MIM Student Profile Survey
Discovering the Profile of a MiM student
Here are some questions that the MiM Student Profile would help you answer….
- What are the admission committees of top Masters in Management schools looking for?
- What is the average class profile of a MiM school? Where is the bar for the admission set?
- How does one maximize his chances of admission into LBS, HEC, ESCP, Fuqua or IE??
What exactly will the MIM Student Profile teach me?
Well the MiM Student Profile Survey was designed to answer several of the questions that are raging in a prospective MiM students mind, such as
How strong should my GMAT be?
GMAT score can be used to reflect your Quantitative abilities. Some of the top universities have made it mandatory for admissions to their prestigious MIM programs. However, a score of 650+ is considered to be a decent score which can help you get admitted to top schools like Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University; University of St. Gallen; Essec Business School; University of Bocconi etc. But if you get a score between 670 – 700, you can increase your chances of getting selected for the dream category schools such as IE Business School, ESCP Europe, London Business School, HEC Paris etc.
How much do the extracurriculars matter?
Admission Committees look for holistic profiles that are both academically well with active participation in extracurricular activities. Although your academic profile matters alot but participation in extracurriculars is equally significant. You can mention the following extracurricular activities in your profile:
- Athletics: Perhaps the most frequent extracurricular activity that springs to mind. Almost every high school has a sports team of various sizes, kinds, and competitiveness.
- Career and Technical Student Organizations (CTSOs) are academic and professional activities that expand classroom learning and provide career-focused education. They are also known as career technical education (CTE). These organisations provide activities that promote social and intellectual development by concentrating on professional, interpersonal, leadership, self-confidence, communication, and decision-making skills.
- Student Government: Serving in student government is an excellent method to develop leadership abilities while also shaping school policy and activities. Students can be chosen by their peers to various offices or just volunteer with their student government group (SGA). These organisations, often known as student councils, advocate students’ interests and organise activities like dances, spirit weeks, community service, and fundraising.
- Volunteer and community organisations are common in most schools, and many school districts require students to fulfil volunteer hours in order to get their diplomas. Participating in a service group or volunteer initiative not only provides your teen with a meaningful extracurricular activity. It also allows them to earn service hours toward graduation.
- The Arts: Among the various arts-related extracurricular activities are drama club, marching band, orchestra, dance, choir, and literary publications. These groups are ideal for students who are enthusiastic about the arts and wish to devote extra time to perfect their talent. They are also a fantastic supplement to normal school-based arts instruction.
Am I too old for the MIM?
Students pursuing a Master of Management degree are often recent college graduates aged 20 to 25, with an average age of 23.
Do I have too less or too much work experience?
For the MiM programme, up to 2.5 years of work experience is acceptable. A frequent observation is that employment experience for overseas candidates ranges from 1-2 years. It is a misperception that MiM programmes only accept 0-1 years of job experience. In general, the age of 24 is considered the international norm.
What is the ideal CGPA schools are looking for?
Although there is no minimum requirement for CGPA, you should always aim to get a CGPA of above 7. Also, you need not worry if you have obtained a low CGPA as you can always cover it up with your GMAT and GRE scores and extracurriculars.
Presenting the mim student profile survey, taken by 127 MiM students, in an attempt to decipher what were the key factors which led to their admission.
Often argued as the most important part of the application process, one usually wants a GMAT score above 700 to cement his chances of acceptance.
Though the median scores of colleges usually hover around 690-710, a lower GMAT is definitely not a deal breaker.
One can observe from the survey that a substantial population of the students had scores below 680. A strong profile with a good academic track record can go a long way towards mitigating a low GMAT score.
Also, some colleges accept alternative exams, which you can write to get admission, these include EMAT, TAGE Mage (For French Schools), IELTS, GRE, TM Base (For German Schools) and a few others.
Though a strong CGPA is always a plus point in your application, one can observe that students with a varied range of academic scores have successfully gained admission.
One reason for this is that colleges know that some specific schools have tough grading process and hence will judge your grades accordingly.
Alternatively, the person may be involved in lots of activities and by giving a proper justification via essays, would be able to mitigate the effect of low CGPA.
This question was included to give an idea of the diversity in a MiM program. Students from over 26 countries study together to lend a very dynamic environment to the campus.
An upside of belonging to a country which is not well represented in the MiM student body is that you have a stronger chance to get accepted. This is because schools try their best to maximise the diversity of incoming batch for various reasons (one of them is global rankings)
The downside is that some schools also have unofficial limits on the number of students they accept from specific regions. This is especially true for countries such as India and China where a high volume of applications come from.
Though the MiM marketed as a degree for young graduates, the international student body usually consist of students from various age groups, going up to 27 years in some cases.
So never think you are too old to apply for a MiM.
Business schools love different backgrounds, you will find die, hard engineers, savvy business majors and creative humanities students studying together and working on various group projects.
There are also a number of students who have done their UG in language studies, so the subject of your UG degree is not a constraint at all.
One thing interesting here is that if you have a very different background (say a degree in Archaeology or Psychology) or some unique skill (e.g.- a handwriting analysis expert), it can really work in your favour if framed well in the application essays.
Often marketed as a degree for young graduates, the MiM is also a very popular choice for people who have up to 3 years of work experience.
Schools favor work experience because such individuals tend to have a better understanding of the corporate culture are more placement ready and tend to bRING learnings from their respective fields. Also, the work experience provides some very interesting material to showcase in the application essays.
Most of the international students entering the MiM course tend to have 1 year of work experience on an average.
If you have a small amount of work experience or want to gain some experience working in the international field, the MiM has a very interesting gap year or gap semester concept, where one can take a break from studies and do a couple of 6-month internships. This can boost your market value when you try to find a job after graduation.
Different people have different reasons for joining MiM. Some want to explore the world while some want to use it as a way to improve their job prospects and some want to change their field of work and for some it is just an alternative to an MBA degree.
These tend to be the top four reasons why students select the Masters in Management degree.
Only 12% people feel that GMAT played a detrimental role in obtaining their college admission. They felt a much higher weight age was given to-
Having an open and global mindset.
Strong extracurricular activities.
Work experience.
The MiM provides excellent opportunities to get into top companies in almost all major sectors ranging from Consulting, Finance, Marketing to Operations & Energy.
As can be seen from the survey, a majority of the aspirants want to get into consulting, finance or marketing field.
Each of these sectors recruits heavily from top MiM schools and fetch handsome salaries for the graduates.
This question provides a suitable answer to the old debate of MiM vs MBA.
You can notice that only a small percentage of students feel the need to do an MBA after successful completion of the MiM and most prefer to go for an Executive MBA later in life if they feel the need.
This is mainly because there are a lot of similarities in the curriculum of a MiM and an MBA, and both degrees do a splendid job of preparing the students for a career in Management. Hence, MiM students do not feel the need to supplement their education with an MBA degree as most of their needs have been met already.
With profile elements such as extracurriculars, age, CGPA, nationality, and your under graduation stream being out of scope for much improvement now, you are left with only GMAT, essays, and LORs to make your application stronger. So make sure you put all your effort into making them the best possible.
We hope the MiM Student Profile helped in clearing some of your masters in management related doubts, you may want to check out our Essay Editing and LOR services to know how we can help you get admitted into your dream college.
