Neha’s Journey to one of the most selective Top Tier Programs in the world, IMD Switzerland.
Applicants generally believe that less work-experience can be an issue during their MBA admissions. However, applicants with high work experience of over 8 years often face more issues convincing an admissions committee of their future employability, past handicaps, and the motivation to pursue an MBA.
When Neha (name changed on request) walked in our doors with 9-year long work experience, we knew one thing for sure. Due to her seniority in work experience, business schools would expect her needed to have a good grip of the Past + MBA = Short-term and Long-term goals equation.
Neha cracked her dream school, IMD Switzerland; a highly competitive one-year MBA that admits only 90 applicants every year.
Neha was currently in an analytics-based consulting role and wanted to move to a different branch of consulting.
Our roadblock was constructing a profile that convinced admissions committees that a candidate who was already in the industry function she wanted to be in and had led various teams throughout her career, would benefit from what their MBA program had to offer. In simpler words, we need to connect Neha’s post-MBA employability and her short-term and long-term goals via the one-year MBA Program at IMD.
Before even starting with the applications, we began training her on a few things:
- Building up a resume
- Short-term and long-term goals
- Networking with the MBA community
- Picking the right recommenders
Neha followed the instructions provided to her during this training and then began the process of fine-tuning her submissions.
A business school resume is much different from the one you submit during a job application.
Neha had to quantify all her achievements and make sure the resume did not exceed one page. Saying she led a project to launch from scratch wasn’t enough. She ended up adding that the project was worth $38 Million.
Since she was from an analytics industry, we really had to push her to drop all the industry jargons as well as the admissions committee member reviewing her resume could be form any industry.
When it came to her short-term and long-term goals, Neha needed much more help in explaining why she had chosen her short-term goal rather than explaining the goal itself. She struggled in detailing what her current handicap was. While she knew what her handicap was, Neha couldn’t convey the intensity of the same.
After cleaning up the rest of her goals story, we decided to leave her handicap for a couple of days as it would be better addressed in school-related essays.
The essays were a rigorous and all-consuming process. We started with a framework for each essay question from each school and received a detailed expression from Neha. After various rounds of email and on-call feedback, we had reached a point where we had created essays that both Neha and we were proud of.
In addition, Neha could now convey her skill gap and how an MBA would help fill it perfectly.
Before she even received an interview call from either LBS and IMD, we shared our interview training resource, Interviewninjas, and the interview guides, with her since schools don’t provide a lot of time for prep.
After having two amazing interviews the first decision, that LBS had rejected her, had Neha very disappointed.
We did not let this dampen our spirits and waited for IMD’s reply, after all that was her dream school.
The acceptance from IMD was over call and Neha immediately informed us of the great news.
Those endless email threads and calls had finally paid off and thus began her journey to the next stage of her career.
Here’s Neha’s story straight from her:
“Before embarking on my MBA journey, I had been thriving in my comfortable cocoon and had never thought much about finding about the entire process, applications or even GMAT for that matter. Given a very hectic schedule where I was continuously shuttling across cities, I thought best would be seek support from an established institute which can not only provide help with the GMAT prep but also provide perspective on the complete application process.
Even before I started working with Jatin on my applications, some of the sessions that he held on school selection, networking, goals and the mailers that he would regularly send assisted immensely in getting a lot of clarity. During one of our initial admissions consulting call itself, I was quite impressed by how he answered all my questions very patiently, understood my thought process and helped alleviate all my confusions. Throughout the application process, Jatin continuously pushed me towards asking the right questions, exploring as much as possible to prepare for an authentic expression of “why do you love this school” and provided constant words of encouragement whenever I was about to give up. I loved how he would quote examples to drive home a point. Even prescriptive items such as networking videos, interview ninjas provided a wealth of information to fall back on and emulate in the entire preparation. The rigor demonstrated throughout the course, despite me missing a few deadlines set by him, ensured top quality essays which I actually could not have imagined at all initially.
Right at the onset, I was pretty fixated on getting into IMD. Thanks to Jatin & his team at PythaGURUS, I secured an admission in my dream school and now all set to traverse a new path!
Thanks again for the all the guidance! It would have been extremely difficult if not for your guidance and support throughout 🙂 🙂 It was a pleasure!
Also, if you’ve any future students, who want to know more about IMD, I will be happy to answer questions. You can share my email with them. “
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