She Got Into 4 Of The Top 5 U.S. MBA Programs — While Planning Her Own Wedding

She Got Into 4 Of The Top 5 U.S. MBA Programs — While Planning Her Own Wedding

Estefania Diaz Escamilla and her husband Eduardo on their honeymoon in New Zealand. While there, she discovered she had won interviews at Harvard, Wharton and Booth. Courtesy photos

Estefania Diaz Escamilla says she felt “incredibly blessed” to be in the position of applying to top business schools and getting married. But she was definitely overwhelmed, too.

“It was super overwhelming, everything happening at the same time,” she tells P&Q. “I was working as an investment banker, and then whenever I had free time, I used the time to plan the wedding, the menu and the other planning, or look where we wanted to travel for the honeymoon — because it was not only the wedding, it was also the honeymoon which we had to plan. So I focused all the free time I had during work to make decisions on the wedding. And then on the weekends, we focused more on studying for the GMAT and on all the essays.”

In other words, she had little time for sleep — and no time at all for friends and family.

“I entered to work at 9 a.m. so I tried to wake up every day at 7 a.m. and from 7 to 9 it was either making decisions for the wedding or studying for the GMAT,” she says

“I wouldn’t say that I was sane all the time. I had many tears.”

She Got Into 4 Of The Top 5 U.S. MBA Programs — While Planning Her Own Wedding

Diaz Escamilla: “My husband gave me the ring in January 2022. So I was already very stressed because I knew I still had to work on the GMAT and prepare all the applications — and now I also had to prepare a wedding”

LEARNING TO MAKE SACRIFICES DURING THE GRUELING APPLICATION PROCESS

How did she stay organized?

“I knew I couldn’t do everything because it’s impossible to,” Diaz Escamilla says. Something that quickly went by the wayside: exercise.

“I wasn’t able to do exercise and study for the GMAT and go to work — for me that that was just not possible,” she says. “If I did the three of them, I was either not sleeping or not studying. If I decided to do exercise, I didn’t have enough hours in the day. So I just learned that I had to make sacrifices and accept that, instead of punishing myself for not being able to do the three things. Because when you’re doing the GMAT, they say that it’s very important to do exercise and to keep a good mind and a good state of mind and meditate and all these types of things. And for me, it was like, ‘Okay, I can’t do exercise. There has to be another way that I can cover this part.’”

Exercise wasn’t only important as an outlet to relieve stress, she says, because In Mexico, “when a bride picks her dress, they have to commit to not increase their measurements, because a wedding dress can always become smaller but they can’t make it bigger. So when I started looking for a dress, that was one of the triggers that made me go back and say, ‘I have too many things on my plate.’ And what helped me was just speaking about them and saying, ‘I’m worried about this. I’m worried about this. I’m worried about this.’ Having someone that could hear me was helpful.”

Instead of exercise, she focused on a healthy diet. “I couldn’t add more hours to my day, but I could control what I eat.”

THE HARD WORK PAYS OFF

Diaz Escamilla had to take advantage of all the free time she had at work, which meant arriving early to work and, sometimes, instead of going to eat with others at lunch, she ate by herself so she could study more for the GMAT. Another sacrifice is that she didn’t have a lot of time at all for family and friends.

“Weekends were for studying,” she says. “It was easier for me to make decisions on the wedding during the week because I also had to talk with suppliers. And on the weekends I was more focused on completing my essays and the GMAT.”

She took the GMAT three times and was rewarded with a 710 score. Eduardo took it four times and scored a 760. Then came six months of crafting and honing her essays, and finally in early January of this year all four applications were done and submitted.

Later, while on her honeymoon to Australia and New Zealand, Diaz Escamilla discovered that she had won through to the interview rounds at Harvard, Wharton, and Booth. (Stanford’s interview offer came later.) “I had to study to prepare for my interviews on the flight back home,” she says. “The HBS interview was the same week I returned from the honeymoon.”

Eventually she completed her four interviews by Zoom and won admission to all four schools — the culmination of a whirlwind of work, study, and hope. Her husband was accepted to Booth and Wharton. Both will attend Wharton as part of the MBA Class of 2025.

Next page: A Q&A with Estefania Diaz Escamilla where she recounts her strategies for essays and interviews.

And read Poets&Quants’ past coverage of extraordinary B-school applicants: How I Got In: A Harvard, Stanford & Wharton Admit Tells All and A Stanford-Harvard-Wharton Admit Describes His Application Process