Columbia MBA Essay #3: Favorite book, movie, or song and why it resonates with you. (250 words)
1) Book vs. Movie vs. Song
The risk of quoting a movie or a song that is profound for you but wouldn’t connect with the admissions team is high if your taste doesn’t match with the taste of the popular culture.
Relying on Billboard Top 100 or IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes is one way to mitigate the risk.
A better strategy would be to list the members of the admission team and do a background check – the city they grew up and the colleges they attended.
The latter is time-consuming, a bit creepy, and highly effective in customizing the answer to the views of the audience.
2) Songs
Sadly, popular culture where rhythm is valued over lyrics is tough to translate into an essay unless you quote Kendrick Lamar or go back a few generations and mention Leonard Cohen & Bob Dylan.
The problem is that lot of your competitors will be quoting Dylan.
If you come from a working-class family – Bruce Springsteen has several lines that connect with the angst of the community.
3) Movies
Open-ended or character-driven movies are the easiest to interpret for an essay.
Life’s meaning found through the meaninglessness of infinite life in the movie Groundhog Day, or recognizing kindness even in criminals in The Green Mile, or persisting through setbacks but never never never giving up in The Pursuit of Happiness or recognizing the perils of pursuing power & wealth at the cost of losing the family in The Godfather (II) or the magic of time travel and recognizing each generation’s similarity and uniqueness through Back to the Future are some of my favorites.
4) Why Books
Books are easy to interpret for a general audience.
If you are choosing a fiction, the threads of the narrative that you found similar to your story could be captured in a 250-word essay as long as you focus on one character or an event.
If you are choosing a non-fiction with one theme, your passion for a cause or a region or a community could be captured by highlighting the author’s interpretation.
Book Summary: Unless you have the habit of keeping notes, some of the nuanced life lessons might have been lost in the far corners of your consciousness. A quick glance at the book summary will bring back memories. I recommend reading your favorite book again and underlying the sections that connected with you.
What to Capture from the books: Ideas
Several of the ideas that have become cliché in our culture was novel a few years ago: first-principle thinking – disrupting traditional businesses, process optimization – improving production volume without increasing cost, strategic funding – revenue vs. market share, and power of sleep – in improving performance.
What to Capture from the books: Causes
The discrimination in acquiring property in the 1950s and its long-term impact on family wealth for generations of African Americans might have been an obscure literature for decades. With social media, camera, and the recent violence, the systemic injustice and the root cause have reached the mainstream.
If you are from a minority community and had to face the injustices of the system, a historic context of slavery will enlighten the admission team on the challenges.
If you are not from the minority community but worked closely in elevating the minorities or worked on global causes – poverty alleviation, climate change and equitable access to energy, books themed around them will fit perfectly with your background, volunteering and extra-curricular.
What to Capture from the books: Skill
Books on learning a skill – art, piano, improv or selling, also translate well to essays. After reading, Keith Johnstone’s IMPRO – Improvisation and the Theatre, I could never unsee every interaction in life as a wildly manipulative game of status. One person dominates, and the other person secedes – sooner or later. Once the equilibrium is established, deals close, friendships build, and dates become life-long partners.
IMPACT of Age
In my late 20s, when I was starting F1GMAT, I loved Felix Dennis’s, How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets. When I married, I had a better perspective on looking beyond my selfish goals and found Gordon Livingston and Elizabeth Edwards’ Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now, to offer a balanced perspective on what to expect as I move past the ‘confident’ 20s. When I had two kids, Gabor Maté’s Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, became an interesting read on parenting and grooming the next generation.
Your favorite book from the early 20s would become meaningless in mid-20s and irrelevant in your late 20s or early 30s. However, there are a few interesting books that have stood the test of time, and if you have read them, I would suggest mentioning one of them:
1. Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want - by Nicholas Epley (A bible for anyone who wants to understand how we think, feel and act)
Note: Nicholas is a Booth professor
2. Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now by Gordon Livingston and Elizabeth Edwards (if you are seeking the philosophical answer to the purpose of life)
3. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl (An introspection on the possibilities and the limitations of suffering)
4. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (An original narrative on how we think)
5. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (A best-seller and a milestone in understanding human beings and their journey)
6. When Cultures Collide by Richard D. Lewis (A fascinating look at the origin, evolution, and uniqueness of each culture)
7. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (A pre-cursor to Sapiens and understanding human beings)
8. The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster by Darren Hardy (A realistic perspective on what it is like to be an entrepreneur. Ideal for entrepreneurial applicants)
