Mr. Banker & FMCG Co-Founder

Hi Mr. Banker & FMCG CoFounder, Julie-Anne Heafey at mbaMission here. First, I love your leadership and initiative both in your community-focused efforts and on the job, very impressive. I’m a little confused on your location given the anti-LGBT rhetoric in Europe issue, but I’m going to assume you are in India perhaps working for a Europe-HQ multinational bank? If you are in fact in Europe, that will raise your chances more, because it gives you global work experience and perspective that other Indian applicants won’t have; but if not, just working for a reputable global firm in a role with responsibility and cross-border teams will still be somewhat helpful. Your GPA is low here, but I’ll assume that you’ve translated your Indian GPA, which is not usually an apples to apples exercise- I think usually something approaching 80% is good but it depends on the school/program. I’d say the bigger issues are simply the level of competition you’ll face in an “overrepresented in the applicant pool” category and your low-for-that-category GMAT of a 730. Usually we tell candidates in highly competitive groups to try to beat the school average score by 20-40 points – with a 730ish average normally, that is tough to do, but I think it’s worth retaking the test to see if you can get a higher score. I also think “leadership development rotational role” and “startup” (even late stage) in the same sentence around goals makes me think you’d benefit from refining your goals – I tell folks to focus less on titles/positions you might obtain than on the problems you want to solve and where you want to solve them. Your ultimate goal – a suite of products and services – sounds more FinTech to me than Consumer Products (but that’s because I don’t think of consumer products as having associated services normally), but it would help if I understood whom you’re helping in the untapped regions of emerging markets. Right now, I’m putting your odds at 25% because I really love your leadership, but do your best to execute as well as you can on the app and try to boost your score – every 10 points will help in your particularly tough category. Good luck!