How This Reapplicant Made It To Wharton, Kellogg And Columbia

Little did she know at the time that this memory is going to become the driving force for her career.

Upon graduating from high school, Simone decided to aim for the best and that’s what got her into NYU Stern School of Business. Her experience at Stern was filled with stints that enriched her understanding of the world of business as well as provided her a platform to advocate for issues that were close to the heart such as ‘Immigrant job security in the US’ and ‘Government-led stimulus for women financially burdened by dowry arrangements in India.’

She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Stern and then went on to work for WeWork just a few months before Adam Neuman’s resignation. During her tenure at WeWork, she focused on the WeWork premium launch, managed revenue mandates for the IPO, and built their financial models. This rich experience of working for a startup and understanding the various challenges one faces in building systems and structures paved the path for her to go on and then work for Citadel where her main focus was insulating the firm from systemic risks and strengthening the financial markets.

This entire journey made her feel, “To get to the next step in my career, I needed an MBA.”

During our conversation with Simone, she shared “I wanted to expand on my network. I had already built a pretty good foundation being at NYU Stern, an undergraduate business school. The network I built there helped me in exploring opportunities both at WeWork and Citadel. I got my job at Citadel because I reached out to someone in my NYU Stern network and had them help me through the interview process. This experience taught me the power of having a network. So I realized that I really wanted to grow further in my career, and an MBA would help me with that.”

That’s when she decided to apply for a JD MBA program in 2021. She did most of the grunt work herself and hired an MBA Admissions Consultant from a Los Angeles based Premium Consulting firm to work with her on an hourly basis. The Consultant helped her out mostly with story formulation and essay editing and the rest of the application work she managed by herself. The outcome wasn’t positive. She received a waitlist offer from Wharton which also turned into a rejection as with all the schools she applied to.

“So that whole process obviously reduced my confidence. And I wasn’t as sure if I would get into schools if I applied again. I didn’t know if I still wanted to go. But then after I started working at Citadel, and I spoke to a few more people there, I decided that getting just an MBA was probably the best route for me. I always wanted to continue my further studies. That’s why I was thinking about getting a JD MBA earlier. But I came to the conclusion that even though I wanted to get a JD because I thought academically I was interested in it, I realized after talking to a lot of people that I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I liked the business side of things more. And so that’s what shifted my perspective and wanting to get an MBA.”

To summarize, a few key takeaways from this first round of applications for her were:

• Her profile had the potential (because she got waitlisted at Wharton) but she needed to work harder on the applications.
• She needed to improve her GRE score.
• Just getting an MBA was the best route and not JD MBA since it didn’t align with her background and goals.
• She needed expert hands on deck to help her land an admit from an M7 Business School.

“I’d say when I made the decision to apply to business schools again, obviously, because I didn’t have such good results the first time, I wanted to make sure that I had the best consultant possible. And Admissions Gateway was very highly recommended from a friend of mine who had heard about it from a friend of hers.

And I actually spoke to one of the previous clients, Akshita, who got into Stanford before I made the decision to go with Admissions Gateway, and she had nothing but good things to say about Admissions Gateway. She had kind of a similar story where she mentioned that she had applied to a few schools the year before and she didn’t get in.

But with Admissions Gateway, she was able to kind of change her story. And she got into Stanford, which she didn’t think she would get into either. And she was very happy about that.”

Simar from our team recently had a Coffee Chat with Simone to explore her MBA application journey with Admissions Gateway. In this interview, Simone shared some of the most valuable lessons from her journey and her reflection on the outcomes. Let’s explore!

Question 1. Did you find the workshops helpful?

“Yeah, Of Course. I would say initially, I was hesitant about the workshop format because you’re going with a consultant and putting a lot of time and effort into working with a singular consultant. So initially, I didn’t know how helpful having those workshops would be.

But when I started listening to them, I actually really liked the format. Because I thought it gives you an opportunity to go back to the basic foundations of what Rajdeep was saying about each essay. And Admissions Gateway clearly knows what they’re doing to the point of a formula where everyone’s using that standardized structure and format.

And I think a lot of people might think that, oh, you know, you don’t have differentiation or uniqueness if everyone has the same structured approach to writing the essay. But I don’t think that’s true! Clearly, I mean, people are using just a similar structure, but everyone has their own unique story.

And that’s what works. I also think I liked the ability to be able to go back to those workshops whenever I felt stuck, or I felt like I needed some sort of guidance or inspiration. It was helpful to go back to them and rewatch them versus having to call your Consultant and have them guide you again and again. I would say a lot of what Rajdeep does, especially I think in the HBS workshops, at least what stuck with me was – him kind of going over the common mistakes that applicants make and the common stories that people tell and you think that you’re different when you’re thinking about those types of stories. But actually, when someone’s been doing this for as long as he has, and when you know the type of essays and stories that people keep going to and how common they are, you realize that, it’s important to dig deeper and find what’s unique about you.”

Question 2: What was your biggest learning take away from the workshops?

“I think the biggest mistake for me was not connecting my future goals with my current job enough. I think that in my head, and a lot of people do this, I was looking for an MBA to pivot into something different. And you feel like getting an MBA will help you do that.

But that’s not a good enough reason for them to see how you will succeed in that new field. And so I think the ability to be able to prove based on your past experiences or background, that you actually can succeed at this new thing, I didn’t do that before.”

Question 3: How do you think your narrative transformed as a direct result of collaborating with Nisha?

“I started working on goals with Nisha, probably in July. I completed the goals workshop and then she conducted a few brainstorming chats with me walking me through structures and examples. Then, she asked me to send what I think my goals should be based on this newfound knowledge.

And I remember sending her a 300 word goals narrative about my background and goals to which she said that this doesn’t actually make any sense with your background. Like no one would believe that you would be able to succeed at this.

And I think at first, it can be disheartening when you feel like what you thought that you wanted to do doesn’t actually make sense with your background. But at the same time, I think it was really helpful to have her keep pushing me to ask questions, and even allowing me to dig deeper into more of my personal background and ask myself what would help me be successful with some of these long-term goals. And I wasn’t thinking like that.

I think I went in thinking I already had goals from my previous application and I’ll try to adjust them a little bit more to my background. But actually, we went through about five or six iterations of a goals statement, and we spent the whole month of July on just goals.

And I know Nisha could sense that I was getting frustrated that I didn’t hadn’t figured my goals out because I was feeling stressed about only having August to work on my round one applications. But I think in the long run, it was actually very beneficial because she was like, until and unless you feel confident about your goals, and we both know that this is the best you can do, we shouldn’t start working on the essays. And I think having that perspective was really helpful because you as an applicant feel like you need to rush into the essay writing process, especially when you feel like you don’t have enough time.

But I think she really helped me really think about what my goals should be. She brought in a lot and helped me bring out a lot about my family background, including how my father’s first few businesses failed, and how that links to why I want to do what I want to do in the future. And I think that that process was really helpful.”

Question 4: According to you, what was the backbone of your MBA Application Narrative?

“A lot of my father’s small businesses failed when I was younger. A lot of the reasons for why I’ve chosen to succeed in strategic finance and help improve the financial management of the companies that I’ve worked with is because of those experiences that I faced as a child. And I believe having the ability to communicate that narrative for business school was actually the thing that differentiated my application the most.”

Question 5: Do you think your resume evolved during the process?

“Oh, yeah. 100%. I would say I spent the most time consecutively on the resume. I spoke to Mudit at 10pm, like every single day for two weeks, even if it was for 10 minutes.

And yeah, it definitely changed my perspective on how resumes should be written. And I think it changed my perspective on how you can adapt some of the projects you’ve worked on and some of the impact that you’ve had to more of that last mile impact that you can portray that schools want to see.

I also think it teaches you to think like someone that’s two or three levels above you or that’s heading a team. Even if you’re not that old, because a lot of what Mudit did with me, and I’m sure what all the students do is, think about what the impact of every little thing you’re doing is, but on the larger objectives of the firm. And I think that usually when you’re working, you’re not thinking about that, you’re just thinking about the little impact you’re having on your team. But you don’t have that big picture of mindset, which is really hard to get into if you don’t have someone pushing you and telling you okay, but what else did your project have an impact on? Or why do you think you’re working on this? So I think it was a lot of reframing what you did into the big picture planning of the company.

I would say my resume completely changed after I got done with the process. I even showed it to some of my friends. And they were so impressed by it. Everyone wanted me to review and edit their resume after that.”

Question 4: How did you choose your target schools?

“I was very certain about which colleges I wanted to go to – Harvard, Columbia and Wharton. I had toured their schools already. But Admissions Gateway did a good job of explaining why it would be helpful for me to apply to programs that might not be my top top choice, but still might be a good choice to apply to. So that’s what led me to apply to Kellogg. And I actually got a scholarship at Kellogg, which I wouldn’t have ever known about or looked into if I didn’t apply.”

Question 7: How was the LOR process for you?

“Admissions Gateway really taught me how I can guide my recommenders to frame the LORs in a way that makes me seem like a really strong candidate. They helped me formulate the bullet points of how I want to structure each LOR in so much detail, and they essentially helped me guide my recommenders to the point where I knew what they were going to write. The team also advised me to strengthen my LORs by showcasing different strengths for both of my recommenders, which I think was very helpful.”

Question 8: Can you walk me through the interview process for yourself?

“Yeah. I think the interview process with Admissions Gateway was very, very helpful. I think that not only the workshops, but they had sample interview scripts that they sent out based on past successful candidates.

For me, personally, that was quite helpful, because it gives you an insight to how other candidates were thinking about the interview process and how much detail goes into preparing the answers. And I think most people at first may not put in that much detail and see your answer with that much thought. Because oftentimes, when you’re in an interview, you just kind of keep talking and you don’t you don’t think about the structure of your answer that much. So I would say that having those scripts really helped me get perspective.

Secondly, no matter how long my interview scripts were, whether they were 20 pages or 30 pages, Nisha went through them and commented if I needed to improve any of the bullet points that I put down. So that was really helpful in making sure that someone else was going through the answers that I had prepared and seeing whether they were good enough or not.

Third, I also think that having the network of applicants from previous years to help with mock interviews was also quite valuable. For HBS, the buddy mock system was quite advantageous because I think I did four to five mock interviews.

For Wharton, I did one Team Based Discussion with Nisha and another with a past successful applicant. And an interesting anecdote I’d like to share is someone else from Admissions Gateway who I actually did my mock interview with, he was in my real interview session as well. So it was nice to have someone that you’ve already practiced with in your real interview because then we could help each other strengthen both of our answers in the interview process. For example, during our interview, there were a few other people who weren’t talking as much. And I think because both of us had done so much prep, we were pretty strong in terms of how we were leading the Wharton group discussion.

And then both of us realized that, okay, we have to bring other people into the conversation because both of us can’t just keep talking during this interview. So we both did a good job of bringing other people in and I think it was really helpful to have that.

And I think that you don’t really have that at other Admissions Consulting firms where someone can literally be in your real interview. And I think it just goes to show the network of Admissions Gateway applicants and students.”

Question 9: Which school are you planning to attend?

“Since I’m still on the Waitlist for HBS and MIT, I haven’t made that decision yet. My top choices were always Harvard, Wharton and Columbia and I’ve received two out of three admits so far from these places.

When I visited their campuses, I really liked Harvard and Wharton much more than Columbia. I’ve lived in New York for 9 years and I feel like switching cities as well. I also really liked the kind of people I met during the welcome weekend and I could gel with them more. That made the decision really easy for me and it was really hard to give up the scholarship for Kellogg but I think I liked Harvard and Wharton more.”

Question 10: Any words of wisdom for other applicants?

“I know, it does feel like a never ending process and it feels like you’re constantly questioning yourself throughout the process and you question whether you’re good enough for the schools you want to go to. You’re worried if you’re ever going to get there. But it’s important to trust the process. It’s more of a marathon than a race and I spent a year to get there and eventually all of us get to that place.”

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