If you’re someone who has read a lot of profile reviews of MBA applicants or students, I’d imagine many of them follow a similar script. A person started working in a particular sector or industry, maybe switched around a company or two, worked for about 5 years and then decided to take a leap and do their MBA. This certainly is the most common path seen in most “traditional” MBA applicants.
Today, however, we’re hearing from Nakul Arora, who got accepted into the Tuck MBA despite his high work experience and non-traditional background!
My long journey to Tuck School of Business, started in one of the least business-like careers one would typically imagine. After graduating from IIT BHU, I began my career in the non-profit education sector by joining Teach for India, which was still at a nascent stage at the time, and I was in fact part of the first batch of Fellows in Delhi.
My decision to join TFI was driven by my love for teaching, and upon completion of my fellowship, I decided to continue in this sector for another three years in different managerial roles, concluding with my work at Teach for Bangladesh. After five years in these incredible organizations, I moved back to my hometown to set up a hotel on an old property my family owned. The hotel I set up did really well and grew 4 times over in 2 years and became an asset to secure my family’s finances.
It was in this process of taking this hotel from what was just an idea in my mind, to a fully functioning business that I realized that I really enjoyed this process and the business side of things, and at the same time, also recognized gaps in my own skills and knowledge when it came to running a business. It was this combination of experiences and realizations about myself which led me to the decision of applying for an MBA.