Profile Evaluation Request

[my_mba]

Hi,

I am 28 year old Indian female planning to apply to best IVY league colleges for MBA.
I aspire to become a sector development and innovation lead in outsourcing industry.

I attempted GMAT last year with a score of 740. I have a good work experience but a low GPA score of 3.1/5.
I request you to kindly evaluate my profile and provide your suggestions.

GMAT score: 740(Attempted Sep 2012)
Applied Universities: None till now
Qualification: B.E Computer
GPA score: 3.1/5

Work ex : Total work experience of 5 years. A very brief snapshot of my work so far:
1. Currently working as a PMO for a year and a half with Business Unit lead of one of the world's largest outsourcing company. Helping in developing road maps and designing strategy for sector development.
2. Have 3 years of work experience as a web developer and designer. Automated the build process and led a 15 member team for 6 months as a Rnd lead in parallel to the development and designing work.
3. Shifted to program management because of my keen interest in management
3. Can get good recommendations and show leadership in managing tasks. Can demonstrate problem solving with quantifiable results.

Extra Curricular : Quite sporadic
1. Keen Interest in classical music and playing instruments for 4 years
2. Fundraising for NGO
5. Won prizes at school and college level for elocution, UN examination prizes, elocution competition, singing and dance competitions

My aim is to do MBA from Ivy League colleges.

I request you to let me know if I should consider doing some certification to overcome my low GPA score. Also I have a 8 months gap before I switched over to new firm so request to guide me how to overcome this as well.

Thanks in advance for the complementary evaluation!

[Jon@Admissionado]

Hey there,
You actually have a very nice profile. An excellent GMAT score, doing management, with real NGO work. Being female will help you set yourself apart from the large pool of Indian Male IT applicants. so you have good luck there!

Other than that, I would say your GPA is not a "problem" even if it would have been nice for you to get higher. I don't know if you need to do anything in regards to that. If you didn't perform well in Quant courses, then yes, it may be useful for you to take a few of those, otherwise, your GPA is your GPA, and you'll just have to live with it, and work on strengthening what you can in the rest of your profile.

Your job switch shouldn't affect you adversely in any way either, and a single 8-month-gap is really no big deal.

[my_mba]

Thanks Jon,

Really appreciate your valuable feedback. It was quite motivating.

Are colleges like Harvard,kellog,wharton, columbia and Berkley(HAAS) reaches for me?

Regards,

[Jon@Admissionado]

For a very rough evaluation based on the info you wrote here, I would say H/S/W would be reaches for you, but you have a shot and you should apply. At Haas and Columbia I feel you would be competitive and at Kellogg something in the middle. Maybe you should add one or two "safe schools" to round off your application strategy, but otherwise I think you can start with the schools you have already selected.

[my_mba]

Hi,

Thanks for evaluatinhg my profile and providing your valuable feedback.

Could you provide me a few insight on INSEAD admission criteria. Do they emphasize a lot on Academics and since my acads are not strong can it be still a reach for me based on the other criterias of my application.

Looking forward to your response.

Best Regards,

[Jon@Admissionado]

Well every good program emphasizes Academics. From what I have seen INSEAD (and this holds true for most Euro programs) can be more fleixable when it comes tot he "numbers" than US programs, but it is still quite important.