Written by Sameer Kamat

The Darden School of Business MBA Class Profile at the University of Virginia, reflects more or less what you’d see at any of the best MBA programs in the US. For the Class of 2013 year, the statistics hover at around 30% international candidates, a Male/Female ratio of 70:30, an average GMAT of 700+ (701, to be technically correct). What the statistics don’t reveal is the level of competition for Indian IT Males & Females who are vying for one of those 319 seats along with applicants from 37 other countries.
We published an interview with Wendy Huber, Associate Director of Admissions @ Darden MBA. Gowthami Guttikonda was one of the candidates who had her MBA interview with Wendy. Yup, small world!
With a failed enterpreneurship venture, lesser experience than other applicants, a ‘low GMAT score’ (in relative terms) and an Indian IT software engineer background, Gowthami knew things were exactly in the best possible shape. Believing in her capability, she went ahead with her Darden MBA admissions process and came out victorious.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Vijay Govindarajan, Professor of International Business at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, is one of the most influential business thinkers of our times (number 3 on the Thinkers 50 ranking). His ideas on innovation and strategy have gained worldwide recognition and respect. Reverse innovation – his most recent contribution to the world of strategy and innovation – has been hailed by Harvard Business Review as one of the top 10 ideas of the decade.
Sameer Kamat, founder of MBA Crystal Ball, caught up with Vijay Govindarajan (VG) to find out more about his book on reverse innovation.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Though the MBA rankings might have a different viewpoint, Sonal Yadav thinks of the Vanderbilt MBA program (Owen) as the ‘Harvard in HR’. She had a bit of a rough ride with her GMAT score and she was pretty clear about the business schools that she wanted to apply to.
Many of her advisors and well-wishers painted a bleak scenario for an international (Indian) candidate trying to get into a Human Resources role in an American company.
But she went ahead and applied to the Vanderbilt MBA. Minutes after her fantastic interview with the Vanderbilt MBA admissions officer, she got a shock. And then soon after, a pleasant surprise. Sonal has written interesting articles for a US-based newspaper. See if her flair for journalism comes across in her writing.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Dual degrees like the JD-MBA offered by the Kellogg School of Management and Northwestern University’s School of Law can be a great way to learn about two disciplines that have more overlap that we generally assume.
However, compared to the regular 2-year MBA programs, these longer and more expensive joint degree options can seem more mysterious than they are. Apart from the data available on the school websites, there’s not much information about JD-MBA programs.
Jeremy Wilson had a very eclectic background – engineering, politics, consulting, startups, archaeology – before he decided to attend the JD-MBA program at Kellogg. In this interview he answers many of the frequently asked questions about the program.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Situational interviews or Behavioral interviews are the vague, mysterious and confusing interview questions that get thrown at you when you are trying to get the best management consulting (including the top tier strategy consulting firms) and investment banking jobs. Or for that matter MBA interviews as well. They make you feel that the tough technical questions you got for your first few jobs were so much easier in comparison. At least there was a right or wrong answer to them, and after the interview you’d know if you fared well or not. With situational interviews, most candidates are unsure of how their performance will be judged by their future boss.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Accepted.com has been at the forefront of MBA Admissions consulting since the early 1990s. Linda Abraham, founder of Accepted.com, shares her knowledge and experience with MCB readers on a range of topics: choosing the right schools (using rankings, two year versus one year programs, brand vs scholarships), top-5 mistakes to avoid in an MBA interview, top-10 do’s and don’ts for MBA essay writing, what you should be doing 6-9 months before you apply and much more.

Written by Sameer Kamat

For over 10 years, Stacy Blackman Consulting (SBC) has been helping MBA applicants around the world get into their dream schools. Stacy Sukov Blackman, founder of SBC, has an MBA from Kellogg and a Bachelor of Science from Wharton. We reached out to her to see if she’d be willing to address some questions that most MBA applicants from India have on their minds. So here she is to set the ball rolling.

MBA Crystal Ball (MCB): Pranaam Stacy-ji

Stacy: Namaste Sameer-ji, sab kushal mangal?

Written by Sameer Kamat

Talk about modesty. Bodhisattwa Gupta considers himself the black sheep of the family…and he’s got into one of the toughest and most selective MBA programs anywhere in the world – ISB Hyderabad (Indian School of Business). So you can imagine what others in his family have achieved (we know but we can’t tell you ). Here’s Bodhi’s success story covering his journey from getting closer to the average GMAT score for ISB to cracking the ISB admissions process. – -

Written by Sameer Kamat

The UC Irvine MBA (Merage) was one of the schools on Deepak’s (name changed on request) list based on school info, ranking and personal data. But his MBA application process didn’t exactly start the way he planned. A low GMAT score could have delivered a knockout punch to most applicants and made them re-evaluate their plans.

Written by Sameer Kamat

The question pops up on various forums frequently and there are two categories of guys who want to know. The first set are a few months away from application deadlines and have recently realized that their competitors look and sound better on paper than they do. This is the ‘uski kameez meri kameez se safed kaise’ syndrome.