Dear hm2009,

Thanks for your post! Please see my thoughts below:

GMAT: 720
- Indian (M/28) + IIT Bombay Graduate + MS in Comp. Sci. from Univ of Cincinnati (on scholarship).
- Below avg UnderGrad GPA (too busy having fun ), MS GPA = 3.70/4
- During Undergrad: President of Mountaineering club (frequently lead expeditions for groups of 50-100) and was nominated as student-representative to a university-level council (interfacing with 10,000 students at the time).
- Gold medal in a national physics competition in India (1 of 40 nationally awarded out of 12,000 test takers).
- Selected to be trained for the Int'l Physics Olympiad (1 of ~25 nationally selected)
- Couple of paper publications.
- Strong. long-standing contributions to open-source/engineering community.

>>Your GMAT is slightly above average for the majority of programs on your list. Of course, while it may be above average in the overall pool, it's likely more 'average-to-below-average' for Indian engineers who make the cut. How many times have you taken the test? What were your percentiles?

>>Graduating from an IIT is great, but your marks sound troublesome. How bad are they? Are you below 60%? What was your rank?

>>The combination of what may be viewed as average performance on the GMAT with poor ungrad marks could be difficult to overcome.

>>The grad degree performance is excellent, although U. Cinn. isn't going to wow anyone in the admissions office. Were you active with XCs in grad school?

>>Did the physics-related awards come before university or during? If the former, they aren't going to be terribly helpful.

>>You should be aware of the fact that you are slightly older than the average student at your target programs. I don't see this as a major liability, but I can tell you that some of the top schools seem to be gravitating towards the '2-4 years of experience' crowd as opposed to the 6+ years folks...

Professionally:
- Engineer (based in US) in the world's second largest semiconductor industry (~3yrs) and a technical consultant (in India, ~1yr)
- Various leadership roles with the team@work; worked closely with the CTO office for a project (recd. an award -- see below). Responsible for over 20 projects@work and regularly interface with internal/external high-worth clients.
- Writer; recently won a national (India) poetry award (organized by Harper Collins, judged by an Internationally known poet).
- Recently won an award for outstanding contribution at my office.

>>Your work experience sounds fine - albeit not terribly unique in the pool of Indian IT applicants. Ideally some of the leadership elements will help you stand out.

>>The skills you posess in poetry writing are intriguing. They could potentially help you stand out from the rest of the engineering crowd.

Extra curriculars:
- Founder and president of a local chapter for an international non-profit.
- Founder and ex-president of a local poetry club.
- Lead teams from UT Mccombs and Columbia in multiple business plan competitions (reached semi-finals in one; others ongoing).
- semi-fluent in spanish
- Piano player (2 solo concerts under the belt).

>>These all seem promising to me. I am especially interested in the fact that you seem to have music, literary and language skills that differ from the typical Indian IT applicants who apply. This could be useful in building your admissions strategy.

I am planning to apply to Wharton, Columbia, NYU and probably Stanford (not a 100% yet). Yale is the backup.

>>This is a very competitive group of schools. I'm not so sure I'd call Yale a 'safety', but I agree that Stanford, Wharton and CBS are typically very challenging from an admissions standpoint, while NYU and Yale offer slightly better odds.

I'd like to get into a social entrepreneurship oriented for/non-profit focused programs. Ultimate goal is to network with fellow social entrepreneurs, understand how the business works at the grass-root levels, understand the financials of said business, and, at the end of the program, get into socially conscious wealth/capital management, or funds that focus on emerging markets, ultimately moving into green VC (in ~5-10 yrs). Any thoughts on this? What are my chances given that I have no prior finance/capital-management background.


>>Your goals don't seem to fit with any of your past work experiences to date. Beyond that, it doesn't seem like your outside activities/community work really has much of a link to the social entrepreneurship domain either. This will make your plan a bit of a 'hard sell' to the admissions committee. Clearly, this is something we would need to discuss carefully as you work on your admissions strategy, since at the moment I fear that your goals present a bit of a liability.

Feel free to send your resume to Clear Admit ([email protected]) for a free 30-min assessment via phone with one of our counselors.

Best of luck,

Graham