@vatsagrawal

Interesting goals. Make sure you are able to show a strong connect with your passion for sports and how a particular MBA program will actually help you steer your career in that direction. Schools look for connect with the goals and your ability to fulfil them in your past stories. With unconventional goals, there is little room for vagueness. Show deep research into your career prospects to win over the adcoms.


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Aanchal Sahni (INSEAD alum, ex MBA admissions interviewer)
MBAGuideConsulting
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Hey Vatsal,

Opportunities in Sports Merchandising within the US are fairly limited and the ones that do hire MBAs may not be able to sponsor your visa given the demand supply mismatch. Unfortunately, Nike sponsors on a case by case basis and that too marketing analytics functions. If you are really passionate about Sports merchandising, think about the EU where you have options like Decathlon, Manchester United, Adidas and many other larger sports retailer offering some good roles for business graduates. Plus given their focus on the Indian market, you may make a good fit for their hiring plans as most are aggressively looking at expanding their India presence.
Within the US it would make sense to stick to plain vanilla e-comm/retail opportunities with the likes of Amazon, Walmart, Target etc. since they have been working with international students day in and day out.

Reach out at info@thembaedge,com | +918368000961 if you have any other queries. All the best for your applications!

Hi folks, sorry just saw these inputs. Thanks a ton! Sharing some more nuances around my Plan A and Plan B, looking forward to discussing this further.

My immediate post MBA goal is to re-enter the Strategy domain in e-commerce domain, and, I would love for this to be with a sporting goods firm as I can see myself being excited to work in a role of the sort. I feel my experience in BD, merchandizing and platform growth has given me the basic wireframe, which an MBA can really polish up to enable me to succeed here. This is my plan A, however, I am aware real life is often not ideal, and my plan B will be to look out for established e-commerce firms like Amazon where my existing work experience combined with my MBA learnings can help me excel.

One reason for me to look into US B-Schools was because I wanted a comprehensive MBA experience given my work experience will still be just average (5 years) for most programs. Another reason for going with US was because they have the best ranked schools for my overall profile, and I feel I will be able to find a peer group there that will really push me to fuel my own growth.

I understand the visa concerns, but I'd rather have a plan B to deal with that rather than not show case my motivation on the application. Having a mainstream goal in a competitive candidate pool like mine (Indian male with an engineering background) could also negatively impact my application, so that was another headwind I felt incoming with that approach.

Eager to hear your views on this!