Meet Ohio State’s MBA Class Of 2019

Neha Gupta 

Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University 

Describe yourself in 15 words or less: I am an adventurous vegetarian and extreme extrovert invested in the power of human connection.

Hometown: Phoenix, Arizona

Fun Fact About Yourself: I sang bass in an all-female barbershop choir for four years.  We had an incredibly memorable uniform: sparkly red shirts, palazzo pants, and black top hats!

Undergraduate School and Major: 

University of Arizona

Majors: Psychology and Business Management

Minor: Spanish

Arizona State University

Masters in Education

Employers and Job Titles Since Graduation:

PricewaterhouseCoopers:

Talent Acquisition Associate (2015 – 2017)

HR Specialist (2013 – 2015)

Teach for America:

2011 Corps Member – 7^th Grade Math Teacher (2011 – 2013)

Phone Interviewer (2013)

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: I consider both of my positions with Teach for America and PricewaterhouseCoopers to be major accomplishments in my career.  However, I was given a distinct opportunity within PwC that I would consider my greatest achievement thus far.

PwC’s Corporate Responsibility initiative “Project Belize,” is the international counterpart of their platform to increase financial literacy in K-12 schools. Each year, PwC uses a competitive process to select 200 employees (out of 45,000+ employees nationwide) to attend a week-long volunteer experience in Belize. Due to my enthusiasm and involvement in financial literacy in the PwC Chicago Market, I was selected for the 10-person planning team for this amazing project.  Not only did I get to channel my passion for education and financial literacy into a 4th grade classroom in Belize, but I also got to be a part of the team that brought this experience to several of my colleagues across the country.

Looking back on your experience, what one piece of advice would you give to future business school applicants? My advice for future business school applicants, when writing application essays, is to be sure to actually answer the essay question!  It may sound silly, but the process of applying to business school requires a lot of soul searching.  Therefore, the first time you put pen to paper and begin articulating your aspirations, you tend be highly emotional and (in my case) unnecessarily verbose.  Often, you start answering questions that the school has not even asked (i.e. your personal philosophy on life and the business world) and you have not provided any tangible answers to the questions they have asked.

Nonetheless, it is important to go through that process of getting a first draft down on paper, even if it ends up being a stream of consciousness you use as a cathartic release instead of a submission essay.  But force yourself look at the draft critically, compare it to the initial prompt, and throw it away or edit significantly. If you can, enlist a few people you trust to look at the essay without the prompt and ask them to tell you what they think the essay prompt is. While business schools are mildly interested in your creative writing abilities, they are also wanting clear and concise responses to the essay prompt.

What was the key factor that led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA and why was it so important to you?  I chose the Fisher MBA program at The Ohio State University due to their extensive history and expertise in Leadership and Organizational Behavior.  I was committed to attending an institution that didn’t simply use “leadership” as a buzz word, but strategically embedded leadership into the MBA curriculum. Fisher intentionally recruited an abundance of distinguished faculty with extensive leadership research to teach MBA courses. Additionally, the program has several hands-on leadership development experiences such as the Global Applied Project (an opportunity for MBA students to work on an actual international solution for a firm) and Fisher Board Fellows (a program that allows you to act on a board of a local nonprofit); they even have a new Leadership Retreat for graduate students starting this Fall!

What would success look like to you after your first year of business school?  I will measure success from my first year of business school along three dimensions: knowledge, relationships, and my internship placement. Since I spent most of my career honing my soft skills, the first year MBA curriculum is perfectly suited to help fill my gaps in knowledge (i.e. Accounting, Finance, Economics, and Data Analysis). This will certainly present a challenge and a steep learning curve, but academic success for me, would be having enough confidence to look over the numbers of a business and extract the relevant information. As for measuring my success through relationships, I hope to walk away from this first year with one or two close friends, a few teammates I love working with, and a couple faculty/staff I value as mentors. Finally, I hope to land an ultimate internship that allows me to creatively contribute to the human capital management strategy of a Fortune 500 company and/or a young and innovative firm.