From Siliguri to LSE: How Harsh Mittal Made It to London

When the offer from the London School of Economics finally landed, Harsh Mittal was sitting in a remote village in Gujarat, "somewhere in the middle of nowhere." The notification popped up on his phone. He glanced at it, saw he'd got in — and swiped it away to finish the work he was doing. Only later did he call his parents.

It's a very Harsh way to reach one of the world's top universities: quietly, deliberately, and on his own terms. We've known him and his family in Siliguri for over twenty years, and across all of it he has been unusually serious about his career. This is how he got from a North Bengal classroom to London — told the way he told it on the Global Thinkers Podcast.

A decision made at sixteen

Harsh studied up to class 10 at Don Bosco, Siliguri, then moved to Mayo College in Ajmer for classes 11 and 12. The move to boarding school wasn't pushed on him — he'd wanted it since class 8. His parents made him wait.

The reason was telling. He had grown up in Siliguri knowing everyone, carrying a family legacy that, in a hometown day school, can feel like a comfortable bubble. "I wanted that exposure of being away from home, where I was not in the shadow of my background," he says. Boarding school took the cushion away. "It made me very independent."

That instinct — to choose the harder, more exposing path on purpose — is the thread that runs through everything that followed.

NMIMS, COVID, and the refusal to coast

After school, Harsh went to NMIMS in Mumbai for a BBA in Finance — a score-based admission, no interview, taken during the COVID batch. Three of his semesters, roughly half his degree, were online.

We see a lot of students from that batch who quietly drifted: comfort zone, shortcuts, careers knocked off course. Harsh was the rare exception. "I had an unfair advantage," he laughs. "I was the category of kid who actually paid attention in the online classes." More than that, he never let the question of finishing his education become a question at all. "Not completing my education was never an option. I have to study, even if the world is going to end."

Alongside the BBA, he completed his CMA (Certified Management Accountant). He'd tried the CA foundation first and realised it wasn't for him — too much law. CFA leaned too far into trading, and he's "not a trading person." CMA, built on the managerial accounting he loved at NMIMS, fit. His way of putting it stuck with us: "If you go to a doctor, they ask for your reports. If you go to a CFO, they ask for your numbers." He wanted to understand the numbers.

He also pushed himself sideways — joining the college tech club, designing a website, building an app, none of it on his syllabus. "It's just the willingness to learn," he says.

Why a master's, and why abroad

Harsh comes from a family business — and unlike many family-business students who skip further study, he chose to do a master's first. The motivation was exposure. His family's business spans multiple cities and countries, and he wanted to know people from Singapore, the UK, Greece, Turkey — not across a boardroom table, but as peers. "I just knew my education couldn't end there. There was more to learn, and a way to make it practical."

That's the honest case for studying abroad, and it's why we always start with the goal rather than the brochure. (If you're weighing where your own goal points, our guide on choosing a destination is built around exactly that question.)

Choosing London, choosing LSE

Together we applied to a shortlist of London names — King's College London, UCL, Imperial, London Business School, and LSE. LBS came back with a straight rejection; Imperial offered a waitlist; LSE sent the offer. He never finished the UCL and King's applications — the LSE offer settled it. "The brand value of LSE was much more important."

Location mattered as much as the badge. Harsh was clear he wanted London. He'd visited Cambridge, Oxford, Liverpool, Manchester — "great, world-class universities and cities, but they were just college cities. There was nothing for a person who wanted to explore what the world has to offer." For the exposure he was after, it was London or, at a push, Dublin. This is the kind of trade-off we map with every UK applicant on our Study in the UK guide.

Inside LSE

So is LSE overhyped? Harsh doesn't think so — but not for the reason people assume. "It's not that everyone comes from money. The cohort is people who talk about ideas that will change the world of tomorrow." Visiting faculty during his time included the politician Sachin Pilot and entrepreneur Ashneer Grover. His classmates ranged from chemistry and music majors to people who already held one master's and had come back for another, simply to keep learning.

The teaching demanded self-direction. A capstone project put him inside a real company as a consultant, start to finish. Beyond a generic first semester (economics, maths, accounts, marketing), he chose options in negotiation and operations. And nobody chased him. "They just email you what needs to get done. The schedule, the paperwork, getting it checked — that's on you. No one is going to run behind you." For a student used to being spoon-fed in India, that was the real education.

Harsh's advice for students aiming at LSE

Because so many of our students say "LSE" by default, we asked him what actually moves the needle. His answers were refreshingly concrete:

• Build the CV early. "Be on the organising committee for an event or two a year. Get into clubs and societies." The exposure compounds.
• Take IELTS seriously. LSE doesn't require the GMAT or GRE, so IELTS is the one compulsory test — which makes the band a genuine tie-breaker in a competitive cohort. "People think IELTS is just a language test. It isn't." His own tip is to book it early and prepare deliberately. (We bake that into our application timeline so it never gets left to the last minute.)
• The SOP is everything. "Your CV is just a skeleton. The SOP is what they judge you on." On ChatGPT he's pragmatic but firm: don't ask it for an SOP — give it your life, your data, your vision, and make it write in your words. The substance has to be yours. We walk through that process in our study-abroad guide for North Bengal families.

Coming home

Harsh finished at LSE in 2025 with a 1.5-year post-study work visa in hand — and chose not to use it. He came home to the family business, where he's now working on a high-speed rail project for the next couple of years before pursuing ideas of his own. "One thing at a time," he says.

His parting advice is the line we'd want every student from Siliguri to hear: "Keep an open mind — to experiences, to people, to whatever the world has to offer. Every experience is just a story you can tell someone else."

This is one of those stories. If your child has a version of it in them, the honest first step is a conversation — tell us where they want to go, or get an indicative match in two minutes with our Course Finder.