In the next part of the series, ,”Believing is Seeing”, I am going to carry a few personal stories of youngsters who have realized their immediate dream, of securing their admissions in their dream institution. I asked each one of them to write a personal note on

a. What are the key factors that contributed to their success

b. In what ways has the personalized program (PDPP) benefited them

c. What would each like to share with the youngersters who aspire to get into these institutions

Here is a note by Priyanka Phukhan, who is now at her dream institution, Indian School of Business (ISB), pursuing her MBA.

“An electronics engineer from MIT Manipal, I have worked in Philips India Ltd., in a sales and marketing role, handling projects in Tamil Nadu and NCR region. Working in Philips and garnering a host of experiences across different geographies helped me evolve as a professional and honed my interpersonal and managerial skills. After completing a two and half year stint in Philips, I decided to take the next big step in my career and pursue an MBA.

Although MBA was the brainchild that I had conceived during my final year at college, I realized the importance of having professional work experience before pursuing MBA as it helps us to grasp and imbibe the learnings taught in the program in a much more efficient way. Considering that I had prior work experience, I was looking at colleges like Indian School of Business and SPJAIN and a couple of Business schools in Europe.

So with that goal in mind, I started my preparation for GMAT and CAT in the month of June 2016. Although balancing the preparation along with the job commitments was no easy feat, I maintained a very disciplined approach towards my preparation. I decided to take the help of Career Launcher material for honing my quantitative and verbal concepts. The entire coursework has been explained in a very lucid manner which aided me in gathering a clear understanding of the nuances of the subjects.  I also took regular mocks to understand and gauge my areas of weaknesses and strengths and strategically plan my next step. With each month of preparation and taking small steps towards my goal, I finally cracked GMAT in my first attempt in October 2016 with a score of 710.

The next step in the application process was to prepare for my essays and interview for different Business Schools. I joined the Career Launcher for the PDP Personalized course for interview preparation after my friend recommended it to me and it was a transformational journey thereafter.

PDP helped me in identifying my strengths and how to work on my weaknesses. The mock interviews aided me in articulating my thoughts in a more structured manner, which helped me in my actual interview. The regular sessions and snippets of current affairs helped me immensely in keeping myself abreast with the latest happenings around the world.  In addition, all the faculty members were very approachable and ready to help with all our queries. On the whole, the program helped me in gaining clarity over my long term and short term career goals and developing a holistic understanding of my profile and devising a clear road map to attain these goals.

Today, as I sit in my room in the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, sharing my journey, it still seems like a dream come true. The entire journey has definitely been a roller coaster ride with its own ups and downs, but each moment has been a learning experience and worth remembering.  For all the future aspirants, the only piece of advice that I would like to give is- Have faith in your abilities, introspect and learn something new every day, and mostly, do not get bogged down by your failures. Use them as stepping stones to success and enjoy and learn from the journey.“