Digging Deep with Your MBA Program Research: Anecdotes & Advocates
Communicating with insiders (current students, alumni, and faculty members) can be beneficial to your MBA applications for a number of reasons. In addition to learning about a given school and your potential fit, you’ll also generate material for your essays, demonstrate your interest in the program, and perhaps even make an ally or two.
As you aim to go beyond the schools’ websites and promotional materials, we specifically recommend reaching out to individuals in a few key groups:
Current Students
People who are currently enrolled in a given program can obviously provide the clearest picture of the present state of the school community. They are often able to describe their school’s overall culture more vividly than brochures put out by the admissions offices. Current students can also help you understand the ins and outs of academic and extracurricular options.
So how do you get in touch with MBA students at your target schools? One strategy is to reach out to friends and acquaintances who are studying at a given school (or who know someone who is). It’s also helpful to get in touch with the leaders of clubs and programs in which you are interested; their contact information is generally available through the club website. This will help you to understand the club’s needs and priorities, as well as the impact you could make while on campus. Students can also provide a sounding board on this topic as you work to demonstrate your potential contribution during the admissions process.
Alumni
While students offer a great view of the program itself, a school’s graduates can often provide the best perspective on just how far an MBA from a given program can get you in a certain field. Meeting with alumni working in your target post-MBA industry (tracking them down either through your own network or school-sponsored events) may help you anticipate the program’s strengths and weaknesses in setting you on the right professional course. You might also gain some valuable insight that will help you to refine your career goals and better understand what short-term position would best prepare you for your long-term plan.
Faculty
Professors at business school tend to be a bit less accessible than students and alumni, but if you’ve identified someone whose research interests match yours or if you’ve sat in on a class that you found particularly intriguing, there’s no harm in sending a note to let the faculty member know and to ask them for a brief call or meeting. The individuals responsible for designing and delivering the MBA curriculum can offer great insight into the specific skills and lessons you would learn from one class to the next, and improve your understanding of the ways that an MBA would bridge the gap between your current skills and those you will need to achieve your goals.
So if you’re working on a business school application, consider reaching out! These folks are often happy to discuss their experiences with prospective students, and admissions committees also like thoroughly informed applicants (of course in all cases, patience and manners are of great importance). You might also gain advocates from your target b-schools, who you can later tap for unofficial ‘letters of support’ after you have submitted an application.
MBA Admissions Academy
Episode 1: How to choose target schools for application
MBA Applywire
I work in enterprise middleware / infrastructure engineering at DXC, supporting IBM MQ/MFT environments for large enterprise clients. My work extends beyond production support into automation, observability, systems optimization, and leading cross-functional technical initiatives.
Key impact areas include:
• Reduced service downtime by 10+ hours and eliminated 80+ hours of manual effort through centralized monitoring solutions using Dynatrace and Datadog.
• Led end-to-end resolution of a major mainframe transfer overload issue by analyzing system behavior, designing a multi-agent routing solution, coordinating testing, approvals, and phased production deployment mitigating ~$4M in potential revenue lost .
• Mentored 10+ junior team members and peers on MQ fundamentals, troubleshooting, and best practices, reducing dependency on senior engineers.
Post-MBA, I aim to transition into Technical Product Management, leveraging my experience solving complex systems problems, building scalable processes, and leading technical execution.
I would especially value feedback on:
1. Competitiveness for T10/T15 schools as an Indian male engineer applicant.
2. How admissions committees may view an enterprise infrastructure / middleware background relative to software engineering or product backgrounds.
3. Whether TPM / PM goals appear credible and well aligned with my experience.
I graduated in 2022 from MIT World Peace University (MIT‑WPU), Pune, with a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering, achieving a CGPA of 8.6.
From an early age, I was exposed to entrepreneurship through my grandfather’s agricultural business, where I regularly assisted him. This experience sparked my long‑term interest in business, ownership, and value creation.
During my undergraduate years,I co‑founded two start‑ups with college peers—one venture did not succeed, while the other continues to operate successfully, although I am no longer actively involved.
Alongside academics, I served as the Publicity Lead for my college technical fest, where I:
Secured over ₹2 lakhs in sponsorships
Led promotions and crowd management
Coordinated operations for an event hosting approximately 10,000 attendees across 3 days
I am also a national‑level roller skater.
Between 2020–2021, during the COVID‑19 pandemic, I actively engaged in social impact initiatives:
Volunteered for over a year with an NGO, teaching underprivileged children during lockdown
Assisted at COVID‑19 vaccination camps, supporting on‑ground public health efforts
After graduation, I joined NielsenIQ, where I have been working since 2022 as an Incident Manager. In this role, I:
Manage complex, high‑pressure incident calls
Coordinate cross‑functional stakeholders and global teams
Exercise people management and decision‑making responsibilities, but no direct managerial exposure.
I have scored 635 in GMAT FE and 8 band in IELTS
My plan for a future career is to expand my network (for either entrepreneurship or career pivoting to a higher paying job). Google is my dream but I've never been able to break through. My background is mostly in tech/gaming/AI and I've only been at one major Seattle based company for my entire post-undergrad career. I am open to part time at like Berkeley or MIT Sloan, or quitting (laid off if that happens) to pursue this full time. I plan to study for the GMAT and feel confident I can get 700+.
Uncertain of my low undergrad gpa (from premed classes) and professional career being diversified enough for a strong application. Dream is Stanford > Harvard / MIT > Everything else selected > Foster UW
MBA LiveWire
waitlisted with interview R1 and got the portal update this morning at 9am EST