Profile Evaluation and target GMAT Score for scholarship

Question

Hi everyone 
I’m aiming for ISB next year and would really appreciate a profile review and suggest what should be my target gmat score which would help me fetch scholarship

25 M

10 - 94.2% 
12 - 84.46% 
B.Tech - 8.36 -> (76.1%)

Engineering College Tier 1.5 
CGPA - 8.36 
-Every year it has been an increasing trend 
-International Research paper on blockchain published 
- Hackathon wins

Work ex 
SDE Intern - FAANG 
SDE 2 - FAANG (4 years) 
- Multiple high impact projects 
- multiple recognition and awards 
- Hackathon wins and awards 
Senior Engineer - PhonePe (just joined)

Extra Curricular 
- YouTube channel 3k subs 
- Published book 1000+ sales 
- Mentored over 500+ students 
- Mentorship sessions for underprivileged and government school students

Posted from my mobile device

MBAGuide · Answer

hrishi84 hope this finds you well You have very impressive credentials, but it would be interesting to see how you can craft the narrative so that you come across as a unique candidate. Strong career trajectory overall. It is very important that you make it clear how your contributions in each area have taken your team's position from 0 to 0.5 or 1 in the areas of your expertise. To demonstrate a high level of ownership, you should also unpack your experiences and reconstruct your stories in a way that shows how working on technical strategy, business building blocks and implementation has given you much more practical experience, more experiential maturity and more ability to contextualize business problems (specifically for your area of work in technology) than most others who come from similar backgrounds and are your age. Outline the issues you are currently facing and how the ISB network would benefit you or the company. The FAANG stint also has strong brand validation, so that's a good thing. I really like your extracurricular activities. It's important to show balanced, right-brained thinking and a search for meaning beyond the numbers. Take the time to think about this and remember more impactful initiatives that emphasize these aspects. For ISB, the GMAT is not the only criteria for awarding a scholarship. More often, scholarships are awarded to truly deserving candidates, either those who have performed exceptionally in less represented areas such as impact, or those who are worthy of being accepted into top global MBA programs, and ISB still wants to attract them into their cohort to enhance the experience for their peer group. How do you build your story so that you get strong consideration? Well, that would require a deeper discussion. Get personalized advice tailored to your unique circumstances in the B School admissions process. Reapplying? Get a free ding analysis Best wishes Aanchal Sahni (INSEAD MBA alum, former INSEAD MBA admissions interviewer) Founder, MBAGuideConsulting LinkedIn |WEBSITE: https://mbaguideconsulting.com/ | Message(WA): +91 9971200927| email- mbaguideconsulting@gmail.com

Goalisb · Answer

Hi,

You have a good profile. Aim for a GMAT score of 675 or higher. This score is considerably above the average at ISB, which typically hovers around 710/720 (classic GMAT). Achieving a higher score will strengthen your application.

Enhancing Your Profile for Scholarship 
 
 Continue to expand your mentorship roles and perhaps take on leadership positions within these settings. 
 As you have just joined PhonePe, focus on making substantial contributions that you can discuss in your application essays and interviews.  
 When the time comes to draft your application essays, ensure they reflect your personality, professional aspirations, and potential contributions to the ISB community.   
Now coming to the ISB Scholarship, we have seen time and again that acing every part of the  ISB application  is important for you to get a scholarship. This means that GMAT, Application essays and the interview, everything is important. The following are some admits with scholarships last year, if you go through their profiles, you can see that they have very different profiles. This has been the case in the previous years also. So drawing home the point that there is no specific GMAT that gets you the  ISB scholarship . Work hard on every aspect!

ISB PGP Admit with scholarship  -  shifted from GMAT to GRE and reapplied
 ISB PGP Admit with scholarship  - reapplicant, did not write the GMAT for reapplication
 ISB PGP Admit with scholarship  - a very different profile again.

All the best!

GOALisB

Feel free to schedule a consultation with our  ISB Admission Consultant  !

admitStreet · Answer

@hrishi84 - interesting profile. Some thoughts and clarifications:

1. Acads and GPA are good. ISB's average is 710-720 (Classic GMAT), so aiming for 10-20 points above the GFE equivalent would be ideal.

2. The FAANG brand and high-impact projects you've indicated can add interesting angles. Extracurriculars seem balanced too, and can offer good talking points for essays. Presenting a balanced and compelling narrative would be crucial, both for admissions and scholarships. For some guidelines on how to tackle ISB's essays, check out  here

3. What are your career plans after ISB i.e. which sector/ function? It'd be crucial in your narrative to link the pre-MBA skillsets to your goals and how/ why an MBA/ ISB fits in.

Hope this helps a bit. Feel free to reach out for a deeper chat.

Regards,
Arvind
Founder, admitStreet |  Schedule a free chat 
W:  https://admitstreet.com  |  LinkedIn

ExpertsGlobal · Answer

Hi  hrishi84 ,

Thanks for writing in.

You have some strong talking points in so far as your professional and extra-curricular experience go; however, a lot will depend on how strong your narrative is and how well your career goals sync with your existing profile.

You should aim for a score in excess of 675 on the GMAT; needless to say, the higher the better; moreover, since you have only joined PhonePe recently, please be sure to have some interesting, value adding take aways from your experience here as well; you must make the next ~4 months reall count.

The following video will help with your essays; while the video is from last year, the broader approach will remain the same:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvy7qxUKX7Q

All the best!

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