How Anusheel go into Mendoza with a 36 Lakh scholarship?

With 5 years of work experience in engineering under his belt, Anusheel wanted to switch careers to a finance function. With a GMAT score of 720, the top schools that Anusheel was looking for did not look at him as a highly competitive profile.

However, his goals story and essays, containing life experiences, convinced the schools of the immense value that Anusheel brought to the table and helped him crack a top US business school.

Anusheel cracked Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business with a 36 Lakh scholarship.

Here’s how.

Anusheel’sgoals story

Anusheel started off with a very generic goals story. Although he knew it wasn’t adequate considering the schools he wanted to apply to, he simply had no clear idea on how to make it more specific and tailored to his own self. This is where networking came in.

This was a clear indication that Anusheel needed to start networking with professionals in the same job functions as he wished to be in post-MBA. Along with networking with such professionals, we started sharing different research material, that we had created for other students as well, on the various post-MBA functions.

Anusheel’s long-term goal was to be an Engagement Manager. He took the right approach by defining the job function, but the definition in itself wasn’t much help. He needed to define the function’s roles and responsibilities that he will be required to fulfill.

Anusheel’s goals story also lacked flow in the beginning. The flow that I am referring to here is a seamless connection between Anusheel’s past, MBA Program, Short-term goals, and long-term goals.

HoweverAnusheel was one determined applicant, he spent hours networking with professionals in his desired job functions and students in his target schools just to get his story right.

Anusheel’sessay analysis

The schools that Anusheel was targeting, asked questions about student contribution in their essays. These schools did not only ask “Why our business school?”, but also, “Why should we accept you?”. While Anusheel had given a few good reasons for the same, his answer wasn’t a compelling as we had wished for.

When a school asks why it should choose you out of the various applicants from a diverse applicant pool, it wants to know how you will add value to it’s MBA program as well a the student environment. Thus, your answer should not be limited to the classroom.

Fortunately, Anusheel had already started on Networking, and could easily get started on this aspect of his essays based on our feedback.

Another thing that we needed to work on with Anusheel was the incidents he was using in his essays. Although Anusheel felt he had used great and telling incidents from his past, as a reader, they did not have the desired effect on us. This clearly meant that the stories need to be switched with other incidents.

When writing business school essays, we always suggest that students get them read by someone just to see what effect it has on the reader. If your reader tells you that apart of your essay is incomprehensible, change it. If someone you shared your essays with was not able to comprehend something, chances are the admissions committee members won’t be able to either.

With all of these roadblocks dealt with, Anusheel had a great profile ready, and cracked Notre Dame’s Mendoza College Of Business with a 36 Lakh scholarship!

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