Could I get into a top MBA with a varied work profile?

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Hi
I am 29 years old and I live in India. I have done my schooling and undergrad from India and have a very good academic background. I am a university topper and have a GPA of 4.0
I have also been a keen participant in a variety of extracurricular activities such as Debates, Sports, Community Service, Dramatic Arts and others throughout my schooling and college years. I was the student body president in high school and head of the literature and dance committee as well as a Toastmaster's club coach and club president during college.

My question is with regards to my work profile. I have a very varied work profile and I wanted to check if this spoils my chances of getting into a top MBA Program such as Wharton or Columbia. The details of my work experience are as below. My work profile has provided me with experience in every major field in a work environment. I have finally decided to settle down and make a career in Corporate Finance for which I want to get into a top MBA program.

I received a campus placement with Goldman Sachs right out of college in 2010 in the asset management department and I have worked as a portfolio control analyst. I was also custodian captain for State Street and the vice president for the diversity and LGBT communities. I also oversaw the project to covert our tool from 60% manual to a 100% automated. I was with Goldman Sachs for two years which I left in 2012. The reason was that I wanted to pursue work experience with a not for profit.

I joined WEConnect International in 2012. It is a not for profit which focuses on the development and empowerment of women entrepreneurs by certifying them and connecting them to Fortune 500 companies as suppliers and vendors. They are in the space of supplier diversity. I was a senior associate and I handled everything from memberships to organizing events all over India for women entrepreneurs. I helped get them certified and procure contracts with companies such as Microsoft, Walmart, E&Y and others. I worked with WEConnect International till end of 2013.

In 2014, I moved to the United States after getting married and it took a couple of months for me to sort out my visa requirements and get my work authorization. In November 2014, I started work with Wilmington Trust (M&T Bank) in the compliance space as a client on boarding specialist. My job was to assess any new business profiles coming through for associated risk and if approved to on board them onto our platform with 100% accuracy. I also kick started the mentor-ship program at work. I was also made in charge of the conversion of our accounts from one platform to the other and to educate the relationship managers in all of the branches in the U.S. on the new procedures.

I had to suddenly quit my job in the U.S. and move back to India due to some dire personal issues in August 2017. Since then I have been working with a not for profit, Catalyst for Women Entrepreneurship (CWE) and with the International Trade Center on a project called SheTrades Global 2018. This is a premiere global business event taking place in Liverpool, UK in June 2018 to connect women entrepreneurs from around the globe with investors and buyers. It is the flagship event in the International Business Festival. I am in the process of identifying export ready women entrepreneurs from all over India to apply for the event and to train the selected entrepreneurs on how to best exploit the opportunity that this event offers.

I am also in the process of developing a project to raise funds to make the smartcane device available to all blind people in my hometown, Bangalore. Smartcane is a technology that was developed by IIT Delhi. It's a device that recognizes obstacles in the height between the knee and the head and send this information to the person holding the stick in the form of sensors so the visually impaired can avoid these obstacles with ease.

Your guidance will be greatly appreciated.
Regards

GMAT/MBA Expert

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by MargaretStrother » Wed Jan 31, 2018 5:03 pm
Pretty impressive career you've had! It looks like you've done some truly amazing things, both professionally and in the community.
Whether you will come off as "all over the place" or "diverse and super-interesting" will depend on your other application components, IMO: if your GMAT is extremely high, if your goals are clearly developed and somehow bring together the various exposures you've had across industries and continents, if your resume and essays are cogent and well-organized, and if you can invest heavily in learning about the schools, since both Wharton and Columbia are research-heavy applications, you should be in great shape. I don't see a diverse background as a deficit unless you've been job-hopping, meaning you've stayed at each of these roles less than a year. For example, if you worked at Wilmington Trust for three years, as it appears here, that certainly shows that you can stick to it and build some roots in a company, so no worries there.

In other words, I think you have terrific potential as an applicant, and the best news is that all the deciding elements are in your hands! Your essays, your GMAT, your application components, are all materials that you can make the most of. But you'll need to approach this very systematically, and do lots of deep research about every component in your application, especially your ultra-important post-MBA goal. It's not too early to start now.

Good luck!
Margaret Strother
Margaret Strother
Senior Consultant
Stacy Blackman Consulting

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by aditiarora2589 » Thu Feb 01, 2018 9:45 pm
Thank you so much for your response Margaret. I will certainly take into account, your advice and will focus on a high GMAT score and my applications.

Regards,
Aditi