Phoren B-school 2009 aspirants

[sillyfool]

hey guys lets discuss our strategies and which stage of the application are we all wrkin on
wat r the weak areas and all
lets discuss to help each other out
we can also give a brief intoduction on our profiles too
so that others benefit from the same
well i am posting mine profile here

3 years work ex by the time i join(i mean july 2009)
gmat 710 will give again in july
CGPA 8.11 on a scale of 10 from a decent college
decent extar curic like part of an NGO and other societies
participated in diff sports (college time) and won some prizes too
aiming for 10-20 range (rank wise) bschools in US

[itch]

Good to see a thread of this kind...

I have been doing some research for quite some time now,
what I have identified are the following:
In order to get admission in a good B school, one should target
GMAT Score:700+
Work Ex: 24-36 Month + (ideal 60 month)
Good Acads;
Social Activities / Community Service;
Leadership Qualities;
Extra curricular activities ... etc...

In order to generalize Universities select on 3 major sections , you must be competent enough, however there is always a trade of among these section. Just to break the ice... sections are
GMAT Score -----------33%


Acads -------------33%

1. Your Acads from matriculation to your undergraduate / graduate levels . Acads should be Consistent / should have upward trend.

Extra Currics / Work Experience ----------33%

1. Work experience - leading a team , having diversified profile always has a great advantage, then a person just Coding in S/W Field (no hard feeling towards S/w Industry, but its a fact Universities get loads of application from this industry, more over i belong to this industry)
2. Any leadership activity : in the team , at any level
3. Organizing event / winning competitions / playing sports...etc.
4. Dedicating time towards hobbies and achieving some milestone out of it.
5. Social activity / Community Service is considered as very important aspect in the selection process; associate yourself in developing people / community around you.

As mentioned earlier this is a generalized distribution; universities have there own split towards the selection.

[sillyfool]

hey itch
well you have done a lot of research but i guess you are lil wrong when you break up
the criteria of selection by collges on certain parameters. they look at the complete app
and it may happen one section of yours might cover up for the other section weaker section.
So please do not quantify things like this. It will give awrong picture to other candidates
All they are looking for is diversity and not book worrms I mean. So if you have done something
extra ordinary or something thats rare i guess those ppl have a fair chance.
And yes I am from IT field also but its just because they ar lookin for diversity thats why
tough competiotion awaits ppl from IT background

anyways best of luck to all

[itch]

Originally Posted by sillyfool

hey itch
well you have done a lot of research but i guess you are lil wrong when you break up
the criteria of selection by collges on certain parameters. they look at the complete app
and it may happen one section of yours might cover up for the other section weaker section.
So please do not quantify things like this. It will give awrong picture to other candidates
All they are looking for is diversity and not book worrms I mean. So if you have done something
extra ordinary or something thats rare i guess those ppl have a fair chance.
And yes I am from IT field also but its just because they ar lookin for diversity thats why
tough competiotion awaits ppl from IT background

anyways best of luck to all

@SillyFool

you are correct... probably i missed that point, thanks for making that point clear.

ny ways All the Best

[sillyfool]

umm yeah If you are from IT pool you shuold try to be different in someway
be it score in GMAT or something in your profile that makes you different
from other IT people because at the end of the day all these B-schools are lookin
for diversity.The question that youi have to ask yourself is why should they pick you
out of all those who have same profile as you?
Hope this helps

[mmund]

I just gave my Gmat and scored a 700( 48Q, 38V).

I am no expert, but I believe that a 80 percentile plus in both Q & V is good enough to be eligible to apply to the Top 20 schools? What say guys/gals?

Am still not frozen on my selection of schools...just researching the websites.

Dear All
Any pointers??




MB

[columbia10admit]

i think a score with 80%ile + in both sections shd be ok, and your overall score shd be within 10 points of your target school's average.

unless, that is, you are in a over-represented group. in that case you shd be within 10 points of the avg of that grp... basically if you're an indian in IT and a guy to boot... you may want a 740 to play safe

but the GMAT is just a hygiene factor... there are plenty of other things they consider in your application!

good luck!

Originally Posted by mmund

I just gave my Gmat and scored a 700( 48Q, 38V).

I am no expert, but I believe that a 80 percentile plus in both Q & V is good enough to be eligible to apply to the Top 20 schools? What say guys/gals?

Am still not frozen on my selection of schools...just researching the websites.

Dear All
Any pointers??




MB

[sillyfool]

Originally Posted by columbia10admit

i think a score with 80%ile + in both sections shd be ok, and your overall score shd be within 10 points of your target school's average.

unless, that is, you are in a over-represented group. in that case you shd be within 10 points of the avg of that grp... basically if you're an indian in IT and a guy to boot... you may want a 740 to play safe

but the GMAT is just a hygiene factor... there are plenty of other things they consider in your application!

good luck!

hi columbia10admit
Can you please explain what was the distinguishing factor
that helped you in getting admission to columbia?
I mean they always say we look at app holistically but still
there is a strong point in a persons app?In you case what was it?
I mean on which aspect of app a person shud give more stress if he has less
exp. I guess if you share with all, It will help others who are aspiring for 2009 admission

[wot_me_worry]

Originally Posted by PRGKT

The "unless" part killed me.
I'm in the dreaded Indian IT category.

Congrats, you've got admits from some amazing schools.
Could you pls let us know what your background is?

I hate to be blunt but unless you've something exceptional to show in your profile ( not just by the way you put things in your essays ), 710 is not quite the score that you can bet on for an admit from a t20 school. I'd a 710 and I belong to the IT category and had a red flag in my profile (undergrad GPA - well i'd performed avg. at an Indian engg. school that chose to give out CGPAs out of 4 just for one year ). I do have admits from a few good schools but that was not before I'd started planning for MBA 2011! Getting an interview call from even 20 -30 ranked schools can get very tough and even if you secure an admit, getting a schol can be hard.
I have an admit from a rank 25 school, but no scholarship. I am not saying that no one can because I couldn't do it. I'd not even applied to any T20 school because of some financial considerations but i doubt whether I'd made it with the kind of effort I'd put in! So basically, if you want lesser issues to deal with in life and you think you could have scored better ( if you were consistently scoring well in your mock exams) then don't think twice - give it again. Who knows perhaps a 20 point difference is all that lies between you and a 40K schol.

However, if you chose not to retake the exam, please try doing all of the things that columbia10admit had mentioned in one of her posts. Getting into a t20 is not easy and a better score is not to get you noticed but to put you on the same platform as other worthy candidates. After that you make sure that you get the rest of the steps right (resume, essays, interview).

Good luck!

[columbia10admit]

Originally Posted by sillyfool

hi columbia10admit
Can you please explain what was the distinguishing factor
that helped you in getting admission to columbia?
I mean they always say we look at app holistically but still
there is a strong point in a persons app?In you case what was it?
I mean on which aspect of app a person shud give more stress if he has less
exp. I guess if you share with all, It will help others who are aspiring for 2009 admission

this is a dangerous question i dont know how telling you my differentiating factor will help you.. cos by the very fact that its different, not many people will have it!

statistically, well - I'm a woman. that puts me in a smaller category straight away and I'm in finance. Not many women in finance - in investment banking - in India who app abroad... so thats a smaller category again.

other than that - i have a Bad gpa, a so-so gmat (700) and 3 yrs of wk exp at time of joining bschool. so nothing out of the ordinary there.

if i had to pick One thing... i would say that my essays were very good i really did my research properly. spoke to a lot of people. i think that helped more than anything else..