Breaking Barriers: From IIT Guwahati to Stanford Graudate School of Business

Growing up in a family still recouping from the after-effects of the India-Pakistan partition, Mehul saw his grandmother as the pillar of strength. Restarting their lives from scratch, his grandmother worked hard, studied, and began her career as a school teacher. She rebuilt everything from scratch, managing both work and household responsibilities. 

 

Seeing that not too many women were stepping out of their homes to build a career or teach their girl children, she also started providing free tuition to all the local girls and became a role model for them. These experiences ingrained in Mehul—resilience, empathy, perseverance, and a deep responsibility to give back to the community.

During Mehul’s upbringing years, his father was the primary breadwinner. He ran a confectionary store and always ensured all necessities were met. However, Mehul was acutely aware of the limited financial resources and the harsh realities of how he needed to dedicate himself to building a successful career to uplift his family. 

 

Realizing that education is the path to standing up on his own feet, Mehul dedicated himself to preparing for the IIT-JEE, a national-level engineering entrance examination in India. By burning the midnight oil, Mehul made it to IIT Guwahati and became the first person in his family to attend University (that too, IIT!!). 

 

For his excellent performance in the IIT-JEE examination, he was awarded MITACS GRI Fellowship’18 (3 out of 1500+ students at IITG to receive the fellowship), honored with an Academic Excellence Letter from the Human Resource Development Minister, Government of India, and conferred with FIITJEE Merit Fellowship. 

 

The four years of undergraduate studies at IIT were marked by him studying alongside lobby mates and friends, enabling each other to score well and crack the interviews. During this period, he also took on leadership positions as the Elected General Secretary of the Alumni Board and Vice President of the Association of Civil Engineers. 

 

At IIT, through the Alumni Board, Mehul met many alumni, and that’s when he connected with a senior who completed her MBA at Harvard Business School. This introduced him to the idea of pursuing an MBA. 

 

Completing his undergrad he joined Schlumberger as a Trainee in 2019 and over the next three years, grew into the role of a Project Engineer. Starting from the Environmental Solutions section, he worked across the Mud Engineering section and Well Integrity section. 

 

This period of Mehul’s life taught him the power of resilience through his own lived experiences, he recalled during our recent coffee chat. 

 

“Working at the site in the middle of nowhere with no people around, I still remember when COVID hit. At that time, I was on the rig, and the single engineer was working both day and night shifts. Usually, we have two engineers working 12-hour shifts; however, due to some reasons, I ended up being the sole engineer working 24-hour shifts. And I did that for two and a half months straight. That was absolutely something that I could not believe was humanly possible. I slept whenever I got some time at odd hours. Because of logistical problems, we could not access proper food at the rig site. So, all we survived on was dal and rice. I ate only dal, rice, and curd for at least one month. Nothing else, no vegetables. So, this experience was a game-changer for me because I did not know I could do such a thing. I did not know I had the capabilities and power to survive in such a scenario. And once I did that, I knew that I could do anything that I put my mind to. So, this was a very, very big learning experience for me. The learning that if I do not give up, I can achieve anything that I’m working towards.” 

 

It was during this time that he also became acutely aware of the lack of power in the hands of those working at the site, the disregard for environmental laws, and the lack of technological implementation at National Oil Companies compared to privately owned companies. Realizing that deploying low-cost technological solutions can be a game changer for how things are managed at the site, reduce environmental damage, reduce the carbon footprint, and help achieve net zero emissions, he decided to work on building solutions. 

 

Discussing his ideas with various folks also made him realize that very few companies in India are building for the renewable energy sector, which solidified his decision to pursue an MBA to shift geographies, build an entrepreneurship toolkit, get exposure to the best firms in the US operating in the renewable energy sector and then return to India to start his entrepreneurial journey. 

 

After getting a GMAT score of 750, Mehul started working on his MBA applications with Nisha Kaul, a Partner at Admissions Gateway. Working alongside Nisha on 6 school applications, Mehul made it to all 6 business schools — Stanford Graduate School of Business, The Wharton School, Booth School of Business, Kellogg School of Management, Darden School of Business, and Ross School of Business with $376,000 in financial aid. 

 

Getting through 6 outstanding schools with good financial aid, Mehul describes the experience as incredibly exhilarating while also humbling. He feels really honored and thankful that these schools gave him the opportunity to be a part of their family and their legacy. Unfortunately, he could only attend one, so after connecting with many current students and alumni and creating pro-con lists, he decided to go ahead with Stanford for its emphasis on the human touch and the human values it carries forward. 

 

Speaking about his experience of working on his MBA applications with Nisha, he said, “Nisha is a wizard. You give her a random piece of essay that makes no sense, she will take all the jumbled pieces and make sense of it and help you get the clarity. I still remember when I started the applications and when I shared the first draft of my first essay. I still have that draft, and then I look at the final draft we submitted; she helped bring out so much clarity, depth, and impact that I could not have done myself. She’s made a huge impact on my MBA applications and, hands down, was a big piece of the puzzle that helped me make it to these fantastic business schools.” 



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