I will teach you how to bring your life stories to essays faster with F1GMAT's essay guides. Download below or subscribe to F1GMAT's Service and work with me - Atul Jose, Author/Editor/Founding Consultant, F1GMAT(16 Years of helping applicants gain admissions to M7 and Top 30 schools) Yale MBA Essay: Describe the biggest commitment you have ever made. Why is this commitment meaningful to you and what actions have you taken to support it? (500 words)
Broadly, personal commitment essay can be written with three themes: Commitment to values, Commitment to Goals, and Commitment to Community.
1.a. Inclusion
1.b. Integrity
1.c. Humility
1.d. Humanity
- Commitment to Goals
- Commitment to Community
Commitment to Values
In western cultures – the values are derived with the objective for the individual to maximize their potential. Even the community engagement narrative is evaluated by the person’s impact and growth through the experience.
That is why all your essay questions require reflecting and writing from your perspective – your thinking, your doubts, your fears and eventually your growth.
The individual is everything in a Western culture.
The value of respecting rule of law and equal access to opportunities, mixed with the enlightenment value of reasoning as the foundation for all your decisions should be obvious in your essays.
But if you don’t have such examples, four values: Inclusion, Integrity, Humility, and Humanity, which are universally accepted, should be highlighted in your essay.
Let us go one by one
1.a. Inclusion
This is a challenging value to uphold when you work in organizations, corporate cultures and non-profits operating in regions with strong hierarchical structure.
A company can have a Western value while operating in a hierarchical society.
The best examples of commitment to inclusion will always have some obstacles or conflicts with a peer, family member, or a stakeholder who believes in a hierarchical system with low priority on inclusion.
One example I remember was a candidate who grew up in a moderate society, moved to a hierarchical society, and worked in an organization that prioritized ‘inclusion’.
She already had examples of upholding ‘inclusion’ in her country that had moderate values. The commitment was tested when she relocated and a manager created a policy that was not inclusive for working mothers. Even though she was not a mother, she could recognize the importance of flexible working hours and eventually creating a culture that attracts the best candidates from the world.
The best essay balances personal motivation with a business case for upholding inclusion as a value.
Even in Western cultures, there can be discrepancies in inclusion when capitalistic values override inclusion.
An example is from recruitment when companies prioritize certain demographic because it was profitable to hire from the niche to reduce the training cost.
Lack of inclusion could arise from cultural and economic incentives. Commitment essays with inclusion theme should ideally address both.
The second universally accepted value is:
1.b. Integrity
When we hear the word integrity, the first thing that comes to our mind is a person who can be trusted.
The trust in the person to act with the interest of the stakeholders, community, citizens, or an organization depends on the role of the person.
A CEO acting with integrity could mean overcoming pressures to keep the interest of shareholders in mind while deprioritizing the interest of others – community, government, and sometimes even the customers if there is a strategic sale happening that will benefit the shareholders.
A community leader acting with integrity could mean keeping the welfare of the beneficiaries, the environment, and assessing the long-term impact of initiatives & projects on the community.
Ideally, a President or Prime Minister of a country must keep the citizen’s interest in mind while ignoring or deprioritizing conflicting interest that arise from businesses eager to pass certain self-serving laws.
When you narrate a commitment to integrity, the context of your role should be clearly defined.
The third universally accepted value is:
1.c. Humility
If you think about it – humility is the foundational Christian value that the Western culture has adopted.
But these values don’t cut across demographics in an individualistic society like the US.
The narrative of the lone wolf is more appealing in the story of entrepreneurship than the narrative where there were several failures, pivots, emergency funding from investors and family, and many many lucky coincidences.
But it is tough to create a narrative around chance or luck or coincidence. It doesn’t work in a story format, or it feels manipulative. You must use the cause-and-effect template for all MBA essays.
The best evidence of humility is when someone credits a team or a mentor in the essay.
The second way you can demonstrate humility is by acknowledging your failures from limited experience. This is tough for top performers as the idea of failure is considered a bad omen.
The third way to demonstrate humility is through the tone of your essay. Even a neutral tone or a tone acknowledging your limitations will translate to humility in your essay.
The fourth universally accepted value is:
1.d. Humanity
At its fundamental level, humanity is empathy for those who are suffering.
To demonstrate this value, your narrative must go beyond your identities of nationality, gender, ethnicity, profession, sexual orientation, industry, or culture.
I have advised applicants to use identity as the primary motivation, but humanity can be demonstrated from a place of privilege.
I read an excellent essay of children begging on traffic stops in India and the applicant compared those children with her brother, who was in a comfortable house with people to take care of his every need.
This narrative of contrasting two groups shows humanity.
She was financially secure, but just by acknowledging and relating to a marginalized group, we could show her humanity as an investor.
Now that you have understood the four universal values and strategies to mention your commitment to values let us explore alternative themes for the commitment essay
To read how I have written the Yale MBA Commitment Essay, Download F1GMAT's Yale MBA Essay Guide.
Commitment to Goals
Goal orientation is one of the biggest predictors of your success as a professional. That is why you will see some form of goals essay, even if it is just a 50-word question as part of your application.
Schools can’t do without it.
Goal orientation takes two forms: performance-based goal orientation and mastery-based goal orientation.
Most of the professionals applying to Yale MBA will have a strong performance-based goal orientation, that is validated through GMAT/GRE score and GPA, but if you have mastered an art form or a musical instrument or dance or sports, you are showing a balance that is required for our complex world.
A great motivation for schools to choose candidates with both performance-based and mastery-based goal orientation is for career switching into Venture capital, PE, or consulting, where performance-based goal orientation is not enough. The applicant should have a history of working on a goal with results that can only be achieved with 5-10 years of commitment.
Candidates with mastery-oriented goal setting tend to be extremely good at long-term thinking and self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy is a mindset were meeting a certain high standard for oneself to master the function is the larger goal over short-term performance goals. This mindset helps the quality of decision and advisory service required for the client. It also helps candidates to thrive in an extremely competitive Finance or Consulting industry if they were not from the industry before an MBA.
The third and popular commitment narrative is a commitment to the community
Commitment to Community
Community is an interesting word. We immediately associate ‘community’ with a ‘group’ that has a common purpose.
To engage and commit to the community, you must have a sense of belonging.
This sense of belonging is first determined by your identity – nationality, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation
The second determining factor is the circumstance under which you grew up. Some of the examples I have read are about foster homes, domestic violence, addiction, financial insecurity, and isolation from a typical orientation that your peers at Yale might have received.
The third determining factor that gives you a strong sense of community are similar stressors – war, immigration, illness, military combat, and other unique life experiences.
Not all life experiences need to have a negative connotation.
For an applicant who was passionate about teaching, the sense of belonging to the teaching community was not because of her 1 year engagement at Teach for America. It was because both her parents were teachers.
For another applicant, living in a neighborhood of government contractors was a mismatch to his ‘entrepreneurial mindset.’ He associated more with an entrepreneur network several thousand miles away. Culturally, his community was not his neighborhood.
It is a branding choice to position your individuality through the Commitment to Values or your leadership through a Commitment to Community narrative.
