Hitting the ground running - Harvard - Business personal statement advice
Business personal statement advice
My most substantial accomplishment is my success as finance manager at Helisur, in a position I took with no professional exposure to aviation, advanced degree, or managerial experience. My multiple responsibilities—managing relationships with financial and insurance companies, setting compensation policies, overseeing daily operations, collaborating with international suppliers—quickly outstripped my training as an industrial engineer. Lacking critical knowledge, I largely depended on self-education. I built a business book library, approached experts, attended courses, and spent countless nights building financial models. When first asked to provide a term sheet I looked up the definition on the Internet, gathered ideas from the books I had nearby, and delivered a proper term sheet by lunch without anybody noticing that I had no idea what a term sheet was earlier that morning. Clear goals and a healthy degree of confidence and optimism helped me develop essential business skills necessary to succeed in my position. By focusing on the critical strengths of our organization I optimized our financial management, established strong relationships with important local banks, and transformed our compensation system benefitting our employees and assuring top quality human capital for the company. By accepting the responsibility and meeting a tough professional challenge I made a positive difference for the organization and contributed to advance the project.
My second and very personal accomplishment was graduating first in a high school I started without knowing a single word of Spanish. The move from Russia to Peru changed my world. I lost contact with my childhood friends, my extended family, and my support base in the art school I attended for years and in the neighborhood I had lived in since birth. In Peru I discovered a completely alien environment and a challenge to fit into a new life. Pulled in many different directions and concerned about finding new friends and passing courses I barely understood, I discovered purpose in hard work and independence, learning to persevere in all my efforts. I set universally high personal standards, which I applied in everything I did, from choosing honest and down-to-earth friends to getting good grades. Five years later, the little kid from the former Soviet Union gave the valedictory speech, received three medals for distinguished achievements, including the gold medal for outstanding academic performance, and was applauded by his new friends and the entire community he finally called home.
My third accomplishment is having had a significant impact on my alma mater by co-creating an innovative Leadership and Management Control course. In college I discovered and pursued my passion for entrepreneurship in a variety of projects that were mostly independent and self-motivated because our industrial engineering program didn’t have enough inspiring and practical resources to foster a culture of entrepreneurship. I collaborated with a friend and a young professor to design the first entrepreneurship course in the School of Engineering. Overcoming opposition of authorities who favored exclusively traditional coursework, we developed an innovative mixture of teamwork, leadership practice, project management theory, real-life cases, and guest speakers. My independent-learning managerial experience and success in team projects helped me prepare workshops and lectures designed to help students develop the strategic skills necessary to collaboratively identify, analyze, and capture opportunities. Using my passion for entrepreneurship, professional experience, and contacts as teaching resources, I contributed to make this course one of the most popular electives. I am proud of having had the ability and spirit to innovate and effectively contribute to my alma mater by solving a significant weakness in the program and improving the quality of education for future students.
Analysis
In the first story, the author explains how he overcame a setback. He is a young and inexperienced kid who is under-qualified but realistic. He openly acknowledges the gaps in his knowledge. How many times have you found yourself using the Internet search engine to look up something that others may find basic? We would think often. This section of the essay is effective because the author proves himself as a leader who is capable of learning, strategizing, and surviving when thrown in the deep end.
In contrast to the professional accomplishment described in the first anecdote, the author balances his essay with a more personal accomplishment—overcoming a language barrier—in the second story. His successful move from Russia to Peru is remarkable for any teenager. The cultural, linguistic, political, and structural diversity may have been demoralizing, but the author demonstrates his versatility, strength, and determination in successfully adapting to his new environment.
The third accomplishment again balances the overall thematic choices across the essay by focusing on an academic accomplishment.
We encourage applicants to balance themes across the three accomplishments to showcase their strengths via diversity of thought, expression, and experience.
The real shortcoming of this essay, however, is that the author does not delve into what he has learned and how he is a more capable person as a result of these accomplishments. The essay would have been more powerful if the author had elaborated on his thought process, including the “Three Ws”: what drives him, why is the achievement important to him, and what has he learned as a result of these accomplishments.
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