From a GMAT score of 670 to 770, and a 50 Lakh scholarship from a Top 10 US business school
Not every business school applicant could have worked with a Fortune 500 company or had a successful startup.Mukul was one of these applicants. However, he still managed to get into Duke Fuqua’s MBA Program with a 50 Lakh scholarship
If you are facing problems with creating a seamless narrative between your work experience and your goals story, this success story is for you.
Mukul came to us with a 670 GMAT score and a dream to get into a Top 10 US Business School with a scholarship. A top 10 US school generally has a competitive GMAT score around or above 720. While they will consider applicants with much lower scores, as there is no minimum, the odds of rejection are strikingly high.
We have previously created great results with applicants who didn’t have a 700+ GMAT score, like Sunil who got into Rotman with a 660 GMAT score, and Nitika who had a GMAT score of 690 and got into Kenan Flagler, Tepper and UCLA Anderson with significant scholarships, but we faced another setback with Mukul’s profile. His profile had another major setback, an average brand on the resume, and required a lot of heavylifting.
Before we began working on Mukul’s profile, we suggested he take the GMAT one more time. Mukul diligently prepared for his GMAT exam with us and scored an amazing 770 on it. With the Low GMAT dealt with, we began developing a goals story with him.
Mukul wanted an MBA to switch his career from the IT background to consulting. The problem was that he only understood the help a business school provide him in transitioning to consulting on a very surface-level. Like most applicants, he knew that an MBA would help him get into the consulting industry through post-MBA placements.
Thus, our prime goal was to make him see the organic value of an MBA and how a b-school will help him in his transition to consulting career.
This is very important for every This is very important for every applicant to understand- if you are not convinced about your reasons for an MBA, it is very hard for you to convince anyone else in this process.
You have got to know what your current handicaps are, and how an MBA is equipped to remove those. Only then can you actually understand and answer a business school admissions committee’s question of ‘why MBA?’ or ‘why our business school?’.
Answering this question was necessary for three-part of the MBA admissions process; conveying employability, essays, and the interview.
Employability: Mukul would have to convince schools that he knew exactly what he was looking for post MBA. This he could only do if he understood his chosen industry, Consulting, very well. Thus, we made him research the job functions in consulting in detail. Once he knew what his job prospects after an MBA were, he knew half of the answer to how an MBA be a catalyst to the upward movement of his career trajectory.
Essays: Knowing his potential employability helped Mukul create a narrative and bridge the gap between his current job and his job post an MBA. With the added help of pre-MBA networking, which we train all of our consulting candidates on, he was able to create a storyline that showed an MBA from Duke as an integral part of his future role in consulting.
Interview: Business school interviewers don’t have a set of questions to ask a candidate anymore. Business schools are taking a more conversational approach to the interviews, meaning the interview would revolve around some significant questions for a good 15-20 minutes. When Mukul’s interviewer asked him ‘Why Duke?’ the in-depth research, along with the points he had picked up during the pre-MBA networking sessions came in handy.
When Mukul announced his result of being accepted into Duke Fuqua with a significant scholarship of 50 Lakh Scholarship we were very proud to see all his hardwork pay off.
