My MBA Expedition

My MBA Expedition

Kelley School of Business has been ranked 23rd in the BEST Business Schools. Where learning happens beyond the classroom , Kelley gives immense career coaching to its students along with the option to take up courses at various global universities to expand the networking opportunities.

Scoreleap invited Apoorva Sharma , a Kelley Alumni to share his experience and journey. He is working as a Senior Advisor in Dell Technologies.Scoreleap MBA Admission Services assisted him during the entire application process for Kelley School of Business. Here’s the narrative below.

Question 1: What is your advice to students who are planning to pursue their MBA/higher education abroad during this pandemic?

Apoorva says : Given the current pandemic situation, I believe all students would be targeting @fall 2021 sessions for this process. A lot of groundwork needs to be completed in terms of preparing for GMAT, deep research on schools, crafting profiles and narratives which might take upto a year’s time. My advice would focus on the long term preparation and plan for targeting the fall 2021 admission process . For students who have already given the GMAT, can apply further to the corresponding schools.

Question 2: How would you describe your life after Kelley?

Apoorva answers: I would say it was quite interesting. Talking about myself, when I was hunting for a job post MBA, I could not find the right fitment on campus even though there were many good opportunities that came through but nothing really captured my interest. It was quite challenging for me as I decided to go for off campus jobs. So, in this hunt I had to vigorously network with people but in the end it was quite rewarding in terms of the opportunity that I finally got into the analytical domain of the tech industry. Finally I got into Dell Technologies after a rigorous round of interviews for 3-4 months.

Question 3: What factors did you look into while selecting colleges ?

I would like to say here every business school has something different to offer in terms of the domain that they excel into. Firstly, it is important to decide on the domain for further higher studies. In my case, since my focal point was Marketing and Analytics, I opted for Kelley School of Business. Secondly, it becomes important to analyse the culture and lifestyle fit. The research can be further made to analyse the environment of the business school in terms of being an individual driven or competitive environment or collaborative one. I always wanted to be a part of the school wherein the class size would be small which provides a more closely knit environment for the students. It also provides better ground for being successful. Lastly, I decided to settle down for Kelley with reference to the aspect of financial planning.

Question 4: When does one decide that it is the right time to pursue and start their journey to an MBA program?

Apoorva says: Generally it depends from individual to individual based on their journey. I believe that there may be 3 possible scenarios when someone decides to go for higher studies. First scenario could be that after working for a couple of years in a particular industry, one realizes that he/she is not happy in the current industry and would like to make a shift to a different industry. Secondly, someone would like to continue in the present domain but would like to rise the ladder to different challenging roles. Third scenario is a case with professionals having a huge experience in the range 8-12 yrs. So these set of people are looking for a different career move altogether in the same organisation , targeting more toward the senior management and advisory roles within the organization. Based on the above mentioned scenarios, one may decide to go MBA program post gmat prep online.

Question 5: Can you please share your experience @ Kelley School of Business?

Apoorva highlights : Going to Kelley was the best decision in my life.

So going back to my experience @ Kelley, I would say was the most gratifying one. Amongst most of the business schools , Kelley is one school that pays a lot of attention to academics in general. My past experience was into sales and consulting so I was looking forward to some hard core technical knowledge in the analytics space which I got exposed to in the entire MBA curriculum. One interesting feature about Kelley School of Business is the focus on developing the soft skills in an individual.

So everyone gets aligned to a communication coach who provides the overall feedback on the writing and speaking skills throughout and helps to develop and build effective communication in an executive setup. Giving a small example, during the presentation sessions, it would get recorded online and then the coach would sit with the individual and give holistic feedback on the entire presentation front. I also took a specialised course in negotiation from one of the renowned Professors for Advanced and complex Negotiation in the entire US. Getting to work with a global team, one can definitely build upon other soft skills parameters such as punctuality, discipline, commitment towards work, setting and honouring deadlines. Also, there is a scope for exposure to different industries during the course. As a part of the curriculum, there was a one week scheduled session with one of the CFO’s from Fortune 50 companies. During this week, he kind of shared his experience of running a company as a CFO and various challenges faced in the financial functioning. The session was a very mind boggling exposure. Lastly, I would like to emphasize on the culture @Kelley School of Business. At Kelley You get to interact with people with different cultural backgrounds and tend to make friends for lifetime.

Question 6 : Can you please talk a little about your GMAT preparation and the admission process?

Apoorva mentions : Starting with the GMAT preparation, my target goal was 4 months for the preparation time set for myself. I joined Scoreleap Test Prep in Jan 2016 which offered me a standardized structure for covering all the modules and related questions along with solving the gmat Official Guide in the first three months. In the fourth month, my focus was on giving maximum mock tests as possible in order to be better equipped for the final test. The whole gmat prep @ Scoreleap Test Prep took about 4 months. Since I was targeting admissions in Sep-Oct 2016, thereby I started working on the essays and crafting stories in the month of July followed by preparing on the recommendation letters. But research about respective business schools started during the test preparation period as it takes normally 9-12 months for the same. Also, parallely I started attending MBA webinars hosted by various business schools and hearing the anecdotal student experiences during the gmat prep @ Scoreleap Test Prep.

We are really thankful to Apoorva Sharma for sharing his MBA experience @ Kelley School of Business and journey of overall gmat prep with Scoreleap Test Prep. Having worked for a considerable time in respective careers , we do aspire to go for higher management studies in these top business schools. But the entire process of where to start from , where to go and how to prepare for gmat always leaves a big question in our minds. Going through this engaging talk @ Scoreleap Test Prep platform would help to clear all the doubts pertaining to the gmat prep and further admission to the big business schools such as Kelley etc.

It’s time to take the next step in your career towards an MBA program from big business schools.

Register with Scoreleap Test Prep and get started with gmat online coaching now !