Decoding Insights About HBS With Briti Ghosh HBS’25

Briti Ghosh was born in Kolkata and raised in different parts of India. Witnessing Bangalore’s tech-driven environment and her family’s emphasis on academic excellence drove Briti’s early interest in STEM. Completing an undergraduate degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, with a top 10 rank in her class, she joined BCG as an Associate. While working on impactful projects such as designing growth strategies for pharmaceutical companies, she realized her deeper passion for working in the healthcare sector. Joining Abbott in the MD’s Office, she led multiple high-impact projects, such as driving rural healthcare access and the growth strategy for Gastro-Intestinal (GI) therapy. Shooting for the top, she applied to business schools in 2022 with Admissions Gateway and received an offer from her dream school, Harvard. 

In this piece, we share insights about her journey at HBS so far, things that surprised her at HBS, extracurricular experiences that have been a highlight of her journey, and advice for students looking to get recruited for consulting. 

Do you recall the day when you received an admit from HBS? How did you choose HBS from the 5 offers you had? 

“The answer is Yes!”

I vividly remember the day I refreshed my HBS application page and saw these words in disbelief. The next hour was a blur of congratulatory calls, celebrations, and the realization that I was indeed going to THE Harvard Business School. 

Now, more than one year in, life at HBS has truly been an experience unlike any other, and I am thankful for the intentionality with which I decided amongst the schools I was admitted to, for HBS has lived up to and exceeded what I imagined it would be. Having had a choice between HBS, Wharton, Kellogg, Booth, and Yale, the five schools I applied to, I zeroed in on factors most important to me as an individual: global brand value of the school, extensiveness of the alumni network across the US and India, a diverse and large MBA class, and holistic MBA education including a set of mandatory courses (coming into an MBA, I did not want to choose my courses in the first year itself, I preferred the model of compulsory MBA-beginner courses to bring everyone to the same foundational level). These factors, and especially the high brand value and alumni connect promise of HBS, made me finalize the oldest MBA program to be my perfect fit. 

What surprised you the most about HBS?

Definitely how diverse and international the section experience is. I had friends from across the globe and was able to carve out that small group of friends who were very similar to me in their thought process and vibe, despite how different we happened to be in terms of our cultures and upbringing given our geographical and cultural backgrounds. I was also quite amazed at how non-competitive HBS students were from an academic aspect, given what I had heard about the academic rigor of the full-time MBA program (which was very real). Classmates shared finance Excel models that they spent hours creating freely on the various study groups. You could always find someone willing to spend an hour with you explaining a problem set and the like.

You mentioned academic rigour. How different is the HBS MBA classroom from what you experienced in undergrad, and what have been your key takeaways?

The first year (or ‘RC’ as we like to call it, for ‘Required Curriculum,’ since every member of the 900+ class takes the same courses in year 1) is a stringent test in time management, above all else. Academics, socializing, recruiting for internships, and sleep vie for the limited 24 hours we all have, and it is often sleep that takes the hit. 

My first month saw me and all my section mates spending two hours preparing for every class, which ended up being a sizable demand on our time as we would have two or three classes – case discussions – every day. The case-based discussion or HBS’ professor-to-student hub-and-spoke Socratic method of learning vies to imbibe every HBS graduate with the ability to make consequential business decisions with limited information under time pressure. Preparation was critical to avoid the situation of not having an answer ready when ‘cold-called’ (especially if you were opening the case discussion). HBS taught me the importance of having an opinion, even with minimal information. The case discussion was often likened to a board meeting with your 90 diverse section mates, where having your unique point of view, as well as being malleable to information and perspectives brought in by others, were both key in driving the discussion and debate forward and reaching a conclusion (or not!). This was wildly different from my undergrad, wherein class primarily entailed a lecture-based teaching format, with students mostly being absorbers of information, except for some discussion when a question was asked, perhaps.

What about outside of academics – what experiences have been a highlight of HBS for you?

I’d probably bucket this into three parts of my life at HBS. 

The first would be the various self-organized meet-ups with my HBS family, without a doubt. It has been quite interesting to have been an outgoing, extroverted person who realized I am pretty much an introvert in comparison with the level of people energy the average HBS student has! Finding my set of people who have made board game nights and potlucks the source of warmth in cold Boston winters has been a true highlight of this place. My home-away-from-home family from the SABA (South Asian Business Association) club especially has helped many of us overcome homesickness with the wholesome get-togethers and festival celebrations.

Second, would definitely be all the travel we have been doing! HBS itself has a lot of avenues for students to explore Boston, the New England area, as well as other countries, through section events, club retreats, and courses like FIELD Global Immersion (now called FIELD Global Capstone), which give us an opportunity to work with a partner organization in the cultural and professional context of a new country. There were also several student-organized ‘treks’ or long-weekend/ week-long trips to various destinations across the globe, which I made good use of, as this is the last time we have so much flexibility in our calendars before we are back to stringent work schedules.

Finally, the last would be the HBS Show. As someone who has been a huge theatre, music, and dance enthusiast, I loved how enthusiastically our community spent time together to create HBS Cabaret in the fall semester (a musical parody of life at HBS) and Show in the spring semester (a full-length musical production with a new theme every year). I met several people with shared interests in performing arts through this club, and it definitely was one of my best memories at HBS last year to perform at the Cabaret stage to my friends and classmates as the audience!

How has recruitment shaped up for you at HBS? How did you navigate the internship and full-time job search?

One fact that hit me hard in the first couple of months after the start of my MBA was that even HBS cannot always open all doors. The understanding that not all roles were open to international students and the realization that pivoting to a new industry sector with no prior experience was quite impossible, even with a coveted HBS degree, especially in a difficult job market, was a hard pill to swallow. 

Personally, I focused my efforts on recruiting for consulting roles. New challenges emerged, the most critical of which being how salient networking and small talk were to the consulting recruitment process! Unlike what I was accustomed to in India, recruitment for any role (and especially professional services or people-facing roles) involved considerable effort in relationship building with people in the firm, which were initiated by the student via ‘coffee chats’. 

What tips would you give to students interested in recruiting for consulting firms?

Your resume is the first and most important aspect of your profile, because this is what goes through every company’s first screen, after which it is decided whether you are even to be considered for the role. It is essential to spend enough time on your resume and have different versions for different companies and their specific roles. For example, if you are applying for a general consultant role with Bain versus if you are applying for a specialist consultant role at BCG’s Digital Ventures arm, your resume should speak to the requirements of the specific role.

My advice to anyone who has been shortlisted by a consulting firm and is now going through the recruitment process would be to focus on three things primarily – 1) learning the art of small talk and being able to network naturally and with ease, 2) being a confident communicator in case interviews, and 3) being resilient in making valuable connections at the companies of interest, as well as being flexible enough to go with the flow (for example, if a connection from a lower priority office is being very responsive to you at consulting meet and greets, then be flexible and consider reprioritizing that office higher).

I also recommend attending as many of the events hosted by the consulting firms as you can, including the affinity mixers. These events are good places to find people of shared interests and cultivate a mentorship relationship through the recruiting networking process. You can also reach out to current second-year students or recent alumni who have joined these firms for general consulting recruitment advice as well as to do some mock case interviews. They will typically be very helpful as they have been in your shoes a very short time ago. 

Recruiting is definitely a tough part of business school, but can be conquered with strong camaraderie between friends who support each other during the tough times and the consecutive reject emails, and stick around long enough to celebrate once the offer letters arrive! So RCs, when it is time to step up regarding recruiting, don’t give up on your social life, since the positivity to help you sail through the process will exist only due to your interactions with those who are now your friends-like-family at HBS. 

What are you looking forward to next, now that the HBS chapter is almost done?

In the immediate next few months, I’m looking forward to cherishing my last few months on this lovely campus, and spending time with my friends who will be off to different parts of the world as soon as commencement is upon us. Post graduation, I’m eager to spend a few weeks traveling the US with my parents, who will be visiting for the graduation ceremony, and extending their stay for a bit. After that, it’s back to the corporate life for me! Joining BCG in their New Jersey office, I’m excited to return to the world of consulting, and I look forward to assimilating into corporate America’s work culture and spending time working on clients’ high-impact problems across multiple sectors of interest. Parallelly, I will be enjoying quality time with my family on weekends and during vacations, and I also hope to continue to spend time mentoring prospective MBA students as well as those looking to get into the consulting industry.