Author: I am from Gujarat, India. I am part of the full-time MBA class of 2025, majoring in Strategy and Corporate Finance. I interned at Novartis during the summer in Corporate Finance and will return there upon graduation. Before coming to Stern, I was working as Senior Manager at ICICI Bank in a General Management role. I also worked in sales and wealth management before entering the general management role during my six-year professional journey. I hold a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science and a Masters degree in Marketing.
It was early morning of December 2, 2022 when my sleep was disturbed by movement in the house. I was visiting my parents’ home to attend my school friend’s wedding. I checked my phone to see the time – it was 5.30 AM (I was in India). As I was about to go back to sleep, something else caught my attention. It was a notification about an email from NYU Stern with the subject line – “Application Status Update.” I thought to myself, “I don’t need this update right now.” I didn’t open the email and instead, closed my eyes. As I tried to fall asleep again, I started getting flashbacks of the entire journey.
The journey had started over four years ago when I had made my first attempt at GMAT. After two more attempts, I had finally secured a score on the third attempt that gave me the confidence to move to the next phase of the process – crafting and submitting applications. However, before diving into the application process, I pushed myself at work for a year, striving to get a fast-track promotion to strengthen my application, which I received. Nevertheless, as an international student, the application process was completely foreign to me. With no one around who had completed an MBA from a U.S. business school, I relied on virtual information sessions and coffee chats that schools offered to learn about the process. After months of information gathering, I finally started working towards submitting applications to a handful of top business schools I had shortlisted. A few weeks later, I got the dreaded message – my application had been rejected. I was faced with a decision – should I move on with my life or should I try one more time?
The decision didn’t come easy. I decided to seek advice from my mentors. However, instead of asking them whether I should reapply, I chose to focus on understanding the potential gaps in my candidacy and the reasons for my unsuccessful application. I thought I might stand a chance as a reapplicant if I could realistically fill those gaps. If not, I thought it would be unwise of me to resubmit a similar application and expect a different result. Fortunately, I was able to recognize several areas of improvement in my application. There were no guarantees whether these improvements would be sufficient to get an offer, but since I had found tangible ways to improve my application, I decided to give it one more shot. This is how I thought about resubmitting my application –
As I continued to attend virtual information sessions from India at midnight (while the hours were odd, one good thing about being in a different timezone was that I never had to skip these sessions for work), I learned how the admissions team evaluates candidates. There were three key areas of focus – academic readiness, quality of professional experience and alignment with Stern’s core values. With over six months until the Round 1 deadlines of the next cycle, I had time to improve my application across the three areas.
First, academic readiness. While I felt confident about my GMAT score, I felt less confident about my undergrad grades. My overall GPA was strong but my grades during the first two years were not good. This mattered since the admissions team looks at individual semester grades in addition to the cumulative GPA. This is what had pushed me to take the GMAT three times to get a strong score in the first place. Still, I felt I could do more to prove my academic readiness. So, I enrolled in a pre-MBA course that covered the basics of accounting, statistics and economics. I did well on the tests and saved the results to submit with the application.
Second, professional experience. Since I had been promoted only a year ago and had stepped into a new role, another promotion was out of the question. However, I talked to my manager and got involved in two different stretch projects between getting denied admission and reapplying in the next cycle. This meant that although my title hadn’t changed at the time of reapplication, my responsibilities had increased, and so had my impact at work. I highlighted these points on my resume, and I also asked my manager to include them in my recommendation letter to shed more light on them. (Getting promoted because of these projects two months before I left for Stern was icing on the cake!)
Lastly, alignment with Stern’s core values. As I reviewed my applications from the previous cycle, I realized that I had been too focused on professional aspects of my life, sidelining the personal side of my story. I had enough time to reflect on my past and think of tangible things to share with the admissions team that would help them see me as a whole person. For Stern, this is especially important. I did not fully understand how deeply embedded the IQ+EQ philosophy was until I stepped foot here. However, the virtual information sessions and coffee chats helped me understand how this was the area where I needed to let my EQ shine. I put in just as much time and effort in ensuring I got this third piece of my application right as I did the first two.
I only took a two-week break between receiving my rejection and starting my new application for the next cycle. But I quickly realized that I needed to enjoy life along the way to avoid burnout and maintain a healthy, positive mindset. Striking the right balance hasn’t always been my strength, but looking back, this was one time when I did find that balance, and it provided me with the fuel I needed to keep going. It also meant that I was ready to submit my application within a week of Stern opening its next application cycle.
Waiting is possibly one of the hardest parts of business school applications. I started to get somewhat nervous as weeks rolled by. Then, one fine day at work, I received an email from Stern inviting me for an interview. I vividly remember pumping my fist in the air out of joy before quickly realizing I still had work to do. I focused on two aspects in my interview preparation. First, even though I knew my behavioural stories inside out, I put time to practice them. It’s one thing to know the stories, but a whole different thing to deliver them with calm, poise and confidence. Second, I wanted the admissions team to feel my genuine excitement about Stern. I doubled down on my research on the school, spoke to current students with a different focus, and asked thoughtful questions. I also dived deep into the resources that Stern has to offer – and Stern has a LOT of unique resources such as experiential learning, professors, structure of the program, etc. – and tied them to my goals. With all this preparation by my side, the interview itself went smoothly. The interview was very conversational, which helped calm my initial nerves.
December is a cozy month in India, but with all these memories flashing back and forth, I couldn’t fall asleep. The email from Stern with the subject line “Application Status Update” still remained unread. I checked the time on my phone for the third time – it had only been 10 minutes since I had checked it the first time at 5.30 AM. I sat on my bed and decided to open the email. I could feel my heartbeat going up. I opened the email, half expecting the email to say “sorry,” but instead it asked me to login to the portal to read the update. The more buttons I clicked, the more certain I became that I’d been rejected again. “Why not just tell me that I’ve been rejected in the body of the email?” I thought to myself. When I logged into the portal, I saw the below screen –
I vividly remember gasping the air upon seeing this screen and realizing what it meant. My very next thought was, “there has to be a ‘but’ in there somewhere that says I’ve been put on a waitlist or something.” I read the entire two-page letter twice, at 5.45 in the morning; there was no ‘but’. In the following weeks, I would receive acceptances from four more schools but, I guess, the first one hits differently. With the clock closing in on 6, I tried falling asleep again but I couldn’t – this time for a different reason though. I knew the trajectory of my life had changed forever!
Adam Smith is a Director of MBA Admissions. Adam has worked on our Operations team for over 9 years and is a graduate of the Langone Part-time MBA. Outside of work, you are most likely to find him playing or watching tennis!
