Jahnavi Shah Has Pragmatic Advice for B-School Applicants
Jahnavi Shah says she comes from a humble background and growing up, didn’t know anyone who went to Indian B-schools like ISB or IIM. Today, Jahnavi is a first year at Haas, UC Berkeley. She was also offered a seat at Duke, plus scholarships totalling $120K.
Jahnavi has a B.Tech in Computer Science & Engineering from Vellore Institute of Technology. She says she always knew she was going to study engineering because she is a logical, rational person and both her father and her sister are engineers. Her elder sister has a B-Tech in Computer Science and knew the market demand for it so she influenced Jahnavi’s choice.
Jahnavi says she always aspired to an MBA because she’s always been fascinated with how businesses run and what makes them succeed. She started preparing for the CAT exam for an Indian MBA in her final year of college. She says she never considered giving the GMAT until she learnt that a friend from school was getting a Masters in Management from ESSEC in Paris.
Inspired, Jahnavi decided to prepare for the GMAT as well, while her undergrad classmates prepared for college placements. When she scored 750 in the GMAT, Jahnavi abandoned plans to sit for the CAT as she was confident of being offered a seat at Indian School of Business.
“I did not want to go through the pain if I already had an option”, she laughs.
Deferring her admit, Jahnavi joined ZS Associates as an Analytics Associate. Working with American teams based in Chicago, Jahnavi learnt about the opportunities and education available there and says she realised that the return on effort she would put in, whether studying or working, would be much higher in the US.
Jahnavi started researching a US MBA and was offered a job at Amazon, which she accepted when her hiring manager was supportive of her plans to apply for an MBA.
Though she spoke with a number of Indian and foreign consultants, Jahnavi decided to work with Admissions Gateway after a recommendation from a former colleague who was at Booth.
Jahnavi says she had complete trust in Admissions Gateway, adding
“For my admissions, I gave the reigns to Admissions Gateway”
She says her counsellors changed her mentality and way of thinking and helped her to improve her profile. Together with her counsellor, Jahanvi brainstormed the idea of digitising the entire patient management system for the stray animal hospital she was volunteering with. Not only did creating the impact give Jahnavi a lot of satisfaction, it was a conversation starter in her interviews.
Early in May, her counsellor encouraged her to speak with students from the schools she was applying to before they got busy, which Jahnavi says helped make her applications more unique.
Jahnavi encourages MBA aspirants not to aim low when choosing schools to and apply to schools they like and would be truly happy to get into.
“Don’t self-reject yourself”
She also says that going through the applications process and working with a counsellor will help them build a cohesive narrative about themselves and teach them how to tell their story, something that may seem daunting at the start of the process.
Finally, Jahnavi says that being clear and honest about your goals is vital to choosing the right school for you and getting into business school but also enables you to hit the ground running once you get into school.
Jahnavi is loving Haas, its diversity and the incredible talent she is exposed to.
“It is everything I dreamt of and more.”