Ask an MBA Admissions Consultant

Dear Consultant,

Thank you in advance for your help. I really appreciate it!

I am a 24 year old Indian male. I am targeting Fall of 2009. I am looking to understand what aspects of my application I should work on the most.

Target schools – Kellogg, Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA

Target Function – Post MBA, I want to go into strategy consulting for a reputed consulting firm, or go into product strategy in the high-tech sector.

GMAT- 710 (Quantitative - 50, Verbal - 36), AWA 6.0
TOEFL – 114/120 (Writing-27, Speaking-28, Listening-29, and Reading-30)

Work experience:
• Since my graduation, I have been working at Adobe Systems, India for the last 3 years in Bangalore.
• I started as an engineer and moved in Technical Evangelism a year ago. I was responsible for various client interactions and developer relations.
• 6 months ago, I was promoted as Product Evangelist, responsible for competitive analysis, strategy and in-charge of coordinating the academic initiatives driven by the Adobe Platform Business Unit for India.
• As an evangelist, my job takes a rainbow role with shades of marketing, technical consultancy, competitive analysis, strategy and pedagogy.

Recommendations
Two of my senior colleagues at Adobe have agreed to give me recommendations.

One is the Manager of the Engineering team I was a part of who can vouch for my initiatives at Adobe and the innovations and leadership I took when I was an engineer that led me to an evangelism role.

The other is the Senior Evangelist in my team whom I have worked closely for the past year who can vouch for my activities as an evangelist and the effect that it has had on product adoption in India and also to the product revenue.

Do I need to go for someone who might be a customer or someone who knows me through my extra-curricular activities?

Academic background:
Among the top three in class through high-school and under-grad.

I have a B.E in Electronics & Communication with a 3.87 CGPA from a reputed university in India.

Since college, I have completed a Diploma Inicial in Español.

I am also currently pursuing a diploma course in Financial Engineering to try the waters before my MBA.

Extracurricular involvement:
I have always been interested in creating passionate communities around ideas. I founded the Robotics Club in college and was an active member of the IEEE.

Once I joined Adobe, I started the “Flex-India” initiative to increase product awareness which resulted in me being offered an Evangelist position. Flex-India currently has chapters in over 7 cities in India and an online membership of over a 1000 people.

Due to my hectic travel schedule i haven't been able to do a lot of volunteer work. I am involved with an organization where i teach under-privileged kids whenever i can.

My hobbies include reading, a good game of tennis or badminton and traveling. I am also a self learning guitarist and try my hand at song writing and composing.

Even with an product evangelism profile, will I still fall under the "An engineer from India in the IT industry" profile which most of my fellow applicants from the country will sport?

If yes, then can you advice on parts of my app which I can highlight so that I can stand-out in this application pool?

Thanks a lot...

Raghu

Hello R -

Thanks for your post.

Its is hard to gauge your candidacy based on profile/stats, as much of the decision is based on your essays, LORs, interview. And as you correctly pointed out - you fall into one of the most competitive applicant pools - Indians with IT background (to your later post, yes you will be classified under that applicant pool). So your stats are very similar to many other candidates from India.

That said, you have an interesting background, particularly your ECs and Spanish. Those could be interesting areas of differentiating your background.

Regards,

NP

Curious - how well do you know Spanish?

I can read & write... I am trying to tidy up my conversational skills that is not up to the mark as yet.