Cracking ISB with low work experience

With just 3 years of work experience, Sid’s dream of ISB could have been a little far fetched. The school prefers applicants with a bit more work experience. However, Sid was an exceptional applicant and we knew with a perfectly curated profile, he would be able to crack ISB with ease.

And we were right.Sid cracked his dream school and one of India’s best schools, ISB.

Here’s his MBA application journey.

Sid’s Goals Story

After starting with Sid’s goals, we realized that he needed to network first. His goals were very shallow and had no dimension. They seemed like they were listed just for the sake of it, and that was not the way we wanted them to come off.

Sid’s passion for his goals had gotten lost in translation to paper. So, to help him, he needed to network with current students and alumni of his target school. You never know when your connection at the school, alumni, current student or faculty, would reply and thus need to set apart a good amount of time to cover for any such uncertainties.

So, we provided him with access to the various networking and interview resources, like Interviewninjas, to really help him understand the kind of questions that he needed to ask during his pre-MBA networking calls. We even set up mock networking calls to refine the strategy for the real ones.

Once he had some networking experience, we could go ahead with working on his goals story.

Sid’s first draft of the goals story neither had handicaps nor consisted of AHA moments. And it’s okay. So, we guided him on how to identify his AHA moments and then write specific handicaps rather than a generic statement. After many iterations of the goals story, Sid was able to produce an authentic account of all his handicaps, AHA moments, and how an MBA would fill in the gap for his professional growth.

Sid’s Essay Analysis

ISB asked Sid how he would contribute to the school. Every part of your MBA application is crucial, that’s why is there, but your essay answers should be your priority to get right. You cannot come up with profound and genuine answers in the first attempt. Which is why you need to work on those over many iterations until you’re satisfied with the way your essay turned out.

Initially, Sid’s answer to this question that ISB had posed was nothing special. There was nothing special or unique about his answer that could make the admissions committee see that Sid was a great addition to their MBA program. However, we had a fix for this.

We directed Sid to our Interviewninjas video library and he found a detailed analysis of how to answer said question with honesty while still being unique and personal.

The result is in front of you. Sid cracked his dream school and one of India’s best school, ISB.

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