How to genuinely Capture your story in MBA Essays

After a 3-minute monologue, I invited the dog to a boxing match. Hamish wagged his fake tail and barked onto the stage. My boxing gloves were filled with flour. The punches connected and covered the stage with a smog-like aftermath. I heard a clap or two from the audience. My elder brother was in the crowd and later told me that the mic was off, I talked too fast, and no one could understand the plot. Brothers are brutally honest. Being a shy kid, I didn't emote for the audience. Hamish, my friend and the dog in the rabbit vs. dog fable, would have been a better fit for the role, but my English Teacher thought it was time for me take the stage.

Any form of public performance needs courage, concentration and the resilience to accept failure. I didn't take corrective actions. I quit. I never acted again, not in a lead role.

I saw the Harvard MBA Admissions Director asking applicants to be genuine and the INSEAD MBA Managing Director recommending not to polish the Essay too much; hints that the edited version of the essays tends to be devoid of any personality or genuineness.

Polished vs. Genuine Essay

If I share my first attempt at acting and the subsequent realization that I was not good at it, would my narrative sound genuine?

Yes.

So what is the polished version of the narrative?

I took up another lead role in a play. This time, I made sure that the mic was set up properly. I worked on the script. Recommended a voice over for clarity. You get it. That is a polished version of what had happened. But if I had really given a 2nd shot at acting, I wouldn't use a clichéd comeback story. I would spend a considerable part of the essay building doubt in the reader's mind, before sharing an insider secret on emoting for the audience. The Essay Reviewer would have learned something new about Acting and be thoroughly entertained with the suspense.

So, how to genuinely capture your story?

1) Introspective about Internal Compass

Genuine narratives capture the beliefs, worries, and ideas for overcoming an obstacle or the thought process behind a decision.

2) Failure is a data point not an end of the Story

Genuine Applicants use failures as a critical data point for their narrative, instead of avoiding them or spinning it as a strength.

3) They do not just talk

Volunteering is a great measure of how genuine the applicant is. If applicants talk a lot about helping the underprivileged with no evidence of volunteering, the narrative is wasted.

4) Extra-Curricular = Skills useful for post-MBA

If you don't have great volunteering experience, spend your words on extra-curricular. Capture your strengths and weaknesses in the context of the extra-curricular activities.

5) Details

Genuine narratives will have a lot of details instead of generic statements. Essay Reviewers look for them first while evaluating your candidacy.

A failure should be cleverly used as a plot point in your Essay. That is how you capture genuineness.

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