Profile Evaluation Request - (Indian, Male, Engineer, IT)

[bwmember205]

Hi Alex,

I am 24 year old, Indian Male, Engineer and IT professional with 4 years of work experience (including 1 year in US)
(Also posted on BW forum)

Undergrad: Engineering degree from an oldest and one of the top ranked college in India (After IITs) (belonging to the University of Pune).
Academics: Avg. 60% (May be equivalent to GPA of slightly less than 3.0)
GMAT: 690 (Q90,V78)
Other than study:
Sports:
Have been involved in sports since school days. After being selected in District's cricket team, I played for 3 years including captain ship for 1 year. (during school days)
Played for college cricket team for 3 years (during under-graduate college days)


Current Job profile:
I am currently in US, leading a project having close client interaction. Assignment is showcasing teams capability to win client's confidence, bringing more business by expanding scope of the same project. Met first target recently when the company was given additional responsibility based on teams performance.

Career Goals:
Moving to a position with more freedom to achive goals through my own ideas. Perhaps starting own consulting business.

Why MBA:
Perhaps the reason behind my MBA decision was the lack of freedom in the current job and my increasing need for it. Though I had some opportunities in my previous position where my new way of solving problems was accepted but only after when I had pushed hard. Freedom may be a relative term but thats what I felt I dont want to compromise in my future career.

Beside the regular work, I also have interests like photography & web design to the extent that once I was considering them as full career option but then after some thoughts, I decided to move on with what practical experience I have in the industry. I still get involved into these things in between my free time and may be sometime later in life I would consider them again. I dont know if it makes sense to talk about these things here but from what I know about you from what I have read on the internet, I think you can understand how it adds to the whole picture.

Ok, now the question:
I know that my profile looks similar to the pool of the large number of Indian MBA applicants. As, there is nothing much I can do about it, how do you think my chances are with US B schools? I have no rigid location preference but if given a choice I would like to stay in California after completing my study. Some of the good universities in California that I know are UCB, UCLA, USC. Which universities should I be targeting?

I would be grateful to receive your thoughts on this.

[MBAApply]

I think I answered this in another forum, but the short answer is if you want to stay in California, then yes it's essentially Berkeley, UCLA and USC.

Alex Chu
alex@mbaapply.com
www.mbaapply.com
http://mbaapply.blogspot.com