Dear All,

 

For half a decade, I've been helping Indian candidates chart out their strategies for leading MBA programs (including the top-10) across the globe.

 

When I started my MBA application process, I had a lot of factors working against me. My profile fell in the extremely competitive Indian/IT/Male pool. Considering the average age of the typical Indian candidate, I was too old. I did not have a spectacular GMAT score.

 

I guess I played my cards right, as I ended up with offers from all the schools that I applied to, including my top-choice - Cambridge. I was awarded a double scholarship. I also managed a complete career-change from Technology to Finance (M&A).

 

I've worked internationally as a senior professional in the corporate world in leadership roles. For several years, I've been an active mentor on one of the biggest MBA platforms (Pagalguy).

 

On this thread, I'd be glad to answer any queries related to your profile. Questions ranging from 'What are my chances?' to 'How do I cook daal/chaawal in a microwave?' are all welcome.

 

Hi Sameer,

Good to see an Indian admission consultant. It would be really great if you can give me advice regarding my profile.

Brief Profile - 690 GMAT/8 years WE/MBA from top 10 business school in India/Average grades in B.Com and MBA - 52.5%,6.2/9

Strengths - Multiple promotions, Currently in Senior Leadership role with Financial Services MNC managing a team of 70 people in KPO domain. Lots of international experience in terms of international clients, short stints abroad, also have BD responsibilities. Responsible for setting up a market research team in China. Strong community work/ECs

Journey so far - Admit from HEC Paris, Dinged from IMD after waitlist, Waitlisted w/0 interview at Duke. Had a couple of dings from US last year probably because of my essays. Have reworked this year on the essays and have got one admit and waitlist-ding.

Career goals - Marketing/Strategy role post MBA and Enterpreneurship long term

It would be great if you can let me know the following -

 - Which schools should I target considering my profile and considering the fact that I have an admit from HEC?

 - Are there any schools who give more weightage to WE than acads (like IMD)?

 - Should I apply to colleges such as Cornell, UNC-KF, Cambridge, Oxford considering I have got thru HEC and want to specialize in Marketing and want to go back to consumer goods/financial services industry?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Regards,

LK

Hi LK,

 

I'm happy that we are kick-starting the thread with an interesting profile.

 

The strongest part of your application is the balance. You professional profile is pretty strong. You are hitting the right buttons - leadership, promotions, managing teams, international experience. The scope of work also seems pretty broad. You are getting in new business for the company. That doesn't hurt - during boom time or during recession.

 

The BCom grades will not be a downer. The top-10 schools in India are pretty competitive. And international Adcoms know that. However, considering your profile, I'd strongly recommend European schools for the following reasons.

 

- The average age in the classrooms will be closer to your age.

 

- The admissions process will focus more on your experience than GMAT scores.

 

- You have already got hands-on experience across many facets of business. So a 1-year program would be more appropriate.

 

- Even if you consider currency differences - USD vs EUR (or GBP) - US schools would be more expensive in terms of total investment (including opportunity costs).

 

HEC Paris is a good school. So you are in a pretty decent shape already. You could try Cambridge and Oxford as well, as they look for candidates with your kind of a profile.

 

I think I've answered your last two questions on WE weightage and 4 schools. That leaves question 1. Other schools that you could look at.

 

Just because you've helped start this thread on a good note, I'd like to send you a Crystal Ball Report for free. It'll have a big list of schools with your chances at each. Send me a Private message with your email ID, if you are interested.

 

Hi Sameer,

Thanks in advance for evaluating my profile. I am 27/M/ citizen and resident of India. My profile is as follows:

GMAT 770 (46V and 49Q)

BS in Mechanical Engineering at a hardly-known, "tier 3" US college in the mid-Atlantic.

• Ranked #1 in my class with a GPA of 3.9
  
• Specialized in Power/ Energy conversions within Mech Engr and took a multi-disciplinary minor in sustainability.
  
• Led a 5 person team in Designing, Developing and Testing a Solar Powered Water Heater/ Heat Pump.
• Was a senior member (Committee Chair) in Student Government and was elected to pretty much every honor society.
  

Work Experience (6 yrs)

3 years + 1 year's Internship at an Automotive Electronics company (Fortune 100) as a Manufacturing Engineer at a plant.

• During my internship in R&D, recommended a design change that resulted in reducing product cost by 2% and residual pollution (through fuel leakage) by 5%.
  
• As Manufacturing engineer, saved the company more than $ 500,000 per year (15% of the departmental budget) by putting in place a predictive maintenance program that increased machine uptime and reduced scrap, meeting every stretch-target for the year.
• Led 6-person problem-solving teams to resolve two very important quality issues that if unresolved would have resulted in a loss of the company's preferred supplier status with one of the big 3 US Car-makers.
  
• Was promoted to Mfg Engr II in 2 years against the norm of 4 yrs despite the company laying off 20% of its work force that year.

2 years at a cleantech automotive startup (~200 employees) in a very ill-defined role.

• Developed, implemented and managed the Corrective Actions and Non-conformance Handling programs for the whole company, mentoring over 12 project teams in solving over 1300 quality issues with the finished product.
  
• Led product integration by pulling together all subsystem design teams and created the top level Failure Modes Effects Analysis and identifying top risk factors for the end product.
  
• (Unrelated to job title) Identified several irregularities and gaps with the company's ERP implementation which resulted in the firing of original implementers. Was named a core team member (alongside director-level employees) on the re-implementation and turned around a very poorly configured system and made it operation-worthy in 3 months, resulting in a promotion and change of role.
  
• In the new role as Business Systems engineer, trained and mentored supply chain and production teams on standard automotive industry practices.
  
• Promoted to manager to create standard SOP's to ensure end-to-end connectivity of business processes and to lead the company towards ISO certification (quit before delivering this objective to start up on my own.)
  

For the last year in India, I've been doing a number of things.
Came to India expecting to start a company but family and political circumstances did not allow for me to run per my original plan and I didn't want to end up wasting 3-4 years on this venture and disqualifying myself from an MBA in the future. So, I gave up on that and instead I've been doing two things parallelly,

1. Technical Consultant (I can call myself Director of Technology, but it's just the "CEO" and me) at my friend's early stage e-recycling venture (0 employees)

• Led mechanical design and fabrication of the prototype processing unit based on technical specifications supplied by IIT.
• Designed and conducted experiments to optimize variables to repetitively yield consistent end results.
• Wrote a revised business plan to aid the funding effort that caught the attention of several angel investors.
  

2. Limited Partner at a Property Development firm (~20 employees) - started out as I approached the proprietor (a family friend) to invest some of my MBA money in real estate, and he wanted me to come on board part-time as a partner after a few conversations.

• Advised on altering business strategy, leading to a new project in which is twice the RoR that the firm had averaged in prior projects.
  
• Led to the creation of a construction arm in the firm, taking on projects within colonies/ developments under the firm's banner, increasing income potential per sqft of the firm's landholding by 30%.

Extracurriculars: Avid writer. Never been published per se. Volunteered part time with the Salvation Army and a popular Indian early education charity.

Career goals: Strategic management role at a cleantech company (preferably in the SF Bay area)  or a job at a VC firm in their cleantech practice for a few years.I plan to return home to India by age 35 to become a strategic angel investor focusing on cleantech startups.

I am a big Stanford fan and would love to attend Stanford. Outside of Stanford, I would like to attend a school that would feature in the top 10 and will give me a very good opportunity to get a work-visa in the United States in cleantech. I am not sure as to where else to apply, and I would be grateful for some advice on other schools where I would be a good fit.

I am particularly worried about a few things I see to be weak spots in my profile - 1) I've never managed anyone directly (except interns), 2) why I gave up my venture (it was hard work for little result and I didn't have the shortcuts that I thought I did to hasten the process) and 3) what I currently do (real estate doesn't fit well with rest of the profile or future plans, and tech consulting at an employee-less venture seems like a step down from my previous job which was quite high profile.)
 
So my questions are 1) would I do better to just leave out the half-hearted attempt at a green venture altogether?
2) How about the Real estate activity - does it strengthen or weaken my overall application? Should I leave it out and try to strengthen my role in my friend's start-up?


Thanks a ton in advance for your time and advice.
B.

Hi B,

 

Thanks for your message.

 

Your progession (engineering degree to employment) has a strong logical theme. Clean tech, sustainable tech. Don't worry too much about the undergrad story. You GMAT should compensate it to an extent.
Your promotion has been faster than usual. You could mention this in the application. There a strong techical feel to what you've described. Try to balance this out with the business elements too. You have been involved in strategy (real estate exp), marketing (pitching the business idea to investors). Am sure you'll be able to find other gems if you introspect a little more.

 

Many people try to bloat up their accomplishments by getting verbose. You've mentioned a lot of details, but in your case, I feel it's not just empty shells. You actually have accomplished quite a bit in your professional life. Just a word of caution though. When you start working on your essays, try to find out 2 or 3 key points that you want to highlight. Don't let the important ones get drowned under the volume. Prioritize and then present.

 

You've got quantitative data to backup your 'claims' of cost reduction, pollution reduction, scrap reduction. If you let one of your recommenders say the same thing, it adds credibility to those claims. Let the recos complement rather than duplicate what you've said in your essays.

 

I'm guessing the e-recycling venture is past the proof-of-concept stage(?). Did any of the interest from angel investors translate into actual funding? That would be a huge coup.

 

Your concerns:

 

- The not-so-successful green venture may actually help you answer the 'Why MBA?' or 'Talk about your biggest failure. what did you learn from it?' questions Can you identify why the venture failed?

 

- The real estate part doesn't extend your story. But it's good experience nevertheless. See if you can talk about it without forcing it in.

 

- You've said you don't have team leading experience. You could tap into your engineering days when you led 5 people on the Water Heater/Heat Pump project. That's leadership and team management right there. What about the Student commmittees that you were part of? It doesn't need to happen just in the professional space.

 

Finally, your question on schools that you could consider. Go ahead and apply to Stanford as it's your dream school. Also try Haas, Darden, Cornell and Stern. 'Green is good' for these schools. 

 

Overall I think you have a strong profile. Ensure that your application does justice to it. Good luck.

 

Thanks Sameer. I have sent you a PM.

LK: The Crystal Ball Report has just been mailed out to you.

After browsing through it, do let me know your thoughts on the report - its usefulness, accuracy, overlaps with/deviations from your own independent analysis etc .

 

 

Thanks Sameer. That was very useful.

B.

I was just wondering if for an Indian Male IT, starting a social venture after MBA sounds cliched.

Btw my profile: GMAT 700; GPA: 8.62/10; WE: 48 months at matriculation in a top software product company(development + consulting); engineering from one of top 10 colleges of India.

With this story, I got interview call from ISB and a almost-ding from Harvard. Yale has already sent half of the invites and unfortunately wahan se bhi ding. I was wondering if I should change my story a little bit for rest of the applications.

Hi,

 

I'd like to get a little more insight into your profile.

 

For the social venture what level of detail have you gone into? Is it just at a conceptual stage or do you actually have a business plan for the product/service ready?

 

I'm trying to gauge if the social venture component has the depth to convince the Adcom that you are really serious about this and it's not just a way of trying to break away from the IT pool.

 

If you don't want to talk about the concept on a public forum, drop me a PM and I'll revert back.

 

Also, if you have other strong elements in your application - extra curriculars, NGO experience, awards, achievements etc, do mention those as well.

 

Uske baad baat karte hain.