Hi Guys - I m yet another Indian male with work-experience in Finance IT. Wanted your feedback:
Age - 29 (turning 30 in a month!)
GMAT:
Total Score: 710 (92 percentile)
Quant: 48 (80 percentile)
Verbal: 40 (89 percentile)
AWA: pending
GPA: 81% marks from University of Madras in Computer Science, graduated with "distinction"
Additional Certs: CFA
Work Experience till now - 6.75 years
I work at Goldman Sachs in New York as an IT/quant type guy for a trading desk doing programming for a Prop desk's risk management system. Also do some automated trading strategies. The trading book is > $5bn and I m the main tech lead. Since its based in brazil i ve gotten to travel down there for work as well. Also got promoted to VP earlier this year, and manage a couple of people.
I m looking to segway into the asset management/investment management business, specifically either a hedge fund or as a portfolio manager sort of opening at a buy side shop. Also interested in trading gigs. I do harbour some dreams of private equity/venture capital since I m involved in the NY Tech start-up Meetup scene but I dont wanna throw that into my admission essays since I feel I dont have a connecting theme there yet.
Extra-curricular: Did after school tutoring with a volunteer group for 3 years, and for the past 5 years, I ve done at least one bike ride or cancer-run sort of fund raising event every year. I was a pretty good student in school and have tons of awards for quizzes, improv events etc(pretty random) as well as some honor certificates for academic accomplishments.
I am targeting the Top 10 B-Schools. I ve got these on my list so far:
Booth
MIT
Columbia Uni
Wharton
Harvard
LBS
Also have NYU parttime mba as a backup since my work will pay for me to go parttime, although a big motivation for me to leave my job is basically to effect a career change and I m not sure how effective a part-time mba will be on that front.
I m not thrilled about my GMAT score being a touch low, especially since I tested higher in practice, so definitely taking the test again.
My worry is the usual overcrowded pool of male Indian IT guys/engineers with extremely high gmat scores. I m also worried about being too old and locked-in to my current job path since I ve been here nearly 6.5 years, and would be above the average applicant's age at a lot of schools.
Do you think I have a decent shot? I m also gonna put time in school visits as school kicks off the next couple of weeks, do you think that could help as well ? (will visit all schools except LBS!)
Age - 29 (turning 30 in a month!)
GMAT:
Total Score: 710 (92 percentile)
Quant: 48 (80 percentile)
Verbal: 40 (89 percentile)
AWA: pending
GPA: 81% marks from University of Madras in Computer Science, graduated with "distinction"
Additional Certs: CFA
Work Experience till now - 6.75 years
I work at Goldman Sachs in New York as an IT/quant type guy for a trading desk doing programming for a Prop desk's risk management system. Also do some automated trading strategies. The trading book is > $5bn and I m the main tech lead. Since its based in brazil i ve gotten to travel down there for work as well. Also got promoted to VP earlier this year, and manage a couple of people.
I m looking to segway into the asset management/investment management business, specifically either a hedge fund or as a portfolio manager sort of opening at a buy side shop. Also interested in trading gigs. I do harbour some dreams of private equity/venture capital since I m involved in the NY Tech start-up Meetup scene but I dont wanna throw that into my admission essays since I feel I dont have a connecting theme there yet.
Extra-curricular: Did after school tutoring with a volunteer group for 3 years, and for the past 5 years, I ve done at least one bike ride or cancer-run sort of fund raising event every year. I was a pretty good student in school and have tons of awards for quizzes, improv events etc(pretty random) as well as some honor certificates for academic accomplishments.
I am targeting the Top 10 B-Schools. I ve got these on my list so far:
Booth
MIT
Columbia Uni
Wharton
Harvard
LBS
Also have NYU parttime mba as a backup since my work will pay for me to go parttime, although a big motivation for me to leave my job is basically to effect a career change and I m not sure how effective a part-time mba will be on that front.
I m not thrilled about my GMAT score being a touch low, especially since I tested higher in practice, so definitely taking the test again.
My worry is the usual overcrowded pool of male Indian IT guys/engineers with extremely high gmat scores. I m also worried about being too old and locked-in to my current job path since I ve been here nearly 6.5 years, and would be above the average applicant's age at a lot of schools.
Do you think I have a decent shot? I m also gonna put time in school visits as school kicks off the next couple of weeks, do you think that could help as well ? (will visit all schools except LBS!)
