Our MBA Application Essay Review Service requires the client to write about their failure even if the essay does not ask them to do so. You know why we torture our energetic applicants to relive the dark phases of “FAILURE”? We noticed that a greater measure of the emotional maturity or EQ of a person is the manner in which she explains her failure. If “We”, a word used sparsely during questions about success is frequently used when the topic is about Failures, the blame game has already started.
Failures – Cultural Implications
For the Japanese, failure carries a much deeper psychological wound than what Americans lightly term as “setbacks.” For Indians, a Govt. Job or the predestined Engineering or Medicine degree hold a higher prestige than the failure-filled Entrepreneurial route while for the Chinese, a Business failure is tolerable with a recent Chinese OECD survey showing that 90% of the participants would give a second chance to the failed Entrepreneur.
For MBA applications, failure is not limited to the narrow scope of Entrepreneurship but includes Life Experiences. Failures from your personal experience might be setbacks for an American reviewer, a catastrophe for an Indian reviewer, and a tolerable blip in your otherwise glowing career for a Chinese reviewer. Understanding a universally acceptable life experience independent of the reviewer’s cultural and personal upbringing is crucial to connect with the admission team.
Survivor Bias
Search for Book titles with “How I survived a --------------“.
Now fill the blank with Divorce, Cancer, Failure, Financial Meltdown, Bankruptcy, you name it.
Have you ever seen a best-selling book – “How I lost it all” without any redeeming phrase in the end?
We all love the redemption story, not because we are the soapy sentimental type, but our hope machine depends on stories of survival. With an evolutionary bias towards stories about survival, failures never become part of the news.
Steven Levitt, the Freakonomics author, did tackle this question directly. While reviewing Good to Great by Jim Collins – the early start-up bible for many, Steve noticed that Jim had shortlisted 11 companies from 1435 listed companies. The companies were those that picked momentum when Jim was writing the book (2001). He found a common trait that bound them all together – “a sense of discipline”. Unfortunately, for Jim, one of the 11 outperforming companies was Fannie Mae, which went bankrupt in 2008 and delisted in 2010 after several attempts by the Govt. to resurrect it. Moreover, the other 10 companies underperformed heavily compared to the S&P 500 index. When a company is delisted, it is never part of the analysis, and Financial Analyst do historical analysis of companies that have succeeded over a small period of time, and then try to find attributes that seem like a common trait. This is what Books about Entrepreneurship does.
For every Steve Job or Zuckerberg working out of their parent’s Garage, there are thousands of other Entrepreneurs who didn’t even cross the first stage of funding. To attribute success to “Persistence” and “Ramen Noodles” based on who became successful is a flawed approach.
MBA Failure Essay: Over citation of Persistence
Essays have turned into those Entrepreneurship Books. Applicants are trying to credit the usual suspect – “persistence” for their comeback. You can do better than that. Specificity wins over general attribute matching. The Admission team is reading the 100th essay about Persistence. For once, highlight your problem-solving capability. You didn’t persist perhaps. You changed direction by analyzing the reasons for your failure. Very few applicants have that perspective and very few actually get into Harvard.
Don’t Dwell on Failures: Curse of Self-Help Books
If you go to any self-help books from the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to How to Win Friends and Influence People, to the bulk of the Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar titles, a unifying theme emerges. Don’t dwell on Failures - a common advice MBA Admission Consultants give partly to meet the 500-word limit where you have to include the ‘corrective action’ but mostly because it is not cool to keep sulking on your failures. The moment have passed. Look forward. Learn from your mistakes. Even superstar Entrepreneurs keep giving the same advice – “If you are afraid to fail, you will never succeed, and then swiftly change subjects to the next big venture they took off the ground.”
For the thick-skinned Entrepreneurs and Global Business Leaders, who talk about Failures in such impersonal terms – why is it you might wonder, they never spend even 20% of their words on this crucial aspect of their life journey. Failure is seen as an Idea Virus, and the more you discuss or analyze failures, more the chance that you will approach your next venture with ‘negativity’. The reality is further from this myth.
Worst Possible Results: Was it really ‘The Worst’?
Our minds are naturally working on paths of least resistance, and daydreaming about the best-case results. If you look back at your failures, they were some of the worst results but were they the worst possible results. Perhaps not. It would be a rarity if your failure contributed towards a company going bust or your company losing a major client. Sure there was a loss of revenue. Most contracts have penalties for delays and underperformance. Otherwise, how is it a failure? But the relationship was amended by a colleague or the supervisor with the Gift of Gab.
Even if you took a company down – don’t defend yourselves with all those silly MBA jargons about “Synergy and Team Spirit”. Those applicants never make it to the interview stage. For those, who came out from the worst to a better position, panicked, and desperately tried solutions to get out of the slump. Even a solution that allowed you to survive is a comeback. The redemption story need not be that dramatic. Most dramatic comeback stories are not believable, and the AdCom will file your essay with the list of fictional books for their private reading.
Analyzing Failures: The Growth Mindset
An applicant with Growth mindset looks at challenges as opportunities for mastery. What most applicants confuse is the difference between mastery and persistence. To persist means to continue in a path despite failures. Mastery is more of a mindset than action, and how do the Admission team know? The tone with which you write about Failure will expose your mindset.
The Fallacy of Talent: Those who think that talent is fixed will make an observation about their God- given talents, and reveal weaknesses as talent deficiency. That is a red flag. No one is an in-born Financial Analyst or a Software Programmer. You acquire the skills by working on your Math and Logical skills. You don’t become a great writer by reading thousands of essays and visualizing sentences. You write – some great, some unpublishable but some worth keeping in your MBA Essays. Talent once developed need effort to sustain. When your failure essay is not about Talent but effort, you have taken the first step in differentiating yourselves.
Criticism: Applicants who are defensive about Criticism will either not mention it in the essay or put a positive spin on their experience. If you have failed, you will attract criticism from your supervisors, your colleagues, and your clients. It is a natural reaction. How did you take the criticism should be the thread that you use to write about the corrective action, not the self-realization or calm reflection about events that led to the failure. Let us be real. When we fail, we are least likely to act like a monk. The common thread in the criticism from different stakeholders will reveal the real reasons for your failure (lack of focus, effort, or faulty decisions).
Support: When we fail, someone else will do the rescue act. Most applicants fail to mention the role of the colleague or the supervisor, who was decisive in taking over the project or helping you during the crisis. Use them as inspirations. What did you learn from them? Did you consider the failure as an opportunity to persist or as a lesson to master your skills? How did you approach the next project after the failure?
Don’t worry if writing about Failure with a growth mindset doesn’t come naturally to you. We will guide you through the writing process. Subscribe to our Essay Review Service.
About the Author
I am Atul Jose - the Founding Consultant at F1GMAT.
Over the past 15 years, I have helped MBA applicants gain admissions to Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, Chicago Booth, Kellogg, Columbia, Haas, Yale, NYU Stern, Ross, Duke Fuqua, Darden, Tuck, IMD, London Business School, INSEAD, IE, IESE, HEC Paris, McCombs, Tepper, and schools in the top 30 global MBA ranking.
I offer end-to-end Admissions Consulting and editing services – Career Planning, Application Essay Editing & Review, Recommendation Letter Editing, Interview Prep, assistance in finding funds and Scholarship Essay & Cover letter editing. See my Full Bio.
I am also the Author of the Winning MBA Essay Guide, covering 16+ top MBA programs with 240+ Sample Essays that I have updated every year since 2013 (11+ years. Phew!!)
I am an Admissions consultant who writes and edits Essays every year. And it is not easy to write good essays.
Contact me for any questions about MBA or Master's application. I would be happy to answer them all
Winning MBA Essay Guide - A Complete Guide for M7 and Top 15 MBA Application Essays
F1GMAT's Winning MBA Essay guide will teach you how to transform your essay into a life journey with trials and tribulations that will move the admission team.
+ Over 245 Sample Essays (Read Previews of F1GMAT's Winning MBA Essay Guide Sample Essays here)
+ Top 15 MBA Programs (Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Columbia, Booth, MIT, Kellogg, Yale, Haas, Darden, INSEAD, LBS, NYU Stern, Tuck, Duke Fuqua, Ross)
+ The Art of Storytelling
+ Leadership Narratives
+ Review Tips
+ Persuasion Strategies
+ The Secret to "unleashing" your unique voice
+ How to prepare and present for the Video Essay
+ How to write about your Strengths
+ How to write about your Weaknesses
+ Leadership Narratives
+ Review Tips
+ Persuasion Strategies
+ The Secret to "unleashing" your unique voice
+ How to prepare and present for the Video Essay
+ How to write about your Strengths
+ How to write about your Weaknesses
Want to try the individual school Essay Guides before upgrading to the Winning MBA Essay Guide? Try below.
F1GMAT's Essay Guides
Harvard MBA Essay Guide (20 Sample Essays)
Growth-Oriented Essay: Curiosity can be seen in many ways. Please share an example of how you have demonstrated curiosity and how that has influenced your growth. (up to 250 words)Example #1: Persistence Narrative
Background Information: The applicant – a design and music talent, shares her journey through several setbacks. She attributes curiosity to her growth.
Curiosity: Philosophy
Curiosity (Explained): Curiosity as a philosophy is tough to translate into a narrative unless you are from the creative industry or your contributions had an influence on a solution or an initiative.
MBA Essay Strategy: I wanted to capture the humanity of the applicant and her influence in music instead of just highlighting how she overcame multiple roadblocks to gain attention as a designer.
Theme: Persistence
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Life Starts at NO (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #2: International Community Building
Background Information: The applicant, a Machine Learning (ML) entrepreneur specializing in healthcare diagnostics, shares how his curiosity to learn other ML algorithms’ evolution in diagnosing Alzheimer’s, cancer, and heart disease transformed his platform into a global community.
MBA Essay Strategy: I wanted to show the applicant’s contributions in diagnostic from 2020 to 2024 by citing two events. Such examples build credibility instead of engagements that were recent. The evolution of the platform from an AI development community to a community for discussing the application of AI in diagnostics is captured through a ‘curiosity’ angle.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Growth through Collaboration (AI in Healthcare) (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #3: Culture
Background Information: The applicant, an Entrepreneur from India narrates his first entrepreneurial experience – facilitating exchange of stamps in the late 1990s.
Theme: Culture
MBA Essay Strategy: Instead of addressing the biases in the investor community that could turn preachy, I wanted to focus on the applicant and his entrepreneurial journey by citing two entrepreneurial experiences – a platform(club) for stamp collection and his Grocery delivery App.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – The American Dream (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #4: Addiction
Background Information: The applicant – a beneficiary of the foster home system, captures the sacrifice his adopted grandparents made to save him from a path of addiction. Paying it back through early intervention among teenagers and community engagement is the curiosity narrative.
Theme: Addiction
MBA Essay Strategy: My strategy is to capture a gratitude narrative in the first one-third of the essay to demonstrate motivation for starting the venture and dedicate the latter part of the essay to the unique solution
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Drug Addiction and Gaming (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #5: Scarcity
Background Information: The applicant, an education major, recognizes that 70% of all students in Kenya don’t have a computer. The curiosity that drives him to pivot from one solution to another is the growth narrative.
Theme: Innovation
MBA Essay Strategy: Often, innovation is captured with a ‘hero’ narrative where the applicant is the sole originator of an idea. I wanted to break that cliché and include a person from whom the applicant learned to use a concept called ‘scaffolding.’
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Scarcity (Growth-Oriented HBS Essay Example)Example #6: FinTech
Background Information: The applicant captures a vulnerable moment of a beneficiary to compare his journey of side hustle before a technology giant noticed his talent. Although cryptocurrency is not a flavor for the year, capture niches where innovation is still happening.
Theme: Education, Child Welfare
MBA Essay Strategy: Empathizing with a techno solution is tough without a strong backstory around the beneficiary. For the essay, I wanted to clearly establish the beneficiary – Rami, before the applicant narrates the similarities to his journey and finally shares the solution that emerged from his curiosity.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – FinTech as a Tool for Good (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #7: Learning from the best
Background Information: The applicant – a Remote Engineer in the Oil and Gas industry, reflects on a value that has helped her learn from the best regardless of her geographical limitations.
Theme: Learning
MBA Essay Strategy: The effectiveness of the case-study method depends on the assumption that peers in a Harvard MBA class will help elevate your learning experience. For the essay, I have highlighted the applicant’s recognition of this value proposition with three examples.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Learning from the Best (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #8: Military & Search for IMPACT
Background Information: The most common narrative for US military applicants is to quote 9/11 and the reaction your immediate family had while watching the events unfold. The horrifying moment is captured as a motivation to join the Military. On digging deeper, most applicants would share that their motivations were diverse.
Theme: Career Choice
MBA Essay Strategy: I wanted to quickly highlight that the applicant had the choice of entering any industry. One achievement to demonstrate his curiosity that I shared in the first half is the invention of a game. Since the game is mentioned in the resume and verifiable through search, I didn’t quote the name. By clearly highlighting the person’s curiosity and career options, the family legacy is used as a factor in joining the military.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Career Choice after a Military Career (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)
Leadership-Focused Essay: What experiences have shaped who you are, how you invest in others, and what kind of leader you want to become? (up to 250 words)Example #9: Small Business Values
Background Information: The applicant - a second-generation Asian American, is familiar with the values of fiscal conservatism, building relationships, and understanding the daily struggles of the community through his family’s department store.
Theme: Customer-Centric
MBA Essay Strategy: The applicant’s role in developing an App for the store is highlighted in the essay at a crucial part of the narrative so that the essay is not all about his father. I have also humanized the journey – by sharing how upset the father was when the revenues fell by 40%. The essay is about the transformation in the applicant’s value from a person chasing productivity and optimization technique to someone who is truly thinking about the customers.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Small Business Values (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #10: Breaking Away from Family Business
Background Information: A unique challenge that applicants whose parents are public figures or CXOs of businesses or entrepreneurs are the pressure to live up to the parent’s standards or milestones. For the leadership narrative, the burden of legacy is established before the narrative addresses his leadership principles.
Theme: Authenticity
MBA Essay Strategy: For the essay, I want to capture an entrepreneur’s journey to rise above his entrepreneur father’s image. But I didn’t want to make the entire essay about this complex dynamics. The narrative is around the applicant’s focus on customers and surrounding with teams who keeps him grounded.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Breaking Away from Family Business(Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #11: Creativity and Communication
Background Information: When the overall percentage of users with internet access is 62% in South Africa and the inequality accentuated by the rural and urban divide, the applicant endured the lack of digital infrastructure, and spending close to 22% of the family income on gaining relevant information on schools, global exams, and financial assistance.
Theme: Creativity, Communication
MBA Essay Strategy: The strategy is to share why the applicant values no distraction in a child’s home for optimum education experience. Then I highlight the many roadblocks the applicant’s non-profit faced in receiving fee waiver for their cooperative run ISP.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Non-Profit (Telecom) (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #12: Mental Health
Background Information: The applicant like most didn’t pay much attention to the mental health epidemic until tragedy hit home.
Theme: Communication, Innovation
MBA Essay Strategy: A question we frequently get from applicants is whether they should cite tragedy in the family as a motivation for a venture or a non-profit initiative. As long as you don’t linger too much on the tragedy and offer a balanced narrative, there are no restrictions on leveraging unique stories from your life.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Mental Health (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #13: Trauma, Healing & Finding Authentic Self
Background Information: The applicant narrates the absurdity of war in the narrative about the duties in Kabul, and the trauma. Instead of wallowing in on the horror, the applicant takes what makes military applicants strong and guides unprivileged children build life and leadership skills.
Theme: Resilience
MBA Essay Strategy: Capturing PTSD in an essay, the healing process, and the cues that helped the applicant are too sacred to be shared in a Harvard MBA application essay. However, with the right motivation and narrative arcs, you can capture the essence of your journey without sharing the darkest secrets. That is what I did by merging two stories – the horrors of the war with a non-profit engagement.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Military & PTSD (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #14: Addiction, Setback and Leadership Mantra
Background Information: In this narrative, the applicant captures Peru’s Silver mining boom of 2006. The growth experienced in her father’s business shifted the family’s economic status to a new stratosphere. Through the changing economic and family dynamics, the applicant finds her voice in a unique way, initially to record her unheard voice but later as one of the youngest subject matter experts in mining and commodities.
Theme: Failure
MBA Essay Strategy: For the essay, the strategy is to show how life’s unpredictability is a blessing. By narrating two setback events, the essay demonstrates the applicant’s resilience and her acknowledgment of people who made a comeback possible.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Addiction, Setback and Leadership Mantra (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #15: War, Immigration and Starting Over Again
Background Information: Despite a raging war in Syria, the family of the applicant was unblemished by the chaos. The strategic government assets near the applicant’s house would have made the region an easy target, but it was not. The calmness of her journey is shattered in one event. From the privileges of a cocooned life, the applicant is forced to think about survival, her sister’s future, and her future in the US. The second half of the narrative captures the change that was forced on her.
Theme: Gratitude, Resilience
MBA Essay Strategy: I consciously chose not to start the essay with a dialogue or trauma. Two lines are allocated to set up the narrative before the trauma event.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – War, Immigration and Starting Over Again (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Harvard MBA Business-Minded Essay: Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices and aspirations and the impact you will have on the businesses, organizations, and communities you plan to serve. (up to 300 words)
Example #16: Creative or Finance
Background Information: The applicant starts the narrative with the origin of her talents. The unbridled enthusiasm receives a reality check when in high school, the applicant’s father has a conversation with her about academics. While the applicant picked up her quant skills, she was reaching over 50,000 loyal fans, and her videos captured 1 million views.
Theme: Passion, Talent
MBA Essay Strategy: Capturing vulnerability is the toughest part for Harvard MBA applicants. For this essay example, I have captured the applicant’s uncertainty about career choice throughout the essay. Here the goal is to show vulnerability in the career choice essay while for leadership and growth essay, I could capture one example each from creative and PE industry respectively to balance the narrative. So don’t follow this example without a strategy.
Read: Harvard MBA Business-Minded Essay – Creative or Finance (Business-Minded HBS MBA Essay Example)- Stanford MBA Essay Guide (24 Sample Essays)
- Columbia MBA Essay Guide (21 Sample Essays)
- Wharton MBA Essay Guide (15 Sample Essays)
- INSEAD MBA Essay Guide (19 Sample Essays)
- Darden MBA Essay Guide (21 Sample Essays)
- Yale SOM MBA Essay Guide (15 Sample Essays)
- Tuck MBA Essay Guide (15 Sample Essays)
- Haas MBA Essay Guide (18 Sample Essays)
- NYU Stern MBA Essay Guide (15 Sample Essays + 6 Examples - Visual Essay)
- LBS MBA Essay Guide (6 Sample Essays)
- MIT Sloan MBA Essay Guide (6 Sample Cover Letters + 3 Sample Video Statement Scripts + 3 Sample Optional Essays)
- Kellogg MBA Essay Guide (11 Sample Essays)
- Chicago Booth MBA Essay Guide (12 Sample Essays)
- Ross MBA Essay Guide (31 Sample Essays)
- Duke Fuqua MBA Essay Guide (10 Sample Essays + Two 25 Random Things Samples)
- Cambridge MBA Essay Guide (12 Sample Essays)
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