Quick guide to Evaluating your profile for ISB (and writing your essays)

I have been a member of PaGaLGuY Forums for quite a few years now. I have followed the "evaluate my profile please" posts with a lot of interest over time. I am going to try and summarize the wisdom across all these posts and have a permanent link that I can refer people to. May I present to you, my quick guide to evaluating your own profile.

Acads (12th Grade):
+ 2 if in the 90th percentile of your board
+ 1 if in the 80th percentile of your board 


Acads (Undergraduate):
Repeat as above

GMAT
+2 if greater than 760
+1 if greater than 680

Work Experience (Quantity)
ISB does recommend having at least 2 years of experience while applying. However, there have been people with 17 months of experience and 17 years of experience in batches. Keep in mind that companies come to recruit assuming an average of 4 to 5 years.
+2 for 3 to 6 years
+1 for others

Work Experience (Quality)
Now we are talking. Your work experience causes you to come in with a view point of the world. For most people their first jobs or second jobs are about paying the bills and is understandable. However, have you done something different? How is your view of the world shaped? What have you experienced that will make the theory being discussed in the classroom come alive? What did you like about your job? What did you not like about it?
+10 if you can answer these questions well
+5 if you can answer these questions
+0 if you have absolutely no clue about what I am talking about.

Extra-Curriculars and other achievements
Lets get brutally honest here. Extra curriculars should be something that you are interested in and have done a lot of. Joining an NGO for a year isn't really going to cut it. ISB wants well rounded people not just people who are studying all the time. Extra curriculars that have been made up to get into B school (NGO work, start up etc) are going to bomb big time.
+5 for extra curriculars that you are passionate about and can talk the whole day about without getting bored
+ 0 otherwise

Essays
If you maxed out the above, you would have a score of 23. I would say this carries a score of 27 marks or more. This is where you can explain the quality of your work experience, extra curriculars, achievements etc. This is where you get to paint a picture of yourself that people who have not met you are going to try and understand if you have what it takes. Do you know what the course is about or are you just enamored by articles in newspapers? Do you know what the realistic chances of the kind of jobs post campus are?Are you caught up in the average CTC figures or want something else out of your degree?

Summary
Your past marks are history and cannot be changed. A lot of people get caught up wondering about taking the GMAT again to improve their scores. Don't worry about it. This is a hang over from our school days were marks were the easiest way to compare people. ISB and other B Schools are trying to select you for who you are rather than the marks that someone else assigned to you. The work you do and your extra curricular activity tells the panel a lot more.

A cursory look at the people getting in makes you think that only people with high grades get in. Look deeper and you will see that these people are more likely to take the application process seriously. They will have their essays reviewed by friends and keep rewriting them. They spend enough time on researching the college, the course, their goals etc. I cannot stress enough on how important the essays are. Forget about things that are not in your control and work on the things that are.

You want someone to do your profile evaluation? Let's check the quality of your essays.

All the best for the application season.