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Applicant cracks top US business school with 640 GMAT score

Saurabh had a low GMAT score, and the fact that he came from the oversaturated applicant pool of Indian IT applicants did not help his profile.

Saurabh wanted to get into a school with an average GMAT score of 692, while his GMAT score was 640.

But his perseverance got him through his MBA application journey and Saurabh cracked the George Washington University School of Business.

Here’s his story.

Saurabh’s goals story

Saurabh was writing a very politically correct goals story. While there is nothing wrong with that, it was neither memorable nor inspiring.

For example, saying that an MBA will help you create an impact is not good enough. Everyone knows that an MBA will certainly provide you with additional skills to create an IMPACT. In fact, you can create an IMPACT even without an MBA degree. What you need to talk about is what that IMPACT will be, and how an MBA will help you create it.

What would Saurabh not be able to do if he could work as an IT Strategist, his short-term goal, right now? And how will an MBA help fill in this gap that he will face?

He also needed to talk about his motivations for his short-term goal. He needed to explain to the admissions committee, why he had selected his short-term goal before he could even begin explaining the “why MBA?” part of his goals story.

Saurabh’s feedback was to not only simply narrate his experience dealing with people as an account’s manager but also the moments during his professional experience which pushed him to realize his short-term goal was something he wanted to work towards.

Saurabh’s essay analysis

Saurabh’s issue with his essays was space allotment. He wasn’t making the right space allotment to different parts of his story to create a seamless transition between his past, and the MBA.

For example, to answer the “Why this school?” question, one needs to list down their reasons for pursuing the school, but also allot a small percentage of the essay word limit to tell the admissions committee why they are a good fit for the school.

Also, to truly write a response that would be unique, and would convince the school of the effort put in by Saurabh, he needed to start networking. After providing the Networking guide to Saurabh, and running a couple of mock calls to get him accustomed to the process, we asked Saurabh to start networking before anything else.

Saurabh put in a lot of hard work and cracked the George Washington University School of Business’ MBA admissions.

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