To understand how ingrained our beliefs about universally appealing traits are, we must go back 1000 years before the birth of Christ and read Homer. Greek Literature is the originator of all the heroic qualities that we value in our peers and modern culture.
Before Greek mythology, the primary drivers of culture were Egyptian narratives, where the Gods were made into this perfect entities with no flaws. Greeks dismantled this perception and made Gods like us humans – flawed, ambitious, destructive, and idealistic.
MBA Essay Universal Trait #1 – Humanizing the Protagonist with ‘The Cycle’
I edit and write every day. Even the dry research articles need some breather with an interesting opening line or a connection to an industry trend that offers readers a new perspective. To turn around quant-heavy information into an interesting line, I always look for humanizing the narrative. This is a strange practice that not many readers have dissected.
In every human being’s life, whether it is a billionaire, millionaire, farmer, working professional, or blue-collar worker, there is an up, a down, and a swing to the mean cycle. Life’s obstacles, distractions, and competing responsibilities take the protagonists through these cycles.
Capturing the cycles is fundamental to Humanizing the protagonist.
In business writing, the protagonist need not be a human. It could be an institution, stock market, a country, a company, or even a commodity.
When you read about schools as this protagonist fighting to rank higher in US News or FT ranking, we forget that the school is a group of administrators, researchers, professors, students, and alumni - all distributed in different life goals, cities, or even countries – representing an abstract entity. Still, we want to see the protagonist go through the ups and downs of life like a human.
M7 MBA candidates make sure that they capture the cycle and humanize themselves.
MBA Essay Universal Trait #2 – Commitment
It is trivial how commitment is celebrated in the modern world, where we have one-week, one-month, and 6-month anniversaries to celebrate a relationship. Maybe it is our inability to focus beyond 30 seconds that changed the metrics of measuring commitment, but all universally appealing stories had long, enduring periods of commitment.
• Commitment of Time
• Commitment of Energy
• Commitment of Attention
• Commitment to Values
A young swimmer in our neighborhood wanted to be a state champion. Her parents shared the same enthusiasm. She went to practice 2 hours a day for a decade. With each year, she started winning local competitions. The commitment to achieve the goal puzzled her friends, who, as they approached their teen years, began shifting to more meaningful pursuits of gaining the attention of potential partners.
The ‘committed’ swimmer kept at it. At 16, she won the state championship, earning her the title of the youngest champion. Then, in a week, she decided it was enough.
Her goal was fixed. She attained it. And now she wanted to commit to another pursuit.
This story template gets repeated among M7 admits with multiple careers, hobbies that became small businesses, and passions that changed the neighborhood. In all these pursuits, there were years of commitment that cannot be faked.
MBA Essay Universal Trait #3 – Sacrifice
All heroes we look up to are going through a voyage. A metaphorical sea with crushing waves. The danger of losing one’s earned reputation and fortune is real. The glitz of funding and Ferrari cars aside, the journey to change how society learns, transacts, travels, or thinks has transformed the Entrepreneur from a nerd with no hobbies to a modern superhero.
What makes the voyages of the ‘entrepreneur’ universally appealing is the Sacrifice of pleasure. Sacrifice of living a comfortable life. Sacrifice of a safe path with a high risk of reputational harm.
Sacrifice has a universal appeal.
Sacrifice for the greater good of the team, company, family, and the future of society has ingrained heroic traits that any examples colored subtly with elements of Sacrifice immediately change the admissions team’s perspective about the candidate.
A few months or years of financial hardship is trivial in an M7 MBA essay, but financial hardship brought about by sacrificing income for the family and extended family is a heroic narrative.
Not following the path of the industrialist father looks like a manufactured story, but starting at the lower rung of a company not owned by the father, building a reputation as a creative, and demonstrating an innovative approach that became a standard in the industry is a heroic narrative.
Sacrificing weekends for volunteering is expected from M7 applicants, but Sacrificing weekends and traveling 100 miles every week to educate low-income students in an impoverished neighborhood is a heroic narrative.
Spotting such nuances in a story requires years of practice. I have over a decade and a half of practice in reading, writing (see my sample MBA application essays), editing, and structuring M7 MBA application essays. You can collaborate with me by Subscribing to F1GMAT’s Essay Editing Service.
Winning MBA essays tap into these universally accepted three qualities – humanizing the journey, commitment, and Sacrifice.
Download the Winning MBA Essay Guide (245+ Sample Essays) to learn how.
