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What you just bought

Everything I know about getting into business school, put together as the course I would've taught if I'd ever gotten round to teaching one.

I applied as an Indian male IT professional, which is honestly the most overrepresented pool there is, and I got into INSEAD, LBS, HEC Paris, Cambridge, Oxford and IMD. Ever since I made the YouTube video, I've had hundreds of people reaching out every month with more or less the same questions. I can't answer all of them one to one, and I don't want to charge what consultants charge, so I've written all of it down here instead.

The five parts of an application

Every application really comes down to five things, and the modules cover them in the order you'll run into them.

1. Academics and the GMAT. The part where there's a ceiling on how much it can help you.
2. Essays and the resume. The part that decides it, and the part most people get wrong.
3. Recommendations. Either chosen and briefed properly, or wasted.
4. Interviews. Where your story has to hold up with a real person asking follow-up questions.
5. Scholarships and funding. The part people forget about until it's late.

How the process actually works

When I work with someone one to one, this is what it looks like, and the modules follow the same order.

1. Reflection first, writing second. You answer a long list of questions about your life. Anything and everything you can think of, two or three stories for each question. No editing, no polishing.
2. We pick the stories. Out of everything you've written, six to eight stories matter. We pick them based on what you find significant and what genuinely changed you.
3. We find the theme. The stories you've picked aren't a list. They need to add up to one clear picture of who you are and where you're going.
4. You draft, I score, you rewrite. We do a bunch of rounds of this. The first draft is never the one you send.
5. Then the rest of the application. Resume, recommenders, scholarships, all pointing in the same direction.
6. Then interviews. I give you the question bank, and we do mock interviews until the format feels boring.

The single most common mistake is starting at step four. People open a blank document, stare at the essay prompt, and try to come up with a story that fits it. It reads exactly like what it is.

The order I'd do this in

If you're years away from applying, twenty-two and wondering what to do now, Module 1 is written for you, and you can leave the rest until it's time.

Otherwise read Module 2 first and put the dates in a calendar, because the thing that catches most people out isn't any single part of the application, it's how long the whole thing takes. Fifteen or sixteen months from first GMAT lesson to first day of class, in my case.

Then do Module 3 before anything else, and give it proper time. A week of walks and notes isn't too much. Everything after it turns out better or worse depending on what comes out of it.

If you still have a GMAT to sit, Module 4 runs alongside everything else. After that, the modules follow the order of the application itself: schools, essays, resume, recommenders, interviews, scholarships. The module on AI tools you can read whenever you like, and the last one, on the year itself and the job after, is for when you're in.

The downloads

Some modules come with a worksheet. The reflection questions I give every candidate, my GMAT error log, the outreach messages I'd send at every stage, my own story map across six schools, a resume template, a brief for your recommenders, the INSEAD video essay question bank, and the job search target list. They're yours to keep, so download them, print them out, and work on paper where I tell you to.

How to use my clone alongside this

Open the chat and give it your resume before you start Module 3. Every answer after that will be about you, rather than about applicants in general.

Bring it real work. Paste in the actual essay, name the actual school, describe the actual job. It's read this whole playbook, so ask it the stuff you would've emailed me at 2am. It won't write your application for you, and honestly, neither would I.

One thing before you start

If you do this properly, it's going to be uncomfortable. You'll be writing down the things you failed at, the times you were wrong, and the moments that changed your mind. That's kind of the point though. The applications that work are the ones where the person went looking.