Hatem Ahmed’s fearless journey.
From participating in the Arab Spring to accelerating his MBA plans due to a COVID induced lay-off, Hatem Ahmed has never been afraid of taking risks and making big bets.
Hatem was studying IT at the German University of Cairo when the Egyptian Revolution started taking shape, in 2011. Inspired by the movement and wanting to be involved, Hatem volunteered to be part of the presidential campaign of opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, despite the myriad risks involved and the strong apprehensions of his family.
As the Middle East took its first steps towards democracy, Hatem became the campaign vice-president of his district. The experience made him realise that he was “more interested in finding work that would involve collaboration with others rather than sitting at a laptop, coding and designing.”
Upon graduation, Hatem joined an IT role that involved a mix of technology and business. Once again, he found himself enjoying the business side more than the technology aspects and he decided to look for a job where he could grow those skills.
Hatem found this role at ride-sharing giant, Uber. Starting as a business analyst on the strategy planning team in Cairo, he was promoted to the business planning team at Uber headquarters in the Netherlands. Within just six months of the move though, COVID hit and worldwide lockdowns saw Uber’s business drop to just 20% of what it used to be.
Hatem was amongst the 40% of his team that found themselves laid off.
Though an MBA was at the top of his goals list, Hatem’s plan was to gain two years of international experience before applying. However, with those plans thrown into disarray by COVID, he decided to apply immediately.
Though he was told that most people prepare for the GMAT up to six months, Hatem decided to treat studying as his new full-time job and get it done within a single month. A series of test postponements, cancellations and scheduling errors meant that he had to take a last-minute test with just a day’s notice.
His scores thus, were lower than he expected and below what was accepted at the business school he was targeting; INSEAD. He considered redoing the exam but there was not enough time.
Hatem decided on Admissions Gateway for help with his application, after many former colleagues recommended it highly. He was cautioned by Rajdeep Chimni that the combination of his recent layoff and his weak GMAT scores would make INSEAD a long shot. This was compounded by Hatem’s decision to only apply to INSEAD as he found the school’s diverse culture and intensive 10-month curriculum very appealing.
Since Hatem seemed completely convinced that INSEAD was the only school he would consider or apply to, Rajdeep worked really hard with him, multiple times each week, on how to showcase his best stories and prepare him for the interviews and more.
2020 was an unprecedented year for the world and INSEAD was no exception, admitting some applicants with GMAT scores as low as 600 and under. Even so, getting into one of Europe’s top business schools with his GMAT score required Hatem to perfectly craft his application to highlight his experiences, his perseverance and his attitude. Though he and Rajdeep had put in a huge amount of effort into his application, Hatem was still shocked to get accepted.
“When they sent me my acceptance email, I read it five or six times. I even asked my wife to read it to double-check that they weren’t joking or had emailed the wrong person,” he says.
Rajdeep cautions that while Hatem’s decision to apply to only one business school was not something that he would ever recommend or encourage, the strength of his essays and experience are probably what sealed the deal for INSEAD.
Asked for advice for other applicants, Hatem says focusing on the silver lining during the most difficult periods of his life has always helped him make the best of every situation.