IMOs for MBA programs at following unis.Sorry I dont have any idea abt MSc Programs:

University of Exter NO
Coventry NO
University of Birmingham YES
Salford -- Its very near to Manchester , many courses but not well regcognized rest depends on your choice
Southampton -NO IDEA
Cardiff University - Cardiff Business School --It is for Freshers
University of Surrey - School of Management NO
University of West of England -NO
University of WestminsterNO
Leeds Metropolitan NO
University of Bedfordshire NO
Aston University MBA YES heard MSc (International Biz) is good but most of the junta is fresher so not sure if sutaible to you.

1. Have applied for AIM, Manila (11 months, Masters in Management)- (Have thier own test) -Good AIM is # 1 in Asia (as per some rankings )for MBA..no idea abt MM
2. Looking for Great lakes (have their own test) Good
3. I already have secured an admission to Europe Asia Business School, Pune & SOIL, Gurgaon - but refused. Dont go for these
B.Sc (Electronics) -70%
XII - PCMB - 74% CBSE ( English subject - 73/100)
X - 85.2% CBSE ( English subject - 71/100)
No GMAT, No - TOFEL/IELTS
- 11 Years work Ex in one of the leading telecom cable manufacturing company

Take IELTS its easy.You can expect min 6.5.Target MBA at UK tier 2 schools for MBA.(MSc is not suitable for your exp IMO).Following are tire 2 unis in UK.

University of Strathclyde Business School
Aston Business School
Durham Business School
Birmingham Business School
University of Bath School of Management
University of Edinburgh Business School
Bradford School of Management/TiasNimbas Business School
Nottingham University Business School
Sheffiled.
Oxford Brooks
Glasgow uni
Robert Gorden Uni MBA
(Sequence is NOT as per the reputation).I'm sure with your profile you can surely get admission in to all of these.

Total cost (including living expense) -Max 12Lac
( As I may not get sufficient loan , as don't have any collateral)
- Have only 4-5lac cash , rest hoping to arrange through loan (up max 7.5 without collateral)

Some banks do give till 10 L without collateral depend on how u nigotiate or if u have any contacts with top manager in the bank. Total cost of MBA from any of UK schools will cost min 15-20 L (including living exp ).See if you can manage else Indian / Asian MBA is good option.

All the best.
Please let me know your comments or questions :)

Thanks ,
Ajay

asif-mba can u please shear your profile and GMAT score if u dont mind

: Admit to HULT International Business Scholl

Waiting for: Olin and Willamette.

sorry i think in ISB most of the IT junta remain in IT only...they get role change e.g programmer to Biz Analysit , IT consultant.... , talk to ISB alumnis from last 1-2 batchs to see how many IT folks have got career shift from IT to other industries........I dont think there will be many....there are non-IT people who get career shift to IT in ISB e.g a military officer to HR / Admin in IT company.Airhostests to HR.....manager in other industry to Program / project manager of non-tech (sales,admin,finance) team in IT.

Which industry you want to be post MBA.? If you are looking for complete career change /industry change I dont think ISB is right option for you.There are schools specialized in particular subject areas or famous for recruitment in particular industry.eg. if somebody want to go into finance / I-banking after 5-6 yrs of work exp in IT industry Chicago GSB,NYU,LSB are schools for him.....as 2 yr programs are in depth and has intership for 3-6 months students get lot of exposure to the industry which is new to them and this helps in building network in that industry hence 2 yr programs are better option for someone looking for career / industry change.

on the other hand if you look at ISB it is 11 months program.I think everything is covered in hurry and you wont really get enough time and exposure to experience core management subjects ( e.g finance,marketing ) which may be relevant to your target industry or role.

There are subject specialized courses also e.g there is wine MBA in one of the europes top b schools.It is ideal for someone looking for career change and want to build further career in wine industry only.so find out if there are such specialized courses for your target industry.Another example is for someone want to go into International biz after some yrs in IT.Thunderbird in US and IIFT in Indiia are the best schools.If that person is applying to ISB then I would say its wrong path he has choosen...(as going into International biz after ISB is very difficult for someone with typical IT background.)

The more you will be clear about your post MBA goals more it will be easy to select the appropriate program.I'm younger than you so I may not be the right person to guide you on all this.I'm sure you must have done more research than me but,this is something which I have observed in last 4-5 yrs.:

All the best please let me know your comments.

I read this post just now (after posting my reply to your other post abt where to apply which program 1 or 2 yrs etc)

As you are NOT indian you can easily get admission in any IIMs as very less non-indians apply there.

I think you deserve better school than IIM.Why you are not cosidering top US schools ?

IMO you can get admission to any top school........

I took the GMAT today and scored 710. I'm a bit disappointed since my target was 720-730. Although this is only 10 points below the target I'm feeling that this score may not be good enough for the target schools I have in mind.


GMAT Experience:
===============
This was my first GMAT attempt and although I spent almost 4.5 months on it, I think I only seriously studied for about 3 months. I think that GMAT is a sprint not a marathon, so you need to plan accordingly.
I always felt that Maths was my weak point but my verbal score completely betrayed me today as I was definitely expecting a 40 which would have put me right on target.
You are very heavily penalised for making mistakes on the verbal section compared to mistakes in the Maths section.
In terms of the type of questions asked, I think it resembles very closely to the GMATPrep questions. I think that handling the pressure is the key element of the test. Under the conditions of the exam room if you can hold your nerve AND try to think logically, that;s the key IMHO.
I got about 4 probability problems and am confident that I got these right. I did have to guess a few maths problems due to time constraints, but at the end of the math section I did feel confident.
Took a 5 minute break before the Verbal section.
Most of the sentence correction questions were okay I thought. I did get a few CR questions which were tough (not boldface CRs, I got only one BF CR and that was the second-last question). Although I usually do well in RCs I suspect that today RC might have let me down as I did get a few tricky RCs where the questions were looking for minute details from the passages. As a result I had to go back and re-read the passages although I had the gist of it. Thus I lost time and I had to hurriedly finish the last 4 questions of Verbal. Still I was surprised to get a 38 instead of a 40.
Last but not the least, make sure that you have a good night's sleep before the exam. My exam centre was 3 hours away so I had to get up early at 5.30 to catch the bus, but I could not sleep properly during the night.

Study materials:
============
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Maths: OG + OG Quant book + Forums + some old CAT basic reference material I have from 10 yrs back(yes I still have them!)
Verbal:
SC : Manhattan Sentence correction guide. + PSahil's notes + Spiderman's notes + Rajat NDA's notes.
RC: Read passages posted on the forums
CR: Powerscore LSAT Bible. I always felt that in-spite of reading this book I never quite mastered CR
My gut feeling is that both RC and CR combined to let me down on Verbal.

Mock test scores:
=============
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MGMAT May-2008 Overall 650 Q-46(15 mistakes) V-33 (18mistakes)
MGMAT Feb-2009 Overall 610 Q-41(18 mistakes) V-33(21 mistakes)
GMATClub free test Apr-2009 Q (9 mistakes), V (9 mistakes SC-4,CR-5,RC-0)
freeTest
GMATPrep1 9May2009 Overall 760 Q-50(8 mistakes) V-44(4 mistakes)
Princeton free test 12May2009 Overall 650 Q-42(10 mistakes) v-39 (9 mistakes SC-4, CR-2, RC-3)
GMATPrep2 17May2009 Overall 710 Q-49(12 mistakes) V-38(9 mistakes- SC-4, CR-4, RC-1)
Knewton 27May2009 Overall 600 Q-36(10 mistakes) V-38 (6 mistakes SC-3, CR-1, RC-2)
GMATPrep2 retake 1Jun2009 Overall 760 Q-49(10 mistakes) V-44 (4 mistakes SC-1, CR- 3, RC - 0)
(Note the huge difference between GMATPrep1 and GMATPrep2!. My GMATPrep2 first attempt score turned out to be my final GMAT score as well!!)
(I wasn't demoralised with the scores provided by Knewton and Princeton though this was late in my preparation stages as I knew that their algorithm was not really indicative of the real exam. My goal was to try and pick up as many nuggets of information possible using sample questions).
(Also I did not take the MGMAT tests 1 to 6 as I had not purchased the SC book--dont know if it would have made much difference w.r.t. verbal)

Now the difficult part and some queries:
Background:
IT professional 11 yrs experience out of which 9 years have been outside India.
B.E. (Elec Engg - 1997) + M.S.(Strategic Mgmt) - 2007
Professional Certifications: PMP + ITIL + CSM
Role: System test manager in a mobile telco software SME.
Acads: Quite good.
Extracurriculars: Okay, nothing fantastic.

Target schools:
IIMA(PGPX), IIMC(PGPEX), IIMB(EPGP), XLRI(GMP), ISB in that order.
Will be applying as a foreign national.
Does this score suffice for these schools with my experience. I know GMAT is just one part of the application components but I guess schools like IIMA and ISB are particularly skewed towards high GMAT scorers. Plus given the fact that I come from the most common pool of applicants(IT industry) might put me on the backfoot, so seriously considering a retake.
Any thoughts on this guys? I guess if I go for a retake I will need atleast 730 or it will be even more embarrassing!

1. Career change--Change of industry and function. Is it possible at this age(~32 or 33+ yrs) and with the baggage of previous work experience.
is this possible with Indian and European B-schools?
Career / industry change is very difficult but, role /function change is possible.one other thing is even if you get into some other industry there will be no value for your pervious exp and you haveto start from scratch as a fresher (with ever very low salary than what you have now).which i think is big risk at this age (with family ,kids etc in life )
2. if we decide to stay in the same industry what are the kind of roles being offered.
At this age / exp generally people to MBA to shift from people management to stratergic management in other words to shift from middle management to top level management.
3. Which MBA is better-- 1 yr or 2 yr? Probably the latter for a career change
one year is better in my opinion. Do you think you will be able to study for 2 years (considering the fact that you are away from your studies for long time).? Do you think you will be able to invest time and more money for 2 yr MBA and ready to sit with 24-26 yrs old classmates and study calculus or finance ? I mean do you have that stamina for 2 yrs if ans is 'yes' to all these questions then you should seriously consider 2 yrs programs in top unis in US (unis always perfer people with very high yrs of work exp to achive diversity in the class.Career /Industry change is dificult (almost impossible in 1 yr program)

4. Which colleges are on your target list, any specific reasoning behind them.
If you decide on 1 yr .UK is the best.Reading university MBA program has 13 yrs avg work exp.If all your work exp is in Finance.Post MBA jobs in UK wont be a problem.Some UK universities you should apply are as follows:
UK
1.Lancaster
2.Reading (GMAT not needed ! )
3.Warwick
4.Oxford
5.CASS
6.LBS
Again schools are listed in incremented order of fees.Other options are as follows
India
ISB
IIM PGDX programs
US

Look at top 5 in any rankings (BW, FT)
EUR

IESE Spain
IMD Swizerland
Almost all of these need min 550-600 GMAT score for your profile There are some in UK (which r tire 2 ) which dont need GMAT.Those are as follows:
Aston
Barmingham
Nottingham
But , I would say target top 5.
Rest other normal (1 or 2 yrs )programs anywhere in the world will select you but I think its not something worth of spending time and $ for someone like u.
All the best
thanks
ajay

welcome to PG .Rounds are generally like these for US schools .

R1 - Sept - Nov
R2 - Dec -Mar
R3 - Mar -May

so , international students should ideally apply in R1 to increase thier scholarship chances.(and to aviod last min rush for visa etc).
So if you want to apply R1 you should be done with GMAT till Jun -Jul that will give to 1-2 months time for school selection , application essays.

hope this helps :-)

thanks,
ajay

Hes Indian from currect batch so it has been 6-8 months for him.I have sent his name,email and contact # to u

thanks dr Saurabh.

Junta please dont get me wrong here.My only intention is to share whatever info i'm getting thr my contacts in order to help applicants......(and not to de-motivate anyone).I know / have spoken with almost everyone who have choosen Aston here and I am sure they are going to become industry leaders in long term.What matters in long term is your skills and experience....

BTW , I just got conditional offer from Nottingham today...(Need IELTS 7.0).
Waiting for MSc(ITMOC) Lancaster.Hope to hear something abt it till 25th of this month.

I'm now thinking of retaking GMAT and based on GMAT score will apply to schools next year.By that time I'll having 7 yrs of IT exp which will be helpful I hope....:p


All the best to everyone , Feel free to contact me in case any questions.

@sumanlala i know some guys at aston who got in with 3 yrs work exp...hope that helps....

Guys,
Following is the feedback I got from one of the current aston student.

Grass is always green at other side,,,, it happpen with me,, here,,,
i dont know about the other college but i got disappointed by the aston ,,,, may be its my personla opinion,,but its very relax MBA prgram,, and there no placement as such,,,, u need to seraffch with u r own,, and that is why i dont know hoe many studetn frm last batch got placed...

my suggestion is ,,,, go for the college whihc follows,,, hardward teaching style,,, ,which is case study based and very extensive,,,, its will atleast help to gain knowledge out of u r MBA ,,, here program is also not that extensive and job scene is also very bad,,,, i am not able to find part time job from last ,,, 4 months,,,, waitng staff and all,,,, u can imagine the full time scene frm this,,,

u can cross check with other college,,, dont go by just ranking,,,, check,,, abt the programe,,, may be bath and notingham is better than aston,,,


thanks Ajay