Please evaluate my profile - 7 years work exp - 740 GMAT

[soft8400.ravi]

GMAT Score - 740 (50 Q, 39 V) first attempt.

Target Colleges: - Harvard, Stanford, Chicago Booth, Wharton, Columbia, Darthmouth, Kellog, Inseed, MIT Sloan or LBS.

EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS & ACHIEVEMENTS:
Degree Major Courses Year of passing Institution/University Percentage/CGPA
PMP Certification PMP 2010 PMI Pass
B.Tech. Computers 2004 HBTI/UPTU 70.68%
Intermediate PCM 2000 C.B.S.E. 85%
High School N/A 1998 C.B.S.E. 75%

- Got 326 rank in UP-Seat 2000 exam - This is entrance exam at state level for admission in the Engg colleges in Uttar Pradesh, biggest state of India.
- Got 371 rank in the DCE entrance exam 2000- This is entrance exam for one of the topmost Engg College of Delhi, capital state of India.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERTISE:
Tools : Turbo C, Visual C++, Source Insight, MPP
Languages : C, C++, Java, Java Script, VB and HTML
Technical Domains : Telecom domain
Languages: : Hindi - Proficient (mother tongue)
Kannada - Beginner (Out of interest).
French - Beginner: attended the starting course at Alliance Franchise.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Total work Experience - 7 years
- Organization : Subex Limited, Bangalore - 4 years- Project Manager - Got award for management of customer project
- Organization : LGSoft India Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore - 1.5 years - Software Engineer- Got Performance recognition award in LG.
- Organization : Sasken Communication Technologies Ltd, Bangalore - 1.5 years - Software Engineer

- Onsite Experience: Canada (5 weeks)
South Korea (3 Months)
China (1 Month)
Sydney (1 Month)


PROFESSIONAL TRAININGS:
- PMP Certification completed in Dec 2010.
- 2 days of Pegasus Team Building exercise (Subex)
- One week training on Business Etiquette, Software Engineering Process, Software testing process. (SASKEN)
- One month vocational training as a part of our curriculum in Summit Information Technologies, Gurgaon. During this training I made the LIC Management project
- Two weeks training on Embedded System - VxWorks, Linux concepts, interprocess communication. (SASKEN)
- Two weeks training on Cellular network concepts, communication concepts, GSM, GPRS and UMTS. (SASKEN)
- One week training on C++.
- One week of GSM/GPRS training (LG)


PROFESSTIONAL ROJECT DESCRIPTION:

SUBEX - Management contribution:

Roles and responsibilities: I am working as Project Manager and responsible for the successful delivery of the project. I am SPoC from Engg team and interact with client as well to make sure the deliverables to the customers are delivered within agreed constraints and on time. Following are the high level roles and responsibilities at my work.
1. Requirement response to customer.
2. Full Project Life Cycle including Kick-Off, Planning the project, Execution & Monitoring & Closure:
3. Maintaining following during the course of project
a. Configuration Management:
b. Risk Register
c. Communication Management register
d. Cost, Scope, Time and Quality Management
e. Process adherence.
f. Keeping team motivated to deliver the high quality projects.
Project delivered: I have successfully delivered many different projects for different customers including Swisscom, Telecom Italia, Telstra, and Centennial. I am currently handling Tata, a leading Telecom operator in India.

Before Subex - Technical contribution:

Roles and responsibilities: I was working as the developer in my previous companies and projects contributing significantly for the technical area assigned to me

Project delivered: I have worked on different projects before while contributing as a technical expert including different GSM models of LGSI, including famous chocolate model, Order Management system to SOUL, a leading service provider in Australia


PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENTS

- Worked as a representative of Placement Cell (Student Coordinator) in the college for full final year. Started the concept of preparing the CDs demonstrating our College culture and expertise and sent to many companies, which finally came for on-campus interviews.
- Class Representative for 2 years and has performed & organized various events in the College fest.
- Contributed in winning of one of friend for Sports Secy position during the third year of college. I was one of the key people involved in campaigns and in deciding the strategy.
- Carom Champion at College Level during first year of my college.
- French classes from Alliance academy - Did not complete the course though.
- Joined Kannada classes held in Bangalore to learn the language at the place I am residing, even if it is not my mother tongue


PERSONAL CONTRIBUTIONS:

- Contributed to Gujarat flood relief during my college days, collected funds over 2 days going house to house to collect the funds.
- Worked as the volunteer organiser of the SMASH 2003, a sports fest in our college.
- Participated in the IIT-Roorkee technical presentation.
- Have run 2 Sunfeast 10K runs in year 2009, 2010 to the cause of CRY, a NGO.
- Started my passion for running in January 2008 and then went on to run 10K Sunfeast 2 times. In this process, I lost around 20 KGs of weight:)
- Contributed to avoid the pollution. Started going to office (around 6 kms one way) on bi-cycle to avoid the pollution. Had to stop because of the flyover construction.

PERSONAL INFORMATION:

- I had love marriage - inter caste, inter state and had to convince my parents, a long story.
- I am a big time traveler and have visited many places nearby Bangalore and around it. I have been to many treks as well including night trek.
- A big fan of Cricket as every Indian is.


RECOS
I can get recos from my managers, Colleagues and client.

[mbamission]

Hi soft8400.ravi,

Thanks for writing in. While on paper you can certainly look to your scores and experience as consistent with top school admissions, I have two concerns.

The first is your age -- w/ 7 years experience you're going to be on older side of the application pool, which means you need to emphasize in your career goals why it is important for you to seek an MBA now, and why you have waited until this point.

The second is your very technical background -- both in the nature of your work and the method in which you describe it. Plenty of engineers with high GMATs apply to top schools, the ones that are successful are able to show strong leadership and business skills beyond the assumed technical skills. How have your soft skills developed throughout your career? And how does an MBA fit into further leadership and professional development goals?

You'll also need to simplify the way you describe your background. Remember your reader is not an engineer and many of the accomplishments you list could confuse him/her with acronyms and jargon.

Of the schools you list, I think your application would play best at INSEAD, Booth, MIT and LBS. I would rate the others as "reach" schools.

Good luck!

Daniel Richards
http://www.mbamission.com

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[soft8400.ravi]

Thanks a lot for you guidance,
It really helped in understanding where stand. I am thinking about applying for ISB and INSEAD because both are 1 year and I want to continue in the same field after my study.

Can you please help in prioritizing the colleges between MIT, LBS and Booth. I am thinking of applying one of them if i stand a good chance.

However I want to come back to India after my MBA course and hence thinking about the financial aspect of the same. I did some research about the US & UK colleges. Do you think I should apply to Imperial, Oxford or Kelley, tuck and Duke.

What do you think my chances are to get the scholarship and how much because without that I will not be able to study there as I intend to come back. Also do you think that once I come back to India these colleges will have the weightage which will help me in getting good job?

Thanks again for helping.

[mbamission]

Hi again,

I would rate your best chances at LBS, then MIT then Booth.

Your plans to return to India shouldn't be a factor in admissions as long as you present them as well-planned and thought out.

As for scholarships, each school has different guidelines and that is typically handled by the Office of Financial Aid, not Admissions, so I unfortunately I can't provide any insight there.

Best of luck,

Daniel Richards
http://www.mbamission.com

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