• Leadership-Focused Essay: What experiences have shaped how you invest in others and how you lead? (up to 250 words)
Background Information: The applicant navigates the horrors of war and finds his humanity by guiding underprivileged children build life and leadership skills.
Leadership Traits: Mentoring, Authenticity
Leadership Trait (Explained): Sometimes leadership traits are all about evaluating the current situation with authenticity. The applicant realizes the PTSD that comes with serving the military in a combat zone. But he doesn’t allow the thoughts to conquer what makes military training unique.
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.
Theme: Resilience
Theme (Explained): Surviving the horrors of war could be a sign of resilience, but when there are many braver soldiers laying their lives for the country, such narratives are disrespectful. A better strategy is to highlight narratives that demonstrate resilience in acclimatizing to civilian life and taking the ‘best’ learning from the time in combat for the betterment of the world.
Profile: Military
Industry: Non-Profit, Military
Opener: The opener establishes the location and the on-ground reality of the war.
Sample Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Trauma, Healing and Finding Authentic Self (242 Words)
The war in Afghanistan was in decline but I received the notice. On departure, my father gave a despondent look one sees in funerals. Since the destruction of strategic assets had relevance geopolitically, we were constant targets in Kabul.
Kids who barely made it out of high school were on a mission that ...
