Admissions Success Stories

Time for a career shift. I have been in the merchant navy(engineering officer) since 2007 working with a reputed company. In I had taken a break in between and joined a Tata company for about 18 months as project engineer and subsequently got a promotion as well. However, the larger picture was to crack an IIM in this period which didnt happen. Went back to shipping and have worked 2 years since then. I graduated in BE Marine Engineering from a BITS affiliated college and acquired a CGPA of 6.2/10. However, I was involved in a lot of extra curricular activities in school and in college and need to find a way of highlighting them properly. In my 18 months with TATA Steel I have been in very important projects in corroboration with HEC, BHEL, BORL and have got recommendations to show. GMAT score of 670 and exclusively looking at ISB (2014). Kindly evaluate my chances.
Thanks
M

Differentiating Factors

Strength of your profile can be very well measured when we compare you to your applicant pool. For example if I compare you with another merchant navy professional, what do you think are the 3 differentiating factors? Is it that you have extensively worked on process improvements during dry dock projects or onboard ship? Or does your strength lie into your general management skills? Can you quick stint and promotions with TATAs a strong point? No easy answers here, start thinking on these lines.

Leadership

In your current role did you drive projects on your own? Did you motivate a de-motivated team? Did you face a crises situation? Did you take initiative and did good work for client? These are the examples you would have to weave in your essays. If you have such example to put in, believe me you stand in good stead not only for ISB but for US B-schools as well.

Goal Clarity
You have not stated your goals here. Do you wish to stay in Shipping/logistics/operations industry? Or do you wish to test the waters in a different industry? In a world where 1000s of applicants are applying to B-schools every year, an applicant's goal clarity is of paramount importance. What are your long term goals and in line with these what are your post-MBA short term goals?

Have you given a sincere thought to these questions? If not you should because they would be a part of your MBA essays/interviews for sure.

GMAT

670 is little low as a GMAT score, but there is no GMAT cut-off as such put by B-schools. Higher the better is the general thumb rule. Asian applicants esp Indians tend to have high GMAT scores. You can get an idea about B-school's GMAT expectations by looking at class profile of last year's admits, where in they give Average GMAT score for last year's intakes. For ISB this number is around 710.

Hobbies/Extra Curricular

If you do have decent achievements in Extra Curricular then do mention them in your essay in terms of what people or processes you have affected and what impact have you achieved?