Hello , I would like to request your evaluation of my profile. Obviously, I prefer to be anonymous and i apologise about that.

I am a 27 year old Indian national and have a undergraduate engineering degree in Telecommunications.

I have given the GMAT 4 times (the last two times after buying and roughing out the MGMAT test series....thanks). My last two scores were 600, 680. I would like to commence my MBA studies this year.

Been working for a multinational company in India in technical sales for the last 4 years. I was just promoted to be a product manager for one section.

In college, I was active in sports and led technical student organizations as President etc...

My interests are in finance and strategy/marketing.

I have tentatively drawn up Stern, ISB-Hyderabad(India), McCombs, UNC-Chapel Hill, PennState-Smeal, UT Dallas, Rutgers, Possibly UMass-Amherst.

Can you comment and recommend on what would be a good approach.

Thank you,
Purple Rain (sic)

No offences, but being an engineer is a sort of a disadvantage nowadays (especially for male Indian candidates).

ISB is unlikely to view your profile highly unless you show some "diversity factor". For example, do you have any interests in parallel which help you avoid a uni-dimensional mindset?

As for the other colleges, I have no idea. But I would also suggest that you take a look at CEIBS, and HKUST.

But generally speaking, try to include diverse factors to your profile, which will help you "stand out" of the crowd. There are way too many engineers in India, and another engineer is seen as an undifferentiated product by the admissions committee.

Thanks for your observations. It's an interesting point you bring up.

Although I have graduated in engineering, I have pulled myself away from engineering within the first 6 months of my employment and ventured into commercial and more 'products' and managerial projects in my company. The result has been that for the last four years, I have been working more around the commercial (as well as some of the technical .. not denying that) opportunities in my company. Would my profile still appear to be an engineering profile to evaluators ?

Hi Purplerain,

Thanks for writing in. The leap from 600 to 680 is a big one and good work on breaking into this higher tier. As you seem to recognize, the biggest challenge for you will be differentiating yourself among the large pool of Indian male applicants with IT backgrounds. You'll want to show how you've grown from technical roles to display leadership and management potential, and then devise a clear goal statement that can help you stick out from the applicant pool.

I think you have a very realistic list of schools. Stern strikes me as a reach and UNC/McCombs as near-reach as well, but you should be competitive at the likes of Rutgers, UMass, etc. Your GMAT score will likely hurt you at ISB, as the crop of candidates there comes in higher.

Best of luck,

Daniel Richards
http://www.mbamission.com

Read the mbaMission Insider's Guides (15 individual school titles)

Download mbaMission’s Free Personal Statement Guide

Visit the mbaMission Blog

Follow mbaMission on Twitter