After being dinged by 13 business schools by himself Gaurav chose PythaGURUS and got into his dream school ISB

Gaurav attempted the round 2 application deadline for 13 schools and got rejected by all of them without an interview invite. He then took the decision to look for a consultant to get him his dream admit and landed on PythaGURUS.

Gaurav wasn’t sure if he wanted to attempt at the schools he had already been rejected from before he came to us. However, there was one school for that list of 13 he felt was worth another try. It was ISB, one of India’s top business schools.

We’re proud to tell you that Gaurav did crack ISB in his second attempt.

This is the story of Gaurav getting his dream admit.

Gaurav’s goals story

Gaurav was almost there in regards to his goals story but was missing the flow and a few more things. Firstly, Gaurav needed to answer the following questions separately and clearly.

1. How did your current past make you chose your future goal, i.e. what are your AHA moments?

2. If someone hired you right now, what challenges would you face in your desired role in the short-term, i.e. what are your current handicaps?

3. How can an MBA help you overcome the challenges from question 2, i.e. why MBA?

The tone of Gaurav’s answer also needed to be more deliberate than accidental. He needed to take ownership of all his decisions from his professional life rather than saying that life just happened around him and now it has brought him to do an MBA.

With such things taken care of, Gaurav’s goals story was ready to be used in his application essays.

Gaurav’s essay analysis

We started our analysis by going through Gaurav’s application essays from the previous year. Since he wanted to definitely take another shot at ISB and was undecided about the rest of the schools, we decided to analyze his ISB essay from last year first.

One of the mistakes that Gaurav had made the previous year was that he hadn’t addressed the questions head-on. In his goals essay for ISB, Gaurav had completed missed the “Why ISB?” portion of the answer. He had simply stuck to answering “Why MBA?”. While answering “Why MBA?” was an important part of the essay, telling the business school why you want to do an MBA from their school, in particular, was equally important, if not more. He needed to convince ISB that even though there’s numerous business schools and MBA programs out there, ISB’s MBA Program was exactly what he needed to proceed further in his career.

In his accomplishment essay, Gaurav had completely forgotten about his professional accomplishments and had stuck to personal ones. To ISB, this sends a message that he was an applicant who wasn’t keen on his current job and thus, hadn’t created much success professionally.

What he needed to do instead was tell ISB what set him apart from others professionally. Making these changes did the trick, and ISB called him in for an interview.

When the time to interview came, Gaurav studied up on the material we had provided him pretty well and the mocks went smoothly.

The result was that he was able to crack ISB, a school that had rejected him last year without an interview.