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My Story - Aishani Gupta - MBA student

After doing my bachelors in 2013, I chose to work for a couple of start-ups as I always felt startups give you a bigger learning canvas.  The last company I worked for gained traction, raised funding and I was part of the team that was working on scaling the company across the country. I was with them for nearly 3 years – and when the company was at a150 million dollars, was when I decided that I needed some personal growth.

I had completely lost myself in the hustle, when the quarter life crisis hit me, and I began asking the ‘what do I want to do in life’ question. I was exploring myself and trying to find answers when I realized that one thing was certain - I decided that I wanted to pursue higher education to explore newer avenues for both work and living and started looking towards an MBA. However, my mind had a tsunami of confusing ideas with no clear direction. The idea of getting a global education was definitely sounding more attractive to me than studying in India.

With just 3 months to prepare for GMAT and to apply to schools, everyone I spoke with told me it was impractical and impossible to crack a good school and I should probably defer my decision to apply by a year. This is when I happened to meet Mrs. Renu Mehandru of East West Unisys. In our first consulting session she spent an hour with me, getting to know me and understanding my goals. She educated me about my options with respect to schools, geographies (UK, US, Canada) and options for work after graduation. She was the first person, apart from my family, who instilled in me the confidence that it was possible, and that I could indeed do it in the short time span. All it would take would be a lot of hard work and focus, which I was prepared for.

She fleshed out a plan of action for me and I began with the first challenge - taking time off work almost immediately. I spoke to my bosses and they very graciously supported me, My next challenge was preparing for the GMAT and taking the exam. Even though all my mocks were over 700 but after going through all the usual panic attacks etc. I ended up with a score of 640. With no time for a retake and me wondering whether if it was even worth applying to top schools with that score – but with her counsel. Support and advice I decided to give it a shot.

I prepared a list of 6 schools I wanted to apply to considering cross discipline learning and impact footprint - NYU, Columbia, Duke, Rotman, Schulich and ISB. This is when Renu ma’am also told me about this prestigious but small school called Babson, which was the number one college for entrepreneurship in the world which seemed to be a good fit for me considering my work experience. We worked together for over a month, giving it our blood and sweat - writing, re-writing and editing essays, resumes, doing mock interviews getting panic attacks et all! Finally, our efforts paid off. I got admitted to 4 of the 6 schools I had applied to – but my Yipee moment was when I got into Babson with a 50% scholarship and a fellowship of the Forte foundation for women in Business.  Incidentally Babson is ranked as the no. 1 school for MBA (Entrepreneurship) as per US News. While I was contemplating between Babson and another top University I had go into, Babson threw another bait at me- I got an invite from the college (with a fully paid ticket) for a “meet and greet” at their Boston campus, to help me make up my mind.

 I marvel at the marketing skills of American universities -  Needless to mention, I was sold on my new college and decision almost made while I was on the flight to Boston. It was here that Renu ma’ams expertise of being an “insider” in the US education system helped me further, and she guided me on the possibility of getting additional scholarships – something I did not have the slightest clue about! I did exactly as she advised and – overnite with her help, I put together some paperwork which  got me an additional 26%  scholarship – a definite icing on a beautiful cake!

This made it a fantastic deal as the ROI with studying at a top school was great with the scholarship. Now that I have graduated from there, and when I look back, I feel it was one of the best decisions of my life to study overseas and to get the exposure of a school like Babson. The holistic curriculum, the exposure to Industry specialists, the resources available, the erudite faculty and most importantly a peer group of academic toppers from across the globe, was an amazing and an incomparable experience!

I cannot thank Renu Ma’am for all the handholding she did for me to make this journey and walk so comfortable for me and feel I could never have got a better guide and mentor!

Aishani Gupta, MBA (Entrepreneurship) from Babson College, Boston (Mass) USA.