Srishti Dahiya Is Fulfilling her Father’s Dream.
In 2019, Srishti was offered an admit to Indian School of Business but she turned it down because it was her father’s dream to see her go to a world renowned business school. Later this year, Srishti is headed to Wharton.
Srishti Dahiya grew up as an army kid and moved around the country till class nine when she moved to Delhi and enrolled at Delhi Public School. She says she chose engineering because she wanted to make her ambitious dad, an electronics engineer, happy and proud.
She wanted to go to Delhi College of Engineering even though she wasn’t sure about the stream, so she just made a pragmatic choice that would keep her options open.
While she was excited about being a woman in Civil Engineering, a male-dominated stream, Srishti confesses that she lost interest very quickly. Instead, she discovered an interest in writing and business through her extracurricular activities at college.
In a college campus placement, Srishti won a position as a research analyst at BCG’s backend office, the Advanced Capability Center. Researching BCG’s agro-business engagements with the Indian government and a desire to make a difference to society influenced her decision to leave, a year later and join Samagra Development Associates, an organisation working on government transformation projects in the education sector.
Srishti worked on continued learning for students and mentoring for teachers during the COVID pandemic. Wanting to work with a wider selection of clients and larger scale projects though, she moved back to BCG as a consultant, a role she had always wanted.
Srishti says she had always known an MBA was important for long term growth when she had decided she wanted to be a consultant. With four years of work experience, she applied to Indian School of Business and was offered an admit but says it was her father’s dream to see her go to a world-renowned business school.
After hearing about Admissions Gateway from a number of seniors, Srishti spoke with them and says her counsellor got her story in a way that none of the other firms she spoke with did.
With her counsellor’s help, Srishti applied to Booth, Ross, INSEAD & Wharton; receiving admits from all four colleges she applied to. She was also offered 40k each of scholarships from Ross and Wharton.
Sristhi says perseverance is key to MBA applications. She says she was dissuaded by many she spoke with because her GMAT score was just 730 and she wasn’t from a prestigious college like an IIT. She reattempted it twice but got lower scores, which felt like huge failures.
“You have to constantly believe that it can happen and shut your ears to everything everybody has to say.”
She says Rajdeep Chimni pushed her into applying to Wharton and she did even though she was exhausted.
Srishti’s advice to applicants is to have faith in oneself and pick yourself up every time you encounter a setback, even though the process is physically and mentally exhausting.
“Have a clear vision of where you want to be. Take advice from everyone but never lose faith in yourself.”
Srishti kept the faith, persevered through many setbacks and has made her father incredibly proud.