Noises off - Harvard - Business school application essay editing

Business school application essay editing

Time never passes more slowly than when waiting for an actor to remember his next line. During my senior year in high school I earned the opportunity to direct a play, from casting to curtain call. What should have been a pleasant, two-and-a-half-hour performance, however, turned into a four-hour ordeal. I honestly felt sorry for the audience.

I did not realize the problems my casting had caused until two weeks before the show when the lead actress was suspended and the lead actor was still using cue cards he had hidden around the set. I should have mitigated my poor evaluation of my cast by replacing the lead actress and adapting my directing style to reap the talent of my lead actor. Instead, I continued with my plan, confident that my two actors would pull themselves together. The lead actress assured me she would be ready for the show, and the lead actor, who later went to Juilliard, would surely perform to his skill level.

My confidence was shattered that first long performance. My mistake was in my casting, but my failure was in my unwillingness to make the changes the play needed to succeed. This experience strengthened my skills in critically evaluating the strengths of my team members, but the lesson that has haunted me is that it is never too late to change direction when success demands it.

Years later, when I recreated the process-monitoring system at the Koch refinery, the first version was complete when I realized that major revisions were needed to keep the system running after I was gone; I had to change direction. I spent two months working extra hours to complete the revisions. Six months later, my assistance has not once been needed to maintain or operate the system.

Analysis

You can almost feel Craig squirming in his seat as his actors bungle yet another line. But in this essay the writer does not miss a trick, delivering an offbeat example of personal disappointment. This essay is a good example of how you do not have to tell a story related to your job. In fact, lots of people do not. Do, though, remember to tie what you learned back to why you want to go to business school.

Here, Craig is conscious of telegraphing his key takeaways through a series of “shoulda, woulda, coulda” moments, showing how he wished he could have acted differently. This addresses the topic’s requirement for personal learning, and makes the reader believe that the protagonist really did assimilate these lessons. In addition, the essay neatly dovetails into a second example, which illustrates the application of lessons learned to his project at the Koch refinery. This symmetry between the creative and commercial strands of the essay shows Craig as a well-rounded individual.

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