While editing MBA Application essays, I noticed a pattern of writing that requires a complete rewrite. These are applicants in the top 5% with measurable impact and visible career progression validated by promotions.
So what happened?
The applicant confuses coming out of the comfort zone with the mild discomforts that all professionals face while reaching a deadline or working with a demanding client. Many also assume that elaborating the expected responsibilities of the role with storytelling is sufficient to hook the admissions team. It rarely works if the examples chosen aren’t unique or the narrative looks forced.
So, how do Essay Reviewers evaluate whether you have come out of your comfort zone?
1) Personality Traits vs Job Function
A big hint about your personality traits is the job function you chose. It is unfair. Most in their late 20s and early 30s switch function and reach a career that matches their personality traits. But even to enter a function, you need the aptitude to do the minimum viable responsibilities.
The admissions team will assign scores around the big 5 traits - conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion.
These traits are first evaluated based on your current job function.
Even if your default personality trait is A, when you work in a job function that requires demonstrating B and C, you will be judged on B and C first before you are evaluated for personality trait A.
For instance, Finance candidates are known for superior number crunching and trend analysis skills. Even if you were a creative who was part of a renowned Orchestra in your late teens, you would be first evaluated based on your Quant skills.
The job function, to a large extent, determines the baseline traits on which you are evaluated.
2) Organized vs. Innovative vs Both
The unorganized creative who walks to the office in sandals with long hair and an unkempt appearance is a stereotype that you will see in the marketing industry. In pre-MBA industries, such stereotypes are non-existent. The T-shirt-wearing Techie or an Entrepreneur is a different story.
Each industry has fixed schedules. The innovation is within the framework of the organized schedule. Schools are evaluating candidates for innovation within the constraints of the company culture.
One client had to demonstrate why initiating communication with suppliers from a different region outside the partner list was a first in a Japanese culture that requires elaborate rituals and consensus building. An American admissions team is unlikely to know the cultural nuances.
Any culture or region-specific constraints need elaborate narratives to turn around challenge narratives in a job function to interesting stories about innovation, consensus building, and creative thinking.
If you work in such an organization that is international or unique culturally, you have a great opportunity to stand out.
3) Entrepreneurial Thinking
Entrepreneurial candidates are a minority in top schools. They typically can’t be controlled in a rigid work environment.
Applicants who thrive under a culture that values autonomy – a.k.a flat organizational structure or start-up-like culture have these traits. Only MIT Sloan subtly evaluates this trait by asking the applicant to submit the organizational chart. Other top entrepreneurial schools like Harvard and Stanford use other means to measure the applicant’s entrepreneurial thinking.
Employers love the risk-taking with boundaries, strategic thinking, and self-driven candidates.
By choosing examples and breaking down the constraints, challenges of implementing the solution, the beneficiaries, the cultural and economic gaps, infrastructure deficiencies, and policy challenges, you will help the admissions team understand the complexity of the solution that you developed.
The work you do determines your admission chances.
You don’t have to create a hero’s narrative from routine job responsibilities or mild discomforts in your job.
I will help you develop an outline to write persuasive MBA application essays that will increase your admission chances to Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Booth, Columbia, Kellogg, MIT, INSEAD, LBS, Columbia Business, and other Top 20 MBA programs.
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