Is my profile outstanding enough?

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Is my profile outstanding enough?

by xyeeknz » Thu Aug 27, 2015 8:59 am
Hi team,

I'd like to get an opinion on whether my profile is different enough to stand out from the crowd.

Basic Stats:
- 29 year old Asian female who grew up in Singapore and moved to NZ alone for varsity and am now working there
- NZ citizen
- Graduated with BSc Combined Honours 1st Class in Psychology and Marketing Management (I custom designed my own degree) my GPA when converted works out something like 3.8-3.9
- Did a study exchange to Bocconi in Milan
- Bilingual in English and Mandarin, beginner in Italian (couldn't live in Milan without knowing some) and French (did an intensive summer school paper)
- GMAT score 740 (Q50, V41, IR 7, AWA 5.5)
- 7 years marketing experience in SMEs across 3 very different retail industries (fashion, building & renovation, liquor) with a strong emphasis on digital marketing

Schools interested in:
- INSEAD, Yale, London Business, Wharton, HEC Paris

Goals:
- Short term I'm looking at switching into management consulting and work on international business projects and projects involving corporate turnaround
- Long term I want to run a firm that buys small businesses and turns them around hence the need for experience in consulting and an MBA with strong entrepreneurship focus

Leadership Examples:
Current role
- Lead the development of a complicated eCommerce site providing real time data for 80+ individual stores
- Designed and established the eCommerce order fulfilment system including training of regional managers, store managers and retail staff
- Have recently found myself evolving into IT and driving some of their projects as well even though I'm in marketing

Previous role
- Ran the marketing department and grew sales 10% year on year during a poor economy where other retail businesses were closing stores
- Improved standards of the organisation's visual merchandising and established guidelines and a system for store managers to follow, which required behavioural change (they were previously doing whatever they wanted)

More interesting stuff:
- Started up a part time wedding hire company during the course of planning my wedding because there was better ROI in importing from China and re-hiring out than paying to hire items. Profits paid for the wedding
- I'm a Figure skater and have won several medals, some of which were as a synchronized skating team member (makes for excellent teamwork skills)
- Coached adults and children in figure skating and have been a judge at skate school competitions
- Board member of a new charity for chronic fatigue
- Was an organising committee member of a festival that promoted the Hong Kong culture in NZ and aimed to build business and educational relationships between NZ and Hong Kong
- I'm also a recreational aerial artiste specialising in aerial silks and I've performed in a paid production before
- I used to be an MMORPG gamer and held a leadership position of guild officer in one of the top ranking guilds in the game which had a mature international community 25-60 years old

I think I have the diversity an MBA program seeks, but I don't know if Adcoms of the schools I'm interested in would think the same. Any insights you can provide on how I should make myself stand out would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

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by CriticalSquareMBA » Tue Sep 22, 2015 7:37 pm
Hi there!

I think you have a strong profile and the schools you're targeting make sense. You'll be challenged a bit on your long-term goal as it sounds like you're wanting to start your own PE/VC firm which can prove to be quite challenging. You might want to weave in an opportunity to gain experience doing that work before you try and start your own company. You have a lot of strengths across the board in your leadership, work experience, and involvement. The schools you're targeting are considered to be stretch schools, but all are worth applying to. Are you planning to apply R1 at each of these programs? Have you thought about other programs such as Kellogg, CBS, or Fuqua for R2 should these schools not pan out?
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by Rads279 » Wed Feb 10, 2016 5:40 am
Hi Friends,

Need Profile evaluation.Can someone please evaluate my profile and let me know my chances for schools:
NUS,Nanyang,Cambridge and Warwick.

Nationality : Indian
Gender:Female
Age:31
Industry :IT
Experience : 9 yrs
GMAT:Yet to give(Expected 650)

Want to do MBA to get into business side.

Thanks in advance.

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by CriticalSquareMBA » Tue Feb 16, 2016 7:26 am
Hi Rads279,

Thanks for the inquiry. To get you a reasonable assessment, I'm going to need a bit more information from you. Everyone wants an MBA to get into the business side - question is, what specifically do you have in mind? Without a specific goal, your story will sound too generic for anyone to take you seriously. A 650 GMAT is low for your applicant pool - how does your UG experience look? How did you place - top 5%, 10%, 25%? Given that you're a bit of an older candidate, why do you feel now is the right time to pursue an MBA? Looking forward to hearing back!
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