Mr. Indian Software Engineer

Hi, it’s Nisha with mbaMission. What deferred programs look for: Outstanding academics, excellent extracurricular leadership, and strong professional promise as demonstrated by internships, recommendations, and your post-graduation plans. It sounds like you’ve made some impressive professional inroads already and have a great job lined up, along with strong extracurricular involvement. Your academics are solid, but given the high standards admissions committees have for GMAT scores among deferred applicants, I’d bump that up to a 730+ if possible.

In your application, you’ll want to emphasize the leadership impact you’ve made in your campus organizations, given how much business schools value leadership. You’ll also want to make your motivations clear – what drove you to decide to channel your CS skills into a finance career, and what interests you in buy-side investing?

One thing I always share with deferred MBA candidates: the process is not only competitive but also, unpredictable – we’ve seen that it can be tough to predict who makes the cut. But even if the deferred programs don’t work out for some reason, it will not penalize your prospects down the road if you apply to MBA programs the “regular” way after a few years of working. So, there’s never any downside to applying to deferred program, and the pluses in your profile make you a viable candidate for sure. Hope that helps – best of luck!