Profile Evaluation

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Profile Evaluation

by Gagan2001 » Tue Feb 24, 2009 8:15 am
Dear Sir,

I am an ERP Consultant working with TCS for the past three years. During these three years I also got the opportunityto work for a Project in Saudi Arabia for a prestigious client.My GMAT score is 720 (49 Q,40 V) AWA 4.0.I also have a GPA of 7.3/10 in my undergraduation

Sir, I want to go for an MBA degree as i want to switch my career to the field of Management consulting .

Please suggest, how should i go about researchig the schools and which schools you would recommend for a profile of my kind ?

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by Graham » Wed Feb 25, 2009 1:26 am
Dear Gagan2001,

Thanks for your post! It's great to see that you have begun the process of planning your goals and targeting MBA programs. While you've posed a very open-ended question (nearly any MBA progam will give you the basic education you might need to be a management consultant), I've offered a few ideas below.

One way to view the MBA is as "a means to an end" - in your case, you might view it as the key to taking you from the technical arena of ERP consulting to more high-level/strategic area of management consulting. Doing this might lead to several questions:

1) Which MBA programs are strongest in areas like general management, strategy, cost accounting, operations, case-based learning, etc?

2) Which management consulting firms will you be targeting? Where do these firms source their MBA hires?

3) Where do you want to work in the short and long-term? India? The US? Europe? This could potentially help you further narrow the field (since most schools are best suited to place candidates in their region and studies have shown that a high percentage of graduates end up within 5 hours travel of their MBA program's campus).

4) Do you have an area of interest beyond consulting? For example, are you hoping to do strategy consulting in the tech or telecom sector? If so, you might target schools that have strengths in this area as well.

5) Do you want a part-time or full-time experience? Traditional MBA or executive MBA? 1 year or 2?

To give you an example as to how this might work, let's say that you wanted to work for a company like McKinsey and ultimately focus on consulting in the telecom sector. As such, you might look for a school with strengths in both strategtic management and telecommunications strategy. You'd also want to be sure that the school sends a good number of graduates to work for McKinsey each year. The resulting list of schools might include Wharton, INSEAD, Stanford and HBS - among others.

In terms of resources you might use, I'd advise the following:

-Review the schools' web sites to get a better sense of their academic offerings and career placement statistics.

-Look at a variety of rankings (US News, BW, the FT, etc) - but take them with a grain of salt - not as the final word.

-Beyond rankings, consider reading independent research reports that can provide objective analysis of the schools and how they compare. I'll make a blatant plug for the Clear Admit School Guides (www.clearadmit.com/guides) in this regard.

-Talk to current students and alums at the schools you investigate

-If possible, set up an information interview with someone working in management consulting to learn more about their job. Ask them where their firm hires MBA graduates from, etc.

Hopefully my comments provide you with a good start to your school research process. If you'd like a more in-depth assessment of your candidacy and how it fits with specific progams, send along your resume to [email protected] and set up a free session with one of our counselors.

Best of luck,

Graham
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by Gagan2001 » Wed Feb 25, 2009 2:56 am
Wow !!!Graham Thats pretty comprehensive

I definitely would love to have a session with a counsellor from Clear Admit.

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by Gagan2001 » Wed Feb 25, 2009 3:01 am
Gagan2001 wrote:Wow !!!Graham Thats pretty comprehensive

I definitely would love to have a session with a counsellor from Clear Admit.
Firstly i want to prepare a list of schools that will suit my criteria.Can you suggest some resource that can help me in this ?

Randomly visiting schools' website seems a very unorganized approach.

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by Graham » Wed Feb 25, 2009 4:54 am
Dear Gagan2001,

Thanks for your reply. I agree that "randomly visiting school websites" is not the way to go about your search. That's why I suggested that you first determine the following:

1) Your target companies post-MBA

2) Your preferred region of employment in the long-term

3) Your preferred format (1 year vs. 2, part-time vs. full-time, etc)

Once you've done that, you can look at some of the rankings by focus area (for example, BW ranks schools in various disciplines) and develop a short list based on your findings. You can then use resources like the school web sites and Clear Admit School Guides to learn more.

For example, if you were to tell me that you want to work for a top-tier strategy consultancy (like McKinsey, Bain or BCG), that you want to work in the USA in the long-term and that you prefer a full-time, two-year course (so as to use the summer internship to make your transition into consulting), I'd encourage you to start with programs like Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, Chicago, Columbia, Tuck and MIT. From there you could determine which of these programs suits your needs in terms of class size, coursework offered, etc. You could also look at the class profile for these programs and gain a better understanding of your chances/fit with the students they typically seek to admit.

Best of luck,

Graham
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by iamcste » Wed Feb 25, 2009 5:52 am
Graham wrote:Dear Gagan2001,


-Beyond rankings, consider reading independent research reports that can provide objective analysis of the schools and how they compare. I'll make a blatant plug for the Clear Admit School Guides (www.clearadmit.com/guides) in this regard.

-Graham

I recommend the guides. I use Clear Admit guides for my school and I always keep them near me.

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by Gagan2001 » Wed Feb 25, 2009 7:38 am
Hi Graham,

These are the answers to your questions :

1) Your target companies post-MBA

McKinsey Consulting
2) Your preferred region of employment in the long-term

India
3) Your preferred format (1 year vs. 2, part-time vs. full-time, etc)

Full-Time (1 Year)

Please suggest ,which all colleges will best match my requrirements.

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by Graham » Thu Feb 26, 2009 3:19 am
Dear Gagan2001,

Thanks for your follow up post with further details.

On the surface, if you need a one-year offering and are looking to work for McKinsey, ultimately settling in India, there are a few options you might explore:

1) Indian School of Business
2) INSEAD
3) Columbia J-Term

Of course, if you are looking to work for McKinsey in the US or Europe in the near term (post-MBA), you may lean towards INSEAD and CBS.

Finally, given your career background and the switch to strategy consulting you have in mind, you might really benefit from the two-year format, which would open up a host of additional programs. In any event, this is something for you to consider as you explore your options.

For further advice, I'd advise that you just reach out to Clear Admit directly (by emailing us your resume), as the questions you're posing cover exactly the kind of work we do with our clients.

Best of luck,

Graham
Graham Richmond
Clear Admit, LLC
[email protected]
215 568 2590

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