I will teach you how to bring your life stories to essays faster with F1GMAT's essay guides. Download below or subscribe to F1GMAT's Service and work with me - Atul Jose, Author/Editor/Founding Consultant, F1GMAT(16 Years of helping applicants gain admissions to M7 and Top 30 schools) For the Harvard MBA Essay 1 on Career Choice, Aspirations & IMPACT, we cover:
- Overused but Effective Harvard MBA Narrative Examples - Childhood Events
- Why Frameworks are important for narrating Career Choices in MBA Essays?
- First Framework – Big Five
- Big Five #1 - Extraversion
- Big Five #2 - Openness to Experience
- Big Five #3 - Conscientiousness
- Big Five #4 - Emotional Stability
- Big Five #5 - Agreeableness
- Second Framework – RIASEC
- Realistic
- Investigative
- Artistic
- Social
- Enterprising
- Conventional
Required Harvard MBA Essay #1: Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices and aspirations and the impact you strive to make on the businesses, organizations, and communities you plan to serve. (up to 300 words)
Overused but Effective Harvard MBA Narrative Examples - Childhood Events
This is a cliché that works. From experiencing flying to hunting to fishing to meaningful activities that your parent or caregiver shared with you, there are many ways in which you can bring back the ‘origin’ story of one event from childhood.
There is nothing wrong with using it as long as you focus on the prose.
Two similar examples can be read differently if the writer captures a unique ‘slice’ of life experience and then captures the ‘big’ moment that became a defining moment for their career and captures it with all the right emotions.
Mentor, Career Choice and the Risk of Losing focus Away from you
Another Harvard MBA Essay narrative that I have read and intervened with my edit comments are narratives where the first one fourth of the essay is about a mentor. Even when Harvard had no word limit or 900 words, such liberty with words on another character is a sure way to distract the admissions team.
Keep the focus always on you in subtle ways that don’t sound narcissistic.
Why Frameworks are important for narrating Career Choices in MBA Essays?
I am a short story writer who believes that one’s creativity should fill the page. There should be limited pre-planning except for planning how the story will end, but when it comes to Essays for MBA application, I strongly suggest that clients embrace a framework to reason out choices when it comes to career or goals essays. It could be from matching personality types to behavior and outcomes or an event from childhood acting as an impetus for choosing a career or a mentor’s guidance or behavior inspiring you to choose a path.
Two frameworks that will help you outline your Career Choices part of the Harvard MBA Essay One are the Big Five and the RIASEC framework.
Matching Personality Types to Behavior and Outcomes – 2 Frameworks
First Framework – Big Five
I have suggested this framework to answer the What Matters Essay for Stanford. A similar principle can also be applied once you understand the Big Five personality dimensions.
Although there are hundreds of literature on what each dimension means, let me break it down from an MBA Essay narrative perspective:
Big Five #1 - Extraversion
A person who is socially adept at communicating and coordinating to meet personal, team, company, or community objectives is categorized under ‘extraverted’ individuals.
It would be unusual for Harvard – known to popularize the Case Study Method to accept someone who is an introvert or with limited cross-functional and cross-hierarchical communication skills.
From an HBS Admissions perspective, Extraversion is extremely important. Make sure that you shortlist examples that clearly demonstrate extraversion.
Admission Consultant’s Note
Shortlisting examples is half the battle. You would be surprised at the number of rejected applicants who got in the second time around just by changing the example cited in the MBA Essay. This goes for other M7 schools as well
Big Five #2 - Openness to Experience
Openness to Experience has many sub-contexts – openness to actions, openness to ideas, openness to aesthetics, openness to values, openness to fantasy, and openness to feelings.
Just the motivation to pursue a Harvard MBA came from an Openness to idea. But in HBS Essays you must explore other aspect of this trait to complement your professional accomplishment and competency.
I will explore a few examples:
Openness to Actions: is a manifestation of extraversion where the person gets dopamine hits by pursuing sensation seeking activities and working together with groups. Although the results on Openness to Action on team outcome is inconclusive, the sub-trait has a positive correlation to the person’s overall mental health.
Openness to Ideas: is the fundamental tenant of learning. Person willing to engage in activities that explore new ideas are primarily seeking to build wisdom. An MBA program with diverse peers is a classic example of candidates pursuing openness to ideas. But not all applicants with openness to ideas are exhibiting creativity.
Openness to Aesthetics is the sub-trait that evaluates imagination and, to a large extent, Intelligence and emotional vulnerability. Unlike other sub-traits, Openness to aesthetics is a measure of a person’s willingness to experience ‘awe’ – a habit that regulates emotion. Contradicting the feeling of awe, this group is also more prone to depression and least likely to be extroverted in expressing emotions.
Openness to Values is the sub-trait that dictates political discourses. Traditional applicants like stability and established norms, while a person with an openness to values looks at change as an essential path to growth. One caveat is that a person who is high on openness to values has a higher risk of developing mental health issues. The Type A candidates that typically apply to the Harvard MBA program have low scores on openness to values. The applicants are persisting with values that have earned them success till now.
Admission Consultant’s Note
Narrative that clearly expresses Openness to Values is when I know that a person is better suited for Stanford MBA program over Harvard.
Openness to Fantasy: is more of a measure of your mental health and resilience than a trait in itself to measure performance. If a person is fantasizing about an ideal outcome while not managing the real outcome, it can lead to depression. The chance of derailing the pursuit of a goal affects extroverted people with an openness to Fantasy the most. This trait also affects neuroticism, the inability to adjust with peers and family, and motivation in general. When you cite failures in any of the narratives, make sure that the admissions team doesn’t interpret the pursuit as a manifestation of ‘openness to fantasy.’
Openness to Feelings: Women tend to have higher openness to feelings and could be overwhelmed by not processing feelings. An advantage for those with high openness to feelings is that it reduces the risk of all types of diseases, including cardiac, depression, anxiety, and a tendency for substance abuse.
What narrative can you use to express openness and career choice?
An Openness to Action, Ideas and Values play well for traditional Harvard MBA applicants working in Consulting, Technology and Finance with Openness to values not particularly high on the list.
An Openness to Action, ideas, Values, and Aesthetics is persuasive for career switchers and creative applicants with Values, Ideas, and Aesthetics playing a larger role in their decision.
Big Five #3 - Conscientiousness
In the most simplistic definition, Conscientiousness is a trait of ‘taking complete ownership’ of a task. This means putting in the effort, ensuring that the quality standards are met, and working diligently until the task is complete.
Related: What is Conscientiousness – An MBA Essay Perspective
I have yet to see a person who got admitted to Harvard or any M7 school without this quality. It is an unsaid requirement.
Big Five #4 - Emotional Stability
An emotionally stable person is not affected permanently by negative outcomes and does not disrupt team dynamics when faced with stressors - work or life events.
From an essay narrative perspective, professionalism even when faced with personal tragedies are a few examples I have read a decade ago. In our current culture where we are more open to addressing our stressors, such heroic narratives is not required to demonstrate resilience. There are other ways to build suspense just by playing with storytelling structure (captured in my storytelling section in the essay guide).
However, emotional stability or resilience is still one of the top qualities that employers look for in a candidate. With 13% pursuing entrepreneurial goals at Harvard post-MBA and as an Entrepreneur myself, I would vouch for this trait as the single biggest determinant in reaching your short-term and long-term goals. Failure is inevitable if your goals are ambitious. You will pivot one or several times if the post-MBA goal is anything related to entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurial Applicants: Keeping your entrepreneurial goal in mind, choose examples where you have pivoted or shown resilience under tremendous stress. Maybe the negative event has helped you choose a career. Even if the career choices are accidental, put reason to your choice.
Don’t attribute your career choice to ‘luck.’
Schools don’t look kindly at such narratives.
Big Five #5 - Agreeableness
Person high in agreeability is known to earn much lower than non-agreeable persons or persons who have prioritized self-interest goals over maintaining harmony in a team.
From a school’s perspective – a reasonably agreeable person who has the extraversion skills to focus on the class objective while also possessing emotional stability to work with peers from diverse backgrounds is sufficient to meet the definition of an ‘agreeable’ peer.
Second Framework – RIASEC
RIASEC Evaluation and Harvard MBA Essay on Career Choice
Another simplistic model to Evaluate your Personality for the Harvard MBA Career Choice Essay is RIASEC (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional)
Realistic
Engineering (Mechanical/Oil and Gas/Former Sportspersons/Military): The person enjoys working outdoors and with their hands – tools & machines. They need to work on ‘real’ visceral objects to find meaning in their career.
Investigative
Finance, Science, Math, and Technology majors fit into this group where the person is energized by working alone on a problem. Collaboration with peers is pursued to expedite reaching the solution or to acquire knowledge. It is a means to an end and not the primary motivation for teamwork.
Artistic
Another group that thrives alone are artistic people who like to maximize their imagination to work with both ideas and ‘real’ visceral objects. They are an intersection of Realistic and Investigative groups in terms of working in a team, but in thinking, their motivations are unique.
Social
A stereotype for women applicants working in non-profits, marketing, and on-ground development work as part of the government, this group thrives at helping the community.
Admission Consultant’s Note: If your day job falls under the Realistic or Investigative group, a Social activity will raise your RIASEC score.
Enterprising
Perhaps the most valuable group that Harvard Business School is unlikely to find in high volume are entrepreneurs, as they tend not to apply to full-time MBA programs or drop out after joining the program. The closest alternative is enterprising applicants who have demonstrated unique leadership skills in starting a new initiative in the organization, taking a process, system, or initiative to its maximum potential, and thrive working with people and data.
Enterprising is a mix of Investigative and Social groups.
Conventional
This group is the least favorable for Harvard. Jobs in traditional accounting and careers fall under Conventional. Even applicants with career trajectory within the expected promotion cycle will be considered a Conventional applicant.
The extra-curricular and volunteering should be among the best for Conventional applicants to change the admission person’s perspective. The career choice essay should also be strategically phrased to avoid building on the first impression.
Essay Editing Service for Harvard MBA Application
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References
- THE BIG FIVE PERSONALITY DIMENSIONS AND JOB PERFORMANCE: A META-ANALYSIS; MURRAY R. BARRICK, MICHAEL K. MOUNT
- RIASEC - An Application of Holland’s Theory to Career Interests and Selected Careers of Automotive Technology Students; Laura G. Maldonado, Kyungin Kim, Mark D. Threeton (North Carolina State University, The Pennsylvania State University
