• Leadership-Focused Essay: What experiences have shaped how you invest in others and how you lead? (up to 250 words)
Background Information: Through the changing economic and family dynamics of her father's mining business, the applicant finds her voice in a unique way, initially to find an audience for her underappreciated voice, and later as one of the youngest subject-matter experts in mining and commodities.
Leadership Traits: Resilience, Authenticity
Leadership Trait (Explained): Failure or setback brings back our strong desire to survive the dip. But rarely do leaders share the need for authentically asking for help or communicating the challenge.
Theme: Failure
Theme (Explained): For applicants coming from an entrepreneurial background (family business or startup), taking the narrative through the ups and downs of the venture is one way to traverse the admissions team through life’s unpredictability. If you had to simultaneously manage personal setbacks, the narrative would demonstrably show your resilience. Don’t just make the narrative a tale of setbacks and comebacks. Show how you could manage to communicate authentically and seek help through the setbacks.
Profile: Consultant
Industry: Media, Family Business
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.
Opener: I want the readers to experience the growth that the applicant experienced. The up in the W-pattern (read the chapter on W-pattern storytelling) sets the context for the downtrend.
Sample Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Addiction, Setback and Leadership Mantra (250 Words)
From a middle-income home, in a year, we saw the square footage of our house triple. Coming from a culture where the privilege to talk was not equal for men and women, I kept small notes that turned into elaborate analyses on regulation, global competition, and sustainable steps to reduce the carbon footprint in family’s silver and zinc mining business. The strategic insights became the blog –
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Download F1GMAT's Harvard MBA Essay Guide for the Complete Sample Essay and learn how to create setback narratives without turning it into a Soap opera
