u/pendingclarification

I have about 5.5 YOE overall. With 3+ years currently in a high growth Tech Startup (Series A funded) seen the company growth from sub $5 mill to 15+ during my time.

I started off as an Intern and have moved from Marketing to Founder Office and today have complete ownership of one of the products.

Prior to this I worked for 2 years as an Analyst in one of the big banks, primarily doing Governance work for EMEA region.

I am based out of India and have been thinking about doing an Executive MBA.

I have a 3.6 GPA during my undergraduate in Finance from a renowned institute.

I want to understand my profile better and also primarily understand if I can get GMAT/GRE Waiver as well as I am not the strongest when it comes to those exams.

How much value does IIM give on the GRE and also should I think about an Executive MBA from outside of India?

Thinking from an ROI perspective as well with today's job market

Even if I try I would prefer GRE as I tried GMAT before and well it did not end up well.

27 years old with no direction on where this life is leading me.

I work in SaaS. My trajectory till now has been a little unconventional. I don't hold a tech degree, but I somehow managed to move from Marketing to Product Management. I have been at the same company for over 3 years now; it is a startup.

At the end of last year, I knew my time here was up. I first thought, let me give MBA a shot, I have a good story to tell, but I failed miserably in my GMAT because I never enjoyed those tests. Give me a real-life case study, give me a problem statement. Why do I need to solve Data Sufficiency questions? The system is completely broken, and it is getting worse.

Start of this year, let's hunt for jobs, 5 months in, very few interviews and every waking hour, unsure where life is leading me.

Everyone around me has said, I already have the experience and do not need an MBA. I personally don't want to do an MBA, I despise the tags our country runs on. I have worked with people from the best colleges, and yes, I do have respect for the kind of work they do, but that is not it. I have also seen the flip side of it, no knowledge whatsover.

It has become a space today much worse than before. A Pre-Seed stage startup demands an IIT + IIM person to join their startup to do what? Run some Paid Marketing campaigns? Startups that were supposed to be a place for people with potential to show their work are now getting filtered out because they did not go for fancy degrees; they chose to follow a little unconventional path of trying to build something without going to these places they cannot afford and being stuck under the mountain of debt and the uncertainty that comes with it. It somewhat feels like why did I not know about this at 17? That this is what life will turn out to be, you will always be labelled at what you did at that age?

I still think about being 22, full of dreams, blasting Pink Floyd and Dylan while riding across the country. Reading Bukowski and Murakami, making notes on them. I was earning peanuts, but I was somewhat happy.

I never ever wanted this life. I left my first job in a"Big" Investment Bank (I was doing nothing fancy) to find purpose, and years into it, after giving in so much, I have worked harder, and I love working harder than most people out there, but it looks like it hasn't amounted to anything.

I am 27 today, I will be 28 in a few months, and I am dreading that number.

No fancy degree, no brand name, will anyone ever even give me a second look?

I don't need any sympathy, it is just 1 am and my heart is racing at the thought that I have to get up in a few hours and go and do something again that makes me forget that 22-year-old self a little more day by day.