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

LESSON 3: FIGURE OUT WHAT PROBLEM YOU’RE ACTUALLY TRYING TO SOLVE

Most MBA applicants start with a version of the same question:

“Why do I want an MBA?”

I think a better question is:

“What problem am I trying to solve?”

The distinction matters.

Different goals lead to different schools. Sometimes, they lead to different decisions altogether.

If you’re trying to switch careers, your approach will look very different from someone trying to accelerate in their current industry. If you’re trying to build a network in a specific geography, that may point you toward a different set of schools than someone optimizing for global mobility. Before you start researching programs, it helps to understand what you’re actually trying to achieve.

When I began applying, I assumed I wanted an MBA for many of the same reasons other applicants do. Career growth. Broader opportunities. Exposure to new ideas. Those answers sounded reasonable. They just didn’t feel complete.

As I reflected on my career, I realized something important.

I didn’t need an MBA to switch careers. I had already done that.

I had left a successful legal career and taken a significant pay cut.

I had worked in fintech, moved into education, and spent years building teams, systems, and revenue-generating functions.

Many of the things I once imagined an MBA would help me achieve had already happened.

That realization left me with a more difficult question:

If I had already made the transition into business, why did I still want an MBA?

I’ve always been comfortable teaching myself things. But I was beginning to suspect that books, podcasts, and trial-and-error could only take me so far.

I also wanted global exposure. I wanted to understand how similar business problems are approached in different markets. I wanted to learn alongside people who had built careers in industries, countries, and functions completely different from my own. I wanted to challenge assumptions I didn’t even know I had.

Most importantly, as someone whose future career could span multiple geographies, I wanted greater flexibility and optionality.

Once I understood the problem I was trying to solve, evaluating schools became significantly easier.

I stopped asking which school had the highest ranking.

I started asking which school would best help me achieve my goals.

The composition of the class mattered.

The geographic diversity of the alumni network mattered.

The international mobility of graduates mattered.

The learning environment mattered.

For the first time, rankings stopped being the most important thing about a school.

This shift ultimately helped me make one of the hardest decisions of the admissions process.

When I received the offer from ISB, I was flattered. It is an outstanding institution and one I would enthusiastically recommend to many applicants. A few years earlier, I would have accepted immediately.

But by the time I received the offer, I had spent months reflecting on what I wanted from the next chapter of my life and career.

Accepting would have reduced uncertainty.

It also would have reduced flexibility.

Turning it down was not a judgment on the school. It was a recognition that I had become clearer about my priorities.

One lesson I learned repeatedly throughout the admissions process is that a good decision and a comfortable decision are not always the same thing.

The strongest applicants I met weren’t necessarily the ones with the clearest goals on Day One. They were the ones willing to keep asking hard questions until they found answers.

Looking back, the most useful thing I did was stop treating the MBA as a goal and start treating it as a tool.

The answer may change the schools you apply to, the stories you tell, and ultimately the decision you make.

LESSON 4: LET THE PROCESS CHANGE YOU

When I started applying to business school, I thought the admissions process had one purpose: convincing schools to admit me.

I was wrong.

The process certainly evaluates applicants. If you approach it thoughtfully, however, it can also become an exercise in evaluating yourself.

Most MBA applications ask some variation of the same questions.

What matters to you? What are your goals? Why now? What will you contribute?

At first, I approached these questions like an applicant. I focused on what admissions committees wanted to know.

Over time, I realized I was answering a different audience.

Myself.

For the first time in years, I had to explain my decisions. Not to an admissions committee. To myself. Why had I left a legal career that was going well? Why had I repeatedly gravitated toward roles that involved building rather than advising? What kind of problems energized me? What kind of people did I want to learn from? What trade-offs was I willing to make?

These weren’t admissions questions.

They were life questions.

Unlike an application deadline, they couldn’t be solved with a clever answer.

I wanted reassurance that my career choices made sense. I wanted confirmation that I was competitive. I wanted evidence that I belonged in rooms occupied by people with more conventional backgrounds.

What I didn’t expect was that the process would slowly shift my focus away from being chosen and toward choosing.

By the time I received admissions decisions, I wasn’t asking whether I was good enough anymore.

I was asking something much harder:

What kind of life was I trying to build?

That shift became clearest when I received my first MBA offer.

Earlier in the process, I viewed an admission letter as the goal. An offer from a top school would answer the question that had been sitting quietly in the background for months: Was I good enough?

But when the offer arrived, I found myself asking a different question.

Was it right for me?

That distinction changed everything.

Turning down that first offer from ISB was one of the hardest decisions of the process. It was a fantastic school. It also represented certainty. Walking away meant risking an outcome I couldn’t predict.

Ironically, the decisions became easier as the stakes became higher.

Months later, I found myself choosing between London Business School and INSEAD. On paper, this should have been the harder decision. Both are world-class institutions. Both offer extraordinary opportunities. Both could have helped me achieve my goals.

Yet the decision felt clearer. Not because the schools were easier to compare. Because I understood myself better.

The admissions process had forced me to articulate what I valued. It had forced me to think about geography, career mobility, learning style, community, and long-term goals. By the time I had to choose, I wasn’t looking for the school that would impress other people most.

I was looking for the school that felt most aligned with the life I wanted to build.

I don’t think as applicants we talk enough about this.

Business school admissions can become an endless exercise in comparison. Test scores. Rankings. Acceptance rates. Employer brands. Scholarships. There is always someone with a higher score, a more prestigious title, or a more impressive résumé.

At some point, however, you have to stop asking whether you are competitive and start asking whether the opportunity aligns with what you actually want.

Turning down ISB was difficult. Choosing between London Business School and INSEAD was easier.

The schools hadn’t changed. I had.

By then, I knew what I was looking for. I wanted the most international experience I could find. I wanted to learn alongside people who had built careers across countries, industries, and functions because that is the kind of career I hope to build myself.

I also wanted time. After more than a decade of work, I wasn’t stepping away from my career simply to earn a degree. I was doing it to create space to learn, explore, and challenge assumptions I didn’t even know I still held. A two-year MBA felt like the right environment to do that.

I knew I wanted to remain close to industries that had shaped my career and future interests, particularly technology, financial services, and education. London offered a unique combination of those opportunities, with the school adding an extraordinarily international student body.

That made the decision surprisingly straightforward. Ultimately, I chose London Business School.

In a few weeks, I will move from India to London and begin the next chapter of my career. I hope to continue building at the intersection of strategy, operations, and growth while learning from people whose experiences look nothing like my own. I am sure business school will challenge some of my assumptions. I hope it does.

Looking back, the admissions process taught me something far more valuable than how to get into business school.

How to make decisions. How to evaluate trade-offs. How to distinguish validation from clarity.

Most importantly, it taught me that clarity is not something you find once. It is something you keep refining.

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Akanksha Banerjee is the Head of Marketing at Lumiere Education. Before transitioning into startups, she spent six years as a commercial disputes lawyer at leading Indian law firms. This autumn, she will join the London Business School MBA Class of 2028.

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