Harvard Essays and Essay Tips (2006-2007):

Harvard Essay 1

What would you like the MBA Admissions Board to know about your undergraduate academic experience?

Harvard Essay 1 Tips

As an academic experience preceding the Harvard MBA, your undergraduate academic experience might be a good guide to what you are capable of at HBS. This HBS essay should speak of that formative phase in your life that has now made you the irresistible scholar-applicant that you are today!

The little problem with the question is that after a substantial work experience period (5+) or following a post graduate academic experience you might find it a little tough to backtrack and look into your undergraduate phase. So who said everything was perfect?!

Harvard Essay 2

What are your three most substantial accomplishments and why do you view them as such? (600-word limit)

Harvard Essay 2 Tips

Straightforward question from Harvard. So start off by forming a straightforward answer that lists not 3 but 6-10 key achievements from your professional, personal or academic life.

Having done that, look at the Harvard essay package as a whole and then revisit the list. For example you might notice that there are separate leadership, ethics and academics related questions. So no point reiterating a point unless you have a good story that is not repeated. The rider to that is that since this is Harvard and since this is an MBA application, there is an exception to that rule - leadership. 4-5 sprinklings of leadership instances across the entire package might be just right and this might be the place for at least one.

The final choice can now be made based on the general importance of the achievements, the extent of your contribution to it's success and what the stories tell about you. Choose the qualities that the accomplishments highlight and decide if those are the traits that you want the Harvard admissions committee to remember about you.

Of course the second part of the question "why do you view them as such" is truly where you must start from: clarify your position on the "why" and you will almost automatically arrive at the answer to the first part.

Harvard Essay 3

Discuss a defining experience in your leadership development. How did this experience highlight your strengths and weaknesses as a leader? (400-word limit)

Harvard Essay 3 Tips

Hey, leadership is very important to Harvard. Harvard mentions it wherever and whenever they can. So you will do well to assume that this essay is important.

Write about an experience where you were in a leadership position, preferably one that helped define what kind of a leader you are today. Choose an experience that had it's successes but was certainly improvable - so that you can include your leadership strengths and weaknesses. Simple?

The story can go back in time since the focus is on a developing leader (but let's skip the story about your leadership experience in the first grade classroom!). The leadership development, after the mentioned experience, can actually form the central focus of the essay if that is what you want.

Harvard Essay 4

In your career, you will have to deal with many ethical issues. What are likely to be the most challenging and what is your plan for developing the competencies you will need to handle these issues effectively? (400-word limit)

Harvard Essay 4 Tips

It is so very easy to write a bad essay here, even after some hard work.

That last statement is actually designed to make you smile with anticipated pleasure. Did you?

If not, maybe the next paragraph will make you feel better.

There are very few questions in any essay package that most applicants will get almost completely wrong. Each such question gives you the opportunity to create a well-defined advantage for yourself. This Harvard essay is undeniably one such. Unless you you are determined to do it wrong smile you must!

Apart from your own attitude towards ethics, and your past experiences where your value system may have been challenged, you will probably do well to talk to a few people in your chosen industry and supplement it with online research to uncover specific (or even unique?) ethical challenges that you will face in your chosen sphere of activity.

Harvard Essay 5

What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you? (400-word limit)

Harvard Essay 5 Tips

A leading MBA essayist recently told me that she felt dizzy every time she tried to imagine the number of applicants who want to graduate from a leading Ivy League B School, join McKinsey (or another leading Management Consultancy) and then found their own company. If you imagine the career track in your Harvard essay to be similar to that, perhaps you should think again. Not that there anything intrinsically wrong with the idea (or with McKinsey or with entrepreneurship) but that is certainly not a differentiating or different answer. Some lucid thinking and creativity will go a long way in transforming this from a well-disguised sleeping pill to the high point of your Harvard application.

Harvard gives you greater scope than in a usual "what is your career goal" question. Define the goal and explain your vision. Show how it makes sense for you and for HBS.

Strategic thinking, passion and intelligence: show these in the essay and you'll have my vote.

Harvard Essay 6

What other information do you believe would be helpful to the Board in understanding you better and in considering your application? (400-word limit)

Harvard Essay 6 Tips

Here we have a Harvard style optional essay - no option!

Point 1: Let us not stare a gift horse wherever.. grab the chance to write on any aspect of your life, career, value system, thought process or whatever else you feel will advance the quality of your Harvard application. This is 400 words worth of free airtime for brand YOU. Broadcast!

Point 2: Do you know why, in most places, we advise against attempting an optional essay? Because the temptation to use 400 words worth of admission committee time to repeat points, contradict the other essays or otherwise simply bore them into a blank stupor, is for some unimaginable reason too sweet to resist. Here you have no choice - write you must. So please resist the urge!

Go for it!