Home Newsroom From Delhi University to getting a call from Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton all at once - the La La Land story of Ipshita Agarwal!

From Delhi University to getting a call from Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton all at once - the La La Land story of Ipshita Agarwal!

D2C Admin

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From Delhi University to getting a call from Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton all at once - the La La Land story of Ipshita Agarwal!

0 min read

Ipshita Agarwal applied to ONLY 3 business schools: Harvard, Wharton, and Stanford. And guess what! She got an admission call from all of the three. It is one of the most esoteric feats to be achieved in the world of MBA, to have admission offers from the elite schools - Harvard Business School, Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford Graduate School of Business, altogether.

It is unknown how many applicants are able to achieve the H-S-W triple crown each year because the mentioned schools do not communicate with each other nor do they do with the public in general. But whatsoever, the point is that there can’t be many such candidates. This underlies the fact that Wharton’s acceptance rate for the batch of 2022 was just 23%. Harvard’s was even miserly at 9.2%, even down from recent intakes. And in spite of opening its doors just a little bit wider, Stanford continued its streak of being the hardest B-School in the world to get admission into with an admit rate of approximately 8.9%.

However, Ipshita Agarwal doesn’t need to imagine the hardness of gaining admission to even one of these programs, let alone all three. She joined the exclusive club last year before she decided to defer for a year because of the Covid-19 virus.

The game is all about MBA application

Ipshita’s profile was an irresistible one as far as business schools are concerned. She has an exceptional academic record as she stood first in her undergraduate. She also has a great GMAT score. Additionally, people who work with NGOs or for development consulting or impact investing make for more personal and compelling stories, and everyone wishes to support people who are humane and are innately motivated to do good.

Ipshita spent about a month to 40 days on all her applications out of which almost 80% was spent on Stanford’s. She says that Stanford is super-overarching as they literally ask for everything in the world. However, she just reworked a lot of her Stanford application material for Harvard and Wharton as they ask for things that are almost parallel to what Stanford asks.

She had applied to all the 3 in round one in the 2019-2020 cycle. But with Stanford, she was busy till the last day as she was editing her essays again and again. She had read a lot of different types of essays to come up with hers but found out that there was no real formula for it. And thus, she was unsure if her essay would make the cut.

Talking to current and former students is the key to unlocking Stanford

Stanford is Ipshita’s dream school and where she has always intended to go. She says that she knew that she would not want to go to any other school if there was an option. However, she was least confident about it as it takes really few students from India each year. She knows some of her colleagues from SRCC who had failed to gain admission into the B-School. She spent most of her time on Stanford’s application although she was more confident for the other institutes as she had seen people from her undergrad reach there.

What had really helped her with Stanford was asking the current and ex-Stanford students to review her essays. The reason for this is that those in the school understand really well what Stanford is looking for, and then achieve a fine balance between authenticity and being able to weave a story that is compelling.

She also had MBA admission consultants which helped a lot but only to a point, she said. The admission consultants may not help you much in crafting your story but to just keep the ball rolling, and keep the world spinning, and make sure that you’re not putting everything at the last minute. For example, with things like the application form and the short-form essays, she was super unfocused. But her consultant kept pushing her saying, “There’s this application form that you also need to think about.” She says that it just helps with that, and ensures that one is not asking busy people for reviews on the first draft of the essay; it helps you get to 75%-80%. And beyond 80% it is mostly you.

Also read: Highest salaries of top B-Schools fall flat! MBA Placement trends that you should look out for.

The background story

Ipshita Agarwal was born in a middle-class Indian family and she knew from a very young age that she wanted to pursue higher education in the United States. But due to lack of enough money, she and her brother decided that they would go for studies in the US after their undergrad. Hence, she did her bachelor’s from Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC). University of Delhi (DU). After that, she worked; she directed a nonprofit, worked in an ed-tech, worked for foundations, and also for an investment bank. Ipshita says that she and her brother decided that they would save and then apply to graduate schools in the U.S. So it was a long way coming for them.

Coming from a typical middle-class Indian family, doing an MBA or some form of graduate education is the way people go upwards and that mobility is achieved through education. So it was almost set in stone for her. Also, it was her parents’ dream for their kids to go to the U.S. and to good B-Schools for their graduate education. MBA was always a part of the plan for Ipshita. But it wasn't until she decided to leave investment banking in Deutsche Bank where she had spent 2 years as an analyst.

Ipshita left her job because she was really thinking of how she could create a meaningful impact in line with her values and using her education and skill set. She had also taken a considerable pay cut to pursue impact investing afterward because she felt it to be the right way to be able to create large-scale meaningful impact.

Ipshita currently works with a San Francisco-based startup called Nova Credit, which is a fintech startup helping immigrants to get access to financial products in the U.S. She joined the firm in January 2021 itself. Last year, she was trying to start her own startup, working in the content discovery and education space. She did that for a year but did not work out and, thus, decided to join Nova Credit, which was in fact started by 3 Stanford MBA graduates in 2016.

I felt that I was not getting the call...

Ipshita received her Harvard call on the night of 10th December. While she was at work the next day, everybody around her was so happy for Harvard that it was very difficult for her to say that she was still waiting for another call. She felt that she had not got the call till then and that she was probably not getting it. In her head, she was like, “Oh my God, Stanford’s not calling me. I probably have not made it.” And was, thus, making my peace with it. And literally before two minutes of entering into a meeting, she got a call. And the moment she saw a U.S. number, she went like “Oh my God, I think I’ve made it.” Although she doesn’t remember the call at all but the fact that it was a U.S. number calling. Afterward, she received an email that said that the call was legal and that she had made it. She received the Wharton call 3 to 4 days later.

Choosing Stanford was not an easy decision even when it was the dream...

Ipshita says that when she was applying, Stanford was her dream. But when she actually got in and the schools started connecting her with alumni, that is when she started thinking about it — thinking more rationally about what she wanted to do. This confused her a lot. Hence, she spent a month thinking about what she wanted to do, and which school she wanted to go to.

There were times she woke up and felt that she had to go to Harvard because of the Asian dream where if one goes to Harvard, he/she makes it in life. Everybody in her family and my friends believed that she would obviously go to Harvard and that there was no way she would pick any other school.

There were a lot of nuances when she thought in terms of the alumni base, and the kind of person she was. But in the end, she ended up going with Stanford because she knew that it would be the decision that she would be happiest with.

However, it is not a super-rational decision according to Ipshita, because she thinks that all the points in the Excel sheet, which she made for comparison, pointed her to pick Harvard. But then she just decided that she wanted to take a slight risk for herself, and push herself out of her comfort zone, and thus go to Stanford.

And then the MBA deferred for a year...

Ipshita says that she did not want to defer and was mentally and emotionally ready to move in. But given the Covid situation, visas were super uncertain all the way up till the end of June. And they weren’t really working out in India. That is when they made a team of a few international students, who went to Stanford and said that they needed to give them some options.

For example, they could allow them to enter the campus late and waive their housing fee. Or waive off their insurance fee. They kept all the demands in front of them. And at some point, Stanford realized that the best thing would be to offer a deferral option to international students. The students hadn’t explicitly asked for the option, but it was what they decided to go with.

Word of advice from the achiever

If you are also planning to move on similar lines as Ipshita Agarwal did, she has some pieces of advice for you. Be authentic and think about the whys. Focus more on the whys and not as much on the what. The whats are already communicated through the resume and the short-answer questions. And one gets lots of structured opportunities to talk about what.

So, the essays and everything that is not as structured should really be able to talk about who you are as a person, and what really matters to you. And why does that matter to you? And why are you positioned to solve a problem that matters to you? Is it because of your previous experience, is it because of your work experiences, and what has really shaped you?

She believes that there are so many people from India, who’ve done so well academically and professionally, that there is no shortage of people who have what it takes. And that schools like Stanford are really looking for someone who has a purpose and who is able to show that they have done some work towards that purpose.

Ipshita Aggarwal is set to join Stanford's Class of 2023. All the best to her for her MBA journey!