How Preet scored a $42,500 scholarship to MIT Sloan
Preet had the typical Indian MBA applicant background, 3 years of work experience as an engineer with a 720 GMAT score.
For an Indian male applicant with an engineering background, a competitive score is always around 20 points over the average GMAT score of their target school. MIT Sloan, Preet’s target school, has an average GMAT score of 716. This meant Preetneedeatleast a 730+ score to have a competitive edge.
However, Preet’s diligence got him an MIT Sloan admit with a 50% scholarship!
Preet’s Goals story
Preet’s first draft of the goals needed improvement, but so does every first draft.
Preet was working with one of India’s largest power generation equipment manufacturers. This meant he had a big brand ono his resume, which was a plus. However, in his goals story, Preet only made the link as far as this brand. He linked his current situation, i.e. the big brand job, to an incident in his childhood, but had nothing similar for his short-term goal of consulting.
He needed to portray his conviction for switching from Engineering to Consulting through an AHA moment, and then reveal the current handicaps he came across that convinced him that an MBA was the bridge between his present and future aspirations.
The handicaps would be the skills or knowledge that he was missing to immediately enter the job function of your choice. Whereas the AHA moments would be the events that inspired him toenter the said job function.
But before that, he needed some guidance in regards to Consulting. This is where the Consulting guide on Interviewnnjas comes in. Even if an applicant isn’t looking to switch careers to consulting, the Consulting Guide on Interviewninjas is a must-watch. It is to nudge candidates in the right direction for research and help them ask the right questions to have a comprehensive knowledge of their short-term goal.
Preet’s essays
The first issue we faced with the application essays, in Preet’s case, was the word limit. Preet had exceeded the word limit by almost 300% in his drafts. The second issue with Preet’s essay was leaning on his current job. Every answer was driven around his life story of going to work for his current organization and then the details of the work he did there.
While the word-limit issue required a little prompting in most essay assignments, the relevance of Preet’s answers to the essay questions had improved after the initial feedback. He was now pulling inspiring, authentic, and organic stories from his past that made us feel sure of his application.
The result of all of our hard work alongside Preet was amazing!
