Profile Evaluation

[Rick Roy]

Hi Jon,


I am 24 years old and have a work experience of 2 years in Finance at one of the largest Indian Technology and Engineering co. (during this period I was a part of a team which closed $5 billion worth of M&A deals), post which its been 0.5 years switching over to a leading steel manufacturing co. in India into Management Services Division which comes under Business Strategy.

My profile is as below:

- 10th - 80%

- 12th - 78%

- B.Com Grads - 65% Mumbai University

- Chartered Accountant - First Attempt

- CFA Level 1 cleared this time around (June 13). Would be giving level 2 in June next year.

Extracurricular activities - School Captain of the Football team (played at a state-level) / Acted in a couple of Bollywood movies. However, those were all in the school days and I do not have anything to add to it on a recent date.

Volunteering - I have personally sponsoring a child for the past year through an NGO.

As far as GMAT is concerned I'm targeting a score of 740+ (have been scoring about 710-720 in the mocks and have the real GMAT in March)

Colleges I'm targeting are listed below:
"¢ Chicago Booth
"¢ Duke
"¢ Cornell
"¢ Kellogg
"¢ Darden

Your views on the same would be extremely appreciated.

[Jon@Admissionado]

Hey dude,
Well, the honest truth is that Top 10 schools are gonna be real hard with a 65% from a non-IIT school. They just simply have too many guys with similar profiles who have 80%+ from an IIT, and they will likely go for them. So really, I think the best thing is to go for Top 20/30 schools.

The other thing is since you are young and have time to work on improving your profile in other areas too. Like your volunteer work is nice, but it's not yet strong, and since you will apply in 6 or 18 months (I'd suggest 18) you can take the time to join another maybe bigger NGO, to seek out leadership positions and to work on improving all the areas you can, so that you will get into a great Top 20 schools maybe even with scholarship!

Best,
JF

[Rick Roy]

Hi Jon,

I guess you misunderstood the part regarding an IIT. I'm a Chartered Accountant and a grad in Economics and Commerce, wherein 80+ ain't that common. Would your reviews still be the same with regards to Booth and Kellogg.

Regards,

Rick

[Jon@Admissionado]

Hey there,
Maybe I didn't write 100% clearly, sorry about that. I know that getting an 80+ is really hard, but what I was saying is that Top 10 schools tend to really heavily recruit from IITs (and NIT too). Now I know Mumbai is a good university, but it's still a rank below from their perspective. And the thing is they have guys at programs which are likely just as hard (although more prestigious), and they are getting grades 10-20% points higher than a 67%, and a lot of those guys don't get in.

Kellogg and Booth are gonna be long-shots. Now it doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't try, but I;d suggest building a more balanced strategy that takes into consideration your application pool, your job and your GPA, and use the time to work on what you can to make your profile stronger.

Hope this helps,
Jon