Ask Stacy Blackman

Will appreciate if I can get input on my profile.

Age - 25

Gender - Indian Male with a U.S Legal permanent residency (green card)

Academics:
- BS in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA) with a GPA of 3.4(cum laude).
- Completed BS in 3 yrs with 1 year of co-op work experience in respected field of expertise.
- Deans list 2/4 years in college.
- Awarded Radio Club Scholarship by dept of Electrical Engineering for a year.

GMAT score:
- Took twice and scored 580 (Q46,V25) both times. Highly disappointed with second attempt. Contemplating to take it one more time to score closer to 700.
- AWA 5.5. IR - 4.0.

Current Work Experience:

- 3.5 yrs of work experience as hardware engineer in Hughes Network Systems.
- Currently I'm lead design engineer for a product.
- Overtook responsibilities when teammates left work. Worked simultaneously on 3 products and took up the responsibility of mechanical engineer role (for 3months) due to shortage of mechanical engineers.
- Managers increased confidence in my capability to take more responsibilities led to a promotion (from "Member of Technical Staff 1" to "Member of Technical Staff 2") in 2.5 yrs.
- Gained different experience by shouldering various engineering roles such as Product engineer, test engineer, and design engineer.
- Worked as engineering representative along with business development and operations group to brainstorm solutions to enhance the customer returned products.

MBA Goal: Business Development & Strategy in technology

Extracurricular Activities:
- volunteered at an NGO to focus on Indian government's policy on education. Challenging the currently proposed policy to eliminate any future loss in education system in the country. Sometimes we do research piloting new ideas.
- Beginning next year, I will be involved in an NGO that focuses on presenting successful business policies, implemented in developing countries, that can be introduced in U.S.
- Previous Virginia Tech club tennis team member.
- Initiated a tennis club at workplace and organized summer tennis championships.
- ranked #1 in mid Atlantic county tennis.

Target School:

Before taking the GMAT I set Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) and equivalents as my target schools. But after getting a low GMAT score, I realized I do not have many options. So I decided to shortlist colleges whose GMAT range suits my GMAT score. The starting range for most the colleges I have shortlisted is 560. I have had good acads all my life and played competitive tennis too. But currently my GMAT score is clearly a big road block, forcing me to lower my expectations.

Please suggest what are the strengths and weaknesses in my profile? You can also highlight from the list of colleges below in which my chances will not look good. Feel free to suggest some other colleges in the U.S too.

- Cox (SMU)
- Smeal (Penn State)
- Broad (Michigan State)
- Krannert (Purdue)
- Tippie (Iowa)
- Mays (Texas A&M)