The three most substantial accomplishments in my life comprise an athletic, a personal, and a professional accomplishment. These have rewarded me with confidence in myself and my abilities, because they proved to me that I was capable of successfully handling difficult challenges.

The first accomplishment was the Pedro Zamora National College Bike Tour. I was one of five college students who organized, arranged financing for, and completed a cross-country bicycle tour from Los Angeles to Boston. We spoke at twenty-seven colleges with the objective of raising awareness on college campuses about the threat that HIV poses to college students. In Washington, D.C., we were received at the White House by First Lady Hillary Clinton. Additionally, we raised over $50,000 from corporate sponsors for HIV prevention education. I consider the tour to be one of my most rewarding accomplishments in terms of the physical and organizational challenges as well as the thought that we might have encouraged someone to behave differently and, thereby, potentially avoid contracting HIV. The trip also taught me how to push myself and my teammates to perform beyond our abilities as individuals.

The second accomplishment was living and working abroad for three and a half years. I knew that I wanted to travel the world and have a career in international business. I just did not know where to start or how to gain experience. I tried to obtain a job overseas while

still in school but ran into the problem that I did not have any significant work experience. I almost decided to give up and wait until later in my career to work overseas, but something in my mind pushed me to take the risk and go for it. After graduating from college, I traveled in Australia and Africa for three months. When I ran low on money, I went to London in search of a job. Fortunately, I quickly found a job as an analyst for a firm based in Switzerland. I was soon transferred to the Swiss headquarters and then on to Chile. Over those three and a half years, I traveled to forty countries on six continents, gained significant international work experience, and learned a great deal about myself from exposure to new ideas and situations.

The third accomplishment results from a work experience. In June 1999, the company I worked for transferred me from Switzerland to Chile to conduct a survey of the Chilean market for a particular chemical used in the copper-refining process. If the market proved to be attractive, the company planned to construct a $2 million local production facility. My role was to develop a business model including market size and price structure, production costs, and a return on investment analysis to determine whether the plant would be successful or not.

I was somewhat daunted by the task, since a $2 million decision would be made based on my evaluation of the project. Over the course of six months, I met with the majority of our potential customers in order to produce a detailed market survey, found a suitable piece of property to locate the plant, worked with local engineering firms to develop plant construction costs, and produced a detailed production cost model based on market factors. After completing my analysis, I successfully recommended that the project not be pursued because of an unacceptably low return. This project offered me a significant level of responsibility, and I am pleased that I was able to meet such a tough professional challenge.

Analysis

Erik comes across as courageous and curious, an individual you would want to sit next to on a long flight. Key to this is the tone of the essay, which is accessible, matter-of-fact, and not at all arrogant (always a risk when writing about things that you have done well).

He does a nice job by seamlessly moving from one story to the next. His colorful and detail-rich writing brings his accomplishments to life and results in a superb essay that goes beyond just saying something is good and instead proves it to you. As with many essays in this section, that is the key: convincing the reader that what you did is important to you, not that it is important in its own right. This may seem like a subtle point but it is worth remembering. Playing a tiny role in a $500 million deal but not having much to say other than that it was a big deal is a lot less meaningful than Erik’s description of a relatively small project, but one where he had a major impact. Gaudy numbers matter less than what you did or what you learned. It is inevitable that someone else will have worked on a bigger deal, so try not to win based on size alone.

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