This content provides guidance on approaching Harvard MBA application essays, emphasizing a "bottom-up" approach rooted in personal experiences and self-reflection to showcase leadership potential and growth.
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Man, I miss the good old days of that
monolithic Harvard MBA application
essay, 900 words. What more do you want
us to know?
All good things must come to an end. If
you've been grappling with these three
Harvard essays that are not at all
mutually exclusive and collectively
exhaustive, you are not alone.
Self-reflection and self-awareness is
always at the core of great MBA essays.
So, let's do some work together today on
your foundation for your Harvard essays. [Music]
[Music]
Welcome back to NBA Monday. I'm Angela,
career coach, MBA coach. I got my own
MBA from the University of Chicago Booth
School of Business. I joined the Boston
Consulting Group where I used to recruit
MBAs from Harvard. And for the last 18
years, I've been coaching applicants to
the world's top business schools. I've
actually helped over a hundred people
get into Harvard. So, if you're looking
for MBA application advice this year,
please hit that subscribe button. Here's
what we're going to cover in today's
video. I'm going to cover insights and
thoughtprovoking prompts that are going
to allow you to bring out your very best
in each and every Harvard MBA
application essay so that your entire
application can present a full and
coherent picture of who you are. [Music]
[Music]
First, a couple of words about my essay
writing philosophy. Throughout most of
your education, you've been taught
top-down writing. You come up with a
thesis, you have your idea, you
construct the whole essay around that
core idea, and the rest of the substance
of the essay flows from top down, from
that core idea on down. I think this is
a terrible way to approach MBA essays
because at best, you're going to end up
sounding logical and analytical, and at
worst, you're going to end up sounding
hackneeded and overpolished and trit.
worthwhile to approach your MBA
application essays from the bottom up,
meaning from your own experiences, from
your stories, from the aspects of your
life experience that have shaped you and
build your stories on top of that and
worry about what the topline says when
you get to the end. So, your approach to
answering any Harvard essay should be
first start with a catalog of your
experiences which you've explored and
reflected on. Second, look at each of
the Harvard MBA application essays and
decide which of your experiences are
going to give you the most leverage in
answering each individual question. But
again, it's arising from the story. Then
write the story and iterate. And because
these questions are not meiy, like I
said in my last video, you may find
yourself taking what's written in the
curiosity essay and moving it to the
leadership essay or moving it to the
businessminded essay as you go through
the process. And that's perfectly fine.
Your goal is to make sure that you're
showing all the best of you. Where it
fits in the three essays is less
important. In my last video, I talked
about how Harvard evaluates applicants
and what their values are and what's
most important to them in the admissions
process. If you missed that video,
you're going to want to go back and
watch it. You can find the link right
there and also in the description below.
The bottom line is that Harvard is
looking for leaders and they have a
specific understanding of what
leadership means, which they state
transparently on their website. I talk
about it in that other video. Let's dig
into essay one, the business-minded
essay. The question, please reflect on
how your choices have influenced your
career path and aspirations. Notice the
word reflect. In this essay, you're
being asked to really address your
career, both what has come before and I
believe implicitly, what is going to
come after Harvard. The best way to get
at your best answer to this question is
to think about the how of your career.
How have you had an impact to date? How
have you made a difference? How do you
intend to make a difference in the
future? I say how and you might
immediately go to thinking what like
what industry are you going to join?
What function will you have? What will
be the company or even the title that
you'll hold? You might even think in
terms of buzzwords like I'm going to be
a leader. I'm going to be a manager. I'm
going to build a great culture. But none
of that is how. That's all still at the
level of what we need to drill down one
layer deeper to really get at your best
answer. The how means how will you go
about doing things. So to prepare for
this question, I really encourage you to
start with the future to look at your
life 5 to 10 years after Harvard and
really think about what does your life
look like? Imagine what are you doing
dayto day, week to week exactly what are
the qualities and actions and ways that
you are making a difference. And since
Harvard is about leadership, you're
really going to want to think about how
you're going to lead. Will you be uh
building great teams? If so, how will
you do that? Will you do it by
innovating creative processes that make
team communication better? or will you
do it by managing and mentoring people
more effectively? Really think through
how you uniquely have made change happen
to date and intend to make change happen
in the future. Even if you can't nail
the specifics, you should be able to
presence a feeling. You should be able
to have a vibe of what your mark in
leadership is going to be and is going
to look like based on everything that
has come before. By the way, I've put
together an entire HBS essay prep
toolkit for you and you can go download
it at this QR code right here or at the
link down in the description. It's a set
of questions that if you answer them and
reflect really deeply on them, and I
mean like take time, take days, journal
about your answers to these questions,
the picture of who you are and who you
want to show yourself to be to Harvard
will start to emerge clearly. It's like
one of those magic eye pictures where
it's just dots, but the closer you look,
you can see a dragon or a bear or
your own leadership future. But it's not
enough to have a vision for your future
leadership because here comes question
two. What experiences have shaped how
notice the how how you invest in others
and how you lead? Now when you first
read this question you might think that
it's mostly about the experiences that
have shaped you and that is a part of
this question but the most important
thing really is the how. How do you
invest in others and how do you lead? So
this is really about seeing and
nurturing the potential in others.
Harvard has this great statement in
their evaluation criteria. I'll link to
uh who we're looking for in the
description below. What they say is we
are looking for individuals who aspire
to lead others toward making a
difference in the world.
So you see, it's not just about you
making a difference. It's not about you
being the leader and being in charge.
It's really about nurturing the
greatness in others and empowering them
to make a difference as well. It's
really like creating an exponential
effect as was referenced in a Harvard
College commencement address that you
might find really inspiring and that I'm
going to link in the description below.
So, in preparation to answer this
question, you really want to think about
where in your career have you seen and
nurtured the best in others,
even when it wasn't apparent. You want
to look for those times where the
obvious choice might have been to do it
yourself or to overlook someone or uh to
go with the tribe, but instead you made
a choice to see what someone was capable
of and to bring out the very best in
them. This is just one of a few
questions I have for you in that Harvard
essay prep kit. But the most important
thing here is that you're you're not
just talking about when you were in
charge or when you took initiative. It's
really about bringing others up behind
you and along with you. So put the
emphasis in this essay and in your
exploration on how you have led and
influenced others to be their best
selves. For the third question,
and I I have to say I really I really
love this question. It's only this
question that makes the loss of the
monolithic what else do you want us to
know worthwhile. And here's the
question. Curiosity can be seen in many
ways. Please share an example of how you
have demonstrated curiosity and how that
has influenced your growth. So this is a
new element to the Harvard application
in the last couple of years. They used
to prioritize analytical aptitude and
appetite. meaning you like numbers, you
like to dig into data, you like to, you
know, find evidence for things and prove
it through analysis. But now they've
shifted it to this more internal value
of curiosity. Curiosity is always about
the unknown. It's not just about
analysis. It's about conquering
uncharted territory and embracing the
discomfort of ambiguity and not having
all the answers. So to answer this
question, you're going to want to look
at the places in your life where you've
consciously and concertedly taken an
effort to grow and to evolve. You're
also going to look at the places where
you did something unexpected. You made a
choice that maybe everybody thought you
were going to go left and you went
right, but when you went right, you knew
what you were doing and you did it for a
specific reason. Those are usually the
times where you're embracing the
unknown. Just as curiosity is about the
unknown, growth is often about
persistence. So you want to find the
places where you discovered something
unknown, you followed a yearning, you
ended up somewhere interesting
uh versus where you had been before. It
can be something big or it can be
something really really small. But look
in your experience for those tender
moments where you said, "I don't know
the answer, but I'm going to proceed
anyway." I've got a lot more great
questions for you to reflect on in my
Harvard essay prep toolkit, which I hope
you will download and use it to explore
your experiences. If you enjoyed this
video, if you found it eye opening to
start to look at these deeper questions
about yourself, or maybe if you found it
confronting and annoying to confront and
look at these deeper questions about
yourself, then you might want to
consider working with an MBA protocol
coach to do the spelunking into the deep
dive of your character that is really
required to put forward the very best
application you can for schools like
Harvard and Stanford. You can request a
call to build your custom MBA guided
quest package with a member of our team
at the link below, mba protocol.com/mbba.
protocol.com/mbba.
And if you like this video, please give
it a thumbs up and leave me a comment.
It just helps other people discover our
channel and discover the great free
content that we are putting out every
Monday. I hope to see you next week on
NBA Monday. And if you haven't subscribed,
subscribed,
maybe do that so you don't miss a video.
I'll see you next week through I've put
I've put together an ent an entire
Harvard essay prep toolkit. Why is this
Don't panic.
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