Unusual career paths to Investment Banking, Portfolio Management, or PE are some of the best narratives I have read in open-ended essays.
You should incorporate the narrative even for the goals essay for these 3 scenarios:
Venture Capital professionals are often subject matter experts from the Technology, Law, or Finance industry. A big challenge for those used to the hands-on experience is the increasingly soft touch a VC role demands.
Career Pivoting is increasingly the largest motivation for applying to a top MBA. For Tuck, the transition need not be dramatic. Marketing to Branding. Technology Consulting to Consulting in Technology and broader lateral moves often are more believable than dramatic shifts in functions, industries, or both.
Business School graduate programs are ahead of the job market. When Oil and Gas experienced a 20% decline in jobs from 2014 to 2023, top Business Schools were ahead of the curve, limiting the class size of Oil and Gas courses or completely stopping such programs.
For the Tuck MBA meaningfully contributed to the sense of inclusion essay, applicants often ignore the ‘meaning’ part while drafting the essay. The meaning is not just from a company’s IMPACT perspective, narrowly focused on the performance metrics – money saved, clients earned, increase in revenue, and contribution towards the productivity of the team.
The school’s culture and openness to embrace the idealistic values of the current generation determines the language you use in MBA Essays. For Tuck, emotionally strong words are not the norm. However, the school is open to reading challenging scenarios and debate-inducing political subjects if the applicant has the skills to define the problem in an apolitical narrative. That is the first iteration of our edit – removing redundant political statements.
The Tuck Sense of Inclusion professional examples are broad. Depending on your industry and the performance metrics, you are likely to attract peers with different social, communication, and ethical perspectives.
When you work in Finance, Creative (YouTube) or Consulting, there is self-regulation and ethical behavior that is paramount for the health of the entire ecosystem.
Technology as a lever is a common theme for applicants from developing economies. African applicants use this narrative to demonstrate the gaps in policy and infrastructure. Many such essays feel like the FIELD courses that Harvard Business School initiated for their MBA program. Some MBA admission consultants nudge clients to include the narrative to show fit with Harvard.
One of the biggest challenges I found while editing essays for Consortium applicants is in differentiating the struggles. It is shocking but unsurprising to see how common the thread of the story is for each applicant who had to face the inter-generational consequences of racism.
It is easy to forget the horrors of war when one is in the comforts of an AC room with food on the plate and no worries about water, electricity, or the safety of your family. The narratives all look familiar - as if we have read them a million times. None of the sufferers feel Deja vu. They mask the horrors with the new American dream.
The exploratory narrative works in rare cases. It is even rarer to read this type of essay for a Harvard MBA.
We have the instinct to understand themes in paragraphs. The first paragraph is about a certain topic; the second is about another, and so on. But when writing an open-ended essay, like the What More Harvard Essay or What Matters Stanford Essay, applicants are confused about the themes to choose. Many choose projects from their professional career, while some choose values, and many are stuck in childhood victories that often don’t translate well in MBA application essays.
Family Business dynamics can go either way.
One group of MBA applicants is eager to uphold the legacy of the parent’s business with innovation, technology, and a mindset fit for the AI and the Creator generation.
Before you create a narrative for the Harvard MBA open-ended essay with cliched accounts of the challenges of exploring in unforgiving terrains, and the roadblocks a manager faces working with rig workers of diverse motivations and cultures, you must learn about the historical perspective on where Harvard University stands on the fossil fuel industry.
A common but effective narrative to demonstrate an applicant’s resilience is the setback and comeback narrative. Unlike movies where the comebacks are spectacular, and the protagonist overcomes armies of antagonists without even a scratch, believable narratives in Harvard MBA essays will have comebacks that are not complete.
There is a chapter in all F1GMAT’s Essay guides where I go in detail about capturing the transformation matrix. Those who write and edit narratives for stories, essays, and even featured articles about a larger-than-life personality instinctively understand this secret. For Harvard MBA applicants – most of whom are from Finance, Technology, Healthcare, and Consulting, this might be a new insight.
6% of the Harvard MBA Class is from non-profit/government. A larger percentage of applicants from Finance and Consulting have some experience working with a non-profit in long-term collaborations.
A big reason applicants can’t persuade the admissions team with their essays is the choice of personal and professional ‘examples.’ Many skim through branding and marketing ideas from consultants and assume that inserting a hero’s journey to mundane milestones from your resume is the answer.
Transitioning from the military to Harvard MBA is not a dream of many when there is close to 20% unemployment rate among American Military veterans. Such ambitious goals are feasible only for a select few who have understood how to structure their Harvard MBA application, including essays and recommendation letters.
There is no harm in mentioning your entrepreneurial father/mother running the department store or small business. In the Harvard MBA Essay, one of the commonly cited narratives is around values that Asian parents pass on.
While editing Harvard MBA Essays, a common challenge I faced as an editor was the transition from the personal to the action part of the essay.
A common mistake I have seen while collaborating with applicants with background in contracts or someone whose job is to do due diligence is the focus on perfecting the MBA essay right from the start.
What happens is that the story elements become weaker, and the essay is a perfect version with no unique voice.
Schools have tried disrupting the application process with tweet essay, video essay, and image-based questions. From the many disruptions, the video essay has become a supplemental essay for many top MBA. Harvard Business School has continued with this one question:
I have obsessively ingrained the idea of Structure in all my MBA Application Essay Guides. Some applicants take this idea to the extreme and reach out with special requests.
A few years back, a client asked for edit help with one condition: the opening lines of the four paragraphs shouldn’t be touched. Rest all, she was open to editing comments.