Filed under: Essays — admin @ 9:57 am

HBS essays are out and it isn’t even Memorial Day yet. This is great for applicants, especially those applying round one–you have a full four months to really reflect and bask in any introspection necessary to create great essays. No excuses!

The two required essays, Accomplishments and Mistakes remain the same. They offer insight into your achievements, what you value, and your judgment. Last year, you had five questions from which you were to select two. This year, you have four questions and have the option to select two essays. Some of the questions have changed. The two new questions about professional frustration and how you would introduce yourself should make for some interesting self reflection.

HBS Essays:

• What are your three most substantial accomplishments and why do you view them as such? (600-word limit)
• What have you learned from a mistake? (400-word limit)
• Please respond to two of the following (400-word limit each):
  1. What would you like the MBA Admissions Board to know about your undergraduate academic experience?
  2. What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you?
  3. Tell us about a time in your professional experience when you were frustrated or disappointed.
  4. When you join the HBS Class of 2013, how will you introduce yourself to your new classmates?

Joint degree applicants:

• How do you expect the joint degree experience to benefit you on both a professional and a personal level? (400-word limit

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 5:49 am

This is the second part to how to tackle the Harvard 2+2 application essays. Applicants have the option to choose one of these three essays. After having tackled the first three required essays, these additional essays offer you the opportunity to showcase an aspect of your brand that hasn’t been covered so far in the application or to reinforce your brand. You can also use one of these three essays to address a potential gap that exists in your story. All three essays have equal weight in the eyes of the admissions board so choose what most resonates with you not the essay you believe the admissions board expects you to write.

Select one of the following essays (400-word limit each):

Discuss how you have engaged with a community or organization.

To do justice to this essay you should opt for quality over quantity. It’s more important that you have one or two activities that you are truly committed to and where you can show evidence of your direct involvement. The key word to keep in mind when addressing this essay is “engaged”. This conjures up a picture of rolling up one’s sleeves and helping to bring about an impact. Membership in several organizations doesn’t get at what the admissions board is looking for. The primary objective of this essay is to ascertain what type of student and future leader you will be. If you haven’t shown commitment to other people in the first three required essays, then this essay could be a vital one for you to make sure that you demonstrate that you care about others (not just your own achievements) and that you have tangible examples to show that.  It’s less about the leadership title you held and more about the passion you bring to an organization and how you are able to make an impact.

What area of the world are you most curious about and why?

Self awareness, global perspective/exposure, and maturity are a few words that come to mind when thinking of this essay. This essay could be good for applicants who have a genuine passion for a particular region of the world since it will allow them to “educate” the admissions board why they have this passion and how it fits with their vision for their lives. Remember, what is important is not the region but what it means to you—why you are curious about it. The “why” in this case is more important than the “what”. It’s what you reveal about yourself, your character, what matters to you, that is at the heart of this essay. This could be a great essay to delve into your background—talk about your family.  Or it could be an opportunity to share a hobby/interest that means a lot to you. The choice of topic and how you address it can say a thing or two about your maturity so use good judgment with this essay.

What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you?

It is interesting that HBS doesn’t word this question in terms of your goals but your vision. That leads me to believe, then, that it is less about a step by step process of achieving a particular set of career objectives and more about whether you have the foresight to imagine where you would like to end up and the necessary skills/resources you will need to achieve it. There is a strong element of aspiration connected to vision that applicants should think of when writing this essay. This essay could be good for someone for whom it is questionable why they are applying to the 2+2 program. If you are already on a business track, what is your vision that justifies applying now? Or conversely, if your background is quite far removed from business, then this essay could be a good platform to help the admissions board understand why you are motivated to going to business school and why a program like this would be necessary to help you make that transformation in your career.

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 9:36 am

Applicants to Harvard’s 2+2 program have just about one month to go before the deadline. For those considering applying to this program, here are a few words of advice regarding the essays:

Required Essay Questions

What are your three most substantial accomplishments and why do you view them as such? (600-word limit)

This essay gets at your self-awareness and character. What you will find is that successful candidates all have very different things that they have identified as significant achievements. What matters are two things: what you achieved (impact on a product, process, person or group) and why it matters to you (what you discovered about yourself). Most applicants tackle this essay by addressing the substantial achievements but leave out the second part of the question: THE SELF AWARENESS: “Why do you view them as such”? You need to do some serious soul-searching to arrive at what you consider your most substantial accomplishments. There isn’t a one size fits all response or formula of internship-check, academics-check, and personal- check. Having said that, successful accomplishment essays are those that show you are multidimensional and a strong leader.

What would you like us to know about your undergraduate academic experience? (400-word limit)

This question is trying to understand your academic decisions and the forethought that went into them. They obviously have your transcript and can see the impressive grades. What is more telling is revealing something about your character that drove the decision. Why did you take the two advanced masters courses? What was it about the subject matter that motivated you to pursue the coursework? How did you decide on what subjects to focus on for your major? Why did you pursue a triple major? What does that reveal about you besides the fact that you are smart and can handle different subjects and a challenging curricular? Are you someone who has always had a path mapped out for him and you are basically staying on cue or are you willing to steer your own boat? Do you explore other things and are you curious? Are you willing to try something new? Did you help get a new class introduced at your school? What was it like to teach the freshman seminar class and overcome your initial fears of X? If there are hiccups in the academic experience you should own up to it without excuses and without fixating on it. Simply address it and spend the rest of the essay presenting all the other positive aspects of your educational experience. It’s the self-awareness plus helping the admissions board to connect the dots about your experiences that could make this essay a hit.

What have you learned from a mistake? (400-word limit)

This question can really reveal a candidate’s maturity level. Stay away from simplistic mistakes of “I procrastinated and ended up bumming my Physics final”. Equally troubling are mistakes that raise questions about your character. For example, rudeness towards a boss can never be excused. There is no turning back by putting a spin on the story about the important lesson you learned from the experience. I read an application of someone who wrote about how she went over her bosses head to get a project done because she had gotten buy-in from her bosses’ boss. What that showed about her is that she was insensitive and a solo player. Not the best example to convince Harvard to take a bet on you. Meaningful mistake examples go below the surface and reveal something about you as a person.