There is no harm in mentioning your entrepreneurial father/mother running the department store or small business. In the Harvard MBA Essay, one of the commonly cited narratives is around values that Asian parents pass on.
When Asian American applicants approach me with the question – Should I include the cliched frugality, working hard from 9 to 9, or hanging on to Asian culture, I always respond, "Why Not."
The worry from applicants is that the narrative might seem like what hundreds of competing Asian American MBA applicants with similar backgrounds might write.
For the risk of mentioning stereotypical Asian parents, there are three approaches:
1) Don't start with the Parent
Read any essay. You are likely to retain the first paragraph and the conclusion of an essay over any other sections of the narrative. The middle, where the meat is, only acts as a tool to improve the believability of the essay and bring an overall feeling of satisfaction.
The feeling of satisfaction doesn't come with just facts. The middle is where the 2nd hook of the narrative happens in an MBA Essay - a section where applicants with average writing skills drop the ball. Right at this moment, you can bring an emotional context around your parents, your upbringing, and the amalgam of Western and Eastern worldviews that are guiding you in your career.
2) Address the Cliché
Another approach I used while writing Sample Harvard MBA Essay – Small Business Values during COVID crisis (856 Words) is to address the cliché in a direct statement with lines like, "Growing up as the son of immigrant parents had all the clichés of living an American The initial years of sharing a 1-bedroom apartment, limited English to communicate with the community, helping parents manage the demands of the customers after school, lessons on frugality, and after 20 years of back-bending hard work, owning our Store and apartment block."
By showing an awareness of how the admissions team might misinterpret your story, you are indirectly saying that the essay is not about the Parent or an Asian upbringing. It is about something more.
3) Break the Stereotype
The surprise element in the essay didn't come naturally. I had to brainstorm with the client as part of our impact table creation and remove all examples that might be classified as cliché. Finally, we found an example that was atypical of an Asian parent's priorities.
The focus on efficiency, optimization, and digitization at all costs was the applicant's approach – an American value while the Asian Parent's approach was focused on the customer, even at the cost of inefficiency. This is an immigrant mindset of retaining the customer base. Such nuanced differences could not have been reached without the applicant's suggestions and brainstorming.
Collaboration is the key to Winning MBA Essay while working with MBA admissions consultants and editors.
Editor's Tip: A lot of assumptions about culture are acquired from books, movies, series, and news. There are nuances that cannot be captured in popular media or might seem irrelevant to hook the audience. Such nuances never make it to the culture. The Consultant and Editor consume media in that culture. While working with consultants, offer additional context, even if they didn't ask for it.
Read Sample Harvard MBA Essay – Small Business Values to see how I approached the narrative
