In-between - Harvard - Business personal statement help course

Business personal statement help course

I enjoy never giving up, always thinking there’s a way, and if there is not one, creating it. I enjoy walking through Central Park with Paige, my girlfriend of six years, and discovering new paths. I enjoy helping Ground Zero construction workers by cold-calling major insole distributors and organizing five hundred pairs of insoles to be donated to the Red Cross. I enjoy seeing that the elevator has not moved off my floor between the time I come home late and when I wake up early to go running the next morning.

I enjoy having close friends with not-so-close personalities, histories, goals, and lifestyles. I have friends who work at Lehman and Solomon, and another who works at her mother’s Common Grounds coffee shop; I have friends who visit families on opposite sides of the Dead Sea but can still have peaceful conversations about U.S. foreign policy.

I enjoy never having a single regret, standing in the present and leaning toward the future. I enjoy making mistakes and realizing my first impression was wrong. The best manager I ever worked for initially struck me as a timid and uninspiring person. Weeks later I realized how her unthreatening nature was an incredibly powerful tool in putting clients at ease with changing their minds and with accepting her bold and innovative ideas.

I enjoy listening, learning, trying new things, and growing. I enjoy finally learning to surf Costa Rica’s fifteen-foot waves after spending the better part of two days underwater. I enjoy seeing my first boss finally laugh when I built up the nerve to do an impression of her at the company Christmas party. I enjoy laughing, making people laugh, and people that can laugh at themselves.

I enjoy how my family’s diversity has shaped me. My younger brother, who spent time in three different high schools, is beginning to act on my coaching that straightening up his act does not mean living an uninteresting life. While my father grew up playing stickball on the streets of Queens, New York, my mother learned how to sail her father’s boat on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. I enjoy my parents’ different renditions of my childhood. I enjoy knowing that my personality lies, like the truth in their contrasting tales, somewhere in between.

Analysis

As an essay intended to supplement a business school application with personal details, this effort is a tour de force. Every sentence conveys something new about the author—about his interests, feelings, hobbies, and cultural identity. His insatiable appetite for life is impossible to ignore. The seemingly endless list of details, when taken as a whole, paints a picture of a fascinating and complex individual. The essay is unassuming and unpretentious, while its honesty makes it instantly credible.

Much like the preceding example, the essay adds tremendous depth to the application. The driven banker becomes a candidate with a very broad and balanced view of the world, able to contribute to his MBA community not just a finance skill set, but a deep perspective on happy living.

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