Naveen cracks Emory with 80 Lakhs scholarships

An applicant we worked with, Naveen, had made a significant shift in his industry. He had moved from Construction to Financial services and had a total of 8 years of work experience, and we wanted this to not affect his goals story overall. This made his story tougher than it could have been with a seamless flow.

If you’ve been struggling with a similar switch in your career, trust us when we say, “it is a fixable gap in your profile, all you need is the right approach.”

Naveen did the same and ended up cracking Emory University’s Goizueta Business School with an $80,000 scholarship!

Naveen was already late when he joined PythaGURUS for his MBA applications. We only took him in once we were sure he was ready to work every minute from the day he enrolled with us to the day he got an admit.

The start of Naveen’s MBA applications

He started off with one college application and his chosen business school was ISB. We provided him with the initial assignments, the one-page resume, and the short-term and long-term goals, to get his applications started.

We were thrown for a bit of a loop when he came to us in the middle of his short-term and long-term assignment and told us he was changing his business school choice to Emory’s Goizueta. Although we had already started off on a strategy based around ISB’s application, we decided to almost start fresh to accommodate Naveen’s request since he had informed us that he wished to study abroad.

The Long-term goals dilemma!

Now coming back to the industry shift problem with Naveen. He was a civil engineer in sales. Naveen’s long-term goals were to work in the manufacturing industry as someone who would manage the P&L of the firm. However, he couldn’t explain how his shift from the manufacturing industry to the finance industry was of assistance to his goals.

The first thing that we needed to do was to give him a more precise long-term goal. The goal he currently had was generalized and that is why he couldn’t find the connection between it and career choices.

Naveen’s new long-term goal was more descriptive and had the details of organizations and industries he wished to work in. It wasn’t changed to fit his narrative or profile. It was just refined.

Once his goals story was complete, we moved on to the essays as those taking the longest.

Essays for Emory

However, before starting with the essays we provided Naveen guidance on pre-MBA networking and asked him to start on that as the information would come in handy during his essays.

In his first essay to Emory, Naveen was writing a very Emory oriented story. But his resume did not mention any achievements that pointed to him having the skills his essays focus on. Many applicants try to accommodate a skill in their essays that they believe the school would be impressed by, but if you don’t have facts to back up your claims of philanthropy the admissions committee will definitely reject you.

The other problem in his essays was that he had written very superficial accounts of incidents. He was trying to explain how he had learned that leadership was an important aspect of an organization but hadn’t given the specifics of the incident that then formed his opinion.

When applicants make such generalizations, the impact of their conclusion, in this case, the importance of leadership, gets watered down.

Towards the end of the application process, Naveen had picked up each bit of feedback and turned his essays around completely. What was previously looking like a high schooler’s essay for an exam, was turned into a passion-driven and convincing piece of writing.

The interview with Emory

We were beyond excited when Naveen got the interview call from Emory. Although he had focused on just one school, he had put in his 100% during the application process.

We provided Naveen with all of our guides and the video library on Interviewninjas to start off his interview prep. After giving him a few days to really soak in the advice and information that we had given him, he scheduled a mock interview call with Jatin. With a long gap between his mock interviews and the actual interview by Emory, Naveen was able to take all of Jatin’s feedback into consideration and rocked the Emory interview.

You know the result already. Emory loved Naveen so much that they gave him an $80,000 scholarship to study with them!

Here’s Naveen’s account of the process.

“I approached PythaGURUS pretty late. I thought that I would be able to finish my application without any help as I had a very bad experience from a pretty huge and reputed MBA consulting firm from the US the previous year.

But after hearing some glorious feedback from several friends about Jatin’s style of work, I decided to seek his guidance.

I was pleasantly surprised with his candid approach. He initially started the conversation by saying that I am late and he would work with me only if I am ready to work extra hard. Unlike other consultants who focus on signing up clients by any means, he wanted to keep things clear from day one.

The problem with working people aiming for an MBA is time. He made sure that I was submitting things on time as he is very strict on deadlines. And I love deadlines as they forced me to finish things on time.

I realized he was the missing piece of the puzzle as I needed both the guidance and the push. As opposed to foreign consulting firms that promise a faster turnaround time, Jatin takes a normal time to respond, but he made sure that I was responding on time. I was glad that he had laid out everything for me. His mails are super useful and his responses cannot be closer to the hard truth.

The website – Interviewninjas gives the most pragmatic advice for answering certain questions such as why MBA and Why our school. His suggestions always made me realize that I am actually unique even in the overrepresented pool. This realization was very important as I could speak with conviction during the interview.

During mock interviews, he was ruthlessly honest to me and told me upfront about the skills I lack in. He perfectly balances appreciation and negative feedback. I am delighted to have taken his help in this journey. His support not only made me get an admit into a superb B school but also made me land a generous scholarship”

Please excuse if any grammar errors are present. I am traveling now and am unable to draft this on a laptop.

Thanks,

Naveen

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