How Rajat went from having no goals story to an admit to a top business school?

After working in the IT industry for over 6 years, Rajat decided he wanted to do an MBA in strategy Consulting.

Even after having a clear goal, Rajat struggled with his goals story. This is the situation of the complete MBA applicant pool. The process is difficult, but if dealt with methodically, one can definitely come out the other side with an admit, like Rajat.

Rajat scored an admit to the Schulich Business School.

Here is his MBA application journey.

Rajat’s goals story

Initially, Rajat’s answers to the short-term and long-term goals questions were very shallow. His post-MBA function of choice was Strategy Consulting, and his reasons for choosing the same were very generic. He hadn’t mentioned any of the major moments in his professional or personal experience that had influenced his choice to choose Strategy Consulting.

There was also a significant lack of connection between his past and his future ambition of being a strategy consultant. He wasn’t clear about the handicaps he was facing in his current role. He had talked about how his past professional experience gave him transferrable skills for his future goals.

Amongst transferrable skills and handicaps, the latter is more important for a goal story. Handicaps help you convince the admissions committee that you need an MBA, whereas transferrable skills only ensure that you’ll be able to use your MBA education optimally.

At this point, Rajat needed networking to really clean up his goals story. The conversations with current students and alumni from his prospective schools really helped him make the missing connection between his past experience and his short-term and long-term goals.

Rajat’s essay analysis

Rajat was more prepared for the essays as he had been networking constantly in the background of the application process. His inputs for the essays addressed all the parts of the question that the business school had asked. The issue was that he was only addressing the job description and the roles and responsibilities.

The essay lacked character. It lacked the essence of who Rajat was as a real person and instead portrayed him as just another applicant. This is necessary as the essay is the only time you can show your personality to the admissions committee before they make the interview decision.

Rajat also needed to talk more about his achievements. When talking about their achievements/contribution to their firm or industry, applicants often tend to come off a little arrogant in the first draft. To avoid this, they can at times completely move over this part.

After being guided on how to create the perfect balance between these two states of being, Rajat was able to discuss his achievements as a successful undertaking rather than a pompous victory.

Rajat also struck gold with recommenders as his supervisors were all open to recommending him and providing drafts for the same.

After a long journey of assembling his MBA application profile and preparing him for the interviews, we knew he would share the good news of an admit with us soon, and that’s exactly what he did.

Rajat, soon, received the news that he was admitted to the Schulich Business School
 
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