MBA Student Profile: Hitesh Nathani, Simon Graduate School of Business

Hitesh Nathani tells TopMBA.com why he chose to do his MBA program abroad and how the experience has been for him.

Nathani wasn’t content to follow strategic decisions made by others. He felt he was capable of making business decisions himself. So he applied to business school.

“In my home country, India, there are just a handful of good business schools, as compared to the size and population of the country,” Hitesh Nathani says. “As a result, the demand for MBAs from top business schools such as the IIMs [Indian Institutes of Management] and ISB [Indian School of Business] is very high. Unfortunately, these schools do not have the diversity that a US or European business school has,” he says.

Nathani, an Indian MBA student, is currently studying at the Simon Graduate School of Business in New York. He chose the business school on a number of criteria.

“In order of importance I was looking for a decent reputation and ranking; overall percentage employed after graduate and the recruiters list; active interest and efforts of the staff and students to promote the school, which I felt would make the school rise up in ranks; overall percentage employed in the industry of my choice and the recruiters list for the same; diversity in terms of international students; cost and scholarship; and proximity to cities such as New York and Boston.”

With his criteria in hand, Nathani applied to four different schools: Simon; Rotman School of Business, University of Toronto; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne; and Owen Business School, Vanderbilt University – he received admits from them all.

“I received scholarships from all except Rotman,” Nathani says. “Simon gave me a very good scholarship and also satisfied all the criteria mentioned more than any other school, so I decided to join Simon.”

In preparation for the GMAT, Nathani studied on his own, primarily from three books: Kaplan Comprehensive, Princeton Review and the GMAC Official Guide. “I did not spend a lot of time on preparation, but I feel I spent the correct amount of time, and if I had more time, I would not have done better. For around two months, I studied mainly on weekends and sometimes after returning from work.”

Nathani is pursuing an MBA to change his career into something that will challenge him. “I have always wanted to do a large scale retail startup in India, for which I needed the experience and entrepreneurial skills that are developed at business school.” Here’s hoping his MBA provides him with exactly that.