Profile Evaluation - 31 year old Australian male

[rkafc81]

Hi,

I would be very appreciative if you could evaluate my profile. I recently turned 31 and have been struggling with the GMAT for a long time otherwise i would have applied earlier. I am quite worried about my age and it is possible I may not get my required GMAT score by R3 at the European schools listed below. IF so, what are my chances for applying in September 2013, for the fall 2014 intake?

I am aiming for a 700+ on the GMAT and I should get at least 680+. I took it once last year and got 580, and recently in December 2012 but had to cancel my score due to a major timing error in the Quant section that i didn't notice until it was too late.

I am targeting the following schools in R3 or R4, for this year's Fall intake:

Cambridge Judge
Oxford Said
LBS
IMD
INSEAD
Dartmouth Tuck

If I don't get in to any of those, I would like to apply for the following schools for Fall 2014:

Cambridge Judge
Oxford Said
LBS
IMD
INSEAD
Dartmouth Tuck
Haas
HBS
Stanford
MIT

Nationality: dual Australian/British. Grew up in Australia, came to work in London 5 years ago, have worked in Malta too since then.

Gender: M

Age: 31

GPA: 4.75 on a 7 scale in Australia. I did a 5-year dual degree - bachelor of IT (information systems) and a bachelor of business (e-business) at a good Australian university. the IT degree was quite hard - it's now called computer science at my uni. grades progressed upwards as time went on but had 1 very bad year in the middle of the degree.

Employer: well-known (in the UK) and regarded London-based 250-consultant niche business intelligence & information management consultancy. not really known outside of UK.

WORK EXPERIENCE: 8 years (in reverse chronological order)

** 2.5 years in London - Information Management Consultant at my current employer (no promotion yet but i moved sideways in the company 1 year ago into a more business analyst-type role from a technical role):
- business data advisor on a major financial regulation project at a major bank
- worked as a test team lead (of a team of 4) at a major bank client on a reporting project to automate reporting on the activities of all the branches in the UK for this bank.
- 3 mths at a leading waste management company, integrating data from multiple sources, analysing the business to align its data to its operations and reporting, and migrating their old reporting to new reporting
- Data Integration Lead on a data integration project across multiple data sources for a major media client. indirectly supervised/coordinated and closely worked with a team of 4 developers in Spain.
- call center analytics project business analyst
- trying to spearhead the development of a new big data practice within my company, along with a senior employee within the company.

** 1.5 years in Malta - senior business intelligence and CRM developer/analyst at a leading pan-European online sports betting company
- completely spearheaded, analysed, re-aligned and re-vamped company's Business Intelligence capability from almost no capability to fully-automated reporting and analytics solution across the company

** 2.5 years - business intelligence analyst/devloper in London UK at a pan-European online advertising company with HQ in the USA:
- business intelligence reporting, dashboard design
- business analysis
- key project instigator, analyst and developer in data warehouse project
- solely migrated company's reporting from Excel-based reporting to
fully-automated reporting

** 1 year - graduate consultant with large mining consulting company in australia

** 1 year - IT support helpdesk operator

EXTRACURRICULARS: australian football, badminton and tennis, dj-ing, cycling, travelling.

VOLUNTEERING: 6 month final year project in uni, completely free of charge, travelled to Norfolk Island to help the school there transform its IT. Apart from that, none, as the consulting lifestyle prohibits it on week days and the town i have been living in in the UK for the last 2 years has no weekend volunteering opportunities. also I have moved around a lot too which hasn't helped on this front.

MBA GOALS:
to change from a primarily technical role into technology strategy consulting, applying data and information technologies to help solve real world problems especially involving applying data and analytics and help guide innovation and corporate strategy. it is currently very hard to get out of my technical pigeon-hole. i love the strategy side of technology and business and have had a taste of it from time to time doing what i do now. however there are no real opportunities in this space in my company for me without any experience in this area or in-depth knowledge of business that an MBA would provide. i have a marked interest in big data. ultimately i'd love to manage data-driven projects in developing countries to help make a huge difference to people's daily lives.


MY BIGGEST CONCERNS:

- my current age
- average GPA with some failed subjects in the middle year of my degree due to personal difficulties and working too much part-time outside of university

basically, do i have a chance if i waited until september this year to apply to the schools mentioned above, plus MIT too? or should I try my best to get into one of the schools in their R3 round? waiting until Fall this year to apply in R1 would be much better for me for many reasons (financial, personal, professional)... but i fear about my age :(

thanks!

[mili]

Hello,

Thanks for sharing all this information! Very detailed :)

Your age and your GPA are definitely concerns. I don't think it will hurt you to submit applications for R3 this year -- if you do get in, you can always decide not to go (or try to defer) if that is what makes most sense. If you don't, you haven't really lost anything.

I think that you have a realistic chance at Cambridge/Oxford, LBS, and IMD. Perhaps INSEAD, too. The US universities on your list are incredibly competitive though, and given the more technical nature of your professional experience, your GPA and your lack of extracurricular/community engagement, I think they will be stretch programs. Would you consider others like Michigan, Darden, UCLA? I would also suggest adding some safety programs to your list - perhaps like USC or something like that.

Best,
Mili

Mili Mittal
Senior Consultant
http://www.mbamission.com
 
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[rkafc81]

great thanks Mili!

the more I think about, the more I'm not sure if the US universities are a good option for me anyway; it's encouragin though what you've said about the european ones - thanks!!

[mili]

No problem - good luck!


Mili

Mili Mittal
Senior Consultant
http://www.mbamission.com
 
Read the mbaMission Insider's Guides (16 individual school titles)
 
Download [url=http:// http://info.mbamission.com/MBA-Personal-Statement-Guide/]mbaMission’s Free Personal Statement Guide[/url]
 
Visit the mbaMission Blog
 
Follow mbaMission on Twitter