How To Get Into An Ivy League Masters Program (Cornell Engineering Management) - w/ Unnati

The episode opens with the practical questions behind Unnati Deswal's graduate-school results: how she earned six admits from nine applications, prepared for the GRE while working full time, wrote university-specific statements of purpose, and handled a Cornell case-study interview with only 15 minutes to prepare.

Naman introduces Unnati as an incoming Engineering Management student at Cornell University. He had assumed an Ivy League admit required an exceptional top-one-percent profile or experience at famous companies. Her path suggests that a comparatively conventional academic and early-career profile can compete when the applicant understands the program, organizes the process, and presents genuine strengths clearly.

A year earlier, Unnati would not have predicted the result. She received rejections, but she also earned more admits than she expected. Of the nine universities she applied to, six accepted her, leaving her surprised and pleased with the overall outcome rather than pretending the process was effortless or rejection-free.

Unnati describes her starting profile as normal. She completed a BTech in computer science engineering with a specialization in big-data analytics at a private college. She chose the specialization to distinguish herself when the field was growing, then took leadership roles including chairperson of an Association for Computing Machinery chapter for women and participated in campus organizations.

Her professional experience came from Dell. She joined as a software-engineering summer intern, converted the internship into a full-time offer, and worked there for almost two years. That combination of technical education, student leadership, and early software experience became the foundation of her application; she did not present herself as someone with an extraordinary pedigree.