Answering the HBS prompt like a typical MBA essay question. The key point of the Harvard Business School essay is the phrase “what more,” which is a clear signal that HBS does not want you using the essay to rehash things that are already covered by your resume, career goals statement, professional recommendations or written application blogger.comted Reading Time: 7 mins · “The essay really is make or break for HBS,” shares one of the former HBS Admissions Officers on the SBC team. “So many applications have acceptable credentials up to that point of the application. It really is the essay that sets the overall application apart and earns it the interview.” Check out our updated tips forEstimated Reading Time: 2 mins · HBS essay examples are below. Highlighting personal qualities and triumphs is essential. HBS admit success is driven by how “interesting” the candidate appeared to admissions officers. Applicants convey this through both their overarching story and positioning as well as execution through detailed anecdotes and nuances
Sample Harvard Business School Application Essays
Let us evaluate your MBA potential and develop your game plan. Give us 15 minutes. HBS essay examples are below. Highlighting personal qualities and triumphs is essential. Applicants convey this through both their overarching story and positioning as well as execution through detailed anecdotes and nuances. SBC has hbs essay former HBS Admissions Officers and multiple HBS MBA graduates who deeply know the nuances of applying to HBS hbs essay. My mom likes to tell the story of when I was four years old and we went to visit my aunt in Texas.
For hbs essay reason, I decided I was going to learn to swim—that day. I got into the pool with my parents and held onto the brick edge. I tried to doggy paddle back and forth across the shallow end, and, slowly hbs essay surely, I moved further away from the wall. We stayed in the water for hours. But by the time I got out, I could swim, hbs essay. If I tell myself I am going to learn to swim, then that is exactly what I hbs essay going to do.
However, as the tryouts neared, I got cold feet; I had only played [sport] for one year prior to ninth grade. The high school coach was my gym teacher at the time, and she knew I was supposed to go out for the team, hbs essay.
I could not imagine telling her that I had hbs essay back on my word, so I dragged myself to the first practice. That turned out to be one of the best decisions I have made. I was a starting defender by my sophomore year, and she would make me yell out directions to organize my teammates. This included telling the seniors who to cover, which was very intimidating, hbs essay. Her confidence in me translated into confidence in myself, and I went on to play for her hbs essay the state championship game my junior year.
I was also voted captain hbs essay my college [sport] team. I know my life would have been very different if I did not try out for [sport] like I said I was hbs essay to. More recently, hbs essay, following through on my commitments has made me a reliable partner at work, and has helped me earn the trust of senior mentors and managers.
For example, a few months into my time on the Multi-Asset team, we were asked by the head of the European Sales desk to host a meeting with C-level management from a European company, hbs essay. My boss thought it was a waste of time, but I had already committed one of us to attend. I held my ground and argued that I should go to the meeting given it was only a small investment of time in the grand scheme of the things, and we would build goodwill with the European Sales desk.
He agreed hbs essay let me go, and after I returned, he said he was impressed by my conviction and commitment, and he was glad we had decided to attend. We never made it past the main course before my grandmother would bring up something controversial she had read in the newspaper or saw on TV that week.
We would inevitably launch into a heated debate—everyone in my family has different political hbs essay. Many a dinner guest has left a little harder of hearing since everyone constantly talks over each other. We would be presented with a case each fall and spend months preparing our arguments both as the prosecution and the defense.
I gave the closing argument when we competed against other schools, and I believe those Sunday dinners prepared me well for articulating my thoughts and confidently defending them in front of others. I was always fascinated with James Bond films. But it was not the cars, the action, or the exotic travel locations that attracted me; rather, it was the gadgets. Before each mission that Bond was sent on, hbs essay would meet with Q Branch, a fictional unit in the British Secret Service that provided advanced technology to give their agents a competitive advantage in the field.
The contraptions hbs essay they came up hbs essay were often unassuming tools with a hidden secondary usage — a wristwatch with a metal-cutting laser, a cigarette case with an X-ray emitter used for safecracking, even a bit of pocket lint with a radioactive tracker, hbs essay. Without these futuristic gadgets, Bond was just a man with a gun, hbs essay, but with them, he was a superhero that saved the world.
The idea that technology can enable otherwise normal people to engage in harrowing acts of bravery to aid their country is powerful. I knew that one day I would engineer solutions to contribute to a cause greater than my own, hbs essay. I would get that opportunity much sooner than expected.
They were offering to pay for my hbs essay college tuition in exchange for me dedicating the next seven years of my life to X. From the day I raised my right hand and took an oath to the Constitution, I knew I would not be content just treating this opportunity as a generic summer internship program between school years. My mission at X was my top priority and I, hbs essay, without the usual collegiate pressures of needing to find a job, geared hbs essay education entirely toward learning skills that I could translate to my new career.
I focused on X and X, spending many hours a week in college on a X leading an effort to design ways for a Hbs essay to securely be commanded from the ground.
I even became a licensed amateur radio operator in order to learn the fundamental concepts of X critical to X communications. My dedication paid dividends immediately, facilitating opportunities to design creative hbs essay and travel throughout the country and the world hbs essay national policymakers meet their most critical intelligence priorities.
I excelled, hbs essay, earning multiple awards and an advanced promotion a year ahead of schedule. I concluded that in order to make a lasting impact, I would need to design the shield, hbs essay, not the sword. As my term of obligation to X neared completion, I knew that I would need to step outside of government into a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment.
I decided to join a small startup that was designing X solutions with the potential to protect some of the most important, but vulnerable, systems powering the US economy. However, throughout my endeavor in the private sector, hbs essay, I have been exposed to more than a few inefficiencies in how information security technology is evaluated, transitioned, and used.
I plan to use my time at Harvard Business School to learn the organizational and strategic skills that underpin successful decision-making in order to drive change in the way the private and public sectors allocate resources and make decisions about cybersecurity.
Sharing a makeshift cake with strangers at the Charlotte airport as the clock strikes midnight on my birthday. Meeting with a Partner on the mountains of Park City, hbs essay, so breathless by the elevation I can barely get a word in. Dashing from an anniversary dinner to catch an impromptu flight to London for a project kick-off. My resume will have detailed my professional experiences to-date, but underneath each of the bullets are dozens of memories like the above, hbs essay.
Upon reflection of these memories, one thing I know for sure is that I am not the typical Consultant. I have chosen hbs essay to define me above other characteristics that may have hindered me from pursuing this path, hbs essay. My favorite personality test will tell you that I am introverted, intuitive, a thinker, and a planner, hbs essay.
As I considered my future career, my instinct told me that an introverted bookworm should not pursue a client-facing, hbs essay, heavily social and unpredictable career filled with endless experiences like the above.
Three years later, I am thankful that I overcame these fears and insecurities and adapted myself to the life of a Consultant, fully embracing these experiences, hbs essay. For others, adaptability might mean something else, but everyone will have to embrace some version of adaptability in the near future.
At X, my focus has been building a market around the Future of Work — how technology, demographics, and globalization will change the nature of work. I have succeeded at developing compelling thought leadership, but the fundamental challenge of driving this point of view hbs essay market is similar to the fears I once held as I embarked on my career.
In the same way that I overcame my fears to pursue my passions, millions of workers and their leaders will have to overcome theirs in order to succeed in a future that is increasingly uncertain and irrevocably different — and that is a difficult pill to swallow. Adapting to uncomfortable situations does not come naturally to many.
Fortunately, my personal journey and background has accelerated this skill for me. I am the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and the daughter of a failed small business owner who reinvented himself at The epitome of strength and adaptability, hbs essay, my grandparents came to America after being liberated from the camps, hbs essay, started a family in Queens and opened a small Jewish bakery that was eventually passed on to my father.
I grew up in an hbs essay of uncertainty, but also with a role model who learned an entirely new trade after a year career and found hbs essay job that excites him every day. The time came for me to embrace the strength and adaptability of my forefathers this past November, when my mother suffered a sudden and fatal heart attack. Moving forward seemed inconceivable, but the following year turned out to be the highlight of my career to-date.
The same week that my mother passed, I was offered a role directly supporting a Human Capital Partner in building a new practice grounded in the thought leadership I helped to develop in the Future of Work space.
Despite my personal hardships, I could not pass up the opportunity to be involved in transforming the face of Human Capital. I took on the role, and was immediately immersed in setting the strategy for the new business that will deliver large-scale transformations following Future of Work discussions.
This has meant gaining experience with cognitive technologies, considering how they will fundamentally change jobs, and developing new ways to transform the workforce for the future. It hbs essay been a fast-paced role, vastly different from traditional Consulting client work. My insight into adaptability has been a personal journey that impacted not only my professional focus, but also my community work.
Much of the struggle my father experienced in changing his career path came from not having a college degree, hbs essay.
As a first generation college graduate, my passion for literacy and education access has steered me to become a leader in my community as a founding Board member of X and a volunteer high school mentor.
I try to instill adaptability in the students I mentor and the non-profit leaders and school administrators I have the pleasure of working with, sharing the opportunities afforded by the same disruption my clients face such as rethinking the skills we teach our students, crowdsourcing global expertise to the classroom, hbs essay, and augmenting the physical classroom with digital tools.
Adaptability in this context does not only mean prevailing over hardship to pursue your hbs essay, but also fundamentally changing the way hbs essay think about delivering education in the future. Grounded in the concept of adaptability, my personal, professional and community experiences have informed my dream of becoming an eminent strategist on transitioning Fortune s to the Future of Work and a Board member of innovative education NPOs transforming how we develop the future workforce, hbs essay.
In pursuing an MBA from HBS, I will be able to bring my own unique perspectives and ability to adapt to the unparalleled case method, peer and alumni network and global community. I was initially fascinated by the adventure each medal, dog-tag and faded photo held. As I matured, hbs essay, and learned more about others who served before me, hbs essay, I saw my fascination was rooted in becoming a leader.
Along this journey, I learned that servant leadership is about self-awareness, humility, inclusion and above all, hbs essay, people. HBS will provide the interactive, hbs essay, case-based environment to continue learning, reflecting, and developing.
One mission during Vietnam was coined Recon by Fire — a tactic designed to find the enemy by shooting without hbs essay into suspected areas. Despite dialogue with superiors on the unnecessary risk, hbs essay, the order stood. He decided to disobey; he took his team out, helped in a village, set up security for the night, hbs essay, and reported completion. I can only imagine the self-awareness and humility it took for my grandfather to make that decision.
These critical qualities are only honed through experience. This day leadership course tests your ability to lead in a simulated combat environment. Although I would be given another attempt, I was crushed mentally because of the personal nature of peers. For the first time in my life I thought about quitting. Debating whether to try the phase again, hbs essay, I got a letter from dad with some motivational thoughts.
He closed the letter with a clever acronym he had almost jokingly developed for harder times: STOP-P … Smile, Think, hbs essay, Observe, Plan, hbs essay, Pray. The next week, I restarted with hbs essay smile on my face and a mental cue to remember who I was, hbs essay.
How To Answer The HBS Essay: First, \
, time: 15:00/21 Harvard Business School Essay Analysis [Sample Essays]
· HBS essay examples are below. Highlighting personal qualities and triumphs is essential. HBS admit success is driven by how “interesting” the candidate appeared to admissions officers. Applicants convey this through both their overarching story and positioning as well as execution through detailed anecdotes and nuances · “The essay really is make or break for HBS,” shares one of the former HBS Admissions Officers on the SBC team. “So many applications have acceptable credentials up to that point of the application. It really is the essay that sets the overall application apart and earns it the interview.” Check out our updated tips forEstimated Reading Time: 2 mins There really is no template for a successful HBS essay. The diversity of essays that are acceptable — no pun intended, well maybe a little intended — to Harvard Business School is striking. The commitment of most of the authors to telling their story is also blogger.comted Reading Time: 10 mins
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