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devangpandey007
Joined: 09 May 2019
Last visit: 01 Oct 2025
Posts: 67
Given Kudos: 49
Status:Waiting for results
Location: India
Concentration: Finance, Technology
Schools: NUS '23 (D) Kelley '23 (D) ISB'22 (M) Imperial '22 (D) BU Questrom '23 (A$) Schulich Jan '23 (A) NTU '22 (D) Bayes (WA) Broad (A$)
GMAT 1: 710 Q48 V39
GPA: 3.8
WE:Information Technology (Consulting)
Products:
Schools: NUS '23 (D) Kelley '23 (D) ISB'22 (M) Imperial '22 (D) BU Questrom '23 (A$) Schulich Jan '23 (A) NTU '22 (D) Bayes (WA) Broad (A$)
GMAT 1: 710 Q48 V39
Posts: 67
05 Jun 2022, 22:22
Kudos
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Hi everyone! My name is Devang Pandey. I recently graduated from ISB as part of the Co’22 of the PGP program. I have been meaning to write a debrief about my MBA journey and what I have learnt from it with the hope that it might be helpful for some of you out there who are on this journey already or are giving it a serious thought to pursue an MBA.
I started thinking of pursuing an MBA right after my undergrad. I started my career in consulting in 2016 and I come from a highly over-represented pool of Indian IT male Engineers from a non-IIT undergrad background. For an initial couple of years, I prepared extensively for CAT but ended up getting 91 percentile in the first two attempts. The final attempt did result in a 99+ percentile with calls from a few non-ABC IIMs but I couldn’t convert any of the calls.
I started thinking of preparing for GMAT in 2019 after months of deliberation and then a 10-week prep, I finally ended up giving the GMAT during the last week of September 2020, just in time to apply for round 1 in the US and European schools. For ISB, the round 1 deadline was on the 12th of September itself, but ISB ended up offering the candidates to submit their scores by October 5th due to the COVID situation that year and the GMAT exam being moved to the online medium. I ended up getting a 710 on my GMAT and decided to apply using this score only instead of giving another attempt and waiting for Round 2.
I initially thought that giving the GMAT was the most crucial step. Little did I know that a long struggle awaited me on the other side. Due to the limited time available for me to work diligently on 10 applications, I decided to take the help of the Experts’ Global MBA Consulting program. While I did have an initial list of colleges I wished to apply to, based on my prior due diligence, the consultants at Experts Global did a comprehensive evaluation of my profile to come up with a more refined list. I also drafted my responses to some of the common questions which are asked in the B-School applications and got them reviewed by the consultants and a few of my seniors in B-schools. I also had a lot of mock interviews with the consultants at Experts’ Global which helped me become more confident in my responses (especially because interviews were a concern based on my experience with IIMs and other colleges in India). They also had a well-designed tracker which helped me remain laser-focused and not miss out on any interim deadlines related to drafting essay responses, getting LORs from colleagues or giving mock interviews at a regular interval which might affect my applications at a later stage.
However, after putting in all this effort, I was not off to a great start. Getting the first rejection from Imperial College, London was hard especially because I felt that I had absolutely killed the interview. It also came at the time when I was about to sit for my interview for NTU Singapore which did dampen my spirit for a while. The next result was another rejection from Kelley Business School, which I thought I had a good chance of converting given the fact that I had connected really well with the interviewer during the interview. It was Christmas time, and I was not in a good headspace, especially because I was done with most of the interviews except ISB and didn’t receive any admits by then. The first admit I received was from Questrom School of Business, Boston University followed by Schulich Business School, Canada. However, my eyes were still on ISB and NUS applications where I was waitlisted for quite some time.
After a long wait, I interviewed with a panel of three interviewers from ISB on 30th January 2021. Needless to say, the interview experience was quite different from some of the other interviews I had given so far. All of the three interviewers focused extensively on my short- and long-term goals after ISB and wanted to ensure that I have really thought about the decision of pursuing an MBA from ISB. Talking to a couple of ISB alums and doing extensive due diligence on ISB’s curriculum and how it can benefit me in my career goals helped a lot in this regard.
However, I was again waitlisted after the interview, and it was May 2021 and I still wasn’t sure where I would end up for my MBA. I had admits from Questrom, Schulich, Cass Business School, London and a full ride from Broad School of Business, Michigan State University so far but was really looking forward to hearing from ISB and NUS. I finally ended up getting rejected by NUS in their last round of results which was a bit of a disappointment after a long 40 minutes interview. The wait turned out to be worth it when I finally received my acceptance from ISB on 11th May 2021, less than a month away from the commencement of the program on 5th June. It gives me immense happiness to say that I graduated from ISB earlier this year on May 27th with majors in Finance and Strategy and had, what turned out to be, a truly transformational year of my life so far! We had the privilege of studying from some of the best Finance faculties in the world, learning from a batch of some of the smartest brains in the country and learning the mantra of “Collaboration over competition”, something which all of us would carry with us for the rest of our careers.
In hindsight, I believe that the GMAT is just a part of the overall MBA application journey and the real struggle begins after it. It is extremely important to be aware of which schools are the best fit based on our post MBA career aspirations and our existing profile and to not be either overly ambitious or undercut ourselves too much.
The other learning that I had through my MBA application journey is to be true to ourselves in terms of why we want to pursue an MBA at this stage of our career (money can never be the sole motivation), how will our existing profile help us during our MBA and whether our long-term career goals align with the decision to pursue an MBA right now. This helps us to connect the dots and build a storyline which is one of the key things, business schools look for in a proper application.
It is also extremely important to start early rather than wait for the last moment to apply for a particular round. A diligently worked application can easily take up to 10 days of time and it becomes extremely difficult to manage the deadlines and give your 100% in all the applications if you are applying to more than 5 schools at a time.
I hope this was helpful! Feel free to connect over LinkedIn in case of any help!
I started thinking of pursuing an MBA right after my undergrad. I started my career in consulting in 2016 and I come from a highly over-represented pool of Indian IT male Engineers from a non-IIT undergrad background. For an initial couple of years, I prepared extensively for CAT but ended up getting 91 percentile in the first two attempts. The final attempt did result in a 99+ percentile with calls from a few non-ABC IIMs but I couldn’t convert any of the calls.
I started thinking of preparing for GMAT in 2019 after months of deliberation and then a 10-week prep, I finally ended up giving the GMAT during the last week of September 2020, just in time to apply for round 1 in the US and European schools. For ISB, the round 1 deadline was on the 12th of September itself, but ISB ended up offering the candidates to submit their scores by October 5th due to the COVID situation that year and the GMAT exam being moved to the online medium. I ended up getting a 710 on my GMAT and decided to apply using this score only instead of giving another attempt and waiting for Round 2.
I initially thought that giving the GMAT was the most crucial step. Little did I know that a long struggle awaited me on the other side. Due to the limited time available for me to work diligently on 10 applications, I decided to take the help of the Experts’ Global MBA Consulting program. While I did have an initial list of colleges I wished to apply to, based on my prior due diligence, the consultants at Experts Global did a comprehensive evaluation of my profile to come up with a more refined list. I also drafted my responses to some of the common questions which are asked in the B-School applications and got them reviewed by the consultants and a few of my seniors in B-schools. I also had a lot of mock interviews with the consultants at Experts’ Global which helped me become more confident in my responses (especially because interviews were a concern based on my experience with IIMs and other colleges in India). They also had a well-designed tracker which helped me remain laser-focused and not miss out on any interim deadlines related to drafting essay responses, getting LORs from colleagues or giving mock interviews at a regular interval which might affect my applications at a later stage.
However, after putting in all this effort, I was not off to a great start. Getting the first rejection from Imperial College, London was hard especially because I felt that I had absolutely killed the interview. It also came at the time when I was about to sit for my interview for NTU Singapore which did dampen my spirit for a while. The next result was another rejection from Kelley Business School, which I thought I had a good chance of converting given the fact that I had connected really well with the interviewer during the interview. It was Christmas time, and I was not in a good headspace, especially because I was done with most of the interviews except ISB and didn’t receive any admits by then. The first admit I received was from Questrom School of Business, Boston University followed by Schulich Business School, Canada. However, my eyes were still on ISB and NUS applications where I was waitlisted for quite some time.
After a long wait, I interviewed with a panel of three interviewers from ISB on 30th January 2021. Needless to say, the interview experience was quite different from some of the other interviews I had given so far. All of the three interviewers focused extensively on my short- and long-term goals after ISB and wanted to ensure that I have really thought about the decision of pursuing an MBA from ISB. Talking to a couple of ISB alums and doing extensive due diligence on ISB’s curriculum and how it can benefit me in my career goals helped a lot in this regard.
However, I was again waitlisted after the interview, and it was May 2021 and I still wasn’t sure where I would end up for my MBA. I had admits from Questrom, Schulich, Cass Business School, London and a full ride from Broad School of Business, Michigan State University so far but was really looking forward to hearing from ISB and NUS. I finally ended up getting rejected by NUS in their last round of results which was a bit of a disappointment after a long 40 minutes interview. The wait turned out to be worth it when I finally received my acceptance from ISB on 11th May 2021, less than a month away from the commencement of the program on 5th June. It gives me immense happiness to say that I graduated from ISB earlier this year on May 27th with majors in Finance and Strategy and had, what turned out to be, a truly transformational year of my life so far! We had the privilege of studying from some of the best Finance faculties in the world, learning from a batch of some of the smartest brains in the country and learning the mantra of “Collaboration over competition”, something which all of us would carry with us for the rest of our careers.
In hindsight, I believe that the GMAT is just a part of the overall MBA application journey and the real struggle begins after it. It is extremely important to be aware of which schools are the best fit based on our post MBA career aspirations and our existing profile and to not be either overly ambitious or undercut ourselves too much.
The other learning that I had through my MBA application journey is to be true to ourselves in terms of why we want to pursue an MBA at this stage of our career (money can never be the sole motivation), how will our existing profile help us during our MBA and whether our long-term career goals align with the decision to pursue an MBA right now. This helps us to connect the dots and build a storyline which is one of the key things, business schools look for in a proper application.
It is also extremely important to start early rather than wait for the last moment to apply for a particular round. A diligently worked application can easily take up to 10 days of time and it becomes extremely difficult to manage the deadlines and give your 100% in all the applications if you are applying to more than 5 schools at a time.
I hope this was helpful! Feel free to connect over LinkedIn in case of any help!
