My Journey From A Chef At ITC To An MBA Student At XLRI - Arya Ingley

The task of preparing for GMAT and further MBA Applications seemed daunting. My preparation was one of the most significant parts of my journey. I started from square one with NCERT Textbooks to get my basic concepts right and gradually transitioned to full-fledged online prep modules. I set an intensive study routine that focused on maintaining accuracy, timing and test readiness. Surely, there were days that were encouraging, but then there were also times where I felt stuck. Weekly mock test analysis and mixed sectional tests greatly helped me improve my performance and get over the score plateau.

My MBA Applications were the second half of my preparation which required a lot of focused effort and involved countless brainstorming sessions. Aligning my future goals with my past experiences and collating my learnings over the years were most critical and required deep introspection.

Half a year of tireless preparation, sleepless nights on end and 3 GMAT attempts later, here I was!  Waiting to be called into the XLRI interview room. As I joined the interview room, I was greeted by a panel of three professors.

Coming from an unconventional background, I was interviewed on my work experience as a Chef with ITC Hotels. I was quizzed on the current industry trends in the food and hospitality sector. I was asked insightful questions on the scope of the ITC Frozen Food segment and the future of the frozen foods market in the country. There were a set of reflective questions about my most valuable experiences and learnings. There were grilling debates on the skillsets a chef must have along with the rationale as to how those skills prepared me as a potential business leader. The interview was quite a pressure test with a rigmarole of intensive question & answer sessions. Somehow, the beauty of such top B-school interviews is that by the end of the interview, the panel keeps you guessing whether or not you were convincing enough!

Finally On the night of 22nd Feb at 12:00 am, I was stormed with emotions of excitement, hope and gratitude all in a fraction of a second as I read the first sentence, “Congratulations!”, I was ecstatic to be chosen as one amongst the top 120 students across the country by an elite academic institution as XLRI.

When I look back at my journey so far, I believe that my interview preparedness and my spontaneity really worked for me. In most pressure interviews, one often needs to respectfully stick to one’s own stand in front of the panel without getting phased out. Through my journey, if I could share one important takeaway from my story, it would probably be this,

No matter which walk of life you come from, when a desire becomes a calling, one should go for it! And as they say, “take the leap and the net will appear”! 

Life does have its own beautiful ways of unfolding into limitless possibilities, given that we make a choice and work towards it!

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