Best Master in Management Programs in Europe Cracked!

Do you really think it is possible for me to even aim for schools like HEC and LBS?”. This was the first question that Anubhuti Agarwal asked us when we met her. The question is not entirely without basis. The Master in Management program at HEC Paris is one of the most competitive in Europe, rivalled only by other top programs like the London Business School Masters in Management. At that time, little did Anubhuti know that not only would she make it to HEC, but also to London Business School and IE Spain for the Master in Management Europe programs.

Preparing MiM applications for Europe’s top programs

Anubhuti’s concern stemmed from the fact that she is a student of fashion at the prestigious NIFT, Mumbai.

Could her talents and achievements at fashion design, she wondered, help her to find favor in applying to a Master in Management program? Over the next few weeks, GyanOne worked with her to put to rest these concerns and show her how she could scale the peaks of Europe’s best Masters in Management programs.

The Masters in Management admissions process is never easy. Take, for example, only the IE Spain Masters in Management application.

While the applicant has the option to answer a multitude of different questions through essay responses, IE also welcomes other, more creative, forms of submission such as presentations and videos. Anubhuti is a professional with a wide variety of talents and achievements at her disposal – from singing to dance, writing poems, and of course fashion design.

Working with GyanOne, Anubhuti created a presentation on Sustainability in Delhi, and a detailed video demonstrating her singing and dancing prowess. A Masters in Management program is not just about academics, though of course those are important too.

The final piece of the puzzle was highlighting her key career interests, and how IE would help her achieve them. Here is where her GyanOne consultant helped Anubhuti understand how IE could help her achieve her objectives, and how she should clearly express her future career interests while keeping the program relevant to them.

This took a few iterations, but Anubhuti was really happy with the final product. “My application could not have been close to half as good had I not taken your help.

Submitting IE now and hoping for the best!”. With these words, Anubhuti submitted her IE application, but there were other peaks to be scaled.

From the IE Master in Management to the LBS MiM

The London Business School (LBS) Masters in Management application is quite different from the IE application. For one, it asks applicants to only bank on essays on responses.

On other aspects, the LBS application is much more focused on career goals, the LBS community, and learning in teams. Anubhuti’s key concerns at this point stemmed from how she could address each of these factors within the small word limit allowed by LBS.

With no work experience, she also felt that showcasing a true ability to work and achieve big targets in large teams would be difficult.

While Anubhuti had spent some time contributing to a key social project in her free time, she was not confident in talking about it, and unsure on how this would match up with the ‘spectacular achievements’ of other LBS applicants.

Working with Anubhuti over a few weeks, GyanOne helped her showcase her excellent community contribution, her work in teams in college in India as well as in France, and her excellent potential for using her LBS education to a definite and differentiated objective.

Outstanding results – achieved!

The results spoke for themselves. IE, HEC, and LBS invited Anubhuti to interview soon after she submitted her applications. She worked with GyanOne to hone her interviewing skills, practicing how she could impactfully put across the best of her profile to her interviewers, and did well at the interview stages.

She received final admits from the Masters in Management programs at all three schools, and chose to finally attend LBS, where she starts in Fall 2014.

Perhaps Anubhuti’s experience is best summed up through this short but heartfelt testimonial she sent us at the end of the process:
“I could not have imagined that I would ultimately make it to schools that I considered to be beyond me at first.

I sincerely thank you for your guidance and support throughout the application process, which was truly very worthwhile in building up my candidature.

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