Here is an email that I got from a student pursing his senior year and my response to it. I hope some of you will find the information useful.
"I just came across your blog. Like those thousands of students here in India, i am also wanting to pursue an MBA from abroad. I am just going to enter my final year in engineering here in India. Unlike the many people(read colleges as well), I would want to make the choice of pursuing an MBA early in my career, probably before wrodking. Hence I needed to apply for schools that can do even without a work experience.
My concern is that , my parents are in a govt. service and that probably they can only support me till a limit in the costs involved. Hence i was looking for options that would let me finance the entire education program, so that i put very less financial burden on my parents.
I just came across Yale Silver scholar program, and HBS 2+2( i missed the deadline), but found them to costly.
Do you have any advice for me, so that I could also get admitted into one of the Ivy-League universities, and make a head start in my preferred career direction ?
I would be really grateful, if I could have a handy advice or two from you ."
I hope this message finds you doing well and all geared up for the admission process. Some schools like Yale take college seniors right out of college whereas others like HBS give deferred admits. For financing your program and getting into a top ranked university, I would suggest Stanford GSB. It has Dhirubhai Ambani scholarship for Indian students. Also, I recommend you to apply to management consulting firms as the experience that you get would be valued. You can also read the wall street journal, economist which would help you in the long run.
Applying to the deferred program is a self-realizing process and even if one is not accepted to the deferred program, there is always the option of working for a couple of years to develop a strong set of professional experiences and extracurricular activities on the side to strengthen your overall application package. Having spoken with a lot of MBA students from Harvard, Stanford, MIT ,and Yale, I would say their common advise is work for a couple of years before doing an MBA as the larger consulting firms that recruit on MBA campuses look specifically for people with pre-MBA strategy or finance experience.
I hope the tips are helpful to you as you plot out your path over the next couple of years.
