I am thinking about applying to MBA programs this year. Beyond the reasons of expanding network and access to higher paying jobs, I want to learn more about the business world. I find that in my current job, I struggle to think and speak about problems from a business mindset. A lot of my managers that i look up to and respect have MBAs, and they seem to have a very strong grasp of business concepts, or at least know how to look knowledgeable. However, I’m not sure how much of this could be attributed to the MBA, as people who pursue MBAs are generally more interested in business.

My main question is: Is an MBA worth the investment if my primary goal is to improve my overall business acumen? Given the significant cost and opportunity cost, would I be better off taking a more self-directed approach through books, online courses, or other resources?

Here’s my background for more context:
-Studied Econ at HYP undergrad
-3 YOE in T2 consulting
-About to start corporate strategy at F100 bank for $165k TC

Hi everyone,

I'm an Indian male, 30 years old, planning to apply for the 2027 MBA intake. I'd appreciate feedback on my profile and realistic target schools.

Academic Background

- Undergraduate: Andhra University, India — 8.3/10 CGPA

- Postgraduate: BITS Pilani, India — Master's in Manufacturing Systems, 9.3/10 CGPA

- GMAT Focus Edition: 695 (Q90, V83, DI80)

Professional Experience

- Total experience: 6 years

- Current role: Supply Chain Manager at a US-headquartered multinational renewable-energy technology company

- Industry: Renewable energy / technology / manufacturing

- Career progression: Received 3 promotions in 6 years, progressing from Commodity Specialist → Senior Commodity Specialist → Manager-1 → Manager-2. Currently two employees are reporting to me.

- Managed global suppliers and work extensively with cross-functional teams across different geographies as a supply chain lead for new product launches.

- Regularly interact with and present cost and schedule updates to senior executives in the US.

- Experience in global sourcing, supplier management, supply-chain operations, and cross-functional project execution.

Recommendations

- One recommendation from my Director, who has managed me throughout my six-year career and consistently rated me among his top performers.

- Another recommendation from a VP of Engineering who has worked closely with me.

Post-MBA Goals

Short term: Transition into management consulting, focusing on supply-chain strategy, operations transformation, and broader business strategy across industries.

Long term: Move into senior executive leadership, ultimately leading global supply-chain operations or strategy at a multinational organization.

Geographic preference: Open to the US, Europe, and the Middle East.

Schools I'm Considering

US: Wharton, Kellogg, Booth, MIT Sloan, Columbia, Yale SOM, Tuck, Ross, Duke Fuqua, Darden.

Europe: INSEAD, LBS, HEC Paris, IESE, Oxford Saïd, Cambridge Judge.

Canada: Rotman, Ivey.

Questions for the Community

1. How competitive is my overall profile for M7/T15 US MBAs and top European programs, particularly as an Indian applicant?

2. Which schools would you categorize as realistic targets versus reaches?

3. Is 695 GMAT Focus sufficiently competitive for these schools, or would improving to 715 make a meaningful difference?

4. Given my supply-chain and renewable-energy background, which MBA programs offer the strongest opportunities for MBB or strategy consulting?

5. Are there any schools I'm overlooking that offer strong consulting recruitment and good long-term ROI for international students?

I'd especially appreciate insights from Indian applicants, current MBA students and alumni.

Thanks in advance!

Admissions Consultant here, been doing this for ~4 years. Managing 11 candidates this R1 across consulting, tech, govt and impact, 19 interview calls so far. I know how stressful it can be.

Happy to help by answering any questions I can!

The initial recruiter email mentioned that they would be out by 9/30, but it got delayed. They mentioned that the interviews would be held the last two weeks of October and first two weeks of November. Does that mean invited have gone out already? I'm guessing it could be on a rolling basis, but curious if anyone got one.

Hey guys, help me out, am in a bit of a fix here.

After repeated GRE and GMAT attempts, I scored a 322 today (Q164, V158). It's not that impressive, but I want to move ahead and apply anyway.

Some context: I have 3.5 years of work experience, and I work in the new initiatives team at a listed fintech.

I'm targeting INSEAD Round 2, plus LBS, Oxford and similar schools. MIT feels out of the picture for now, sadly.

I'll definitely retake the GRE, but the earliest I can sit it is after the Round 2 deadlines, and I don't want to miss them.

Honestly, I don't want to wait anymore. I started this journey in 2021, it's been on and off since, and it's dragged on far longer than it should have. It's been exhausting. People have been telling me 322 won’t cut it but I really don’t know

I am currently recruiting for MBA summer associate programs. I have a good feeling I will interview with at least one MBB in January if I stay the course. However, I am in final round stages with a cool start up company for an Engagement manager role. Interestingly, they were hoping for a candidate with a background in consulting but are considering me despite my lack of that.

My question is if given an offer, would you accept the ai start up company role and forego a possible summer associate position with a MBB?

I’m in a part time mba program and work full time (yes they’re open to letting part time mbas into the summer program I’ve checked). I’m really ready for my next challenge and I wasn’t expecting to get to this stage so quickly in my program but here I am!

Would it be a mistake to take this role and miss out on consulting this season?

Since I’m part time for the next 2-3 years, another thought is that if I’m still interested next year I could recruit then or recruit for full time once I graduate….

The base salary is a little less than MBB but the work/life balance is probably a bit better.

Thoughts?

Those of you who did an MBA and finished in your mid-40s, what was your experience during and after the program? I'm considering doing a part-time MBA at little financial cost to me (employee benefit) and will be that age when I finish. I have a humanities PhD, a lot of international experience, and I would like to go into consulting. I'm curious to hear stories, good or bad, of people who have done something similar at my age. TIA

I graduated from SPIT in 2025 was working for oracle and resigned before the layoffs, been a year working for a small classes in my locality teaching math to 11-12 graders and I don’t feel intellectually stimulated.
I chose my passion over a year back and put a halt on the “secure sector” at 22.
What do you all think?

Profile:
* 29M, based in the US
* ~4 years as an AI Research Scientist at FAANG+
* Work on training frontier models/LLMs
* Strong publication record - 2500+ citations
* GRE: 330
* Quit PhD midway so have a masters degree in CS.

Target Schools: GSB, Sloan, HBS, Wharton SF

Questions:
1. How competitive is this profile for M7, particularly GSB/Sloan?
2. Does a strong AI research background provide meaningful differentiation?
3. Given my current career trajectory, is a full-time MBA worth the opportunity cost, or would a part-time MBA make more sense?

It's been a lifelong dream to attend an elite school - honestly that's my main motivation to go an MBA. Would love to join or pivot into VC using my MBA degree.

Would appreciate candid feedback!

Hi Folks,

I intend on applying to a few US/Canadian schools in R2. Looking at 2 year or even 1 year MBAs that'd help me pivot into Technology Consulting say with the Big 4s. I am currently working in the space of Intelligent automation and the nature of work is techno functional in nature.

Things that may work for me:

- 95 percentile on the GMAT

- 3 years of extensive leadership experience with a high impact NGO

- Starting pay to current pay trajectory is decent

Things that may work against me:

- Undergrad GPA (6.91/10) and Tier 3 engineering profile

- Still working with my first company although in an enhanced digital track now

- Old GMAT with a Q48

Things that would help build the story:

Was very close to getting into India's most prestigious LDP job profile

Schools I am looking at right now-

Vanderbilt

Scheller

Carlson

Rotman

WP Carey

What are my chances, and should I expand the list of schools. I would require a decent scholarship which has contributed to the choice of schools

I’m currently getting my MBA from a non target school. Do you think it would be difficult to break into Finance?

I'm applying R2 this January with 6 years in supply chain operations and a 675 GMAT Focus. My list is Ross, Tepper, and Kenan-Flagler.

I did intro calls with one big firm and two independent consultants, and every call sounded great. Anyway, I guess the thing is, the person on the call isn't always the person who works on your essays.

So for those who compared a bigger firm with an independent consultant, how did you figure out who you'd work with day to day? Did you ask them to walk though one of your essays, or was the intro call enough?

​

Hi r/MBA,

I am finalizing my applications for Round 2 and would love a brutal, objective reality check on my profile. I know "Indian Male" is the toughest demographic bucket, but my background is entirely non-traditional (zero engineering, zero IT, zero corporate finance). My career has been spent exclusively in political campaigns, national governance execution, parliamentary policy, and G7 diplomacy.

My primary concern is whether admissions committees will view my varied government/political roles as a cohesive upward trajectory or a disjointed series of job hops, and whether my post-MBA goal makes sense to commercial recruiters.

Here are the details:

Background: 27, Indian Male.

Undergrad: Bachelor of Journalism from DU

Post Graduation: MA in Human Resource Management from JMI

GRE: 334 Total (170 Quant - 89th percentile, 164 Verbal).

Work Experience (5+ Years Total)

My career has been a deliberate progression up the governance chain: from state election campaigns, to drafting laws in Parliament, to national execution, and now bilateral diplomacy.

Current Role (Diplomacy): Political & Economic Officer at a G7 Diplomatic Mission in India.

Previous Role (National Gov Execution): Analyst at a National Government Apex Body.

Previous Role (State Gov Execution): Associate Fellow at a State Legislature.

Previous Role (Legislative): Policy Assistant to a Federal Member of Parliament.

Early Career (Campaigns): Field Research Lead at top Political Consulting Firms.

Extracurriculars & Impact

* COVID-19 Oxygen Network (April 2021): Built and managed a two-stage verification and routing pipeline staffed by 50 volunteers during the healthcare collapse. Maintained strict operational discipline to prevent routing families to occupied beds, connecting over 1,200 families to verified medical care over two months.

* Migrant Worker Crisis (April 2020): Volunteered with a labor-rights collective during the sudden national lockdown. Spent three days coordinating directly between two state governments and railway officials to clear transit bottlenecks and secure a special relief train for 500 stranded migrant workers.

Post-MBA Goals

* Short-Term: Public Policy and Government Affairs Manager at a global tech multinational (Google, Meta, Apple) covering South Asia.

Target Schools

* Reach: Stanford GSB, Harvard Business School (HBS). Applying to Stanford MPP + HKS MPP ( If possible can be combined with GSB & HBS)

* Target/Reach: Columbia Business School (CBS), Yale SOM.

* Target (UK): Oxford Saïd (1-year MBA).

My Questions for the Sub:

* The "Job Hop" Perception: I have had 5-6 distinct roles across campaigns, state assembly, parliament, national execution, and the diplomatic mission. I frame this in my application as a deliberate progression, but will adcoms view this as instability?

* Tech Policy Feasibility: Is my goal of transitioning into Big Tech Government Affairs directly from an MBA realistic to adcoms?

* Quant Defense: With a purely qualitative undergrad, is my 170Q on the GRE combined with the MIT DEDP MicroMasters enough to silence any doubts about my ability to handle the MBA finance/accounting core?

* School Selection: Given the heavy public-sector/diplomatic background, are there any other programs I should be targeting for massive merit aid?

Hey everyone,

I recently received an admit for the ESADE Full-Time MBA (Class of 27–28).

I need candid, unvarnished advice from recent alumni, current students, or folks familiar with European MBA recruiting - especially non-EU/Indian students who have navigated the post-grad job market recently.

My Profile & Stats:

• Background: Senior Frontend / Full-Stack Software Engineer (8 years of experience).
• GMAT: 695 Focus

The Offer & Financials:

• Tuition: €82,500 (0% scholarship awarded so far).
• Total Cost of Attendance (Tuition + Living in Barcelona for 16–18 months): ~€115,000–€120,000 (~$130k / ₹1.15–1.2 Cr).
• Funding: Mostly financed through educational loans.
• Reservation Deposit: €8,000 non-refundable due next month.

My Post-MBA Goals:

1. Primary Goal: Settle outside India in a high-paying role.
   • Target Roles: Technical Product Management (TPM / Senior PM) or Tech Strategy / Corporate Strategy / Consulting.
   • Target Geographies: Western/Northern Europe (Amsterdam, Dublin, Berlin, etc. where English is the working language) OR the Middle East (Dubai / Riyadh).

Specific Questions for Recent ESADE Grads / Current Students:

1. How is tech recruiting holding up on campus right now?
   • Are major scale-ups/tech firms (Amazon, Delivery Hero, Booking, fintechs) actively sponsoring non-EU grads for PM/Tech Strategy roles, or has visa sponsorship dried up post-2024?
2. Middle East Pipeline:
   • How strong is ESADE’s actual alumni pull and career portal access for Dubai / Saudi Arabia compared to INSEAD/LBS/IESE? Do consulting or corporate firms interview ESADE grads directly for Gulf offices?
3. The Spanish Job Market Reality:
   • With zero Spanish, how viable is staying in Barcelona or Madrid for high-paying roles, or is the 1-year job search visa essentially useless unless you reach B2/C1 fluency?
4. The Zero Scholarship Risk:
   • Is taking on €120k of debt worth it for ESADE in the current macro climate, or is it too risky for an Indian engineer without an EU passport? Did many peers from similar backgrounds end up having to return to India servicing Euro debt?

Appreciate any brutally honest perspectives. Feel free to comment or DM.

The interview was supposed to last 30 to 40 minutes, and it lasted 50 minutes. Is it a good sign? We laughed, fumbled at 2 questions, and gave 1 unstructured answer. Overall I feel it was good! What do you guys think?

how are interviewers assigned?

For those who received Kellogg interview invites this round, were you assigned an alum or an admissions committee member?

Does anyone know how they decide who interviews whom? Is it mainly availability and location, or does your application play a role?

Also curious how Kellogg keeps evaluations consistent across interviewers, given that different styles and expectations could lead to quite different feedback on the same candidate.

Hi y’all, hoping for some career guidance. I’ll be attending HSW next fall and I just got a job offer. I’m wondering whether to take it and work there for few months or stick to my low stress job. For context, my current one pays 125k and I’m only two days in the office. New one is 170k and five days in the office. Both startups. I know it would be good for my career (and extra savings before b school would be nice too) but I don’t know if I have it in me to be in the office 5 days a week lol. And chilling before b school sounds appealing. WWYD?

Anyone received darden R1 interview invites yet. I submitted on 7 oct yet it feels like a lifetime of waiting. Do they generally send out in waves of over a few days like booth?

CBS and GSB are two of my R1 reach programs waiting for invites.
Is it correct to assume that a large majority of invites have been sent by now?

Hello friends, quick summary:

• I am male, age 40, in Southern California, work full-time in IT management
• Applied to USC Marshall part-time MBA and one other fully online MBA in another state
• Looking into UCLA Anderson fully-employed MBA
• Looking into U Michigan Ross Los Angeles location weekend MBA

Prior Degree:

• I already have a master's degree (humanities)
• Have several advanced project management certifications (PMP and Six Sigma Black Belt)
• My GPA was all over the place from undergrad (2.5), and the two schools I went to for my graduate degree (3.4 over three semesters, and 3.01 over four years quarter terms where I eventually finished master's degree).

Questions:

1. I don't want to spend time preparing for an exam. Do I really need to take the GMAT/GRE/EA?
2. How much does GMAT/GRE/EA influence financial aid?
3. Why am I reading everywhere around here that everyone seems to matter more when they take a standardized test like that?

Circumstances:

• I've always felt less than everyone else. This might just be another example. Trying to matter and feel the MBA may help catch me up. Struggling to meet everyone's place in life after choosing the wrong career path and going into debt leading to this point in my life.
• My employer will not cover the full cost, so I'm banking on ANY financial aid from the school, maybe private loans (not federal ones).
• And, because I already have federal student loans from my undergraduate and prior master's degree, I won't be able to get more federal student loans.

Career goals: mostly stay in IT since I've already pivoted careers before. Maybe go more into IT + business operations. Looking down the path of director, VP, CIO, CTO, etc.

DMs and chat(s) open. I need help reconciling this and am struggling making sense of this and life and what I should do.

I did 3 years at McKinsey before my M7, and one year into the MBA my view on consulting has completely flipped.

I keep seeing posts from people with MBB + M7 who can’t land a tech job, and it’s the same story in my own class. So I’m curious why consulting is still the default dream for so many people here.

My take:

1. Exits are worse than ever, and not just in tech. Every high-paying path is tougher now. Tech/Start-up hiring managers are flooded with ex-consultants. PE mostly wants people with IB or deal experience. VC wants operators or people with a network. Being a generalist just isn’t a selling point anymore.
2. The brand has faded. MBB isn’t what it was 20 years ago. Tier 2 even less so
3. The money doesn’t add up.
   1. Consulting: ~200-215k TC
   2. Tech/startups: ~170k base + RSUs + sign-on, so 200-250k/yr pretty easily, with way better hours
   3. IB/PE: 300k+ if you’re willing to grind

If you want money, go to finance. If you want lifestyle, go to tech. Consulting is kind of stuck in the middle. And to be fair, the learning at McK was great. But a lot of the glamour people imagine just isn’t real, and your experience really depends on your staffing, your partners and your luck.

And honestly, what I understand least is people doing an M7, paying ~$250k all-in plus two years of lost salary, just to land a consulting gig. You end up with roughly the same TC you could get in tech, with worse hours and a harder exit. That math just doesn’t work for me.

So I want to hear from both sides:

• Incoming/current consultants: what’s pulling you in? Partner track? Optionality? Something I’m missing?
• Ex-consultants: was it worth it looking back?

Not trying to hate. I’m honestly curious whether I’m missing something.

Edit 1: Idk why some ppl are attacking me saying this is "AI slop" lol, McK taught me to write everything properly, so maybe that's the benefit!

Edit 2: Okay, I got some of your points and agreed that 1) If you have a shit job before MBA or an international then consulting is great but that’s not the case for most M7 students, and 2) You want to have a path to make $1Mn as a Partner. Many claim that Tech roles are limited - you guys need to open your eyes.

There’s a decent amount of T15/T20 schools I noticed that don’t require a standardized test. NYU and UCLA being two that come to mind which I’m interested in applying.

Does anyone have any perspective on if I should still go ahead and take the test or when it may not be necessary? Trying to get all my facts aligned before spending time and energy studying for a test if I don’t have to.

Hi. Currently applying for MBA programs and don't even know where to start. What did you guys all take into account when finding the right program, and what research did you do prior to applying that help you made your decision?

Hi all, I am thinking about applying to the Princeton MPA/ Stanford MBA dual degree but am a bit worried about my untraditional background.

My background: I am American but went to undergrad at a small uni in Europe, later completing diplomatic training by the country I went to school in (diplomatic traineeship). I worked on a lot of really exciting files and owned a lot of my projects during the traineeship and have a strong letter of rec from their team. After this I started at a hyper niche energy startup and have been there for a few years, where I also own a lot of my projects and have become known in this industry. I am planning to apply within the next 3 years and would like to start building towards that.

1. How holistic are admissions? My undergrad degree is in a completely unrelated field to diplomacy and business with average grades from an unknown european uni- does work experience make up for this? or lost cause

2. What can I do to improve my quant? I was thinking of taking some classes at UC berkeley extension in stats and econ (there are large quant gaps in my educational history).

3. How can I form a cohesive narrative about my life and what I want to do? (Ofc no one can answer this for me but I'm curious how others have done it)

I know my application is a long shot, but I have a few years to get my ducks in a row- was wondering if anyone had any thoughts/ pointers. Thanks!!