In today’s application tips series, I will talk about 3 things that will make your essays realistic for MBA admissions.
1) Dilemma
Any interesting story or essay will have some element of doubt – either in the choices you had to make or the feasibility of achieving a goal. One way to do that is to clearly articulate the dilemma. For one of the sample essays I created, the dilemma for the applicant, who was from the African American community, was to recommend unionized jobs in her consulting engagement. This was one of the largest infrastructure projects.
The dilemma arose because she believed and experienced the positive impact of capitalistic ideals, but the solution for black workers to overcome income inequality was to get support through unionized jobs. And she was in a position to recommend a certain percentage of the infrastructure project to union jobs. Suddenly the narrative became interesting.
2) Opposing Force
You don’t have to create villains in your narrative, but you can introduce opposing forces in subtle ways. For the example I created about the union jobs recommended by the black consultant, the opposing force was contractors who wanted to minimize unionized jobs to save cost. And initially, the applicant was about to recommend a low number, but then she conducted a research study -revealing unionized black workers earn 5 times more than non-unionized black workers. Once that data was available, the recommendation became a quant exercise in balancing cost with the right representation. The contractors were mentioned in a subtle way without adjectives labeling them as villains.
3) Realistic metrics
The first thing I notice in a resume is the IMPACT of your achievement, the team size, the project size, and the company size. If your achievement is at a scale that is disproportionate to the project size or the company size, I immediately read the essay.
How it was done becomes an interesting read.
Unless you are working in a fast-growing industry or with the most profitable product of the company quoting high numbers as an IMPACT metric can affect the believability of your story.
The only exception is with government projects or in countries where it is a top-down hierarchy, and the scale of the project is large, with budgets running into billions of dollars.
But when in doubt, always use conservative numbers.
I hope you got value from my tips. You can contact me for any help with Essay Editing and Review.
About Atul Jose
Atul Jose is the Founding Consultant at F1GMAT who has helped applicants get into M7 and Top 30 Global MBA programs over the past 14+ years. He is the Author of the Winning MBA Essay Guide and the host of the Winning MBA Admission Tips Podcast.
