Sanjana Sinha Has Taken The Less Obvious Path.
Despite coming from a non-traditional background, with no investment banking or private equity experience, Sanjana Sinha was offered admits at Kellogg, Yale and Ross along with scholarships worth over a quarter million Dollars.
Born in Calcutta but brought up in Delhi, Sanjana went to school at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya. She then chose to get a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics at Miranda House at Delhi University because she felt it would give her many avenues to choose from for a career.
Before she graduated, Sanjana had already won admit offers from Boston, NY and Rutgers Universities’ Master programmes in Economics but she forewent these offers because she decided to gain some work experience instead.
Sanjana chose Teach For India’s two-year fellowship programme rather than the more obvious choice of joining a consulting firm, taking a 70% pay cut because she felt it was more focused on building personal leadership, which she felt she needed at the start of her career.
Sanjana says her parents were supportive of her decision to forgo a Masters but confesses she wasn’t very confident about the choice herself because the two-year commitment at Teach for India was a daunting prospect.
“It was a choice that hung over me.”
Sanjana was trained at a school in a muslim community in Pune and then placed in a government school for boys, in Delhi, experiences she describes as game-changers since she was immersed in extremely poor, marginalised, minority communities that she had never been exposed to before.
After her fellowship, Sanjana joined Sattva Consulting in their non-profit advisory, where she went from an associate to spearheading the Educate Girls programme. Sanjana says her growth and skill-development was tremendous, going from a note-taking support role to learning how to design strategies and implement programmes. After leading projects for year and a half, Sanjana felt her learning had plateaued. She wanted to gain wider exposure and learn leadership from a broader range of people and decided that an MBA was the best step forward for her.
Sanjana heard of Admissions Gateway in a glowing review from a former colleague, now at Wharton. She says that though she spoke with seven consultants, the clarity of Rajdeep Chimni’s feedback and how realistic he was about her prospects on their first call, convinced her to work with Admissions Gateway.
Sanjana says Admissions Gateway pushed her to take ownership of the application process and set high expectations at the start. They were also prompt and worked around her time schedule. She says her counsellor pushed her over more than seven iterations to refine her goals and though she questioned why at the time, in hindsight she says it was the right choice. Sanjana says her counsellor also pushed her to make her applications unique and highlight what it was that she brought to the table.
“Everyone tends to have the same answer.”
She also attended Rajdeep’s college-specific webinars multiple times for each college, which helped her build a level of detail into her essays that she didn’t see in other applications.
With her application process now complete, Sanjana says she realises now that it is as hard as people make it out to be, something she hadn’t foreseen.
“When people told me the process is really hard, I thought it was because their time management wasn’t great.”
Sanjana says applications have taken her an entire year and required incredible multi-tasking and time-management.
“It is a difficult process and one needs to be mentally prepared to dedicate time to this if you want results.”
She confesses she wasn’t clear about her goals and working with a counsellor on the MBA application process has helped her figure them out.
“You shouldn’t not choose an MBA because you don’t know what you want to be after it.”
Lastly, Sanjana underscores the importance of trusting one’s consultant completely.
“Take your time when you select a consultant and then trust them going forward.”
Sanjana’s complete faith in her consultant paid off and later this year, she’s headed to Kellogg on a full scholarship.