Soccer Saved Mattia Lanzi’s Life.
Mattia Lanzi spoke no English when he was offered a scholarship at Merrimack College in Massachusetts. A sports journalist spotted the young Italian playing soccer in Central Park and put him in touch with the college’s soccer coach.
Matt had just finished high school in Italy and convinced his parents to fund a month’s vacation to New York, a city he had always dreamt of visiting. He returned home and excitedly told his parents about the offer but they were unconvinced.
Mattia’s mother had never gone to college and his father had never attended high school. They ran their own home-furnishing business and were going to pay for him to attend an expensive culinary college, where he had already secured a seat. In addition, to even be eligible for an American college, he had to take the SAT and TOEFL exams first.
Mattia signed up for both tests and immediately started taking English classes, all on the quiet.
“The way it goes in my family is first I convince my mom and then she convinces my dad.” he laughs.
Mattia’s parents eventually came around and after four tries, he passed the TOEFL exam. Even with the scholarship though, studying in the US was still beyond reach for his working-class family so Mattia reached out to the soccer coach who increased his scholarship offer. Friends and family pitched in as well and Mattia finally enrolled at Merrimack College for a double Bachelor’s Degrees in Business Administration & Economics.
Matt confesses he really struggled in the first few months at college. The soccer scholarship meant he had to do three training sessions every day and the language barrier meant he sat through entire classes without understanding a single concept and was studying his economics text-books using Google Translate on his phone. Matt persevered though and eventually graduated magna cum laude.
Matt credits his first job as an Analyst at Citigroup to a combination of hard work and hardcore networking. He estimates he sent a thousand emails, made a hundred cold-calls and often made the six hour bus journey to New York just for a twenty-minute coffee with someone who could help him get hired.
Just over a year later though, right before COVID struck, Mattia returned to Italy to join his struggling family business; helping it digitise and bringing the nearly sixty-four year old operation into the twenty-first century. At the end of 2020, with his family business stable again, Mattia joined McKinsey in Milan as a core member of their Strategy & Corporate Finance and Private Equity practices.
Mattia had always dreamt of getting an MBA and a year later, he felt he had enough experience to apply. He spoke with many consultants but he had already heard good things about Admissions Gateway through friends at Citigroup and decided to work with them after his first call with Rajdeep Chimni.
Mattia says Admissions Gateway helped with choosing schools, honing resumés, essays and finding & perfecting stories & anecdotes that helped him stand-out amongst applicants, assisting him even with the smallest details.
“Rajdeep gave me 360º help.”
They applied to Booth, Kellogg, Harvard and Wharton in Round 1 and received admit offers from Booth and Kellogg, with scholarship offers of ~$40K from each. Mattia says that with Booth’s finance focus, it was the obvious choice for him.
Mattia opines that everyone has something to offer at business school, even with non-standard profiles like his.
“That’s the beauty of business school, even if you didn’t work at Goldman Sachs.”
Also, he says that like with many big decisions in life, some people keep waiting for the perfect time to apply to business school.
“Give it a shot. Worst-case scenario, you apply again next year.”
Mattia is headed to Chicago later this year and remains very humble about how far he has come already.
“I’ve been a very fortunate person. That’s the theme of my life.”
That’s downplaying the sheer amount of hard work he has put in and Mattia’s story is a perfect illustration of the old adage “Success comes with opportunity meets preparation.”