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Hi,

Great board! I am hoping someone knowledgeable can weigh in on my profile as well. I am looking to apply to a full time or an executive MBA program starting Fall 2009.

Current age - 35

Ethnicity - Indian

Education - IIT. low GPA, did some entrepreneurial projects rather than focus on studies M.S & Ph.D at a top 10 engineering school (midwest, U. S.). Graduated with a 3.78/4.00.

Work ex - currently 6.5 years in R&D at an advanced materials company. 3 yrs individual contributor, 3 yrs technology mgr leading a group of PhDs, currently a tech. director leading several technology groups.

Awards - best paper award from a prestigious institution during grad school, nominated for best product award as an individual contributor, other project execution awards

Extra-curricular - With family I have only time for one meaningful activity but have focussed a lot of effort on this. I play squash well (won local championships) and am passionate about evangelizing it. Founded a local club, serve as a coach and provide 2-3 hrs free coaching. Helped improve membership.

GMAT - 760 (99% Q, 95% V, 4.5 AWA)

I would appreciate constructive suggestions on challenges I'll face and potential workarounds. In some discussions people have already mentioned that my age may be a turnoff to adcoms.

Comments welcome!

Best Regards,
P

Hey Pat,

Thanks for your post.

You have good credentials and likely a good candidate for a top MBA program. However it is hard to gauge your candidacy based on profile/stats, as much of the decision is based on your essays, LORs, interview.

As you probably know from reading this post - you are (unfortunately) in one of the most competitive applicant pool - Indians with IT background. Therefore your biggest challenge is how to best differentiate yourself. What makes you different from the thousands of Indian IT applicants that will apply to the same schools with similar backgrounds.

Also, your age is a higher than average. Its not a dealbreaker, but many schools are trending downward in terms of work experience.

Therefore its difficult to truly assess your candidacy. Again, I believe you are a good candidate for a top program, but given the above mentioned factors, its hard to say which top 25 schools you would have a good shot at.

You should also check out Veritas Prep's School Selector tool. This is a great way to get a sense of what schools you might be competitive in. Here is the link www.veritasprep.com/selector

Good luck!

NP