GMAT 740. Low Work-Ex. National level football player

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10th: 86%

12th: 83.4%

GRADUATION
B.Tech. in Computer Science from IP University, Delhi with an aggregate score of 72.6% (First Class)

GMAT: 740

WORK-EX:
Working with Samvardhana Motherson Group (SMG) (World's 5th largest group) for past 2 years as a Software Engineer. Involved in different roles for 2 years. Was a JAVA developer for the first 12 months and worked on a project related to automobile industry wherein we tracked all the activities of major automobile players (like Mercedes, Audi, Volkswagen etc.) and their manufacturing plants. In this project I proposed a module which involved scanning of invoices, of which I proposed the algorithm, to potentially reduce the effort at customer's side. This brought a business of 60.2 Million INR to organization. Received Star Performer of the Year award for the initiative taken.
In lieu to this initiative taken, after 1 year in the organization, I was shifted to Business Intelligence Team to use the critical data like revenue; budget etc. of the organization to track down the lacuna's to suggest possible changes to be made for organization's benefit. Working under this team, I proposed the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) which shall mitigate the re-work done in few teams in the organization. Upon review it was implemented in the organization. I inked down the proposed SDLC and got it converted in form of a research paper, published in a prestigious journal.

Total Work-Ex at the time of ISB 2016-17 application will be 2 years 8 months.

OVERSEAS EXPERIENCE
Went with project leader and other team members for installation and demo of the project to the client for duration of 3 months in Hungry during my tenure as a JAVA developer in initial 12 months

EXTRA-CURRICULAR
I have categorized extra-curricular into following categories.
Scholastic Achievements:
"¢ Have 5 research papers being the 1st author published in prestigious journals with a high impact factor. For one of the research paper published, was selected as a reviewer at the same journal (Science Alert) where mostly doctorate and post-doctorate professors are selected.
"¢ Was selected to represent my school in a competition of Mathematics and English conducted by University of New South Wales.
"¢ Winner of 3 state awards in technical events conducted at Delhi College of Engineering (DCE). Runner-Up in 4 technical events conducted at Delhi College of Engineering.
Dramatics
"¢ Winner in 1 competition and runner up in other organized in IGIT.
"¢ Played Football at National Level. Represented Delhi and scored a hat trick and helped team to reach semi-finals. Was also adjudicated Man-of-the-tournament by sports head of IIT during an intra-college football tournament in my college.
"¢ Organized literary events during college fests in the year 2011-2012-2013. Recoded higher participation with each successive year.
Debating and Literacy
"¢ Winner of 3 State level debate competitions organized at Delhi College of Engineering.
"¢ Winner of 3 State level extempore competitions organized at Delhi College of Engineering.
"¢ Winner of 3 State level essay competitions organized at Delhi College of Engineering and 1 essay event organized in my college.
"¢ Contributed to college and school magazines and remained an active blooger in my organization monthly newsletter.
Social Initiative
"¢ Involved with an NGO for past 3 years. Working as a treasurer now. During my time I organized events to raise fund for the NGO and used the same money to prevent cow smuggling and prevent slaughtering of cows in the small villages of Haryana.
"¢ A short 3 months internship at AIESEC under the program Iccha, to help slum children identify the basic cause of malaise. Helped them identify major pollutants and areas acting as a breeding ground of mosquitoes. Drafted a survey on the area visited and was adopted as a blue print by the local residents to palliate the waste.
"¢ Worked for 5 months at Children Home, Delhi Government foster home to orphan kids. Provided pedagogy to students and was involved in various teaching drives organized at foster home during those 5 moths.
"¢ Active member of CSR committee of my organization. Awarded for an active role in donation and social drives.


Is the GMAT score enough to compensate for low GPA and low work-ex while applying to ISB 2016-17 batch ? Or do I need to retake GMAT and try to score > 750 to offset the low GPA and work-ex ?

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by mbaMissionKate » Thu May 07, 2015 4:46 am
Hi there,
Looks like you posted the same profile on one of our other message boards so I'm going to paste my reply below for the benefit of others. Keep us posted if we can help!
Best,
Kate

***
Hi there, thanks for your post.

So I think your GMAT is very strong, though you don't mention your Q/V breakdown. Your grades seem good too, so academically, I don't see any concerns. In terms of work experience, yes, it is a bit below the average but you do have that entrepreneurial experience in college which does not formally "count" in terms of years, but I think should be a good part of your story and help you to demonstrate drive and maturity. You will need to demonstrate that you've really thought through the decision to get your MBA and why now is the best time for you. Without knowing your post-MBA goals, it's difficult for me to evaluate. This is an important part of anyone's application but especially for you since you're on the less experienced side. :)

You list a lot of extracurriculars which is great, but remember that b-schools really only care about things post-university. So it looks like you have some things there, like the NGO and CSR committee. I don't think the football experience will have a huge impact, but it could make for an interesting story as part of your essays.

The two biggest challenges I see for you are...
1) Differentiation: you're applying from an extremely competitive demographic (male engineers from India) so you need to think about how you differentiate your capabilities and accomplishments. A lot of this goes hand-in-hand with your career goals too - transitioning from a more technical role to a management role can be tough so really dig deep and think about presenting a career path that's both logical and ambitious.

2) Execution: you listed 14 schools I think which is A LOT. I'd strongly recommend cutting down that list because it takes time to execute really solid applications. You can spread them out over multiple rounds but still, 14 is a lot. Plus you'll need to do some research to understand mutual fit and each school's culture, and that's a lot to take on for so many schools. So I'd seek to cut out 4-6 of the schools you list, but still keep a range with stretches (like Booth) to reasonable targets (like Ross) to safer options (like Tepper or maybe another even safer option). Stanford is by far the most competitive school on your list so just keep that in mind.

Hope this helps and good luck to you!!

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by vipulaggarwal » Wed Jun 24, 2015 12:33 am
Thanks for your valuable inputs. I really appreciate you scanning through my profile to provide the feedback.

I have shortlisted

HKUST Business School
Duke University: Fuqua
Ceibs
Esade Business School
University of Michigan: Ross
University of Virginia: Darden
Carnegie Mellon: Tepper
Indian School of Business
Emory University: Goizueta

What are your inputs on the above universities ? Do you think top 3 are ambitious, next 4 are moderate and last 3 are safe ?

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by mbaMissionKate » Wed Jun 24, 2015 12:03 pm
Hello again!

Looks like your list is coming together nicely!

The last three are definitely the safest...Tepper, ISB, and Emory.

The others are slightly harder to distinguish between - generally yes, I think Duke, HKUST, and CEIBS are the highest ranking of the programs you list, though HKUST appears to have a bit higher acceptance rate (close to 50%) than Duke and CEIBS (which are closer to 30%). The distinction between Duke / Ross / Darden is also very narrow, I typically think of them in a very similar band of US programs. But at least recently I'd say Duke may be slightly more competitive. And yes, I'd put ESADE somewhere in the moderate range too.

Hope this helps!