Engineer, Development sector: Harvard journey with Admissions Gateway
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26 May 2018, 04:06
I am an engineer working in the development sector. I was aiming for the top-5 schools and heard about Admissions Gateway through CHAI folks and other people already working with the firm.
I joined Admissions Gateway because
1) The initial call with Rajdeep and a detailed CV analysis was something that stood out compared to other consultants. Plus the track record of a lot of successful candidates to top 3 schools.
2) Cost was the most competitive among the top global consultants
I applied to Harvard, Kellogg, MIT and Booth in round 1. I was interested in Consulting and Healthcare and the overall brand and experience.
It took a few calls to understand how to work as a team in terms of expectations, iterations etc. I advise people to clarify all these things with consultants as once this is set the process is smooth.
We started with revamping the CV, which I thought was in a very good shape to begin with. But the level of detail and effort that went into rebuilding the CV was commendable. It was great to see the structure come up in the CV (important points first, STAR format – easier said than done), and the CV contents being used as a baseline to create convincing essays.
Once the CV was done, we started with the essays. I am an engineer and not a big fan of writing, so it definitely was a big challenge to begin thinking about writing essays. I think the outlines provided and the general structure provided really helped in getting the right things out in the first draft of the essay. This was followed by numerous revisions, each version systematically improving different aspects of the content and structure. The brainstorming sessions on how to best portray a particular story were instrumental for approaching the essays in an intuitive manner.
Some of the unique aspects of my profile, viz Japan experience and the shift to the development sector were definitely strengthened through these discussions. These were followed by countless reviews, and the final submissions. While it was some work the quality aspect was handled very carefully and we didn’t submit anything that was not up to the mark, even though it meant submitting before the deadline!
After the first round calls, I think the help with the interview process was again a unique aspect of the whole process. Writing down some key points with specific focus on the presentation and headlines definitely helped. These were followed by a few mock interviews and specific feedback on improvement. This post interview-call helped calm my nerves, and I went to the interviews confidently.
I gained admission to HBS (100k), Kellogg (70k) and MIT Sloan and am looking forward to taking some time off and travelling before heading to HBS!