This question is clearly designed to elicit your opinion of yourself. Modest people, and people from cultures less egocentric than that of the United States, have a hard time responding to the first half because it obviously asks you to brag a little. Less self-assured applicants find it hard to be honest and to mention their shortcomings. This question provides a good gauge of how self-confident (or arrogant), accomplished (or boastful), decent (or manipulative), mature, self-aware, and honest you are.
THE TYPICAL APPLICANT
Most applicants list a large number of strengths and one or two weaknesses. Their weakness is generally a strength dressed up as a weakness (“I am too much of a perfectionist”; “I work too hard”).
A BETTER APPROACH
Start by choosing two or three primary strengths. Use these to organize your essay by grouping other strengths around them. For example, if you claim that you are very determined, you might discuss your patience in working hard for a long time in order to achieve something important related to this determination. The problem is not generally finding something good to say about yourself. Usually the problem is limiting yourself to a manageable number of strengths. You want to have few enough that you can discuss them in a persuasive fashion rather than just listing them.
Using two or three as central organizing devices (i.e., themes) helps to achieve this goal.
Remember that simply listing strengths is a very weak way of writing. To make your strengths credible and memorable, use illustrations of them.
Instead of bragging about being determined, note (with detail) your five-year battle to overcome childhood leukemia.
The bigger problem, however, is finding a weakness to discuss. Simply calling a strength a weakness (“I work too hard”) is not sufficient. This tactic is used by countless applicants, and its insincerity is nearly guaranteed to repel those reading your essays. For one thing, you have failed to follow instructions; you were asked to list a weakness and failed to do so. In addition, a failure to recognize your own weaknesses means you are blind to something very important. We all know that even the most accomplished and successful people have weaknesses. It is far better to recognize your weaknesses and thus be in a position to try to overcome them than to pretend they do not exist. If you recognize that a weakness exists, you are in a position to make a constructive change. Being willing to discuss a weakness is thus a sign of maturity and, consequently, a strength in itself.
Do not carry a good thing too far, though, and discuss huge flaws such as your drug addictions. Your choice of a flaw may depend on exactly how the question is phrased. If you are asked for a weakness, you can certainly discuss the lack of skills or knowledge that currently limit your managerial success and that have occasioned your desire for an MBA. This is an easy version of the question. The hard version asks you about your personality strengths and weaknesses. The focus on your personality means you cannot simply respond by discussing what skills you want to acquire. To respond to this you must discuss a true personality flaw. One approach is to look at the dark side of one of your strengths. If you are a very determined person, does that mean your drive is accompanied by a terrible temper? Or perhaps it means you are too willing to trample on peers’ feelings? If you are a strong leader, does that mean you do not always value the inputs of your subordinates? If you have been very successful doing detail-laden work, have you overlooked the big picture? Are you so concerned about quality that you find it overly difficult to delegate or share responsibility? Are you a creative entrepreneur obsessed with your vision who alienates more traditional colleagues?
Be sure to avoid discussing a weakness that will be a major handicap at a given school. For example, if you are applying to a quantitatively oriented program, be leery of talking about your difficulties with numbers.
Be careful to discuss your weakness differently from your strengths. The correct space allocation is probably about three- or four-to-one strengths to weakness. You will note that I say “weakness” because you should discuss only one or two weaknesses. When doing so, do not dwell on your description of it or of the problems it has caused you. Do so briefly, thereby limiting the impact that the specifics will have on admissions officers.
Then note what steps you take, or have taken, to try to overcome it.
You want to describe yourself as having numerous strengths that relate well to your positioning effort without sounding arrogant.
ADVANTAGES OF THIS APPROACH
Grouping your strengths in an organized fashion will give you the chance to cover a lot of ground without taking a scattershot approach.
Emphasizing strengths is obviously appropriate. Writing about them in some detail, with appropriate illustrations, will make them memorable. The use of illustrations also makes your claims realistic rather than boastful.
Describing your weakness in a cursory way, and being detailed about the steps you take to overcome the weakness, will gain you points. It shows you to be willing to face up to your flaw without the flaw itself being emphasized. This offers you the best of both worlds.
QUESTION: WHAT ARE YOUR MOST SUBSTANTIAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS?
WHY THE QUESTION IS ASKED
This question obviously gives you a chance to “blow your own horn.” You can brag a bit about what you have accomplished in life. Moreover, you have the chance to put your own spin on what you have done. A particular accomplishment is all the more impressive when you explain the obstacles you had to overcome in order to succeed.
The question also allows schools to learn more about you insofar as you must explain why you consider something to have been a substantial accomplishment. Some accomplishments are of obvious significance. Winning the Noble Prize for Physics is obviously significant; you probably do not need to elaborate on the fact of having won it. Other accomplishments are much more personal. For example, if you had stuttered as a youth and finally ended your stuttering in your twenties, this might be an extremely significant accomplishment for you personally. You have probably done things that have had more impact upon the rest of the world, but for you this accomplishment looms larger. You will probably want to talk about it as an example of your determination and desire to improve yourself. This essay gives you the chance to do so.
This question gives you an opportunity to discuss matters that are unlikely to be listed on your data sheets or mentioned by your recommenders.
Even if you just discuss accomplishments of a more public nature, including something listed in your data sheet (or discussed by your recommenders), you can personalize it in a way in which just listing it (or having someone else talk about it) does not do.
THE TYPICAL APPLICANT
Most applicants use the whole of their essay to try to demonstrate that their accomplishments are impressive, yet focus on matters that are utterly commonplace (among this applicant group, in particular) and that often took place long ago. Thus, they discuss making the high school basketball
team or graduating from college. Another mistaken tendency is to list a string of things rather than to explain one or two in detail, thus essentially duplicating the data sheets.
A BETTER APPROACH
The first step is to determine which accomplishments you will discuss. Your criteria for choosing appropriate accomplishments will be familiar.
Which ones will help your positioning effort? Which will be unusual and interesting for admissions committees to read about? Was this accomplishment truly noteworthy and also important to you?
The following criteria are also helpful guides:
• You had to overcome major obstacles, showing real determination in doing so.
• You learned more about yourself.
• You came to understand the need for further skill development and thus, perhaps, an MBA.
• You used real initiative, perhaps by pushing a bureaucracy to respond or bypassing one altogether.
• Your success was unexpected.
• You worked extremely hard toward a clear goal.
• You worked with and through other people.
• Your impact can be clearly seen (i.e., you were not simply tagging along with someone else who did the real work).
If you are trying to show that you have had a lot of relevant business experience despite being only 23, you will probably want one (or preferably more) of these accomplishments to be in the business realm. Not every accomplishment will fulfill all of our criteria, but you should be able to meet most of them in the course of the full essay.
In writing the essay, go into sufficient detail to bring the events to life, but do not stop there. Discuss why you consider this a substantial achievement, why you take pride in it, and what you learned from it. Did you change and grow as a result? Did you find that you approached other matters differently afterwards?
The admissions committee will read this for more than a brief description of the items you list on your data sheet. It will want to learn more about these accomplishments and more about the private you, if you discuss significant accomplishments of a personal nature here. It will want to know what motivates you and what you value. It will also want to see how you have developed as a person and as a professional.
ADVANTAGES OF THIS APPROACH
This question gives you a lot of latitude, as our criteria suggest. Using it to show more of the real you will help you avoid the usual problems people create for themselves in this essay. You do not want to restate the facts you have already listed on your data sheet; you want to show you have been ready to face challenges, determined to overcome obstacles, and able to accomplish things that mattered to you. The essays in Part IV suggest a limitless number of potential topics; the excerpted essays were successful because they revealed their authors’ characters while explaining the personal importance of their achievements.
QUESTION: DESCRIBE A CREATIVE SOLUTION YOU’VE DEVISED TO A PROBLEM
WHY THE QUESTION IS ASKED
Because of the rapid change of business practices in the modern economy, MBA programs are naturally concerned about the creativity of their candidates. This is particularly true in an era when many business school students intend to find “the next big thing”—the next great idea for a business—in order to launch their own firms as soon as possible after business school. By asking this question, schools signal that they particularly desire a certain type of applicant. This question is also a means for determining to what extent candidates have performed above and beyond the requirements of their jobs and thus are the stars that schools have always sought.
THE TYPICAL APPLICANT
The typical applicant tells a story about a solution to a problem without showing that the solution was in any way creative. For example, she explains how she tackled an impending deadline by dividing up project tasks among the individuals on a team according to their talents and interests. Although this represents a solution to a problem, it is a stunningly ordinary one. There is nothing creative or even inspired about it.
Still other applicants focus only on the “creative” part of the question, and do not bother to illustrate that this creativity has solved a problem. One applicant, for instance, wrote an essay about his poetry writing.
A BETTER APPROACH
It is obviously necessary to actually answer the question—to show that a creative approach in fact solved a problem. But do not stop there.
Describe the nature of the problem; show that it was indeed a difficult one to crack. Show also that obvious approaches would not have been successful. In so doing, you show that you have tried to turn the problem around and looked at it from every angle, thereby showing good problem- solving skills—and also showing that you did not just get lucky in eventually finding a creative solution. The creative solution will look all the more impressive when set in this context.
After describing the solution you found, be sure to show the impact your solution had. Business schools want to have creative people, it is true, but even more they want creative people who have a major impact upon their environments.
Consider the fellow working for a hair products firm that sells a permanent-wave product that is much less harmful to hair than other permanent waves are, but which faces marketing problems because it is considered to have relatively little holding power. Others in the firm considered trying
to convince the market that this product had sufficient holding power by mounting major marketing efforts. This fellow, on the other hand, decided that the most effective way to tackle the problem was to build a machine that measured the shape stability of hair, thereby allowing the firm’s product to be compared scientifically against the other products. The result—that it was 80 percent as effective (with dramatically less damage to the hair)—convinced hair salons of its value. This is an extreme example; it is not necessary to have devised a new machine (and received a patent for it) to look like a creative problem-solver. Utilizing a new distribution channel, finding a new way to get the data to resolve an issue, or applying a new analytical technique could all qualify.
ADVANTAGES OF THIS APPROACH
Discussing a truly creative solution demonstrates that you will fit well in the more forward-thinking parts of modern business (and business schools). It also suggests that you challenge yourself to approach problems from a variety of perspectives. Possessing such an open mind makes you a good collaborator on team projects. Showing, too, that you have had a substantial impact via your creative approach marks you as more than a dreamer—it shows you to be someone whose creativity and other attributes are harnessed to being productive.
QUESTION: DESCRIBE A RISK THAT YOU HAVE TAKEN AND ITS OUTCOME
WHY THE QUESTION IS ASKED
As with so many other questions, one function of those about risk-taking is to signal the type of candidate the school wants. In this case, it signals that the school wants people who are not afraid to take a risk. The school recognizes that those who have never taken a risk are very unlikely to do what is necessary to achieve something stunning. For example, the person who runs for president or prime minister risks the embarrassment of being beaten terribly and, perhaps, of losing a safe seat in Congress, Parliament, or Assembly. The person who founds a business risks bankruptcy.
THE TYPICAL APPLICANT
The typical applicant goes to one of two extremes. One extreme is describing a situation that involved virtually no risk to him. For instance, he mentions that he went beyond what his boss wanted done on a project—as if doing extra work placed him in jeopardy. The other extreme is describing a situation in which he had no real chance of success. For instance, he invested all of his savings in a plan to airfreight cement across the continent.
A BETTER APPROACH
Your choice of a topic is critical: You need to strike the right balance. You need to show that you took a not-insignificant risk without looking like a cavalier idiot who would jump out of an airplane without a parachute. If you were successful, you do not need to worry quite so much about what precisely you chose to do and why. (You do need to demonstrate that there was a real risk of failure, though, to avoid giving the impression that you were not taking a risk.)
It is acceptable to have failed; it is unacceptable never to have tried to accomplish something that would entail efforts outside your personal comfort zone. Yet if you failed, you should be careful in your explanations of why you ran this risk, the analysis you did before starting in, and so on. If the risk looks particularly foolish, better that it be something that you undertook long ago. Similarly, you cannot afford to discuss a risk you took if it appears to be part of a pattern of risk-taking from which you learn no lessons. Thus, a senseless answer would involve betting your salary on lottery tickets month after month, as no analysis is likely to make this look like a well-calculated risk, you can hardly demonstrate marvelous data analysis or research skills, the outcome is unfavorable, and your continuing to bet shows that you resist learning anything from the experience.
Whether your story is that of a career, academic, or personal risk, consider highlighting:
• Your analysis of the situation. Especially if your illustration of risk-taking occurred recently, show yourself as someone who gathers appropriate information, examines it from every angle and weighs it judiciously, and then acts appropriately in light of all the circumstances.
• The degree of risk involved, as well as the possible payoff.
• The extent to which you did or did not succeed.
• The impact upon others.
• Your learning—about risk-taking as well as about yourself, your fit with the world (of work, perhaps), and so on.
ADVANTAGES OF THIS APPROACH
Meeting the criteria discussed above will show that you are a savvy risk-taker, neither afraid to take a risk nor willing to plunge ahead without determining whether the risk is worth running. Showing how you determined whether to take the risk and the results of your action gives you the chance to demonstrate a whole range of skills and attributes critical to your positioning.
QUESTION: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE THAT DEMONSTRATES YOUR LEADERSHIP POTENTIAL?
WHY THE QUESTION IS ASKED
Top schools expect to produce top managers—that is, leaders. They are looking for applicants who have already distinguished themselves as leaders, since past performance is the best indicator of what people will be like in the future.
THE TYPICAL APPLICANT
All too often, applicants discuss being part of a group that achieved something noteworthy without making it clear that they themselves were leaders in this effort.
A BETTER APPROACH
This question is deceptively similar to the “substantial accomplishment” essay. The “substantial accomplishment” essay, as I explained above, asks you to describe a real achievement (and what it means to you). The “leadership” essay, on the other hand, is not looking so much for an
“achievement” as it is for an understanding of how you led an effort to achieve something. In other words, your emphasis should be on your leadership rather than the achievement itself.
To write this essay, you must understand what leadership is. One obvious example is managing people who report directly to you. Less obvious examples involve pushing or inspiring nonsubordinates to do what you want done. How? Leading by example, using your influence as a perceived expert in a relevant field, influencing through moral suasion, or influencing by personal friendship. You might have led people through direct management or through influence. Describe your method—what strategy and tactics did you employ? And why? You may not have been deliberate or extremely self-aware in your actions, of course, in which case you might wish to discuss what you did and why it was or was not a good choice.
What problems did you confront? What did you learn about managing or influencing people? Would another strategy or different tactics/actions have been better choices? Why? Do you now have a developed philosophy of leadership?
You should emphasize that your leadership qualities are the sort that describe a future CEO rather than a high school football hero. In other words, such qualities as maturity, thoughtfulness, empathy, determination, and integrity are highly valuable. So, too, are coaching others to develop their skills, providing emotional support to a team’s vulnerable members, protecting the group from an overweening organization, being able to see the best possible outcomes and how to achieve them, valuing other people’s input, being able to influence or manage very different types of people, and integrating disparate inputs into a unified perspective.
You are generally better off choosing an example from your business career, but a particularly strong example from your extracurricular or private life could also work.
ADVANTAGES OF THIS APPROACH
Viewing this question as concerning your understanding of leadership, and the ways in which you yourself lead, will result in an essay with the appropriate focus. It is not just your achievement that is at issue here; it is also your method of approaching and resolving leadership issues that concerns the admissions committee. If you show yourself to be aware of the leadership issues inherent in your situation and extract some suitable comments regarding what worked or did not work, and why, you will have the core of a good essay.
QUESTION: DESCRIBE MEANINGFUL CROSS-CULTURAL EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD
WHY THE QUESTION IS ASKED
Schools increasingly recognize that global managers—that is, the leaders of the future—need to be able to understand and interact effectively with a wide range of people, certainly including people from other cultures. This is true not just for people’s future careers but also for their participation in the MBA program, where they can expect to deal with a large number of people from other countries. This question is meant to determine whether you have had significant experiences with people unlike you. It is also meant to signal that you can expect such experiences if you attend this program.
THE TYPICAL APPLICANT
The typical applicant discusses being a tourist abroad or having the occasional discussion with a foreigner, reducing foreigners to being exotic and cute rather than real people. Consequently, he never needs to get to grips with what makes them different than him on some fundamental level.
Instead, he resorts to celebrating the wonderfulness of diversity as an abstract and empty notion.
A BETTER APPROACH
To show that you have had a meaningful cross-cultural experience requires you to show that you have come to understand how another culture, or a member of it, functions.
One excellent way to show that you have really come to understand another culture is by having lived in and integrated into one. If this is the case, by all means discuss in what ways you are a part of this other culture. Simple, concrete examples tend to work better than grandiose statements about your degree of integration. For instance, if your knowledge of local restaurants is better than that of anyone else in the office, perhaps you are the one entrusted with ordering the late night food that will be delivered to your team.
Having had in-depth arguments with people from another culture is another way to show that you have engaged with it. Conflict regarding big issues such as the role of the family and/or women in society, religious views, the value or appropriateness of your respective political systems, the importance of education, work-life balance, and so on makes for a fine essay.
You can show that you have gotten to grips with another culture in other ways. For example, perhaps you have had to negotiate with people from a different culture over important aspects of a project. Maybe they did not view its on-time completion as critical, or thought the level of resource committed to it excessive (or lacking). Maybe they thought you were intrusive in checking on their performance during the course of the project. Or