After transitioning from corporate law into investment banking, Mohsen was drawn to an MBA as a step toward his long-term dream: return to his home country of Bahrain to start a merchant bank that would invest in new ventures and help the country to reduce its dependence on oil.
Mohsen came to Menlo Coaching because he was getting overwhelmed with sifting through the free advice on MBA applications online and trying to make sense of the conflicting opinions. He had trouble finding a way to tell his unusual story, as well as finding a writing style that suited him.
We worked with Mohsen to understand his core motivations, and help him to tell a story that was both aspirational and practical, and–in terms of describing the role of the MBA–tailored precisely to each school’s unique program and culture.
As an investment banker and former private equity professional, Mohsen had the formal credentials to launch a merchant bank, and the stories of his family and friends from Bahrain proved that this was a moral mission that went beyond an ordinary career goal.
Mohsen was no stranger to making presentations and meeting new people, but recognized that there’s a big difference between doing so in a professional context vs. an MBA context.
His favorite part of his work with Menlo Coaching was the interview prep. As he explains, “It really helped me, not only interview a lot better, take me from being quite tense to being very open and enthusiastic and joyful, but it also helped me build better relationships with my interviewers.”
Mohsen’s original goal was to win admission to UCLA Anderson, a school he loved because of the proximity to his family. We validated UCLA as a potential option, and also encouraged him to consider aiming for higher-ranked schools — which could still place him into great LA-area jobs, even if they were located elsewhere.
The Menlo Coaching network proved to be very useful to Mohsen as he decided which schools were a good fit for him, and he benefited from reading other clients’ reports of campus visits.
Based on that research, he emailed David and Yaron on Christmas Eve 2018, assembled some great applications to new schools – pulling from the months of work he had already put into the others – and was able to win admission to Chicago Booth, where he will start in the fall (plus offers from Anderson, Haas and NYU Stern).
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