The "Why MBA?" question seems like the easiest one to answer. You've spent months preparing for CAT. You've paid application fees to multiple colleges. You clearly know why you want this.
Except you probably don't. Or rather, you know the real reason—but the real reason is exactly what you can't say.
The Unspoken Truth About "Why MBA"
Here are the actual reasons most candidates want an MBA:
Reason 1: The salary jump. An IIM degree is the fastest path from 8 LPA to 25+ LPA.
Reason 2: Escape. The current job is soul-crushing, or the undergrad stream has no growth, or the hometown has no opportunities.
Reason 3: Prestige. The IIM tag opens doors that stay closed for everyone else.
These are legitimate motivations. They're also the reasons that get candidates rejected.
> "Panels don't reject candidates for wanting money or prestige. They reject candidates who can't articulate anything beyond wanting money or prestige."
What The Panel Is Actually Testing
When a professor asks "Why MBA?", they're not conducting a survey about your career motivations. They're running a diagnostic.
The real question is: Are you running toward something, or away from something?
Candidates who are running away from bad situations—dead-end jobs, wrong career choices, limited hometowns—come across as desperate. They frame the MBA as an escape hatch. Their energy is negative: "I need to get out of where I am."
Candidates who are running toward something—a specific industry, a type of problem they want to solve, a capability gap they've identified—come across as intentional. Their energy is positive: "I need to get to where I'm going."
The underlying motivation might be identical. The framing changes everything.
The Forward Momentum Framework
This isn't about lying. It's about reframing your genuine motivation in terms of forward movement rather than escape. The framework has three components:
Component 1: The Anchor Point
Start with something concrete from your past that genuinely interests you. Not something you think sounds impressive—something you actually found engaging. A project, a problem, a moment where you thought "I want to understand this better."
If you worked in operations and genuinely found supply chain optimization interesting, that's your anchor. If you hated operations but loved the customer interactions, that's your anchor. There's always something. Most candidates skip past it because they're trying to sound strategic instead of authentic.
Component 2: The Gap Identification
What specific capability would let you go deeper into that anchor point? Not "leadership skills" or "business acumen"—those are generic. What actual knowledge or network would unlock the next level?
A candidate interested in supply chain optimization might identify that they don't understand the financial modeling needed to evaluate infrastructure investments. That's specific. That's a real gap that an MBA curriculum addresses.
Component 3: The Trajectory
Where does closing that gap lead? Not "I want to be a CEO in 20 years"—that's both generic and presumptuous. What's the logical next step that your anchor point plus the capability gap points toward?
The supply chain candidate might say they want to work in logistics consulting to help companies build resilient distribution networks. That's specific enough to be credible, broad enough to be flexible.
Why Most Prepared Answers Fail
The standard advice is to research the company, identify a career goal, and explain how the MBA bridges the gap. Candidates memorize this structure and deliver it robotically.
The problem is that panels have heard this exact structure thousands of times. They can tell when someone is reciting a script versus articulating genuine thinking. The Forward Momentum Framework works because it forces you to start from authentic interest rather than reverse-engineering from what sounds impressive.
Here's the test: If a panel member interrupts your answer and asks "But why that specifically?", can you go three levels deep without running out of genuine reasons? Most memorized answers collapse after one follow-up. Authentic answers keep unfolding.
The Question Behind The Question
IIM panels are building a cohort, not filling seats. When they ask "Why MBA?", they're actually asking: "What will you contribute to classroom discussions? What perspective will you bring that others won't? Are you someone who will add energy to the cohort or drain it?"
Candidates who frame their answer as escape are implicitly saying "I need this from you." Candidates who frame their answer as forward momentum are implicitly saying "Here's what I bring to the table."
That's the difference between a candidate who gets rejected and a candidate who converts.
Practicing The Reframe
The hardest part of this framework isn't understanding it—it's applying it under pressure. In the actual interview, with three professors watching you, your brain defaults to whatever you've rehearsed most.
If you've practiced the escape framing ("I want to switch from engineering to management"), that's what comes out. If you've practiced the forward momentum framing ("I want to understand how technology companies scale operations"), that's what comes out.
This is where tools like Rehearsal become useful. You can practice articulating your "Why MBA" answer repeatedly, get feedback on whether it sounds like escape or momentum, and refine the language until the forward framing becomes automatic. The panel will still ask follow-up questions. But you'll have an answer that survives them.