• Business-Minded Essay: Please reflect on how your choices have influenced your career path and aspirations. (up to 300 words)
Background Information: An applicant who has grown in her PE career is facing a dilemma: whether to continue in her finance career or pivot into her creative career, where she has over 50,000 loyal YouTube subscribers, and her videos have captured over 10 million views.
Theme: Passion, Talent
Theme (Explained): Don’t use exploring passion in business school for any top Business school, especially for Harvard MBA. However, subscription count - YouTube (above 20,000) or TikTok (1 million) is a rare feat even among creators. It is tough to acquire such following regardless of the niche industry the creator is working. If you gained such an audience, you should strategically include it in one of the three essays.
Profile: Private Equity, YouTube Creator
Industry: Finance, Creative
MBA Essay Strategy: Capturing vulnerability is the toughest part for Harvard MBA applicants. For this essay example, I have captured the applicant’s uncertainty about career choice throughout the essay. Here the goal is to show vulnerability in the career choice essay while for leadership and growth essay, I could capture one example each from creative and PE industry respectively to balance the narrative. So don’t follow this example without a strategy.
Opener: The applicant’s early inclination to music is crucial to capture the dilemma the applicant is facing. I started by establishing the origin of her talent.
Sample Harvard MBA Business-Minded Essay – Passion vs. Talent (293 Words)
As a two-year-old, I foot-tapped to the music of Hendrix, Beatles, and Led Zeplin. My father nurtured my talent by playing the biggest rock hits before every dinner. My mother insisted that I focus on my academics. A bit behind in the class, I didn’t pay much attention until my father shared the realities of making a career out of performance arts.
Competing with the best guitarist accelerated my guitar skills. I imitated the strategy and joined the Math club. By high school, I was at the top of the class in Math.
Things got worse when my mother was diagnosed with ..
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