As part of an as-told-to essay for College Game Plan's How I Got In series, Babson College's Prabha Dublish reflects on her college journey.
From
Seattle, Washington
My short & sweet
West Coast-born entrepreneur with a passion for social impact finds her perfect match in Boston.
My application process
I wasn’t really sure exactly what I wanted to do. I knew I really liked business, but I toyed with the idea of doing physics as well. Schools that have really good business schools don’t often have great physics departments as well.
When I was as senior, I was running a nonprofit organization in my community, so as I became involved in social impact and the intersection of entrepreneurship, that’s when I added Babson to my list. It was kind of out-there compared to the other schools that I was looking at — it’s not very well known on the West Coast — and I only knew two people who had gone there from my high school.
Still, it was very intriguing to me.
I ended up getting in with a half-tuition scholarship after applying on a whim. That was one of my first acceptances. I was like 'OK, I really need to consider this school.' I got invited to come and interview for a full-tuition scholarship, and that experience really sold me. If I was going to go across the country to Boston, I knew I needed to be in a community where I didn’t feel like I was getting lost. That really struck me about Babson; It is smaller compared to other schools. There’s always someone I know. There’s always someone on the main road who says 'hi' to me. When I received the full tuition scholarship from Babson, it was a perfect fit.
My essay
I used to run a nonprofit that still runs without me right now, that I founded. It was called Charity Circle. The goal behind it was to shift the focus of community service away from hours to impact. A lot of organizations in high schools today are based around number of hours, as opposed to understanding the impact of the work you’re doing. I wanted to shift that perception, so I started an organization that created these fun, engaging, but also highly impactful activities.
That was a big part of my essay. I was very quiet; I was scared of raising my hand; I kept to myself. The process of me getting this idea and knowing I had to do something about it, but becoming the person I needed to be to achieve it was what my essay was about. I grew a lot through that process. I found a passion for social impact that I’m still following in college today where I started another nonprofit, Womentum.
Womentum is a “pay-it-forward” nonprofit crowdfunding platform that lets anyone donate to women entrepreneurs around the world. Entrepreneurs receive 100 percent of the money crowdfunded on our platform. And, unlike a micro-loan model such as Kiva, money raised on Womentum are donations to our female entrepreneurs.
We launched in April 2016, on-boarded four nonprofit partners from Uganda, India, and Colombia and successfully funded 16 women entrepreneurs.
I think that’s where the best essays come from — from that passion that you already have. it’s very easy to tell if it’s something that you don’t really care about, so it’s hard to write meaningfully about that. I was lucky to have a very strong story; I just had to figure out the best way to tell it.
My advice for high school students
It’s kind of like what you see on “Shark Tank.” You might want an offer from every single college out there, but in reality you can only go to one. So you don’t need to worry about getting every single one. It’s OK if you don’t get into all of them. I kept telling myself that: It’s about the one.