Penny for your thoughts - Harvard - Business school admissions essay advice
Business school admissions essay advice
Since graduating from college I have played various roles in various places, including a law student in Boston, a school teacher in northern Spain, and an investment banker in New York, London, and Frankfurt. Although it would be impossible to collapse these experiences into a single representative day, I can paint my daily experience with broader strokes. Every day I learned something. Every day I met new people. For these reasons, every day was a challenge.
Every day I learned something new. In Frankfurt I took daily German lessons before work. In New York I learned accounting and corporate valuation on the job. In law school I am learning how to analyze judicial decisions and the policies behind them. Despite the diversity of the past few years, every day has comprised a learning experience.
Every day I interacted with new people from diverse backgrounds. In investment banking I worked with management teams from all over the world, including England, Italy, Finland, and Japan. I argued the merits of the matadors with Spaniards at the bullfights in Madrid. I had dinner with the grandfather of my best friend in Germany, who lived under Hitler’s troops in Frankfurt and Khrushchev’s in East Berlin. Every day was typified by a unique interaction, however small, with someone who widened my perspective on the world. Due to these elements, every day has been a challenge. Meeting new people, whether they were clients, coworkers, or classmates, has compelled me to try to understand their distinct viewpoints. Adjusting to new cultural and professional environments has consistently challenged me to readjust my outlook, and staggered me with how much I have yet to learn. My representative day has been alternately frustrating and enrapturing. It has been educational, humbling, enthralling, and demanding. But it has never been boring.
Analysis
This is a wonderful, albeit unconventional essay. Jay is taking a risk here by not describing one single representative day but instead painting a broader picture of how he approaches all days. An essay like this could easily stumble but in this case works beautifully.
Jay has done many things in many cities and wants the admissions committee not to see him as a banker or lawyer but rather as someone who is curious and craves new experiences. Jay is saying to the admissions committee that he will thrive in a diverse place like HBS. Jay’s competitive advantage is his breadth of experiences, and the implication that it will contribute to a richer class discussion.
By acknowledging that “every day has been a challenge” and that he is “staggered” by how much he has yet to learn, Jay comes across as humble and approachable. This is critical because if the essay bombs it will be because the tone misses the mark. A key takeaway here is that it is okay to be creative when answering this question. Most people describe a representative day chronologically but as Jay proves, there are other approaches that can work just as well.
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