I'm looking at applying to 6-7 schools in R1 this fall(bit ambitious?), and was hoping to get some input from you about both my profile...
I'm male, 25 y.o, from Adelaide, Australia (Indian background) and have 4 years exp in Tech Consulting, Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise. My GMAT was 720(50q, 38v) and GPA 4.5/7 (not sure what that equates to in the 4.0 scale but it was middle of the pack in my class - I moved to a new country by myself at 16, worked a full-time job while in college, played varsity sport(volleyball -- was the only foreign national on the team- and was the captain my senior year), and started a social enterprise organization that has now grown significantly--- those were some of the distractions apart from drinking and going out for my average grades. I'm enrolling in a finance and stats course thru the UC berkeley distance program and hope to ace them which I'm hoping might mitigate my average GPA to some degree?
Work exp - I had two job opportunities post college - one at Intel as a product analyst doing back end IT work and requirements gathering/analysis etc, and the second was to work with a start up in India in the mobile tech area where my role would be much more cross functional. So I took that path (stupid maybe, but i didnt wanna be a back end IT guy and always had entrepreneurial inclinations) and had a pretty significant role/promotions in their company and worked on a product which now has over 95% of India's mobile streaming market share. Upon completion of the project, I moved back to Australia and worked with another IT startup(50 employees) as a consultant. Around 15 months ago, the Principal Consultant at the firm I worked at and I founded enCloud which is a startup specializing in cloud computing working primarily with small-medium sized enterprises but we've had some big-name clients lately. We are a team of 40 now and I directly manage a team of 6 developers and 2 sales consultants.
EC- I played cricket and volleyball for my university during undergrad, and still play for a local Grade A cricket club every season (weekends, Oct- Jan). I also play basketball in a social league twice a week. I am also a published sports columnist for givemesport.com, which is the biggest online sports news website in UK and Australia. I'm a regular contributor for them and I mainly cover weekly NFL and NBA stories.
I started an organization, GTNBZY, n we organize exhibits or concerts or hybrids to provide a platform for local artists (both musical and visual) to showcase their talent. We have 36 artists and 12 musicians on our team and organise events every quarter. We started this in 2008, and it has grown tremendously since. We now get over 200 guests (a pretty big number for Adelaide) and raise over $6000 every event on average. We have also sourced local sponsors and made connections with a couple of recording companies and one of our musicians was signed by one of them last year.
I do some occasional volunteer work with the Cancer Council of Australia mostly to help my partner out. Her dad was a former Olympic long distance runner who passed away 5 years ago and her family along with the Athletic Association of South Australia organises a 5K run every year where I do some fundraising and organise teams to participate in the race.
I also love fashion and a bunch of us launched a monthly magazine covering mens fashion, fitness and sport. We had 4 editions out before it fell apart but it's something that might be a potential future passion project...sorta on the lines of a GQ style magazine but with a lot more web resources and more interactive web/social media business model
Goals and Aspirations - I want to get into management consulting(strategy and operations) post MBA preferably working in social enterprise units of M/B/B, and long term I'd like to be an entrepreneur and do something both in the consulting area and also social enterprise (maybe like a virtual interactive art studio/auction house).. I obviously need a some help articulating these goals and tying them to my current exp and portraying them as viable options.
BTW the schools I am targeting are Yale(so far my primary choice), Booth, Duke, Cornell, NYU and Darden(I like Haas too and the Bay area location but the smaller class size and the number of Indian applicants applying there combined with the weird essay questions are giving me second thoughts)...I was thinking of Georgetown as a backup due to their amazing international reputation but I'm not sure if I'd be comfortable making the move to America for a lower ranked school than them.
Cheers, Varun
I'm male, 25 y.o, from Adelaide, Australia (Indian background) and have 4 years exp in Tech Consulting, Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise. My GMAT was 720(50q, 38v) and GPA 4.5/7 (not sure what that equates to in the 4.0 scale but it was middle of the pack in my class - I moved to a new country by myself at 16, worked a full-time job while in college, played varsity sport(volleyball -- was the only foreign national on the team- and was the captain my senior year), and started a social enterprise organization that has now grown significantly--- those were some of the distractions apart from drinking and going out for my average grades. I'm enrolling in a finance and stats course thru the UC berkeley distance program and hope to ace them which I'm hoping might mitigate my average GPA to some degree?
Work exp - I had two job opportunities post college - one at Intel as a product analyst doing back end IT work and requirements gathering/analysis etc, and the second was to work with a start up in India in the mobile tech area where my role would be much more cross functional. So I took that path (stupid maybe, but i didnt wanna be a back end IT guy and always had entrepreneurial inclinations) and had a pretty significant role/promotions in their company and worked on a product which now has over 95% of India's mobile streaming market share. Upon completion of the project, I moved back to Australia and worked with another IT startup(50 employees) as a consultant. Around 15 months ago, the Principal Consultant at the firm I worked at and I founded enCloud which is a startup specializing in cloud computing working primarily with small-medium sized enterprises but we've had some big-name clients lately. We are a team of 40 now and I directly manage a team of 6 developers and 2 sales consultants.
EC- I played cricket and volleyball for my university during undergrad, and still play for a local Grade A cricket club every season (weekends, Oct- Jan). I also play basketball in a social league twice a week. I am also a published sports columnist for givemesport.com, which is the biggest online sports news website in UK and Australia. I'm a regular contributor for them and I mainly cover weekly NFL and NBA stories.
I started an organization, GTNBZY, n we organize exhibits or concerts or hybrids to provide a platform for local artists (both musical and visual) to showcase their talent. We have 36 artists and 12 musicians on our team and organise events every quarter. We started this in 2008, and it has grown tremendously since. We now get over 200 guests (a pretty big number for Adelaide) and raise over $6000 every event on average. We have also sourced local sponsors and made connections with a couple of recording companies and one of our musicians was signed by one of them last year.
I do some occasional volunteer work with the Cancer Council of Australia mostly to help my partner out. Her dad was a former Olympic long distance runner who passed away 5 years ago and her family along with the Athletic Association of South Australia organises a 5K run every year where I do some fundraising and organise teams to participate in the race.
I also love fashion and a bunch of us launched a monthly magazine covering mens fashion, fitness and sport. We had 4 editions out before it fell apart but it's something that might be a potential future passion project...sorta on the lines of a GQ style magazine but with a lot more web resources and more interactive web/social media business model
Goals and Aspirations - I want to get into management consulting(strategy and operations) post MBA preferably working in social enterprise units of M/B/B, and long term I'd like to be an entrepreneur and do something both in the consulting area and also social enterprise (maybe like a virtual interactive art studio/auction house).. I obviously need a some help articulating these goals and tying them to my current exp and portraying them as viable options.
BTW the schools I am targeting are Yale(so far my primary choice), Booth, Duke, Cornell, NYU and Darden(I like Haas too and the Bay area location but the smaller class size and the number of Indian applicants applying there combined with the weird essay questions are giving me second thoughts)...I was thinking of Georgetown as a backup due to their amazing international reputation but I'm not sure if I'd be comfortable making the move to America for a lower ranked school than them.
Cheers, Varun
Of course not saying you shouldn't include many of these in your application, but as I think you know based on your own comments, you'll want to choose a few key facts and experiences about you that you REALLY want to highlight within the application... the 'how will you be remembered' factor. 
