MBA Voices: I Entered MBA Admissions Hoping To Be Chosen. I Left Knowing How To Choose

The first MBA admit I received was from the Indian School of Business (ISB).

A year earlier, I would have accepted immediately. Instead, I found myself staring at a deposit deadline and considering something I hadn’t expected: walking away.

ISB is one of the most respected business schools in Asia. An admit would feel like the finish line. For me, it created a new problem.

I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted anymore. That surprised me.

When I started applying to business school, I was looking for validation. I carried around a mental list of weaknesses. I was 34. I had studied history and law. I wasn’t a consultant, banker, engineer, or founder. My test score was average. Every admissions event, forum, and profile review seemed to reinforce the same message: top schools wanted candidates who fit a certain profile.

I didn’t fit the mold.

Over the course of the admissions cycle, I received offers from ISB, Oxford Saïd, Cambridge Judge, Michigan Ross, and INSEAD. Ultimately, I chose London Business School (LBS).

Yet the most valuable outcome wasn’t an admit. It was clarity.

I thought I was applying to business school. Looking back, I was mostly learning how to make decisions.

The process made me think harder about what I wanted from my career.

It forced me to confront trade-offs.

It eventually answered a harder question: what kind of life did I want to build?

Along the way, it taught me four lessons I wish I had understood much earlier.

LESSON 1: DON’T SELF-REJECT, BUT DON’T IGNORE REALITY EITHER

One of the most common pieces of MBA admissions advice is “don’t self-reject.”

I agree, but with a caveat.

Don’t self-reject. But don’t ignore your weaknesses either.

Early in the process, I had a long list of concerns. Some were real. Some were imagined. The trick was figuring out which was which.

I worried about my test score. That was fixable. So I retook the GRE. Then I took it again. If I had thought another attempt would materially improve my chances, I would have made a fourth try. I’ve found that admissions advice often treats test scores as either everything or nothing. In reality, they are one component of a much larger application. If your score is below the range of your target schools and you have time, improve it.

At some point, I realized many of my worries had something in common: solving them would require a time machine.

I couldn’t change my undergraduate major. I couldn’t redesign my career. I couldn’t go back and accumulate a different set of experiences. At the same time, I didn’t regret my journey at all. So why not own my choices?

I think this is where a lot of applicants get stuck. They spend months worrying about things that are no longer changeable and too little time improving the things that are.

Fix what you can. Explain what you can’t.

Then apply anyway.

Some of the schools that ultimately offered me admission were schools I might never have applied to if I had allowed my insecurities to become admissions criteria.

The admissions committee’s job is to decide whether you belong in the class. Don’t do their job for them.

LESSON 2: TREAT YOUR APPLICATION LIKE EXPENSIVE REAL ESTATE

Every MBA application gives you a finite amount of space to tell your story. My first instinct was to keep reinforcing the same strengths: that I could lead teams and comfortable reinventing myself. Eventually, I realized the goal wasn’t to repeat what admissions committees already knew. Instead, I needed to help them see the parts of me they didn’t know I had.

I started treating every essay, short answer, interview, video submission, and application box as a separate piece of real estate. Every component needed a purpose. If two pieces of the application were doing the same job, one of them was probably being wasted.

To stay organized, I built a spreadsheet of anecdotes. I tracked leadership examples, failures, career transitions, difficult decisions, values-based moments, and personal experiences. Before every essay and interview, I checked whether I was introducing new information or simply repeating myself.

Before starting my applications, I wanted to think through the entire process, including the interviews and video essays. I started looking for patterns because I wanted to understand the kinds of questions schools tended to ask before I started thinking about my answers.

As I researched the process, I found myself returning to a handful of resources repeatedly. This included admitStreet’s interview and video essay guide because they brought many of those recurring themes together in one place. In fact, I found the material useful enough that I eventually signed up for their mentoring program so I could have an experienced mentor and a sounding board throughout my applications and interview preparation.

That gave me an external perspective as I refined my applications. I still needed a system that worked for me, though, so I built the story-mapping framework below. Instead of preparing answers question-by-question, I mapped my own experiences against recurring themes so I could identify the strongest examples from my career instead of improvising answers or repeating the same stories.

 

The goal wasn’t to tell more stories. The goal was to create a fuller picture.

This principle also changed how I thought about optional essays.

If you’re not using an optional essay, it’s not the end of the world. But you should have a very good reason not to submit it.

A lot of applicants treat optional essays like a confession booth. I found it more useful to think of them as a place to reduce uncertainty.

For example, I considered using one to explain my GRE score. The worst version of that explanation would have been something like: “I haven’t used quantitative skills in a long time.”

Even if that were partially true, it would create more concerns than it resolves.

A better approach was to ask myself: what is the admissions committee actually worried about?

In this case, the concern wasn’t the score itself. The concern was whether I could handle a quantitatively rigorous classroom environment.

So instead of explaining the score, I focused on providing hard evidence. In my professional roles, I had spent years working with financial models, growth forecasts, operating metrics, budgeting decisions, and commercial strategy. I regularly collaborated with colleagues from finance, consulting, and analytical backgrounds. The question wasn’t whether I had achieved a perfect score. The question was whether I had demonstrated the ability to succeed.

The same principle applies to every part of the application.

Which brings me to another point: not every meaningful experience belongs in your MBA application.

I had experienced personal and professional hardships that shaped me. Some appeared in my applications. Others didn’t. Not because they weren’t important, but because they weren’t relevant to the story I was trying to tell.

MBA applications are not the suffering Olympics. The goal isn’t to prove you’ve had the hardest life. The goal is to help admissions committees understand who you are.

If a story doesn’t help the reader understand you better, it’s probably sucking up space.

Treat every essay, interview, and application box like expensive real estate. If a story isn’t helping admissions committees understand you better, it probably doesn’t belong there.

Every word should earn its rent.

Next Page: Understanding the problem you’re really trying to solve…and more!

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