The full story
Rohit Chandra — MBA · IIM Lucknow
Where we started
Rohit walked into our Hyderabad branch in early 2024. The family was anxious — management counselling feels overwhelming when you don't know which rank opens which college.
What we did
Our counsellor sat with them for a full 90 minutes in the first meeting. Not a hurried intake — a real conversation about grades, mock scores, budget, family preferences, and how far from home Rohit was willing to live.
From that we built a three-tier shortlist:
- Aspirational (2 colleges) — reach targets that would push Rohit to improve.
- On-target (3 colleges) — realistic based on current performance.
- Safety (2 colleges) — comfortable fallbacks the family could confidently afford.
The hard part
Halfway through the cycle, Rohit hit a plateau. Mock scores weren't improving. We brought in a peer mentor — a student who had cleared the same exam two years earlier — to sit with them for an afternoon. That re-motivated them.
Documentation
By the time the portal opened, every document was scanned, verified, and uploaded. No last-minute scrambles. No "oh we forgot the income certificate" panics that derail so many applications.
The outcome
MBA · IIM Lucknow. Not the #1 aspirational target, but a strong on-target college that fits both the family's budget and the student's long-term plan. That is the real win — a choice the family can live with happily, not a bragging-rights badge.
"I was a mid-profile candidate. Vikram sir helped me frame my SOP around the projects that actually mattered."
Lessons for the next cohort
1. Start paperwork in January, not May. 2. Mock-test plateaus are normal — do not panic-switch your study plan. 3. The best college is the one that fits your profile, not the one that fits the Whatsapp group.
Published with consent. The student's name and outcome are real; some personal details are kept general to respect privacy.
""I was a mid-profile candidate. Vikram sir helped me frame my SOP around the projects that actually mattered.""