The exploratory narrative works in rare cases. It is even rarer to read this type of essay for a Harvard MBA.
One big factor that encourages applicants to use the exploratory narrative is a top 1% performance in multiple careers. These are your college athletes, performance artists with a significant fan following (sold tickets worth $1,00,000), YouTubers (more than 50,000 subscribers), or anyone in the public domain with a noticeable impact.
The applicants, after hitting the initial milestone, decide to transition into a traditional post-MBA career, most frequently in Finance (PE or VC), which is known to be a favorite pre-MBA job function for Harvard MBA graduates.
If you are taking the risk with the exploratory narrative and stating that at Harvard, you will find your true calling, use these 3 tips:
1) Establish your Success Story – Early On
Harvard Business School MBA programs are extremely competitive with an acceptance rate in the 10-12% range. A large percentage of rejected applicants are career risk-takers with unconventional paths. The only difference is that many of the bets didn’t work out. The admissions team has a fair understanding of these profiles based on the metrics captured in the resume. Even then some of the performance arts metrics – although unusual cannot be easily quantified to compare with traditional applicants. Within the first 20% of the essay, share your success in the previous career by highlighting the rarity of the venue where you performed, the concept, or the audience that appreciated your performance.
For applicants from sports backgrounds, these challenges are non-existent as reviewers/admissions teams are likely to be sports fans with a deep awareness of the competition and challenges of performing at the college level.
2) The Journey to MBA
The journey to an MBA cannot be the first time you are exploring a career in Finance, Consulting, or Operations. A major in the related industry is the first data that the admissions team would evaluate to understand the motivation for a career transition. For professional athletes such luxury is non-existent. This is the only profile type where no time for gaining a professional degree is accepted as a valid explanation. For everyone else, sharing interests outside the first career is a way to show how the career transition happened.
3) Post-MBA Plan
The interesting narratives are of those applicants who had equal success in their side gig and day job. The MBA is truly a moment of reflection to pursue both paths and find an intersection of the two paths to find a career. In the Sample HBS MBA Essay – Passion vs. Talent, I had to strategically include how the applicant plans to merge his music interests with Finance. This would not have been possible if the applicant didn’t gain any traction among subscribers. So, when you merge two careers, there should be enough supporting data to prove that you have succeeded in both.
