Requesting for Profile evaluation

[gmatclubmember]

Hello Experts,
Can you please evaluate my profile for INSEAD Sep 2016 intake:
1. Indian Male IT with over 11 years of solid work experience in IT Product, Research and Services companies. Worked in Development, Sales, Product Development, Project Manager roles.
2. Been to more than 10 countries so far - knows German Language (A1 Certificate). Overall international exposure is 1.5 years in Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Ireland, US, Germany.
3. Passout from premier NIT (National Institute of Technology) in Computer Science and Engineering
4. GMAT 700 - (49QA,35VA), overall percentile is 89. QA % is 79 and verbal %ile is 76. Scored 6 in IR with 67%. AWA 5
5. Worked with top-notch IT firms including IBM, SAP, Accenture et. al.
6. Can showcase some very good overall thought process during interview - received numerous accolades in my projects.
7. Associated with a NGO working with orphan rehab. Been associated with this NGO for more than 4 years now.

Encourage any kind of feedback or suggestion on the type of MBA schools to target.

Cheers
MBA Wannabe

[mcbMcK]

Dear Gmatclubmember,

A few thoughts and some questions for you:

1. It will be good to better understand the nature of your experience. Has it been more on the product side or services? What roles therein? Testing/Development/Sales, something else? This is vital to understand to get a better gauge of your experience. It is also not clear if you've worked in India or outside and if outside, for how long? This is especially relevant for a school such as INSEAD
2. Your language skills will come in handy so will your extensive travel. Make sure that its put into perspective though - which essentially means, does it help you and tie in with your post-MBA plan? Or is it merely for dressing up purpose.
3. You seem to have mentioned the NGO as an after thought - so not sure how strong that one is. In general, though your GMAT might be a tad lower than desirable, the quality of experience, if good, might make you sail. In your age/experience bracket, you may want to apply to a few more European schools. If an Indian career is not taboo, the IIMs will be FAR better in terms of RoI than most schools out there.

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

[gmatclubmember]

Thanks Manish for the evaluation.
I edited my post which may answer some of your relevant queries on my profile...

Cheers

[CriticalSquareMBA]

Hey there,

You've got some good experience it looks like! But what are the odds you can retake the GMAT? A 700 is a decent enough score, but if you're looking at a top European program with 10+ years of experience, you can't leave something that big below the median. I'd suggest you retake it if you can otherwise INSEAD will be a bit of a stretch.

Bhavik

[gmatclubmember]

Thanks Bhavik - even though retake of GMAT is not totally out of question. I myself was not really happy with score initially. But when I analyzed score - i found it balanced - so dropped the retake idea. But no worries - will try to retake the GMAT. But my best score wont go beyond 740 - most probably 720-730.

Cheers

[mcbMcK]

Thanks Manish for the evaluation.
I edited my post which may answer some of your relevant queries on my profile...

Cheers

That helps some. The international experience and your not-the-typical IT experience should get you the right attention. But that would also mean that you have better than average clarity on your post-MBA plans at this stage of the career. With that, you should have a shot at some interesting schools out there so go for it. A 30 point increase in the GMAT will definitely help btw.

[CriticalSquareMBA]

Hey there,

Yeah, a balanced score is definitely great. You don't want, say, verbal to carry you. But this is also a numbers game, y'know? If you're below the median for your applicant pool, you're putting a lot of stress on the rest of your application. I think retaking it is the right idea. I know it probably isn't what you WANT to do - but it's a good idea nonetheless.

Good luck buddy!

Bhavik