Beat The GMAT

pg850 · Fri Sep 04, 2009 1:27 am

I am a 24 yr old Indian national, born in Chandigarh, India but brought up in 3 different cities in India, Nigeria and finally in Kuwait, where I did my high school. I then went to the United States to do my undergraduate.

I graduated with a major in Electrical Engineering and a minor in Business Administration from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) with a GPA of 3.12 in May 2007. The Electrical Engineering program at UIUC has been consistently ranked in the top 5 by US News for several years now and is therefore extremely competitive. My grades in the Finance and Accounting courses were mostly A’s. I also won a hall of fame “green” award for my senior design project in electrical engineering.

GMAT score ��" 770 (Q50 ��" 93%, V44 ��" 97%)

After graduation, I got a job at AT&T (through a consultant) as a design engineer for its Project U-verse. It was a small team of about 30 people where I moved quickly through the ranks and within 8 months time was leading a team of 6 people, lecturing and training the new inductees on system processes and project methodology and interacting with senior AT&T managers to continually improve and streamline existing processes. It was during my tenure with AT&T that I started developing an interest in value investing. I read several books that introduced the concept of value investing and revisited the finance and accounting books from college. I figured I should move to the financial services Industry and started looking for jobs. This was around September 2008 (I had worked for about 1yr and 2 months by now). I realized that with the economy in turmoil, it was going to be a challenge to get a job, especially in the financial services industry. I thought of doing the MBA then but realized I was short on experience and didn’t know exactly what I would want to do post MBA. So after a couple of months I figured I should probably move back to India where the economy was still growing and I would probably have better luck getting the job I wanted.

So, I moved back to Mumbai (financial capital of India) in December 2008 with an open mind. I wanted to have a vacation for a month or so and take that time to think about my career goals and where I wanted to be headed. I came to the conclusion that an MBA is a must but wanted to get some experience in the financial services industry so as to get a better idea of where my interests lie. After a couple of months of job hunting, I secured a job with IDBI Capital Market Services Ltd. (an Investment Bank with a good reputation in India) as an executive (equivalent to an analyst in US Investment Banks) in the corporate advisory department. I have been working here since April 2009 and have gained valuable experience executing assignments across different industries. I have registered for the CFA Level 1 exam in December 09 and believe an MBA would be ideal at this stage of my career.

Extracurriculars:

Before College:
Led a team of 6 individuals to a Student League of Nations conference in Geneva.
Sports Captain at High School

At college:
Initiated a team that collected funds for the South Asia Quake relief
Involved in backstage preparations for several shows such as India night etc.
Member of IEEE
Member of the cricket club

Post college:
Helped organize various events during festivals as part of my housing society .
Member of toastmasters International

Other Interests:
I am an avid reader and traveller. I love trying different types of food (from roadside stalls serving utterly disgusting food to fine dining) and have travelled to various parts of US and other countries such as UK, Switzerland and Italy.

Target B-schools:

Booth at University of Chicago
Columbia GSB
NYU (Stern)
Cornell (Johnson)
Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)
Austin (Mccombs)

I appreciate your patience in reading this long post and will be very grateful for any feedback/advice you can provide on what my chances are at these schools and what part of my profile I would need to strengthen in order to boost my chances.

Thank you!

Best Regards,
Piyush Goel

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Monica Okrah · Mon Sep 21, 2009 8:00 pm

Thanks for your questions. You have certainly gone after what you want so I commend you on that!

I think the fact that you've lived in three countries and studied in the U.S. at one of the top 5 engineering schools is a strong point for your profile.

The work experience and current extra-curricular activities are light however. I think with another year of experience in your current role, and more community leadership, you could be competitive at the schools that you've listed.

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