I didn’t know what to believe, and with hypothermia setting in, I didn’t know if I could make it. The water was 48°F and I had been in it for thirty minutes. Luckily, I was headed back to shore, but it had been a frustrating experience. I had always been a good swimmer and I could have made it back before now, but those weren’t the rules. The twelve of us were instructed to swim and finish as a team. Then again, the same people told us the water would be warm and to jump in without wet suits. After another twenty minutes and constant encouragement, we finally made it. My feeling of pride and newfound confidence showed me just how much I had needed the challenge.

Eagle Lake Wilderness Camp in the Colorado Rockies provided fourteen days of cold, hunger, and exhaustion, which turned into a lifetime of opportunities. Growing up, I was smart and perceptive, but also reserved. I needed to break that paradigm. I needed confidence in my ability to handle stressful, unpredictable situations so that I could develop my potential as a leader.

Our swim was only one of ten challenges faced by our team. I learned much more than how to survive hypothermia, navigate a free rappel, live in and off the wilderness, and complete a high-altitude half-marathon. I revealed some of my natural leadership qualities like self-understanding and sustained motivation. I demonstrated how to work effectively within teams. I acquired the confidence to pursue leadership responsibilities. I found the will to pursue difficult and exhausting goals along with the stamina to accomplish them. And I learned how to be most effective by encouraging and developing others.

Our team mantra, “This wasn’t in the brochure,” has since reflected the excitement and challenge of my life. Without the lessons and confidence gained from this experience, I would never have had the ability to run student governments, organize community initiatives, or lead consulting project teams.

Analysis

The outdoors-experience-that-changed-my-life story runs the risk of sounding all too familiar but does not in this case, thanks to Brad’s nice sense of storytelling. Brad goes into the experience as a shy kid without a lot of confidence but emerges from the hypothermia, the half-marathon, and the free rappel as a more courageous and confident person. The transformation is striking, and Brad proves that he is someone open to new experiences. Brad does a nice job with this essay by describing in detail both how he changed and what he learned from the experiences. When writing your own essay, if you are worried your topic might not come across as super-original, take the time to tell a compelling narrative with lots of colorful details. The more specific you are, the better your essay will be.

Brad concludes his essay by mentioning his participation in student government, community work, and leadership at work. These are great illustrations of the impact of his “defining experience.” While he lacks room in this essay to elaborate on them, if used thematically throughout the rest of his essays, these common threads could give the reader a coherent, mutually supporting picture of the applicant. 

Furthermore, while Brad does an effective job highlighting his leadership strengths, he could have improved his essay meaningfully if he had discussed how this experience highlighted his leadership weaknesses as well. The most important leadership lessons are often found in your setbacks or mistakes, and reflecting on these will show the admissions committee that you possess strong self-awareness and a willingness to learn and adapt.

From 65 Successful Harvard Business School Application Essays edited by the Staff of the Harvard Crimson. Copyright (c) 2009 by the authors and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Publishing Group