The Long Game: Betting on Myself for a Fully-Funded MBA Abroad and Beyond

Author:

Mohammad Sohrawardy

Finance Manager, Microsoft

MBA, Vanderbilt University – Owen Graduate School of Management

I have wanted to get my MBA abroad since my BBA days. From my final year, I tried to make decisions that would help this cause in the long term. The main difficulty in this process was taking bets that hurt me in the short term, especially when I didn’t know if they would work out. I had one goal: to get a free business education from America or Europe. I had good grades, which simply showed that I worked hard and had some discipline, but I realized this wasn’t enough. After some research, I understood that, to U.S. or European business schools, I was just another South Asian with good grades—the most overrepresented minority. I needed to differentiate myself. 

The first thing I tried to do was gain some international exposure. So, after my final BBA exams were over, instead of getting a corporate job immediately, I took the opportunity to do an internship in Finland while also doing an exchange semester. When I came back, it 

was really hard to find a job, as recruiting season was over. Eventually, I got two offers and took an M&A deals strategy analyst job at PwC, with a 40% lower salary than the other offer from an MNC Bank. This decision made me sad, but it was necessary. I was 

going to be the first strategy analyst in the relatively new PwC Bangladesh office, while the bank had at least 100 other IBA graduates like me, with good qualifications. This consulting job, on the other hand, gave me a ton of exposure, and I got to manage projects fairly quickly. 

There were days when I would get a call in the afternoon and would have to take an early morning flight to Chittagong or someplace to talk to a C-suite executive and visit facilities to determine valuations and feasibilities. I had the opportunity to talk to everyone from roadside mechanics to the CEO of an automobile company to put the numbers and stories together. In my less than three years of experience, I earned a couple of promotions, my salary increased by 2.8x, and most importantly, I made connections in India and Bangladesh who would later write my MBA recommendation letters.