Cracking 750+ in GMAT and Making it to Columbia

"I was born in Madhya Pradesh and grew up in a middle class home in Gurgaon. I went for high school to DPS Vasant Kunj (New Delhi) where my aptitude for Science and Mathematics led me to a formal education in Engineering. I graduated from Manipal Institute of Technology (Karnataka) in 2012, but since I was more interested in the business side of things, I ended up working in sales (B2B) at Philips from 2012-15. Here, I formulated and delivered on a two year business roadmap for a previously underperforming territory, resulting in 40% sales CAGR and 80% growth in market share. I absolutely loved my experience of stakeholder management and building new partnerships, but my passion for learning new disciplines brought me to Ashoka University where I studied Liberal Arts (Young India Fellowship), graduating in 2016. The Fellowship was the turning point of my life (both professionally and personally). As a part of the curriculum, I worked on a year-long project in rural India to uplift a low-cost school. By partnering with several education organizations to bring about a meaningful change in the school's curriculum, I learned how the private sector can play an equally significant role as the government in driving social change. This brought me to FSG (US based impact consulting firm) where I spearheaded the fundraising, marketing, and dissemination of a $16 million program to improve education in 300K low cost schools in India. Through pitching our program to 100+ funders and interacting with several key players in education, I learned about the challenges and opportunities in the Indian education system. "