Ruhi cracked UC Davis, US Top business school, with 3 years or work gap and a low GMAT score

People believe there are some special profiles out there that have work gaps and low GMAT scores and still get into top business schools. It’s true.

Ruhi had almost a 3-year work gap and a low GMAT score of 680, but her determination to get an MBA made her profile special.

She ended up cracking a top US business school, UC Davis, and will soon graduate.

This is her story.

Ruhi’s goals story

Ruhi’s goals story needed networking. She needed to pick up the phone, or log onto social media, and start talking to people from her target business schools. The two things that she needed to network for were:

1. Research on her chosen short-term goal and the recruitment from her target business schools.

Ruhi had to find out the companies that her target business schools got visited by the most during recruitments. She also needed to have an exhaustive list of the organizations that hired for her desired function at her target schools. She found people that had been working in her desired function at these organizations and dedicated her networking calls to find out about their career trajectory at the organization. Her job at the moment was to create a blueprint of what her post-MBA job search and career would look like.

2. Research on what her target business schools could exclusively offer to her as a student.

The second part of networking that Ruhi indulged in was with current students and the alumni of her target schools. she needed the inside scoop. She could have easily found five or more reasons to attend her target schools but she needed to find very exclusive and unique reasons that can only be divulged by people who have experienced the business school firsthand.

With both of these research topics taken care of by networking, Ruhi’s goals story was forming amazingly. Now was the time to start deriving the essay answers through these goals.

Ruhi’s essay analysis

Ruhi’s essays were a treat to read. Her story was truly inspiring and we knew we needed to do our best to reproduce that on paper as well. The one problem we faced here was that she could contradict herself sometimes in her essays. For example, if one essay portrayed her as a very compassionate human being, the other might say she needed to work harder to be compassionate. A few head-scratching reads later, we figured out it was the word choices she was making that were changing the essence of the story.

This brings us to a very important tip. If a sentence in your essays is coming out rather negative, try to look for different synonyms for your adjectives. Chances are, those are the words giving your essay a negative tone.

Then we needed to address Ruhi’s work gap. Due to some personal crisis, Ruhi’s life plan had come to a halt and she went on a sabbatical from working for close to 3 years. We had to take the chance and explained the same in the additional essays for her target schools. This was a very crucial handicap to address and we suggest you to always address it head-on.

Right before her interview with UC Davis, Ruhi scheduled two mock interviews. she insisted that the first one be easy and the second one be tough as she wanted to challenge herself. Unsurprisingly, she nailed both her mocks.

A few days later when she informed us of her acceptance to UC Davis.

This is the story of how Ruhi overcame every obstacle in her path and even had to revisit the idea of getting an MBA before achieving her dream business school admit.

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