Profile evaluation / guidance for essay application required

[layadalja]

Hi Everyone

First of all, I want to thank MGMAT as it served a crucial role during my GMAT preparation.

Let's look at my profile now:

GMAT Score: 710 (Q - 50, V - 36, AWA - 5.5, IR - 7)

Education Qualifications:

10th Board - 93 %
12th Board - 91 %
B.Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering - 80.5% (Which is tantamount to ~3.5 CGPA, I think)

Background:
I live in Pune, India and have been working as a Business Operations Associate in a reputed US based consulting firm. My total work experience would be around 2 years by next month and I am targeting MBA starting from 2015 mid, for which I will require to complete essay applications by November this year.

Please evaluate my profile and let me know areas of improvement and schools to target for.

Work - Experience: - (Total 2 Years by June'14)

Entrepreneurial Experience:
1) My first start-up:
- Organized career counseling workshops across various schools, presented seminars, conducted aptitude tests and helped students make informed decisions while choosing the best available careers for them

- Developed Go-To-Market strategy involving the Entry strategy, Pilot testing and Location prioritization

- Employed agents to increase market footprint

- Had to keep innovating in marketing strategies or pricing strategies in order to sustain in the market

2) My Second start-up

- Started providing consulting services to under-developed businesses that include restaurants, barber shops etc.

- Carried out well - structured analyses to support well-though insights and recommendations

- Helped these businesses to organise data and understand its nuances

Organisational experience:

1) Business Operations Associate (Current Job - 1 year)
- Working across three different projects for various US pharmaceutical giants of USA

Responsibilities include:
- Devising Incentive & Compensation plans that include Goal Setting, Payout-curve modeling and Performance evaluation strategies for sales representatives of our clients

- Automating the current manual processes involved in various report generation tasks

- Analyzing market research and in turn, facilitate insight generation process

- Leading a team of four people along with handling client communication and task & project management

2) Business Analyst (Previous Job - 1 year)
- Worked in Global Development Operations Offshore Team for one of the biggest pharmaceutical giants of USA

Responsibilities include:
- Defining and understanding business problems, identifying factors affecting the problems and developing methodology to approach them

- Delivering data analyses, statistical models like regression modeling and well organized process maps to clients

- Communicating effectively with clients/onsite personnel and ensuring high-quality outputs to clients

Certifications pursued to help develop my start-up endeavours:


Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Pursued a certified course on Innovation and Commercialization

Darden School of Business (University of Virginia) - Pursued a certified course on Foundations of Business Strategy

International Competition Experience:

X-Culture:
- Presented a case study on Diamler’s Mercedez Benz trucks

- Identified strengths and weaknesses of existing Benz trucks by carrying out extensive market opportunity analyses

- Proposed a new truck design and its marketing strategies in developing countries such as South Africa, India, etc.

- Worked as a team lead and managed co-ordination among the team members who were from different countries such as UK, Ukraine, China and Ghana.

Extra-Curricular Activities:

- Student Placement Coordinator at my university

- Organized group discussions & mock interviews for students to prepare for company interviews at my university

- Non-technical events organizer for a club

- Marketing head of that club at my university

- Secured top 3 ranks for various robotic competitions held at inter-institute level

- Secured top ranks in some gaming events

Community Services:

- Provided volunteer services for six months to an NGO, during when I helped the group to initiate use of social media in collaborating with other NGOs and develop data management system to manage bulk informations.

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I am targeting ISB, Wharton, Kellog, INSEAD, YALE, TUCK. Please let me know if there are other schools I should aim for.

In addition to that, I am also looking for some guidance/practise for interviews and essay-applications. Please let me know what are the apt resources for the same.

Thank you in advance for your time.

[mbamissionjenK]

Hi there,

Thanks for your post. And glad that Manhattan GMAT's preparation served you well.

You have an interesting and fairly diverse profile. I had to read it over a few times to really feel out a good picture of who you are and your background, which means two things 1) there is a lot to draw from/can be a plus to showcase various strengths and experiences within your candidacy, and also 2) you will want to put your story and essays together carefully to ensure that the admissions committee is clear on who you are and why you want this MBA and does not get confused along the way. ;)

Side note I would start your resume with your actual full-time work experience first, and then include your start-ups, as in that order the start ups will have more weight than when someone who doesn't know you reads them first and starts to wonder if that is your primary job and how successful/substantial it really is. ;)

Ok, a few other thoughts to consider:

-Wharton may be a bit of a stretch, and next Kellogg, but generally you have an ambitious but not impossible school list, with good applications. You may just want to add one more outside that list/rank as a safety option just in case.

-Your start experiences do sound quite intriguing and the readers/adcomm will be wondering a lot more about them so be prepared to answer that where feasible and to be prepared in an interview situation (timelines; size; how you decided to start them; challenges; current status; what you learned from it, etc). For the second one it sounds as though you basically started your own small consulting firm??

-not sure what your career goals are/why you want the MBA? This will be very important, fyi!!

-lots of great experience in terms of community service; helping others and communication skills through the mock interviews etc; international exposure; initiative through the certifications you sought.

-you will have slightly fewer than average years of work experience, so just be sure to emphasize the QUALITY of that experience, which I believe you can do.

In terms of services, we are happy to help in any way that you need. Most of our clients sign up for packages that are "Complete Start to Finish" for a given number of schools, so you can work one-on-one with an admissions consultant on brainstorming, essay drafts and feedback, resume reviews, interview prep, you name it. We also offer hourly services if you want to really focus on a key area of the application (such as interviews). For more on our services and options see http://www.mbamission.com/services.php, and let me know if you have any q's.

We also offer a free 30 min initial consult, just an additional chance for you to ask questions, if interested you can register at http://www.mbamission.com/consult.php.

Hope that helps and keep us posted, good luck!

[layadalja]

Hi Jennifer,

Thanks a lot for your valuable reply.

Some of the additional points to help you better gauge my profile/ambitions:

1) I continued my start-up endeavours along with my first job (for one year) and in turn, I had to spend my weekends carrying out these activities. Both the start-ups were profitable and commercially viable; however, as I changed my job, I could not continue spending much time on them. Thus, I have just stopped career counselling and focusing on the second start-up (You can call it a small Consulting firm) during weekends. In summary, I have been actively working on these activities for the past 18 months.

You can see some of the certification courses listed on my profile. I decided to pursue them so as to boost my entrepreneurial career. The MIT course was a stunning one which taught me important aspects of innovation and commercialisation and I implemented many of those while handling start-up activities.

As far as my learnings from the start-ups are concerned, they are immense. I, along with my partner, had to identify right customer base, design marketing strategies, persuade our customers to work with someone who are new into business (the most challenging task), plan workshops, carry out analyses and decide pricing strategies in both of the start-ups. All these helped me in my full-time jobs as well. They helped me plan my day better, come up with 'out-of-box' ideas in my projects, start handling client communication and project management more confidently, and grow my professional career.

2) Yes, I do feel that my overall work-experience of 2 years is on a lower-side; however, I still want to have your feedback if my education qualification, start-up experiences and other elements of my profile can help me offset the experience-part to some extent. Please note that I target MBA from one of the top 20 B-schools. Do you feel my low work-ex can be a concern then? If I wait for next 1-2 years, would my chances of getting into top notch B-schools increase?

3) Do you feel I should re-take GMAT to boost my score to 730-740? Would this help my chances of acceptance this time around?

I really appreciate your time and feedback.

Thank you again.

[mbamissionjenK]

Thanks for the additional insight. It sounds like your start up experiences really taught you a lot, and that there will be a lot you can draw from in your applications as well as the b-school classroom!

In terms of GMAT I am not worried about that, with a 710 and a 50 in Quant. Yes the GMAT is important, but you are very close to the average score at top schools.... at this point the GMAT on its own will not keep you out of a program; other factors might. And it's tough to score a 50 on quant! A low GMAT can easily keep you out of a program in certain cases; where a strong one does not guarantee you'll get in.... a solid GMAT is a necessary, but not sufficient, application factor in many instances. So I would focus on the rest of your application at this point, in my view.

Re: the 2 years of experience... yes if you waited one more year, and especially if you were still continuing to grow at least one of the start ups and to progress and take on more leadership at work, your chances might be better. It's a personal choice-- to try it and go for it this year, or not. All you have to lose is the time/effort it takes to apply. Top 10 may be challenging though not impossible, top 20 may be within reach with strong essays/recommendations/applications.

My biggest question mark at this point is the WHY... be sure (not for me, but for the applications) you have a strong answer to that question, that could make the difference!! Why do you need the MBA and what will you do with it, exactly. ;) Let me know how else we can help!!

[layadalja]

Thanks a lot Jennifer for your valuable feedback. :) It helps a lot.

I would let you know once I start working on applications and other steps of the process.

Thanks again.

[mbamissionjenK]

Great, keep us posted! :)