There are the following questions I would like to ask to clarify my doubts. Before that, I would like to add a background of myself.
Bachelors: B.Pharm Hons. BITS Pilani (Tier 1) (batch of 2019) low CGPA of 5.93 (Scale of BITS Pilani >9 distinctions, >7 and <9 1st division only 4/40 and 2nd division >4.5 and <7).
Work Ex: No industrial. 10+ months into research and writing grant proposals for the government of India research grants such as DST- SERB COVID call, DBT- BIRAC COVID consortium (where the proposal was recommended among the top 50 proposals out of 1200+ proposals).
Challenges with project: Reasons for Failure: a) conflicts of interest with the host institute and principal investigator, in this case, NIPER Hyderabad(T1).
b) can't further apply for other grants, due to exhausted my network resources and conflict of interest
on Intellectual Propriety Rights (IPR) sharing, Publication credits sharing, etc.
Status: SIIC-IIT Kanpur (Tier 1) proposed our team be our incubator for research for a startup grant DBT- BIRAC BIG Scheme,( the proposal was recommended for the next round of screening and the proposal was among the top 40 proposals out of 1600+ proposals). Possibility in failing to clear further rounds of grant approval due to lack of data w.r.t commercial potential during submission of the initial draft.
Skills gained: HR experience, Team building & development, market research (Primary and Secondary), core Research, startup business planning.
I want to pursue Management preferably an MBA. Planning to take GMAT
P.S. on of the research writing which I collaborated with NIPER is under review (impact factor 5.16)
Here are a few doubts I want clear since I couldn't post my doubts in the forum:
1) Given the background understanding of my goals and experience so far should I go for MIM or MBA?
2) I'm targeting top affordable b-schools like UBC, University of Toronto, University of Texas A&M (in USA, Canada, France, Netherlands, and West Europe) and this school have a minimum requirement of high GPA and as I mentioned in the first 2 lines mention regard my GPA. Should I even consider applying to these universities and write to the Adcoms and in an essay for the same?
3) Which year I should target to apply and should I apply ahead for scholarship/fellowship programs?
P.S2. : Thanks for guiding for post edit