Rishabh Bhatia Has Got Into His Dream School.

Rishabh Bhatia says that Rajdeep Chimni was the only consultant that was confident he would get into his dream school and encouraged him to apply. Later this year, Rishabh is headed to Wharton with a $60K scholarship.

Though his father is a civil engineer, Rishabh says he was always clear he wanted to study business and not wind up an engineer or doctor, even when he was in school. He describes his decision to sit for the entrance exam to Delhi University’s Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, as a very deliberate choice.

Rishabh won a position as an analyst with Bain Capability Network (BCN), in a campus placement and has worked at BCN for about 4 years, including a six month externship with an American non-profit, building over four thousand toilets in Kenya.

This isn’t his first foray into community service though. Rishabh volunteered for Teach For India, while in college and in his final year, started preparing for the UPSC exam for the Indian Civil Services. Though he cleared the exam and was put on the reserve list, he was not allocated a position. Rishabh says that though he had a passion for community service that he imbibed from his mother, who works for USAID, he was very clear that he would not get caught in the trap of sitting for the exam again and again. Though it was a hard decision, he decided to pivot and focused on achieving the same goals through his consulting work at Bain.

Rishabh says an MBA was always on his radar and would have happened even if he had entered the Civil Services. He wanted the exposure and network he would get with a foreign MBA. He applied in 2021, calculating that he would have about four years of work experience when he got into a business school.

He took the GMAT and scored 720 but cancelled the score because he knew he could do better and immediately after the sixteen-day cool-off period, Rishabh retook the test and scored 760.

Rishabh returned to India from his externship in Kenya and knew he was already late so he reached out to admissions consultants he knew had worked with applicants from BCN and who would understand his profile. He says decided to work with Admissions Gateway after speaking with Rajdeep Chimni; who was confident about his chances of getting into his dream school and encouraged him to apply to Wharton. 

Rishabh says his counsellors at Admissions Gateway set the benchmark for his applications and the amount of networking he would have to do. He says he ended every call with Rajdeep with clear action steps, points to think about and impact that he would have to show in his essays. He says Admissions Gateway helped him define the pillars of his work experience.

“I worked on those projects but I’d never have been able to weave them into themes myself.”

Rishabh says his counsellor set a high bar for all applications and did not let him submit some applications till the deadline because they wanted to strengthen his essays further.

Their attention to detail paid off for Rishabh because he secured admits from Kellogg, Ross, Columbia and Wharton, with $60K each in scholarships from Columbia and Wharton.

Rishabh’s advice to applicants is to be proactive about networking and not hesitate to reach out to connect with students and alumni to learn about schools, their classes and clubs.

“This will give you a richer flavour of a school than you could get by just reading their website.”

Rishabh says that unlike the UPSC exam, if he hadn’t won any MBA admits this year, he was sure he would have applied again. He describes the UPSC exam as a black-box with a luck playing a very important factor and he wasn’t willing to gamble another year on it. With MBA applications, he could have added to his work experience and improved his GMAT score before applying again. Most importantly, the applications process itself has helped him grow as a person.

“MBA applications might be the first time you have to really think about your vision for your life and it can be a journey of awakening.”

For Rishabh, the journey will continue at Wharton later this year.