About | Privacy Policy | Advertising| Editorial | Contact Us
Follow Us
Subscribe | Login
I have 10 years of work experience and started my career in one of the biggest global IBs as a junior analyst with one promotion in my 3-year stint. Post that, I started an ed-tech startup in India. I lead a team of 50+ employees that undertake various responsibilities in the organization.
Target School: Columbia
Considering: NYU Stern
See More Profiles For: Columbia
Application Status: Open
Undergrad School: NMIMS
Undergrad Major: Finance
GPA: 3.23
GMAT: 720
Age: 31, Ethnicity: Asian or Indian
Other Degree/Certification: CFA Level 3 Candidate
School Name: CFA Institute USA
Extracurriculars: Advisory role to a Not for Profit dedicated towards women empowerment in India | MMA | Mixology
Title: Jr. Analyst
Industry: Banking & Finance
Company: Fortune 500
Length of Employment: 3 yrs, 1 mos
Title: Co-founder
Industry: Education
Company: Start-Up
Length of Employment: 7 yrs, 1 mos
1. Organization founded by me has educated 200,000 low-income students, 50% of whom have seen a significant jump in grades. 2. Bootstrapped company with a capital of $500 to reach a lifetime revenue of $1M.
Short term: Consulting Long-term: VC with a focus on Impact Investing
Join in! Click here to assess the odds of Mr. Ed-Tech Social Enterprise
You have an impressive background that incorporates the best of both worlds – a strong command of finance as evidenced by your investment banking experiences and CFA journey AND a passion for social enterprise. In addition, your success as an entrepreneur who is making real impact is incredibly admirable. Given this profile and your strong 720 GMAT, there are many MBA schools that would welcome you into their communities. Harvard might be one of them. Kudos to your advisory role with a non-profit focused on women’s empowerment in India. It is always encouraging to have a male perspective involved in areas such as this. Keep up that work! Adcoms will definitely want to know more about your transition from IB to EdTech. Assuming that is …
You have an impressive background that incorporates the best of both worlds – a strong command of finance as evidenced by your investment banking experiences and CFA journey AND a passion for social enterprise. In addition, your success as an entrepreneur who is making real impact is incredibly admirable. Given this profile and your strong 720 GMAT, there are many MBA schools that would welcome you into their communities. Harvard might be one of them. Kudos to your advisory role with a non-profit focused on women’s empowerment in India. It is always encouraging to have a male perspective involved in areas such as this. Keep up that work! Adcoms will definitely want to know more about your transition from IB to EdTech. Assuming that is a compelling story, your chances of being at Harvard (and at other schools like Yale and Stanford) look promising. Let us know if you would like more insights on how your story can be presented with maximum impact!
Request A FREE Consultation
You absolutely have a good shot at CBS, but you’ll have to address some headwinds in your profile in order to achieve the admissions you seek: You have double the work experience of the average CBS candidate. “Why MBA” and “Why now” (vs. 5 years ago) will be questions you’ll need to tacitly answer in your essays and interviews. Otherwise you may appear to be a burned out “has-been” who wants to take a 2 year vacation to restart his life after not achieving the entrepreneurial success he previously sought. Ultimately, if spun correctly, I think your enhanced work experience can be the feather in your cap rather than your achilles heel. It simply does TAKE TIME to found and grow a company, and lessons that …
You absolutely have a good shot at CBS, but you’ll have to address some headwinds in your profile in order to achieve the admissions you seek: You have double the work experience of the average CBS candidate. “Why MBA” and “Why now” (vs. 5 years ago) will be questions you’ll need to tacitly answer in your essays and interviews. Otherwise you may appear to be a burned out “has-been” who wants to take a 2 year vacation to restart his life after not achieving the entrepreneurial success he previously sought. Ultimately, if spun correctly, I think your enhanced work experience can be the feather in your cap rather than your achilles heel. It simply does TAKE TIME to found and grow a company, and lessons that you learned along the way will positively impact your future employers and your (more seasoned, mature) contributions during classroom discussion. If you had 50 employees reporting to you for a company you founded, that will be very differentiating in the candidate pool and you should make sure to highlight this leadership aspect of your candidacy. As an Indian Male, your geographic demo is insanely competitive. Your GMAT score of 720, while respectable on an objective basis for almost any school, is at least one standard deviation below your geographic demographic average for admitted Indian males. Your GPA, while respectable, will also be below average on an objective basis as well as a relative basis for your geographic demo. Additionally, IIT alum status is becoming more and more of a table-stakes characteristic for M7 schools. Sure, non-IIT grads are accepted to M7 all day long, but you need to understand how many brilliant IIT grads you will be competing against in this M7 game. CBS has the highest percentage of non-domestic full-time MBA students of any top US business school at about 40%. Of that, the minority are Indian, yet Indian Males are waayyyyy overrepresented in the applicant pool and the ones who do get admitted typically have significantly stronger stats that the typical US admit. This just means that your application, and especially your essays, will need to SPARKLE in order to land the interview. You have so many great things going for your application, though, that make sense to flex as much as possible. All things equal, AdComs want to accept students who change the world in positive ways beyond return on shareholder capital. Your impact on under-resourced students demonstrates your commitment to this kind of double bottom line thinking – profits AND people. Given your ultimate goal of social impact VC, you’ll need to show rather than tell your impact on these students and how your vehicle for impact did things differently than other socially-aware ventures in order to gain admission. You are lucky to also be immensely employable in addition to being entrepreneurially accomplished given your finance professional and academic background and CFA L3 candidacy. Your GMAT score will be low for an overrepresented ethnic demo for MBB but your odds are still very good Deloitte, KPMG, industry-specific consultancies. Because your stats will be optically low in the AdComs eyes for consulting, it may behoove your strategic positioning to espouse an interest in edtech or fintech, two industries which may even be more interesting to you given your career thus far (vs. being a consulting generalist) and will better prepare you for your ultimate goal of social entrepreneurship. CBS often has a lower acceptance rate than even higher ranked schools like Wharton due to its significantly smaller class size and its high number of international applicants seeking the CBS international brand and NYC location. One backdoor with slightly lower stat averages is the J-term option, which is an accelerated full-time MBA program with Jan. intake that does not have a summer break (and consequently no summer internship). We’ve successfully advised Indian Male applicants to apply for the j-term, but we wouldn’t recommend it if you need a summer internship to land a US-based role. Still, something to consider if you haven’t already. We are rooting for you!
Submit My MBA Profile
Our Partner Sites: Poets&Quants for Execs | Poets&Quants for Undergrads | Tipping the Scales | We See Genius