Storytelling is an outline of your relationship with time, world, future, and yourself.
The inner conflict between your ego and the challenge put forward by the outside world is similar to the turmoil that the reviewers go through on a daily basis while reviewing your essays or pondering over their future.
When the story is about your life journey, the essay should demonstrate why you are interesting. Focus on 5 Strategies:
2. Details
3. Childhood
5. Flaws
1. Differentiate Just Enough
The background information that you capture should strip out the clichés and break away from the expectation of your profile. But don’t veer too far away from what reviewers expect from an applicant from your nationality and profession.
Take the example of the cult-classic track “Hey Ya!.” The 2003 song was unlike what early 2000s pop/hip hop/rap or rock songs were. Radio stations hesitated to play the song. The André 3000 song was tough to categorize in a Genre or even interpret. But once an obscure Radio jockey gave the green signal, the song caught on and remained in Billboard Top 100 for 32 weeks.
You might not be as lucky as Outkast.
Processing fluency -- the ease with which information is processed, influences likeability. It is rare that the admission team accepts applicants who are not likable. The familiarity with your profession and worldview help the reviewer evaluate your fit.
2. Details
Yesterday, I saw my son intrigued by a kid’s waving gesture, a toy rotating meaninglessly under gravity and my skills of anticipating and repeating rhymes that I had heard a thousand times. Toddlers are in an endless awe. Occasionally, he points at nature and reminds me that I should also be in awe of the world's magnificence.
Each of you has at least 3-5 intriguing daily responsibilities that are guaranteed to surprise me. You assume that it is common knowledge. Think like a child when you share the uniqueness of your world and share how the blocks fit into your eco-system.
3. Childhood
Every story has a flashback to where it all began. The superhero movies have the origin story, Forrest had Mama & Jenny, and you had a loving caretaker or a role model. Essays limit how much you can indulge in your childhood story, but we all had one life event that changed us.
The event demonstrated a new life skill, a passion, or a vision for what you would like to do in this world. Not everybody is lucky to follow their passion, but most of you found your strengths at an early age. Share them through stories.
4. Love, Hate and Beliefs
We tolerate bad traffic, obnoxious bosses, and mediocre experiences. What we tolerate is rarely expressed in rants or 280 character tweets. They don’t define us. A character’s belief system is reflected in what she loves and hates. We avoid what we hate and broadcast it to the whole world, and embrace opportunities to do what we love. Essays are never a tool to explicitly mention your love-hate, but past actions are hints.
Listing extra-curricular activities and mapping it to your Love-Hate matrix is an exercise that will flesh out character details that other applicants take it for granted.
Examples
Activities
Half-Marathon
Love: Fitness
Volunteering for the World Food Program
Hate: Inequality, Poverty Love: Compassion
Volunteering for Habitat for Humanity
Love: Building sustainable communities
Volunteer for Teach For America
Love: Teaching, Equal Opportunity Hate: Lost Opportunity
5. Flaws
Perfection is unreal, arrogant, and uninspiring. This might seem counterintuitive for applicants. Weakness essay measures your ability to self-reflect and in a certain way humanizes your journey. Applicants who are defensive or delusional or doesn’t understand the purpose of essays, hide their weaknesses, hoping that the admission team will be moved by their heroic journey.
Flaws hidden beneath the wit of the writer works great in novels. In MBA essays, there is limited scope to put in that clever one-liner. Applicants who stand out learn to mix flaws, with comeback stories and hope. There is no space for negativity.
I have never felt bored with survivor stories. Strategically incorporate your flaws in such stories.
Lessons Learned
My interactions with clients taught me two things:
• Most have a critical view of themselves, especially applicants from Ivy League schools. The expectation from society, siblings, friends, and parents put them in a choke hold, leaving few real moments to enjoy their achievements.
• Apart from professionals in Sales & Marketing, not many have the inclination to pitch their story.
Taking too much time narrating our achievements is looked down among our peers. Unfortunately, essays require just that. Most applicants rush through their achievements, hoping that the reviewer doesn’t construe their ‘success stories’ as tales of arrogance.
Humbleness should be in the tone of your narrative not in citing what you had achieved.
List even the trivial achievements. You will be surprised to see what you categorize as trivial turning out to be one of your defining successes.
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