T25 MBA Success Story: Multiple Admits With Scholarships
(All personal identifiers have been anonymized. Certain institutional and geographic details have been changed to protect client confidentiality. The narrative reflects the true philosophy and process used in this application.)
Applicant Background
29 years, male, 6.5 years of experience in industrial engineering, supply chain, and operations, GRE – 338.
This applicant had a strong professional record across functions. He had a technical and operations-focused career at a large industrial conglomerate. He managed time-sensitive shutdowns, led vendor negotiations, improved procurement systems, and introduced process improvements that reduced operational delays.
On the personal side, following a financial crisis in his family during COVID lockdown, he developed an interest in financial literacy, and taught himself the principles of equity investing and built a sizable portfolio to avert such disasters in the future. He also actively conducted community-focused financial awareness programs to improve financial literacy in underserved communities.
What He Needed Help With
Despite this strong professional base and personal strengths, he struggled to articulate a clear MBA narrative. His experiences spanned engineering, procurement, shutdown planning, financial literacy initiatives, and operational efficiency, but he did not know how to tie pieces together to form a compelling story for his MBA applications.
Like many engineers transitioning to business roles, he viewed his experiences as isolated events rather than elements of a unified narrative.
His challenges included:
- Unclear long-term and short-term goals
- Too many possible narratives (engineering, supply chain, shutdown operations, financial literacy, energy transition)
- Difficulty framing leadership stories with emotional depth
- Lack of clarity on how his technical background translated into business leadership
- Inconsistent positioning across different school applications
He had several strong anecdotes, but could not identify the intentionality behind his decisions, learnings from his experiences or how these stories can be connected to form a consistent professional identity.
My role was to bring structure, clarity, and direction to his application, and build a compelling narrative that clearly articulated his story and strengths.
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Narrative Strategy We Built
During our brainstorming and conversations, a strong underlying pattern emerged in his career: Structure → Efficiency → Empowerment.
This became the backbone of his narrative. Key elements we built into his story:
1. Identity & Motivation
We framed his identity around being a structured, analytical problem-solver who thrives in complex operational environments. His motivation came from exposure to inefficiencies in large-scale supply chain systems and his desire to use data, structure, and technology to create scalable solutions.
2. Leadership Philosophy
He consistently led through responsibility, ethical decision-making, and team-centered thinking. Examples included:
- Introducing safer work practices during shutdown operations
- Resisting pressure to compromise safety
- Developing frameworks to reduce downtime
- Building stakeholder alignment across procurement and engineering teams
These stories demonstrated maturity, ownership, and the capacity for operational leadership, traits highly valued by top US B-schools.
3. Community Impact
The applicant’s financial adversity during his teens, and his financial literacy initiatives in later years became a distinctive part of his narrative. He had taught colleagues the basics of investing, mentored younger professionals, and helped students secure scholarships. This showed empathy, initiative, and a strong commitment to uplift others, which pointed to how his leadership carried beyond his technical achievements.
4. Clear and School-Specific Goals
We clarified his goals as:
Short-term: Operations or supply chain roles at procurement-heavy companies in the US, leveraging AI/ML-driven systems to improve efficiency.
Long-term: Senior leadership roles building predictive, technology-led logistics and procurement models.
This positioning made him compelling for programs strong in operations, analytics, and supply chain.
5. Cohesive Narrative Across All Schools
The biggest transformation came from ensuring every essay, regardless of school, reflected the same core identity: A structured thinker who improves systems, empowers teams, and uses technology to create operational efficiency at scale.
This consistency strengthened his applications and contributed significantly to his scholarship outcomes.
Narrative Summary
- Identity: A structured, analytical operations professional motivated by solving complex inefficiencies.
- Leadership Style: Responsible, people-first, and focused on long-term, sustainable solutions rather than quick wins.
- Impact Pattern: Improving processes, reducing delays, strengthening stakeholder alignment, and empowering colleagues through financial education.
- Career Vision: Using AI/ML and predictive models to transform global supply chains and logistics.
- Why Schools Chose Him: Clear alignment between past experiences, leadership traits, realistic goals, and program strengths.
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Emory Essay
For the benefit of readers, one essay from his final applications is shared below. This is just one part of the full set of school-specific essays we developed; all aligned with the same core narrative.
Identify a personal account of a time you effectively demonstrated your leadership skills. What did this experience teach you about leadership? (300-word limit)
In 2017, freshman year, my classmates and I frequently fell ill after regularly consuming pesticides- and preservatives-contaminated food served at the university’s food-court. As I discussed this with my sister, we identified a prominent need for quality food at colleges and decided to start a healthy meal-delivery service for college students. However, we soon realized that even the ‘organic’ produce at local stores was not chemical-free. According to NIH-National Institutes of Health, in India, 51% of food commodities are contaminated with pesticide residues.
Upon researching the current supply chain, I discovered that the distributors and wholesalers extended produce shelf life with harmful preservatives to tilt the supply-demand price curve in their favor. The farmers were reluctant to sell to us directly owing to the fear of damaging relations with their current distributors. To convince them, I offered them two incentives: First, a higher price than what they were currently being offered for their produce. Second, a no-cost pick-up of raw vegetables from their farms, reducing their costs. I also created a robust supply chain by collaborating with local transporters and establishing weekly transport contracts to ensure consistent supply. Currently, we serve homemade, pesticide-free meals to over 200 students, while uplifting 14 farmers and 4 transport families.
As a leader, I am proud of my compassionate collaboration skills that helped me to elicit core qualities of a diverse team and adequately address their concerns, ensuring alignment across the board. The journey of bringing pesticide- and preservative-free produce from the farm to the table has been challenging yet incredibly rewarding. The satisfaction and joy in the eyes of farmers after getting their fair share motivates me to commit myself to create a transparent and ethical supply-chain ecosystem inspired by the upliftment of the SMEs.
Outcome
He received four admits with significant scholarships:
- Georgetown McDonough – $50,000
- Emory Goizueta – $75,000
- Kelley School of Business – $100,000
- Texas McCombs – $50,000
He ultimately chose Kelley School of Business, attracted by its strong operations curriculum and generous scholarship.
Lessons for Applicants
Many applicants have strong achievements but struggle to fit them into a cohesive story. They list experiences without understanding how the pieces connect or what message their application communicates.
This case shows that clarity is a competitive advantage. A coherent narrative built around identity, motivation, leadership philosophy, and impactful goals, strengthens every part of the application, from essays to interviews.
My work with this applicant focused on transforming a scattered set of experiences into a clear, compelling, and scholarship-winning narrative.
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