Profile Evaluation

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Profile Evaluation

by mudigal » Thu May 05, 2011 1:54 am
Hi All,

I just cleared my GMAT yesterday and got 640 (50 in Quant and 27 in Verbal), though I was expecting around 700 (34-35 in Verbal) :( . I need help in deciding if this score is sufficient or is it really necessary to take the GMAT again.

School: Graduated Engineering, Information Science and Engineering, in 2003 in India.
Work Experience:
1. Talisma Corp - 2003-2006 (3 years) : An Indian CRM start-up, worked as a Software Development Engineer
2. Intuit Inc - 2006 till date (5 years) : Designation : Senior Software Engineer and Innovation Catalyst -

Emerging markets research on small businesses
Me along with 2 of my colleagues at Intuit started studying the Indian market to analyse on what Intuit Product to launch here. After 3 month of market research and experiments with Point-Of-Sale, we actually customized the existing QuickBooks POS and even deployed it at few customers' place in 2007. Then in 2011 for 3 months talked to 300+ small business owners and have proposed a new product for them which handles complexities with money in money out.


Emerging markets research in the bottom of the pyramid
we analyzed the opportunity for other Intuit Products, we pushed ourselves to "put more money in farmers' pocket". I involved myself in understanding the ecosystem of the farmers and their pain points...After talking to 100+ farmers across India and understanding the ecosystem and their pain points, we started a new service, a simple SMS based market place, to make sure they make more money on their produce. After few iterations we nailed the pain that farmers face and now we have more than 250K farmers actively receiving our messages. I am now managing the relationship with the 3rd party advertisers and the companies who are trying to use our platform to brand their products.

Gist
Domain Expertise in ecosystem for Bottom of Pyramid in Emerging Markets!
Domain expertise in the domain of small businesses in the emerging markets : Having spoken to around 300 small businesses.
Domain expertise in the domain of consumers in the emerging markets.

I also won Scott Cook (our founderer) Innovation Award in 2009 for the same. Overall I have a great experience in what it takes to identify, build and launch a successful product for the Bottom Of Pyramid in Emerging Markets.


ExtraCurricular Activities:
1. Led more than 50+ treks. Major one 18 day long 3000Kms 10 people(2 girls) bike riding to Ladakh and achieving the highest motorable/non-motorable road in the whole world (Marsimek La - 19000 ft above sea level).
2. Won photography competitions in Intuit and Talisma as well. My photographs of vandalism in Bangalore during Dr.Rajkumar's (a great icon) demise has been published in magazines and had spread like wildfire. Interested in Wild-Life photography and have thousands of wild life photos shot including Tigers

Awards and Honours:
1. Couple of Patents
2. Scott Cook Innovation Award
3. Intuit Nominated me for Ted Young Innovator Award in India

Academics:
Average 73% in Engineering
Won 4 State-level/National-level Programming contests
Placed on day one and was the highest salaried placement in college (one of the top 5 in Nation India) then.

Future Goals: Want to get into Strategy Consulting for emerging markets after my MBA

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by mbaMissionJessica » Fri May 13, 2011 11:00 am
Hi Mudigal and thank you for your question.

There is one big gap missing from your profile though that has tremendous influence on my answer as to whether your score is too low....which schools are you targeting? If you are looking at top schools, then yes, I'm afraid that a 640 is too low, especially from an Indian technologist which is an extremely over-represented demographic in business school applications, and is a group that tends to score particularly high on the GMAT. The score would differentiate you in a negative way. However, if you are targeting schools where the average GMAT is closer to your score, then no, it is not too low at all.

You seem to have a solid profile in many other important ways though, so it may be well worth your time to take another stab at the GMAT.

Good luck!

Jessica
Jessica Shklar
Senior Consultant
mbaMission (www.mbamission.com)
646-485-8844

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