Prasanth has worked with 136 ARINGO candidates. Prasanth’s candidates were admitted to MBA programs at Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, Chicago, MIT, Stern, LBS, Tepper, Tuck, Haas, Michigan, UCLA, McCombs, Tuck, Fuqua, Yale, INSEAD, IESE, ESADE, HEC, IMD, Georgetown, Oxford, Cambridge, Darden, Kenan-Flagler, USC, Johnson, Olin, Babson, Goizueta, NUS, ISB, IIMA-PGPX, Rotman, Indiana, Bocconi, Ivey, HEC Montreal and many others.
Columbia MBA Graduate (2012). Since 2012, Prasanth has successfully guided over 75 applicants earn admission in various top b-schools in USA and around the world. He is currently the Head of Product at Wealth-X, a SaaS venture in New York City.
Prasanth holds a MBA from Columbia Business School, MS in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon and a BS with honors from Cochin University. At Columbia, he served numerous leadership positions such as Peer Advisor and Hermes Society member. He also co-chaired the India Business conference.
Prior to Columbia, he worked at Accenture for four years advising financial services firms and government on technology strategy. Post Columbia, he worked in LexisNexis NYC for four years across strategy and product roles.
Outside of the professional sphere, Prasanth is passionate about community service, blogging, photography and he has fund-raised over $10,000 for charity by running marathons in USA and Europe.
Applicants’ quotes:
“Dear Prasanth,
Just wanted to pass on a Thank You note for the efforts you have put in to ensure I get an admit from Kelley School of Business. Your constructive feedback for my essays, recommendation letter and Resume was outstanding. Getting into top 15 Business schools was my dream and you guys made it possible.
Thank You very much again and wish you all the very best for the future.”
.
“I want to thank Prasanth for not only getting me into Harvard, Columbia, and Wharton, but also making the process smooth and fun.
Thank you, Prasanth, for helping me create an application story that I loved and wanted to tell every business school. Thank you for calming me down when I was about to break apart in the stressful essay writing process. Thank you for being so prompt with your reviews and trying to match my crazy work schedule.
Thank you for giving me the right advice about all the interviews, they were always spot on. Thank you for calling me the evening before my last interview to tell me that no matter what I do, I’d end up somewhere good. And I did.
See you in Boston!”
“I liked working with Prasanth a lot, I got a lot of confidence from working with him. Prasanth was organized, responsive and insightful.”
GMATclub Chat with Prasanth Ramanand – Session Transcript:
aashu4uiit: Can you suggest what should be a Typical GMAT ( more admit admit ) score for an Indian IT male , 10 Years work ex for INSEAD and IMD. Profile : 10y works IT Project manager . average acads and extra curricular
ARINGO_Prasanth: Hi Aashu, so MBA is about holistic evaluation. As you know Indians generally have a high score (700+) but there are plenty of those in IIM (Indian-IT-Male) profile with that score and won’t score an admit still. On the other hand, I’ve clients with 680 who got through (from IIM pool). So, I encourage you to get as high score as possible, but don’t get too hung up on GMAT. The application package needs to differentiate you from the crowd and that’s the key to admit
MBASpartan: Would you mind giving a quick overview of Kellogg and Booth ? Other than the normal high GMAT, work experience, etc? Thanks!
ARINGO_Prasanth: Chicago is very unique given the nature of their essay prompt. They really like those applicants who have tried to shake things a bit at their work. It’s in their nature to be more analytical and inquisitive. Kellogg on the other hand is more interested in seeing if you’ve taken risks in your career, tried to do something different
manneken: Hi Prasanth, Do you have any idea about the importance of GMAT for Phd applications? Especially at UC Berkeley or UCLA?
ARINGO_Prasanth: Hi Manneken, for PhD GMAT is still a key attribute to show quantitative abilities, but the more important criteria will be your research aptitude.
madhan: Hi Prasanth, Have you ever dealt with applicants who got into H/S/W with average grades..if so can please discuss about, what was the X factor in those applicants??
ARINGO_Prasanth: Hi Madhan, ah I was waiting when someone would start the HSW discussion Yes, it’s possible to get into those programs with a lower acads. Obviously, if you have lower GPA then it’s important to get a higher GMAT to offset that negative a little.
Ergenekon: Prasanth, is there any difference between attitudes of wharton and columbia adcoms? for example one can pay more attention to leadership etc.
ARINGO_Prasanth: H/S/W – sure. With HBS, it’s about what is the best thing about you that you want to share. You can talk about work or personal life or future goals or anything else about you that will differentiate you from others.
Wharton – has completely revamped their process recently and I believe they are trying too hard to ensure the class is filled with students who are likeable, humble and get along. So the team dynamics is key for Wharton these days
Columbia’s process hasn’t changed much in the recent years, alumni continues to do the interviews and so adcom is perhaps happy with how we have filtered the applicants thus far
Narenn: Hi Prasanth, Let me ask a couple questions on today’s topic of this chat – MBA Application Essays.
What are the characteristics of good and bad essays?
What’s the ideal time to start essays writing?
And, finally, please share some tips on Essay drafting
ARINGO_Prasanth: Hi Narenn, sure. I’ll address them one by one.
1- A good essay will attempt to do several things – it will capture the attention of the reader from the get go. It will have a compelling narrative, story arc that keeps things interesting till the end. It will above all, address the question carefully and showcase applicant’s strengths and differentiate him/her from the crowd.
A bad essay on the other hand, will be boring to read and won’t have a strong story to support the narrative
2-Ideal time to start writing – well, I’ve had clients who wanted to wrap up everything in 1 week and we have done that successfully. That said, the best thing will be to start 3-4 months before deadlines, so you have time to reflect and not rush through
3- Tips for drafting – I recommend doing something that we call Personal Data Mining at ARINGO . You really need to look at your work/personal lives objectively and capture all the important moments and reasons behind decisions at every juncture – prior to start writing essays. This will help you identify strong stories later as well as give you clarity of purpose when you write the essays.
Some useful material available on this link http://www.ARINGO.com/MBA-Essay-Tips2/
aashu4uiit: If I have one more year to improve on things other than GMAT can you suggest what should one do ? language course … something else any list.
ARINGO_Prasanth: Hi Aashu – you can work on community service if that’s lacking. You can take up a side project if you wish to showcase yourself as an entrepreneur. There are several possibilities it all depends on your positioning and current weakness.
madhan: how ARINGO is different from other admissions consultants??
ARINGO_Prasanth: ARINGO has been around for a while, and we have spent $ to extract insights from the scores of applications that was successful. When a client works with us, you get benefit of not just 1 consultant, you get to talk to multiple across the process as well as get feedback on goals etc. from the strategy committee.