Q) I don’t have typical startup experience, although, I have creatively solved problems in my career at Google. How should I approach the What Matters Essay at Stanford?
Atul Jose (MBA Admissions Consultant, F1GMAT): It is a big misconception that Stanford only accepts applicants with entrepreneurial experience.
I would say a better measure of your winnability is a combination of extraversion, emotional stability, and openness.
Extraversion: It is unlikely that if you are a professional – you would be shy at work. You must communicate cross-functionally, reach out to the management when required, and raise the right questions to solve the problems in a project. A lot of applicants assume that such a display of extraversion is not required to be highlighted in an MBA application. So when I read essays, this crucial success factor is missing.
Stanford also wants to learn how you communicate effectively in multiple contexts – at work, in a volunteering engagement, or while leading a team in sports, international travel trips, or events.
Openness: Now, this quality is so rare in popular culture that if you watch any of the one-sided narratives of news media, it becomes apparent that nuance is lost, and so are the many opportunities to learn from people who have a different outlook towards a problem. Of course, if you diverge too far down to one extreme of left or right, you wouldn’t fit with the academic culture at top schools. So be mindful of that.
Think about the projects at Google where you could see the long-term impact of a solution – be it negative or positive and suggested an approach that improved the product or addressed a problem that has not been thought about earlier.
One of my clients who worked for Google was trying to solve a hotel reservation problem through AI-assisted voice calls. This is a highly technical project on first look, but if you think about it, there are a lot of cultural norms, cues of human behavior, and understanding of contexts that should be mastered to create an AI algorithm.
In an Essay, you can connect such understanding of human dynamics by going back to an experience from childhood. Even if it is a typical lemonade stand example, there would be interesting insights that you developed with that experience. It is perhaps your first encounter of sampling vs. sales or understanding how to persuade an older demographic or any interesting experience that we are unlikely to read in popular media.
Emotional stability: This is an incredibly important quality for group learning. It is so easy to get carried away by failures or setbacks and just wale over it endlessly. In a team environment, you are likely to face conflict, or your approach might not lead to the best solution. So, in addition to your openness, you have to be incredibly calm and thoughtful in reacting to events and people.
I am in no way suggesting that the narrative should not be devoid of any negative emotion. In fact, I recommend capturing negative emotions in moderation throughout my storytelling section in Winning MBA Essay Guide. However, what you felt and how you react are different. Not all display of emotion lead to the best dynamics in a team environment.
Instead of unnecessarily spinning your story into an entrepreneurial narrative, balancing extraversion, openness, and emotional stability through multiple life events will lead to an interesting What Matters Stanford MBA Essay.
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