Research MBA Programs

Hey Guys,

My name is Deepak and at present I work as a developer who develops social media campaigns on platform such as facebook, twitter, youtube etc.

My GMAT score is 730
Q(50)
v(40)
AWA(5.5)

CGPA 3.37 Stream : Computer Sciences and Engineering

I have a cumulative experience of about 3.5 years now and I am aiming for fall 2013. My experience started with an international internship where I worked with a software company called Indra Sistemas in Panama city. Then I moved on to Infosys the second largest software firm based in India. Here I worked on developing artist sites for artists in Warner Music Group and I also developed a lot of tools that connect artists with their fans. I developed some tools with heavy integration in facebook and twitter. Then I moved on to my present company called Votigo Inc. which is among the top 5 social media promotions company in the world. Here I develop social media promotions and I have experience in developing hugely successful campaigns for brands such as Lenovo, AMD, Qatar Airways, Jeep etc.

Most of my 3 years in Infosys and Votigo I have been involved in some kind of social media promotion tools. I have been leveraging the power of social networks such as facebook, twitter, youtube etc. I have a lot of domain knowledge on how various brands are promoting themselves within in the product that our company offers. This interests me a lot and I plan to move on to someone who implements these campaigns to someone who plans these campaigns. MBA programs have awesome modules on stuff such as market research, social media marketing, marketing techniques etc.

I am also an active volunteer in an NGO called India Literacy Project where I am responsible to take mentoring sessions for students of 9th standard on every Saturday. My role is to educate them on the positives of education and also give them ideas as to what they can hope to be in the future and more importantly make sure that they don't drop out from schools after the 10th standard. as part of this I regularly give presentations on careers, teach basics of computers, teach English and basic math. I have been doing this for about 8 months now and even this summer when the schools are closed we are conducting a summer camp.

I am also an active volunteer for the cause fo sustainability and while I was working with Infosys I was part of the eco club and we planned out various initiatives such as recycling e-waste and paper, conducting eco fairs where a lot of products such as solar powered invertors, cookers, water heaters, power saving LED lamps and a lot of other eco friendly products were sold. There were so many initiatves that we undertook and in fact our company won the green corporate award last year.

I plan to select most of my electives based on my 2 core interests 1) Marketing 2) CSR and Sustainable business practices.

Based on my interests, I have shortlisted the following schools :

1. Harvard (Dream)
2. Chicago Booth (Dream)
3. MIT Sloan School of Management (Dream)
4. Schulich(reach)
5. Ross(reach)
6. IE(reach)
7. ISB(reach)

Now the question is am i aiming too high? Because the one who evaluated my profile gave me the following list :
1. Tepper (Dream)
2. Johnson (Dream)
3. Ross (Dream)
4. University of southern california (Reach)
5. Indiana university, Kelley (Reach)
6. UCLA (Dream)
7. Kenan Flagler (Reach)
8. University of washington seattle (Safe)
9. Washington university St. Louis (Reach)

While I agree that Johnson, UCLA, Tepper are world class the intake worries me as I am an international student and considering that only 1/3 is what we get a university with intake of around 350 isn't it too risky by sheer probability? Am I not better off applying to schools such as Harvard whose intake is about 900?

Please advise.