Suchi receives a top US school admit with a 40 Lakh scholarship and a 9-month work gap

With 8 years in a tech-background, having her own tech start-up, and a 740 GMAT score, we knew we couldn’t let a 9-month work gap effect which business school Suchi gets accepted to.

After almost 10 months of working together, and creating a rock-solid profile, Suchi created an amazing result with PythaGURUS.

Suchi cracked UCLA, a US Top 10 business school, with a scholarship of 40 Lakh!

Suchi’s goals story

The goals story is the foundation for every MBA application. Most of the answers to a business school’s application essays are directly or indirectly derived from an applicant’s short-term and long-term goals. Fortunately for Suchi, she had a clear understanding of what her post-MBA goals were.

Suchi wanted to work in product management. Since she was from a tech background, her plan B was program management/tech strategy. As per our advice, Suchi had also started reading up on the recruiters that came to her target business schools.

In her goals story, Suchihad showcased two things: Passion for the future + Transferrable skillset

Now, she needed to assess the third thing: The opportunity out there.

She undertook exhaustive research about the types of projects she wished to be a part of post-MBA. She found out what companies were more open to recruiting her desired role and which weren’t. Suchi’s networking was steered towards such questions at this point.

A small issue in Suchi’s goals story was her narration. When talking about the decisions you’ve made in your personal or professional life, it is important that an applicant portrays them as a conscious choice. Suchi’s narrative made it seem like she had just been going with the flow. After changing the tone of her goals story to a more decisive one, we moved on to the school essays.

Suchi’s essay analysis

The issue with Suchi’s “Why now?” essay was that it sounded very much like her goals story. “Why Now?” is about giving the admissions committee a snapshot of your reasons for switching at the current stage of your career. She took to the feedback well and was able to make the distinction in the next draft.

Suchi was also bringing out interesting and inspiring incidents from her past to discuss in her essays but the tone of the essays didn’t do justice to them. the expression needed to be clearer in regards to why those moments of her life, whether personal or professional, important.

For example, if the essay asked her for an incident that transformed her, she picked a really moving incident but couldn’t show the intensity of transformation she went through due to it. The narration was far to open to interpret which is a risk in MBA admissions.

Making sure that the reader interprets your story in the way you wish them to is very important during MBA admissions. The uncertainty of the story making the desired impact on admissions committee members if the essay is open to interpretation could play negatively for the applicant as well.

Since she had a strong learning curve, Suchi was able to work on these issues without much prodding.

It came as no surprise to us when Suchi received an acceptance letter from UCLA with a 40 Lakh scholarship!