Third Time’s The Charm For Sravan Patchala
Sravan Patchala had applied unsuccessfully to US B-schools, including Stanford, twice in the past four years. Last year, working with Admissions Gateway, he applied for the third time and was offered admits at Stanford and Yale.
Growing up, Sravan was an excellent student. The son of a civil engineer, he wanted to be a scientist and had an interest in maths so he says engineering was the natural choice. Sravan won an admit at IIT-Bombay, where he got a B.Tech. & M.Tech in Electrical Engineering.
Sravan had interned at Qualcomm while at IIT and was offered a position once he graduated. At Qualcomm he worked on their SnapDragon mobile processors and was also part of the company’s efforts to turn their research into commercialised connected vehicles technology that enabled autonomous driving.
In his final year at IIT, Sravan took entrance exams for business schools and was offered admits from IIM-Ahmedabad, IIM-Calcutta and ISB. He says he did this because he always had the perception that just engineering was not enough.
“The thinking back then was that I wanted to be a big tech CEO. I realised that engineering would only get me 90% of the way there.”
He also took the GRE and applied to many US B-schools including, Stanford but he wasn’t offered any admits.
Sravan decided to defer the admits he was offered at Indian business schools because he felt the incoming cohort would be too similar to what he had already seen at IIT. He says he was looking for more diverse, international exposure and wanted to meet people from different countries and different streams from engineering.
In 2021, with two years of work experience under his belt and his IIM and ISB deferrals running out, Sravan applied to a number of M7 business schools including Stanford once again. For the second time however, he received no admit offers.
A year later, he decided to apply yet again but this time, a senior at Qualcomm recommended Sravan work with Admissions Gateway after they helped his senior gain admission to Booth.
Sravan worked with Admissions Gateway and applied to a number of business schools and was offered admits at Yale and Stanford. He says his counsellor helped him see and communicate the human angle of his work for the first time because as an engineer, he was approaching every story he had from a technology and engineering angle.
After finally finding success on his third attempt, Sravan laughs.
“I think the application process is brutal.”
Sravan’s advice to MBA applicants is to get the GMAT done early. He got a 710 and later improved his score to 770. He says that for anyone from a tech/engineering background, it is very difficult to change your mindset to look at your work experience in terms of the people and the emotional point of view.
“You will end up writing very good essays once you are able to make that transition.”
He says going through the MBA applications process helped him overcome this mental block and while it happened unconsciously for him, he recommends applicants make a conscious effort to change this mindset from the very start of their applications.
“Start thinking about the human side of what you are doing. That is not something us engineers are accustomed or trained to do.”
Sravan’s final piece of advice is to network extensively. He says he never did it for his first two application attempts but Admissions Gateway’s networking-heavy approach to building applications necessitated it, allowing him to build much stronger, more compelling essays that stood out from his peers’.
Sravan’s persistence paid off because after applying three times, later this year he’s finally headed to his dream school; Stanford.