Prakhar JainFaculty
1mo ago
Hey Pavaneesh,
Your GMAT performance looks promising, especially with a 715 mock score. However, for top schools like HEC Paris, LBS, INSEAD, Duke Fuqua, and NUS, admissions are not based on GMAT alone.
Your academics (82% in 10th, 58% in 12th, and 72% in graduation) may be a weaker area compared to many applicants, but they are not an automatic rejection. You will need to compensate through good essays, SOPs, impactful achievements, leadership examples, and a very well-crafted application.
Try to push your actual GMAT score as high as possible (ideally 700+), and focus on building a strong overall profile narrative. Also consider adding some schools where your profile has a better probability while still maintaining your target schools as ambitious options.
Now all that being said, you seem to have a lot of stories to write about. Focus your essays on filtering out the most impactful ones wherein you can display the qualities that the schools are looking for. Each school will require different essays, but having a skeleton format ready will be helpful. For this, use the stories wherein you can display ownership of the problem at hand from the the beginning to the end, especially when you can back it up with numbers.
Basically, someone who goes over your application before an interview is bound to build an expectation of you beforehand. A well-crafted application is about building that narrative in a manner that sets the tone for the interview.
Hope this helps!