Today we’d like to introduce you to Nived Ravikumar.
Hi Nived, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My original career trajectory was very L.A., studying filmmaking, studying screenwriting, going to film screenings. I think I was a pretty good director—I had some minor success with my student films at film festivals—but where I really shined was as a writer. I’ll take great writing in a movie over great cinematography, acting, costumes, music, etc. any day. But the funny thing I realized about writing in movies is that when it’s good, it elevates every other aspect of the movie anyway. So, while toiling away as an aspiring screenwriter, some friends of mine who happened to be working of their personal statements for various graduate programs figured they might as well ask me, the best writer they knew, to take a look. To be honest, I had very little experience with admissions essays and had pretty much phoned it in on my own personal statements back in the day, but I did know about storytelling. So I did my best to apply the knowledge I had acquired in film school and during all those hundreds of film screenings to what was at the time a totally unfamiliar medium to me. And it worked! Long story short, growing a business where I work with applicants and help them get into their top college and graduate school choices has been dream come true. Maybe one day I’ll write Statement Guru: The Movie for the real tell-all account of this accidental career!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I don’t have any teaching or advising credentials per se, and due to the discreet nature of the work I do, I can’t exactly broadcast the results to a broad audience. So the challenge is and has always been, how do I sell my admittedly unusual services to strangers on the internet? In the early days, it was significantly harder. I had a basic website, and that was pretty much it. No glowing reviews, no blog articles, no podcast interviews. So how do you get from there to a robust client list? Not easily, I assure you. And the one constant has been word-of-mouth. Those friends of mine who first asked me for help on their essays mentioned me to their friends, who also signed up with me, and so on. But relying on that alone was unsustainable. I decided to run Facebook ads to put myself out there, but running them in the U.S. was expensive for someone just starting out with no marketing budget to speak of. Then, I discovered I could run Facebook ads in India and other countries in South Asia for a fraction of the price. I got a lot of interest, which translated into many Desi clients.
The resulting word-of-mouth was significant, and I think that was probably the busiest I’ve ever been in my life to this day. I was close to burnout. Ironically, I was barely making any money because due to the exchange rates, I needed to discount my prices by 80-90% for applicants in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, etc. to sign up. It was a trial by fire, working over the internet and across linguistic and cultural barriers on essays that were often very technical in nature. But I helped to get dozens of applicants in South Asia to top schools in Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Those experiences are really what forged me into the Statement Guru, and I’ve been able to pivot to a mostly U.S. based clientele based on my unanimous 5-star Yelp reviews and word-of-mouth since then. Although I still do love to work with international applicants and do my best to offer them discounts when they approach me.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am the Statement Guru, and the Statement Guru is me. My professional focus is on helping applicants to college and graduate schools craft exceptional admissions essays/personal statements/statements of purpose. I’m somewhat unique in my industry in that I don’t just work with college applicants or law school applicants or med school applicants, if there’s a program at any level anywhere in the world that requires an essay, I’m your guy. I want to say as long as it’s in English, but actually, there have been a couple of instances where I’ve helped someone with an essay and then they’ve translated it into their native language before submitting, so you could truly say that my services can be used by any applicant anywhere. Beyond that, what sets me apart is my emphasis on storytelling. I don’t want to dismiss admissions essays as just some cumbersome formality that institutions subject applicants, I want to elevate admissions essays into an art form.
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
This has nothing to do with essays or writing, but it immediately popped into my head when you asked about my favorite childhood memory. As a kid, I was obsessed with playing Street Fighter 2 in the arcade and couldn’t wait for it be released for Super Nintendo. I found out that it had already been released for Super Famicom, which is the Japanese version of the Super Nintendo. So, when I took a trip with my family to Hong Kong, I thought the Super Famicom version must be available somewhere there. Somehow, I convinced my parents that we needed to go on a wild goose chase to find it. And somehow we did. The only problem I soon learned was that the shape of Super Famicom cartridges were different from Super Nintendo cartridges, and so my new Street Fighter 2 game didn’t fit in the console. After all that effort, it was pretty heartbreaking. But wait, in my desperation, I pried open the cartridge and crammed that circuit board into my Super Nintendo, and wouldn’t you know it, it worked! It was exactly like the Street Fighter game I loved at the arcade except that all the text was in Japanese, which made it even cooler actually!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.statementguru.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/statementguru/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/statement-guru-santa-monica-4
Image Credits
Main image: Sandhya Ravikumar 2nd: Sandhya Ravikumar 3rd: Ariel Oye
