The MBA question archetypes
ARCHETYPE 2: STRENGTHS, SUCCESS AND ACHIEVEMENT 1. Examples
retirement. There are broadly three phases: the climb, the peak and the dénouement. Very often in the last phase, successful career-minded MBAs go in a new (but related) direction and turn more attention to community and philanthropy. They start consulting firms or turn their lifelong hobbies into businesses.
Women, but increasingly men as well, may take time out for parenthood along the way, but the shape of this broad life and career arc will still apply.
You should be able to say how this arc applies to you, how the sections will fit together and what broad themes will go with you all the way through your personal and professional life.
ARCHETYPE 2: STRENGTHS, SUCCESS AND ACHIEVEMENT
can be small hurdles that, for one good reason or another, were big for you, or show a big heart. Any achievement counts, as long as it is genuinely impressive in some way and was achieved in a competitive setting. Third, and most important, whether the achievement is big or small, what it amounted to exactly is less important to the committee than why you value it and what it says about you.
Therefore, almost any achievement will work as well as any other, pro- vided you can say: why it was meaningful (beyond the fact that it’s nice to win and prove yourself); why you set the achievement as a goal in your life in the first place; why you still savour the achievement now; why it makes you proud;
how it served to build you; why you choose to talk about it in your essay now, over and above any other achievement; and how this suggests the kind of successes you are likely to pursue in the future. In other words, whatever the achievement was or wasn’t in objective terms, the real test of the essay is that you can extract the personal and growth implications from it and use it as a vehicle for telling your personal story. It’s not only about what you’ve done.
It’s about who you are.
4. How to tackle it
There are, therefore, two parts to this essay. Part 1 is the narrative story of the success, including the circumstances and build-up that surrounded it. Part 2 is the analysis of the success. You should think in terms of using no more that 50% of your allotted word length to tell the story. Remember, the success itself does not count for everything, so spend the bulk of your time on your analysis:
why the achievement is significant to you and what this suggests about who you are and the kind of things you intend to focus your talent on once you have MBA skills and credentials.
Choosing achievements
Accomplishments imply attributes and strengths – the skills that allowed you to beat the competition or overcome a significant difficulty. Ideally, the accomplishment you choose should be one that implies your command of the strengths valued by MBA programs, including maturity, leadership, teamwork, strong personality, creativity and perseverance (see Chapter 2 for the twenty- two attributes that admissions committees are looking for). If who you are is more important than what you’ve done, you also don’t necessarily have to pick the most overtly impressive thing you ever did. Instead, you can consider your past more broadly, and choose an achievement that is intrinsic to your themes that allows you to reinforce your key message and clarify the basic premises of your argument. As a general rule, if asked for more than one success, give one from your professional life and one from your personal life.
90 ESSAY MANAGEMENT
In talking of the attributes that underpin the success you mention, this essay is a good place to show you are a ‘finisher’ – someone who will overcome no matter what the obstacles. Generally, all worthwhile achievements imply a large amount of tenacity. Make sure you extract the presence of such strengths from your story.
Writing about your successes raises the questions: How modest should you be? Should you be understated or trumpet yourself? Careful attention to tone and to cultural norms is required here. It’s common cause that Americans are more receptive to forthright self-promotion than the British and Europeans. In applying to competitive programs, you should be prepared to outspokenly showcase yourself. Being modest won’t get you anywhere, and certainly less so in the US than anywhere else. The best rule to follow is: be very forthright in claiming personal merit where you have a concrete award, promotion or other independent proof of your achievement. Go easy on unproven, subjective positive self-regard.
5. How to flunk this essay
You will mess up this essay if:
• You choose a weak or boring accomplishment.
• You spend too long on the accomplishment story and not enough on the analysis.
• You duck or flub the analysis: you can’t say why the achievement means something to you, or what it means.
• You don’t give clear insight into the attributes and qualities that underpin the achievement.
• Your story is short on detail.
• You are over-modest about your achievement, or you are insufferably arrogant (both suggest immaturity).
Compete on the analysis
This suggested essay solution introduces the valuable, classic two-part MBA essay answer format – one where you provide factual and/or story data (input) in the early part of the essay and an interpretive analysis (output) in the later part. The essay goes from grabbing, captivating and informing, to synthesiz- ing, interpreting and convincing. The descriptive part takes the reader into the details of your experiences; the analytical part takes the reader to your learning and insight.
Stories are more or less equal but analysis is not. It might be hard to swallow at first, but the reality is that the story data from most candidates is of equal type and merit. Your great wins and unique experiences – travel to Tibet, THE MBA ESSAY QUESTION ARCHETYPES 91
loss of a grandparent, a bad boss, winning a race – might feel very unique to you, but they will be very similar in form and substance to everyone else’s.
Scores will be similar, the work experience and life path will be similar or of roughly equal value, and so on. In other words, it is unlikely that your experi- ences are better than anyone else’s and, even if they are, it will be difficult to prove. However, candidates’ expertise at, and commitment to, interpretive self-analysis varies hugely, as does their communications ability. Here is where you can differentiate yourself. The obvious implication is that you should compete on the analysis, where there is leverage and where most candidates are weak. Start by getting clarity on what analysis you want to extract, and work backwards from there. Decide what points you want to make about yourself and pick a story that will best facilitate those points, and get the story told quickly enough so you have sufficient space to turn the story into an argument for your admission.
ARCHETYPE 3: WEAKNESSES AND FAILURE