Background Information: The applicant – a white male applicant working with a diverse team from China, South Africa, and India for a technology giant, confronts a peer who makes unflattering comments about his international peers on a visit to the US.
Theme: Inclusion, Courage, Xenophobia
Theme (Explained): Xenophobia takes many forms. In the current fragile global economy, with many countries embracing nationalistic attitudes, immigrants or even tourists are looked at with suspicion. The essay covers one such incident.
Profile: Technology Consultant
Industry: Technology
MBA Essay Strategy: One of the senior persons in the team with strong Xenophobic tendencies began making disparaging comments – subtly about an entire community and, in several cases, against the countries¯ the international peers belonged to.
Asians and Asian Americans become his favorite punching bags. Initially dismissing comments in a jocular spirit, the applicant noticed that the comments became more frequent.
Witnessing how the disparaging comments began affecting peers and their morale, the applicant escalated the inexcusable behavior to the project manager.
The applicant’s courage to stand up for values that made America the most welcoming country to immigrants and travelers alike is the core of the narrative.
The big challenge in such narratives is not to present the context with too many adjectives or ‘preaching’ prose. Keep it as a matter of fact to improve the believability of the essay.
Opener: The opening line sets the context of the project – international teams and the many postponements before finally the applicant and his international team meeting at DC.
Sample Tuck Meaningfully contributed to someone else’s sense of inclusion in your professional or personal community (Xenophobia) (275 Words)
After six months of working on one of the toughest machine-learning projects and three postponements, my teammates from South Africa, China, and India finally joined me in DC.
The final phase of our project required rigorous testing as the FinTech product served the most vulnerable in society who couldn’t afford to risk their savings to security breaches.
A senior developer in the team who was known for making off-color remarks began sharing typecasting comments about our Chinese peer. Initially, ..
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