I know, you know, we know, they know

Many people have told me that you have the most common profile for an MBA applicant. These "Many people" also include one of the B schools which was kind enough to give me a one line feedback. A decent GMAT score, IT engineer, 4-5 years of work experience and a Male. All these parameters have made my profile the most common among MBA applicants. It is sad but true.

So, does that mean that you give up applying to schools. No. definitely not. All these parameters are pretty much hard coded i.e. you cannot do anything about most of them right away. MBA Admissions are all about selling yourself. Making a brand out of yourself. Marketing yourself using the limited resources available. Well, that is what an MBA (especially in Marketing) all about. No, i do not think so. It has to be much more and that is why my profile is common :)

Its all about your application: your essays, your short answers and the other activities that make up the whole application. They sell. And you have to be the Ad man here. You have to be the product here. A product that the MBA admissions committee remembers for long. A brand that the MBA admissions committee associates its school with. Yes, all this can be achieved with the help of essays. Its all about self-study and finding out the little little things that you do, change and achieve in daily life.

A software engineering job is different from many other jobs where you can demonstrate the so-called qualities of initiation, leadership, handling people and sometimes entrepreneurship. I think, in a software engineering job, you demonstrate all these qualities sometime or the other without knowing that you did it. Sometimes, you do it so many times that you start thinking that it is routine and does not qualify as "special" for an MBA essay. Its all about finding all those instances in your job and daily life that will help in writing the essays. If you cannot remember, then make a note of them.

Coming to the common profile mystery, there are a lot of male IT engineers who want to apply to B schools. Now, since they are Indian Male IT engineers, they must have good scores and GPAs. But why are they most common at this point in my life. Well, there are a lot of reasons for that and none of them is sufficient to answer the question. Some of them are:

• Indian IT males are bored of their jobs
• Indian IT males are very ambitious
• Most of India's population is young and the amount of people working in IT is also significant
• A lot of Indians are suddenly realizing the value of post graduation than ever before
• Indian IT males want to switch careers
• Indian IT males want to attain high positions in their own industry, albeit quickly.

Well there can be many more, but the point is "I know, you know, we know and they (MBA schools) know"