How Jeesha Cracked ISB? Overcoming the Overrepresented IT Applicant Pool thought barrier
Despite a great profile, amazing background stories, and very defined short-term and long-term goals, applicants often get rejected by schools. In such a situation, more often than not, the problem is with the storytelling.
Jeesha had a similar problem. Despite a goal clarity, Jeesha did not know what she wanted from an MBA.
Here is a peek into her MBA application journey.
Jeesha’s resume
There were two main issues with Jeesha’s resume.
She was writing a job resume. After all, that is what she knew how to do, because that is all we are taught how to write. She used industry jargon heavily. While a job resume would be read by someone with seniority in your line of work, who understands these jargons very well, an MBA resume can be read by someone who isn’t familiar with your industry at all.
The other thing she needed to change was the format she wrote in, and no I don’t just mean the font or the tables. What I’m referring to is the STAR format of writing a resume. According to this, each situation that you write in your resume should be accompanied by a task you were assigned, an action you took, and the result you delivered.
After a detailed critique of her resume, we moved on to her goals story.
Jeesha’s goals story
Jeesha had a three-and-a-half-year long experience as a research analyst. Her post-MBA function of choice was consulting. When Jeesha sent in the first draft of her goals story, we knew she would need to start networking before she could connect the two (research analyst past and consulting future) seamlessly together.
She also needed to find a way to not showcase her current profile as a part of the overrepresented technology applicant pool. Not that she was doing it intentionally, but her style of writing made it seem as if she was unhappy in her current profile. However, we wished to portray that she had made the most of her current job and identified some handicaps that weren’t letting her grow from it.
Also, her long-term goals sounded very theoretical. The details of her motives were very blurred and made her long-term goal seem very plastic and created only for the purpose of submitting b-school applications.
This is important for anyone writing a goal story or essay. Whatever goals you share must be backed up by the reasons you chose the goal, and the result you wish to create through them.
After working on the same with Jeesha, the goals’ story she then created was ready to be used for her essays.
Jeesha’s essays
Jeesha’s biggest issue was missing out on details. She had great stories to tell and had authentic and passionate convictions for pursuing an MBA, however, it made no difference since she wasn’t able to put those on paper initially.
We tried to make her see this point as it was a constant throughout her profile.
If you can’t convince the admissions committee of the things in your profile, then they end up not being as significant for your admissions no matter how impressive they might be.
After her essays were done with, Jeesha started with her interview prep before even she had an invite. She started working on the interview guides, and the Interviewninjas video library to prep for the mocks.
By the time she received her interview call from ISB, we were already halfway through the prep.
