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Hi,

Request profile evaluation and help in choosing the right schools.

Basic:

Age: 26
Nationality: Indian
Gender: Female
Work location - India


GMAT: 720 (Q50, V38), AWA 5.0

Acads:

Top 1 % of the class throughout my academic career

Xth: 91%
XII: 96%
B.E. (Electronics) from Anna University, India: 80%


Work Experience:

Working with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) since March 2010 (Total Experience: 57 months)

Roles and Responsibilities:

1. Lead a team of 8 members located across various cities in India, including Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi.
2. Manage Identity and Access (IAM) for all the employees of TCS. (~ 300,000 employees, across all geographies)
3. Provide solutions to technical issues, and ensure the delivered solution meets the technical specifications and design requirements.
4. Maintain the IAM technology infrastructure.

Highlights:

1. Improved employee productivity by 90% by automating identity and access management throughout the organization.
2. Reduced support and helpdesk costs by 25% by avoiding the need for manual intervention by helpdesk staff in managing user access and privileges.
3. Improved overall security by eliminating non-compliant user provisioning with an auditable process for managing identity related activities.
4. Revamped the IAM architecture to a centralized and scalable platform which can support 300% more users and connect to a broad range of third-party applications.
5. Created a training module and built IAM knowledge within TCS internal IT, thereby reducing training costs by approximately USD 150K per year.
6. Single point of contact of the IAM team for TCS internal stakeholders as well as external vendors.

Achievements:

1. Consistently ranked top performer and received highest rating in each of my appraisals in TCS.
2. Promoted to Technical Lead within 12 months of joining the team
3. Received a promotion from Assistant Systems Engineer to Systems Engineer within 12 months and from Systems Engineer to I.T.Analyst within 24 months (received by less than 2% of the employees of my grade).
4. Received many awards and appreciation for outstanding performance including
a. 'On The Spot' Award for my contribution in the field of Identity and Access Management.
b. 'Faculty Award' for facilitating and delivering the training programs on Identity and Access Management.
c. First and the only person (till date) within the team to achieve 100% SLA compliance in resolving customer queries.


Extracurricular:

1. Passionate about Music (vocal). Over 14 years of singing and teaching experience in South Indian classical music. Have given many stage performances and won awards.

2. Vice president of INSTRUBLITZ 2008 (Tech. Symposium) during my engineering. Led a team of 12 members and was responsible for raising sponsorships and organising various events. The symposium was attended by more than 1500 students.

3. Actively involved in many community activities including
a. Raised funds for BHUMI - a non-profit youth volunteer organization of students and young professionals providing supplementary education for underprivileged children at orphanages and community centres in India.
b. Volunteered for scribe activity for a visually impaired student.
c. Blood donation

4. Other hobbies include Handicrafts, Reading and Cooking.

Why MBA:

An MBA at this point in my career will help me balance out my technical and functional skills which I believe is a necessary asset as technology becomes more and more a part of the business world. I would like to continue to develop my leadership abilities and add depth to my learning by interacting with a diverse pool of students and alumni network.

Post MBA:

Technology product manager in a top B2B/B2C company.


Please evaluate my profile. I am targeting only top B-schools (Insead,Wharton,Tepper,Kellogg,LBS).

Looking forward to hear your expert views.

Thanks,
Sivaranjani

Sivaranjani-

Even with the competitive Indian applicant pool, I believe you have a good chance at your target schools. Females with technology qualifications are more rare to find, so this helps to shrink the application pool considerably in your case and puts you in position to distinguish yourself. It is going to look really good that you have bonafide leadership experience in your background as well as quantifiable impact on the organizations where you have worked. Make sure you emphasize this--explaining how you made your mark and it's measurable. Demonstrating fit at your target schools should be easy given your background, although I see less of a fit at Wharton, since it's a very finance-intense school. Have you considered Haas? That seems like a good fit as well, but given the difficulty of these schools from an admissions standpoint, you should also look to broaden your applications with a school or two in the safer range (Keenan Flagler is a good choice and has good technology access with its proximity to Research Triangle Park--sort of a "silicon valley south" kind of setup in North Carolina). Please let us know if we can help you pull your applications together. It's important that every component works in order to make the most compelling case for admission.