Prakash Cracked a US Top 10 Program with 100% Scholarship: 1.67 Crores
Prakash came knocking our doors with5 years of work experience in the technology sector, and a dream of cracking a top US business school.
And he did! He got into both, Darden and Tepper’s MBA programs with a 100% Scholarship from Darden.
He was in the middle of a very demanding work commitment and thus decided to seek us out to help him in his applications to business schools.
Prakash’s Goals Story
The first roadblock we ran into was in Prakash’s goals story.
One important part of an applicant’s goals story is the handicaps they have faced which led them to an MBA program. Along with the handicaps, you need to convey something called the AHA moment. These are moments in your personal and professional life which made you see the value that an MBA would add to your life.
Prakash’s first draft of the goals story neither had handicaps nor consisted of AHA moments. And it’s okay. So, we guided him on how to identify his AHA moments and then write specific handicaps rather than a generic statement that said, “I understand technology but I need to understand the product itself.’
After, many iterations of the goals story,Prakash was able to produce an authentic account of all his handicaps, AHA moments, and how an MBA would fill in the gap for his professional growth.
We started with the pre-networking exercises next, as they require a longer time. You never know when your connection at the school, alumni, current student or faculty, would reply and thus need to set apart a good amount of time to cover for any such uncertainties.
So, we provided him with the access to the various networking and interview resources, like Interviewninas, to really help him understand the kind of questions that he needed to ask during his pre-MBA networking calls. We even set up mock networking calls to refine the strategy for the real ones.
Essay analysis for business schools
While writing the essays, Prakash was using incidents from the past. Although nothing was wrong with those, it is more impactful to use recent events that vouch for the various skills you claim to have in your essays.
Darden had an essay where Prakash had to mention how he had evolved from a recent argument. The tone of his answer was very one dimensional where he stated the situation itself. When the admissions committee asks you a question like this, they know the end result (you evolved from the argument). What they really want to understand is the process and the facts that brought you to that decision.
They want you to explain how you deal with diversity and differences of opinions. On receiving this feedback, Prakash came back to us with a much better answer to the question Darden had presented.
One of the biggest struggles with Prakash was his late submissions to us. His work commitments were obviously keeping him busy. What really helped was that all his submissions took into account all of our feedback, and he would give his 100% to each iteration of the essays.
We finally submitted all his b-school applications successfully.
He was so excited with his final admits to Darden and Tepper, and even more excited with a 100% Free of cost MBA from Darden Graduate school of business.
We are truly proud of the result Prakash was able to create even though he had a tight schedule. Goes to say that if you really want to crack your dream business school.
If Prakash can manage to create an exceptional MBA application even after having 12-14 hours long work hours, what’s your excuse for not pursuing your MBA dream?