HBS Class of 2027 MBA Admission Application: The Three Essays & Goals Statement

Jul, 07, 2024

This will be a five part series of blog posts on the essays and rest of the application for admission to the Harvard Business School Class of 2027:

–This post focuses on overall strategy. It will provide the basis for thinking about what HBS wants to know about you and why. It will discuss the the three main essays and goals statement. The objective is to give the reader the big picture and  on helping you brainstorm and develop your content.

–The second post focuses on the application form questions. It will focus on helping you brainstorm and develop your content.

–The third post focuses on the reapplication essay.

–The forth post is on the joint degree application essays.

–The fifth post will be on recommendations and is intended to apply to both HBS and other schools.

My three-part HBS interview prep series starts here.

My comprehensive service clients have been admitted to HBS for the Classes of  2026, 2025,  2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2011, 2010,  and 2009. My clients’ results and testimonials can be found here. In addition to providing comprehensive application consulting on HBS, I regularly help additional candidates with HBS interview preparation.  Since I started my own counseling service in 2007 (worked with many admits from 2001-2007 when I worked for a company), I have worked with 95 successful applicants from Canada, Europe, India, the Middle East, Japan, South Korea, other parts of Asia, and the United States on HBS application. I think that this range of experience has helped me understand the many possible ways of making an effective application to HBS. l I can tell you is that HBS takes a truly diverse range of people. Some had high GPAs and a great GMAT or GRE scores, others had GPAs and scores well below the 80% range for HBS, but what they all had in common were strong personal and professional backgrounds that came out in their essays.

Part 1: Learn from the past: Some history will explain why HBS Class of 2027 essays are a return to their past format of fixed prompts

SKIP TO PART 2 IF YOU ARE NOT THAT MUCH INTO HISTORY BUT YOU SHOULD PROBABLY READ THE PART ABOUT READING HARBUS ESSAY COLLECTIONS. 

I have been an admissions consultant since 2001 and started doing in-depth analysis of HBS application essays on my blog  since 2007 when I started my own business.  That 2007 post was done at a time when HBS asked multiple questions and not a single major question. From the time I started in 2001 until 2013 (HBS Class of 2016), HBS had always asked multiple specific questions requiring word limited answers.

In 2007 (Class of 2009), the prompts were:

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

2. What have you learned from a mistake? (400-word limit)

3. Please respond to three of the following (400-word limit each):

a. Discuss a defining experience in your leadership development. How did this experience highlight your strengths and weaknesses?

b. How have you experienced culture shock?

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

d. What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you?

e. What global issue is most important to you and why?

f. What else would you like the MBA Admissions Board to understand about you?

TOTAL WORD COUNT: 2200 words

By 2012 (Class of 2015) and the last time they had such short-answer fixed questions before this year, the questions were:

Tell us about something you did well. (400 words)

Tell us about something you wish you had done better. (400 words)

Introduced 500 character goals statement that admissions cycle. This is the only part of the  “essay” content that has not changed in a meaningful way since the Class of 2015 essay.

This fixed prompt short-answer approach changed in 2013, when HBS switched to the open-ended format question that they used for entry to the Classes of 2016-2026. While the question and its length was modified during that time, HBS had created a rather open-ended prompt. For the Class of 2016, the question  was You’re applying to Harvard Business School.  We can see your resume, school transcripts, extra-curricular activities, awards, post-MBA career goals, test scores and what your recommenders have to say about you.  What else would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy? No word limit. For the Class of 2026, the question had become: As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program? 900 words maximum.

What does the above tell us?  HBS has a history of changing its questions from specific prompts to a general question open-ended question and also changes the length they want to see from applicants.

The biggest change in the essay set prior to June 2024 occurred under admissions director Dee Leopold in 2012, who had been in her position for many years. The current change is taking place under a new admissions director, Rupal Gadhia (HBS, Class of 2004), who started her role as Managing Director, Admissions and Financial Aid, in October 2023.  However the first version of the new HBS questions had already been tested in the 2+2 deferred MBA program and were released in December 2023, so we should not necessarily think that having a new MD has a direct connection to this change.  2+2  Applicants had to write on 2 out of the following 3 topics with a maximum of 300 words:

• How have your experiences shaped who you are, how you lead, and how you will contribute at HBS?
• What intellectual experiences have influenced your approach to learning and have led you to pursue an MBA?
• What communities have you been engaged with that have defined how you invest in others?

We can conclude that HBS was happy with the change they made from 900 words to fixed prompts  for the 2+2 program. Usually HBS would release essays in May (For example in 2023, it was announced on the Director’s Blog on May 18, 2023 that there would be no change to the essay, but this year they did not release the questions until June 25th. My assumption is that they wanted to fully analyze the 2+2 essay responses, modify further, and then get organizational alignment on them.  Given the massive change, this makes sense.  Hence the result of that process are the Class of 2027 questions:

Business-Minded Essay: Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices and aspirations and the impact you will have on the businesses, organizations, and communities you plan to serve. (up to 300 words)

Leadership-Focused Essay: What experiences have shaped who you are, how you invest in others, and what kind of leader you want to become? (up to 250 words)

Growth-Oriented Essay: Curiosity can be seen in many ways. Please share an example of how you have demonstrated curiosity and how that has influenced your growth. (up to 250 words)

Conclusion: HBS has a history of changing its essay questions. While no major change in the prompt had occurred between the Class of 2016 and Class of 2026, it is not out of character for HBS to change its essays.

Old Successful HBS Essays:

If you are trying to understand the diverse range of essays that gets someone admitted to HBS, I do recommend  The Unofficial Harvard Business School Essay Book. These HARBUS collections provide answers based on the open-ended question used for the Classes of 2016-2026.  In fact, one of my clients admitted to the Class of 2016 contributed his or her essay to the first edition to it, which made me really happy.   I do highly recommend reading this book because it will give you a really good idea about the range of possible answers and dispel any myths about needing to submit something that is professionally written. While you will be dealing with  different questions, you will encounter many different stories within these essays that will help you understand what has appealed to the HBS admissions office.

I would also recommend the old 65 Successful Harvard Business School Application Essays that contained HBS admits essays to the kind of fixed prompt questions asked prior to the Class of 2016. That collection is still a good read for understanding how to put together an MBA essay though the specific questions are no longer being asked by HBS. This will give you an idea of how one might properly address a fixed prompt question with very limited word count, which now again applies to HBS essays.

Part 2: Understand the value of fixed versus open-ended essay questions

Changes in essays reflect the way in which an admissions committee wants to evaluate applicants.  Open-ended questions (Example: Tell us something about you not covered in the rest of the application)  have the advantage of maximizing the range of answers and giving applicants the chance to provide extremely unique answers. In so doing, admissions offices maximize the possibility of recognizing a truly unique applicant.  Open-ended questions, especially those with generous word count make it possible for an applicant to really tell their story in great detail.  This advantage is also a disadvantage because open-ended responses can generate a vast number of  answers that don’t relate to the criteria that a particular admissions office may care about. In other words for every super unique applicant that you might find through such a process, you might end up dealing with a large amount of useless responses. Now it can be said that open-ended responses also would seemingly have the advantage of being less likely to be gamed, but honestly consultants like me can help an applicant game any question.  And there are a lot of us.  Any question can be gamed if you understand what possible range of answers will please the asker.

Open-ended prompts favor those who can write in an extended manner and are generally speaking better writers  (or receiving better advice).  They tend to require someone to build a very specific structure and then populate it with appropriate stories designed to fit what the school is looking for.  So while this can sound creative, let me tell you, as someone who has helped many clients put their HBS essays together that got interviews and also does interview prep only for many HBS invitees,  these open-ended prompt  essay structures can become formulaic.  One such common structure:

1. Discuss something about past.
2. Identify value or meaning from past event.
3. Apply that value or meaning to something more recent.
4. Repeat 2-3 more times
5. Add an intro and conclusion.

So, frankly it would not surprise me if the admissions team at HBS got tired of applicants using these kind of structures.  They admitted applicants using this structure all the time, but after a while reading the Xth essay about how a transformative childhood incident enabled this applicant to successfully assist their company’s Go-To-Market strategy, they might have gotten tired.  I know I did and I don’t read nearly as many essays as they do.

Fixed prompts like the three short essay (300, 250, and 250 words) questions HBS is now asking don’t require building a huge structure. They require building very specific ones.  It can become a bit of an essay contest when the prompts are open-ended, after all, you are comparing things that may very well be unlike each other. With fixed prompts, you can compare like things.  And if you connect your fixed prompts directly to your admissions criteria, as HBS is now doing (see below), it becomes even easier.

Imagine you are an admissions officer, what is easier to evaluate a short answer to a fixed question or a long answer to an open-ended one?  The answer is obvious.  Comparing relatively like things is always easier.  And kids, not to destroy any myths you have about the ivory tower, but an admissions office is an application and applicant evaluation factory. The more standardization, the easier it is to make the sausage (In the case invite for an interview, defer (HBS R1) or ding an applicant).  Imagine you are an MBA admissions office faced with an increase in applications (HBS and the rest experienced this in R2 for 2024 entry and can assume that will be true for 2025 entry), so your costs are going up (you need more admissions readers) but finding great staff is a problem. What to do?  Make the time required for reviewing an application more efficient. What takes the least time?  Short fixed question responses. This is just conjecture on my part. I have no inside information on this but I have enough of an organizational imagination and sufficient years in the admissions industry to draw my own conclusions.

At this point, I should mention something about AI (ChatGPT and company), as some will no doubt conclude that maybe HBS is reacting to AI by changing its prompt. I doubt it but if that was the case, I think it would be an error to change questions on that basis.  I don’t think it matters whether the question involves a fixed prompt or an open-ended one because AI will initially generate a coherent answer to any prompt.  One can certainly use AI to provide a structured response to any question of any kind. An applicant can then rewrite the AI response to make it personal and get human feedback on it to make sure it actually answers the question effectively.  The result may be sufficient for admission.  Lazy morons will no doubt have an AI generate a response and just use the output without considering whether it is actually effective or not.  In this sense, an AI initial answer will functionally the same as any first draft: The basis for something great, something just OK, or garbage.  We will discuss the potential value of using ChatGPT and its friends as a tool for brainstorming answers but that will be in the second post in this series.

While some may mourn the passing of the open-ended HBS essay question, I don’t.  Simple reason: I  AM HAPPY TO KNOW WHAT HBS IS LOOKING FOR AND I DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO GUESS ABOUT IT.  For any analyst of anything, whatever ego boast when can get from correctly guessing in a situation of ambiguity, it is much better  to actually know something.  We don’t have to guess what HBS is looking for! So thank you HBS for being direct and helping applicants understand what you really care about! So what do they care about?  Let’s use these three new essay prompts plus the goals statement to figure that out.

Fortunately for us these three essays align directly with their admissions criteria as stated on “Who Are We Looking For?” I will quote this at length. 

“While it’s important to us that our students’ perspectives vary, they all share three characteristics. Our students are: business-minded, leadership-focused, and growth-oriented.

Business-Minded

We are looking for individuals who are passionate about using business as a force for good – who strive to improve and transform companies, industries, and the world. We are seeking those who are eager to solve today’s biggest problems and shape the future through creative and integrated thinking. Being business-minded is about the interest to help organizations succeed, whether in the private, public, or non-profit sector. This business inclination can be found in individuals with a variety of professional and educational experiences, not just those who come from traditional business backgrounds.

In Your Application: We will look for evidence of your interpersonal skills, quantitative abilities, and the ways in which you plan to create impact through business in the future.

Leadership-Focused

We are looking for individuals who aspire to lead others toward making a difference in the world, and those who recognize that to build and sustain successful organizations, they must develop and nurture diverse teams. Leadership takes many forms in many contexts – you do not have to have a formal leadership role to make a difference. We deliberately create a class that includes different kinds of leaders, from the front-line manager to the startup founder to the behind-the-scenes thought leader.

In Your Application: Your leadership impact may be most evident in extracurriculars, community initiatives, or your professional work.

Growth-Oriented

We are looking for individuals who desire to broaden their perspectives through creative problem solving, active listening, and lively discussion. At HBS you will be surrounded by future leaders from around the world who will make you think more expansively about what impact you might have. Our case and field-based learning methods depend on the active participation of curious students who are excited to listen and learn from faculty and classmates, as well as contribute their own ideas and perspectives.

In Your Application: We will look for the ways in which you have grown, developed, and how you engage with the world around you.”

As you will see each of three essays relates directly to one of these characteristics.  Other parts of your application will also relate to these criteria, which  I will discuss in subsequent posts.

WHAT MAKES YOU STAND OUT?

The discussion that follows is for the purpose of  building essays  that will really showcase what makes you stand out as an applicant. Everyone has their own unique life story and the point is to get your reader interested in your story.  When I am working with an applicant, especially in the initial stages of writing I am  focused on this question because I know that great applications are based on great self-marketing campaigns and the heart of such campaigns is applicant differentiation. Good differentiation will be based on good stories. Think about about the hard and interesting moments in life.   What has challenged you in your life?  How have you suffered and grown stronger? What has made you rethink your decisions or view or career?  Why do excel at what you do?  Who or what motivates you?  These are just some of the questions you need to consider.

Part Three: The Business-Minded Essay:  Be Motivated & Impactful 

The “Business-Minded Essay: Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices and aspirations and the impact you will have on the businesses, organizations, and communities you plan to serve.” relates to both your past professional career decisions and motivations and the kind of impact you want to have in the future. As HBS says “Being business-minded is about the interest to help organizations succeed, whether in the private, public, or non-profit sector. This business inclination can be found in individuals with a variety of professional and educational experiences, not just those who come from traditional business backgrounds.”  However, it is not the actual HBS Career Goals statement. If you just look at this question in isolation, you will be making a mistake because the HBS application includes a 500 character goals statement:

Post-MBA Goals

Before even writing either the goals statement or the Business-Minded Essay, you need to figure out what your career goals are because they will be the basis for the goals statement and inform what you write in Essay 1. You need to have a future plan that you can successfully sell in the application and an interview. This plan must be realistic (short-term), intuitively justify doing an MBA, and be ambitious (both in the short and long-term).  You most likely will spend more time thinking about what you are going to write in 500 characters than writing it.  Since this question does not ask about HBS, you should not necessarily include any why HBS content here but you certainly might explain in either this goals statement or the Business Minded Essay why need an MBA now, like a one-sentence explanation (20-25 words max).

If you are still having difficulty with your career goals, see my analysis of Stanford Essay B for another (and more structured)  method for thinking about goals.

I frequently work with my clients on their goals. My objective is to help clients formulate goals that will be convincing to an MBA admissions office and interviewers. A key test of goals beyond being believable and ambitious is that you can sell them an interview. In the case of HBS that would be a 30 minute intense interview with a member of the MBA Admissions Board who has read your application very carefully and knows what they want to ask you. And part of what they might ask is about goals, so make sure whatever you write in the goals statement and Essay 1 is something you will be able to defend.

Now let us turn to  the “Business Minded Essay.”   By “business,” in this context HBS is referring to “a person’s regular occupation, profession, or trade.”  Whatever your work has been or you want it to be is the business that is the subject of this essay. What you think about your career and what you hope to hope to accomplish in the future, would be another way to say it, though not as precisely as I will.  We can divide Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices and aspirations and the impact you will have on the businesses, organizations, and communities you plan to serve into three distinct parts:

WHAT MOTIVATES YOUR CAREER CHOICES UP TILL NOW?

WHAT MOTIVATES YOUR FUTURE PROFESSIONAL ASPIRATIONS?

WHAT KIND OF IMPACT DO YOU HOPE HAVE IN THAT FUTURE?

Three Hundred words does not seem like very much to answer these three questions. At least you don’t have to be specific about what you will be doing after your MBA because you can do that in the goal statement.

WHAT MOTIVATES YOUR CAREER CHOICES UP TILL NOW?

Is this part you need to provide an explanation for the reasons behind your career to date. I think it is important to understand that these reason(s)  for your career must go beyond the absolute minimum considerations of making money. You must take the messy facts of your career, to whatever extent they are messy, and render it rational:  You are telling a story about your past that renders it rational and explainable to a reader.  Clearly given limited word count one can likely only provide one or two underlying explanations for your career.  Three would be a stretch. You are trying to make what you write meaningful and that requires sufficient word count.

WHAT MOTIVATES YOUR FUTURE PROFESSIONAL ASPIRATIONS?

Additionally you have to make a decision whether that motivation relates to to your future professional aspirations or that there is some kind of change between your motivations in the past and your future motivations. In other words at a basic level you must decide whether you’re telling a career motivation story of continuity or one of change.

The advantages of a continuity story is that it is simple to tell: A continuity story is one where there is consistent or relatively consistent motivation connecting your past and your future. Given limited word count this is easier to do then telling a more complex story. For those seeking to simply enhance a professional career and not change their career it often will make sense to tell a continuity story.  Such a story is ideal for a career enhancer. Career enhancers include those who are coming from family businesses, company sponsored, and those who seek management roles in the same industry/function.

 A disadvantage of a continuity story is that it can be rather dull if the intended impact is not significant. In other words continuity stories can often become extremely careerist to the point of boredom. The best way I know of to avoid this is to make sure that the aforementioned impact is ambitious, which we will address in greater detail below.

The advantage of a discontinuity story is that it is a story of change. My motivation in my career so far has been X but due to some kind of  experience/self-realization it’s now Y. This can make for drama. If you are a career changer post-MBA, you most likely telling a partial or total discontinuity story. That is to say whatever motivated your career so far is being altered or completely changed with respect to what you want to do in the future. The reason  for this change would be the result of experience or experiences or observations about yourself that have helped you understand the need for change. The motivation for this change may be an internal reflective consideration such as realizing you enjoy one kind of activity more than another, excitement about a future career direction and/or opportunity or other based external commitment to an issue in the world such as climate change.

One difficulty to telling a discontinuity story is that is more complicated and likely to require more word count at least the writer will think so. Another difficulty in telling a discontinuity story is that the explanation for change maybe unconvincing if the writer is not careful and if there are insufficient evidence in the rest of the application pointing to the viability of this change.

To think about this a bit less abstractly, we will imagine a hypothetical entrepreneur. His name is Warren Gates.  If Warren’s entrepreneurial focus is not changing from being an agricultural tech entrepreneur because he wants to attend HBS in order to learn how to scale in that same sector, he is likely to be telling a continuity story.  However, if  Warren has been an agricultural tech entrepreneur but now wants to build his next start-up in operations,  he is likely to find that he is telling a discontinuity story. Something is motivating continuity of focus in one case and change in the other. Whatever that something is part of what he needs to discuss in this essay.

WHAT KIND OF IMPACT DO YOU HOPE HAVE IN THAT FUTURE?

“We are looking for individuals who are passionate about using business as a force for good – who strive to improve and transform companies, industries, and the world. We are seeking those who are eager to solve today’s biggest problems and shape the future through creative and integrated thinking”

I have for very long time recommended that applicants have strong ambitious future visions. While it is important to be realistic that is to say believable. It is equally important to be ambitious in the specific sense that you should highlight how you will have impact.

HBS Wants to turn out future leaders heads of companies,  great entrepreneurs, public sector leaders, and  world class business thinkers. They rejected Warren Buffett, but they don’t want to reject the next Warren Buffet!  They want to identify and admit such people. They want to admit people who will truly imbibe their mission statement: The mission of Harvard Business School is to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. This mission requires impact. The impact you have in the future may relate to an impact you had so far. For example you may have had an impact on CO2 emissions based on your work or volunteer activity but now want to play an even bigger role in addressing climate change. Alternatively the impact you have in the future may relate  to something you never done before. It may relate to a problem you see in the world that you are passionate about solving. It may relate to a future opportunity that you hope to bring into this world: For example you might have a hypothesis about building ethical AI to solve problems in the future. Whatever sort of story  it should have direct impact on society, your organization, your industry, and or the people you work with.

When we consider future impact, we are considering the future.  One thing that puzzles me is when I talk with a client and they lack even the ability to think 5 or 10 years in the future. This is not helpful when you are thinking about long-term impact or even the medium term. The world is changing fast and if all you can do is imagine the most linear and obvious sort of changes in this age of disruption and challenge, I think you need a crash course in future-focused thinking.  Learn about the ideas of Ray Kurzweil and Yuval Harari, watch Black Mirror, read some Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash would be a good start) or other SF writers who focus on the near-term future,  listen/watch the Lex Fridman podcast (I am too lazy to insert hyperlinks). “We are seeking those who are eager to solve today’s biggest problems and shape the future through creative and integrated thinking.” Make them believe you are the one they seek!

PART 4:  Be a leader

What experiences have shaped who you are, ORIGINS

I think it would completely insane to discuss more than 1 or 2  experiences in this essay.  There simply is not enough word count to say something meaningful. While the word “experiences” could refer to non-leadership experience, it had better relate to one because that is overall subject of the essay.  Hence one might combine a personal experience or fact in combination with a leadership experience. For example, image the hypothetical example of Allison Zuckerface.  Allison’s father was the founder of  Faceplant, a SNS that no one under 40 uses except to interact with their family, but that has gobs of money that hopefully will not be squandered by the time she finishes her MBA. Allison’s formative life experience is knowing that she would be the future leader of Faceplant or at least of the Zuckerface Family Office and Foundation. Knowing that leadership was something she needed to cultivate, one of her most formative leadership experiences was leading her university’s student government during a time of great political and economic dislocation. She would write about the experience of being Zuckerface’s daughter, her sense of responsibility, and how she rose to the challenge of preventing her university from being burned to the ground by angry students complaining about the poor quality of the tofu burritos, emphasizing her leadership communication skills. Then she would discuss how she needs to be more than being a good spokesperson for Faceplant and discuss the kind of leadership she needs in the future.

how you invest in others: IMPACT ON OTHER PEOPLE

Whatever example or examples, you use you are required to highlight through at least one such example, the impact it had on others.  The others in questions are not defined. They might be:

1. Your team.
2. People in your organization (Colleagues, seniors, and/or juniors)
3. Your clients/customers/end-users.
4. Your mentee.
5. Your students.
6. Your family or friends.

Whatever the case, your concept of leadership has to involve being sufficiently other-directed.  This is reflected in what HBS says about leadership: We are looking for individuals who aspire to lead others toward making a difference in the world, and those who recognize that to build and sustain successful organizations, they must develop and nurture diverse teams.

How much of your essay will actually focus on this part of the question will really depend on what kind of leadership experience(s) you write about. That said, it must be included.

what kind of leader you want to become?  FUTURE LEADERSHIP SELF IMAGE.

There should be some consistency  between this part of the Leadership essay and the future impact part of the Business essay because whatever kind of leader who want to become needs to be someone  with the capability of achieving the future impact you imagine having.  I don’t necessarily think you need to spend a huge amount of words on this part of the essay, maybe say 50, but need to think about it carefully. When considering what kind of leader you want to become, I suggest thinking about the following:

1. What kind of leader do you need to be to reach your post-MBA short and long term goals?
2. What areas of leadership challenge you the most but are critical to your future?
3. Is there a specific role model or famous leader that you look up to and aspire to be like?
4.  What aspect of leadership are you good at, but want to be better at?
5.  Reflecting the leadership experience(s) you are going to mention in this essay, what would have made you even more successful as a leader in those experiences?  In other words, how do those experience(s) highlight what you need to improve on.
6. Looking at the eight types of leaders mentioned above, what kind of leader to do you aspire to be?

I know that I will be brainstorming this with my clients. One way I do that is to ask them to come up with multiple potential answers so we can figure out what will work best. I think it is a good approach for handling this topic.

Part 5: Be Curious and Reflective

Growth-Oriented Essay: Curiosity can be seen in many ways. Please share an example of how you have demonstrated curiosity and how that has influenced your growth. (up to 250 words)

YOU WANT TO GO TO HBS?  DEMONSTRATE THAT YOU HAVE CURIOSITY.  IT IS A PRE-REQUISITE:  Our case and field-based learning methods depend on the active participation of curious students who are excited to listen and learn from faculty and classmates, as well as contribute their own ideas and perspectives.

Hence, if you can’t demonstrate curiosity go to a school where you sit in class and don’t have to participate all that much.  There are plenty of schools where one can be passive. HBS ain’t that place. Lack of class participation is the basis for kicking someone out after the first year at HBS and they do it.

Unlike the other two essays, which are absurdly short given their purpose,  it is surely possible to write effectively about one example of curiosity and its impact on you.

Whatever you write about has had to have influenced your growth.  While that might be relatively recent growth, it is entirely possible that you might be discussing something occurred even in childhood.

Hence we are looking for story with the following characteristics:

1.  It highlights your curiosity.
2. It has influenced your subsequent growth.
3. It shows your potential for being an active curious student at HBS. (You don’t need to be explicit about that but you should make sure the reader would be able to easily see why you exhibit the kind of curiosity that might apply at HBS).

Some ways of thinking about curiosity:

1. Curiosity is about asking “Why?” The incurious accept the world as it is and don’t try to understand it, they simply take it granted. Curious people want to understand why things are the way they are.
2. Curiosity is dangerous and disruptive, it questions the status quo and is this basis for undermining existing systems.
3. Curiosity may be expressed very analytically (STEM), creatively (art, literature, music, idea generation), or even physically (travel, adventure sports, sports in general-How good can I get?).
4. Curiosity can to lead understanding and change of the self, others, organizations, and systems.

Another consideration for writing this essay is the balance between the example and how it subsequently influenced you. I think an effective answer will balance these aspects but the actual balance will vary great.  For example, if the experience that you are writing about occurred when you were young, you might very well devote 50% or more of the essay to focusing in its subsequent impact on you. While telling an example is important don’t get into the trap of providing excessive story telling descriptive detail at the cost of really helping HBS understand the impact of this experience on you.

PART 5: WRITING

When it comes to telling stories, I think it is most important to think about your audience.  You are not writing these essays for yourself, you are writing them to convince your audience. How to convince them?

The following grid connects the parts of an essay (the first column) to three core aspects of writing an effective essay. The table should help you see the relationship between the components of a story and what I would consider to be three major questions to ask about any story.

The grid above is based on the following assumptions, which I consider to be basic for writing effective essays:

Your reader must understand you.   Provide a clear interpretation of what you have done. Write in simple language, even about complex things. Assume your reader has a basic business background, but don’t assume any expertise. Cause-effect relationships should not be merely implied where possible. Showing your actual action steps is critical. A full explanation might be impossible because of word count, but if you tell things in sequence, it usually provides that explanation.

Your reader must believe you.  If your reader is not convinced by your story, you are dead.  I am all in favor of telling the best version of a story that you can, provided it is also believable. Bad self-marketing is frequently based on lies that can be seen through. I have met many admissions officers and while not all of them were brilliant, all the good ones had finely tuned “bullshit detectors.” If your essays have a seemingly tenuous relationship with reality, you are likely to be setting yourself up for a ding.

Your reader must be engaged.  If a reader does not become interested in what they reading, there is a problem.  The problem may be that the essay is simply generic or it might be the way a story is being told is boring or it maybe a lack of passion in the writing.  Whatever the case, it needs fixing.  One of my roles as a consultant is to coach my clients on writing essays that will be engaging.

You must sell your reader on your high potential for admission. Great essays don’t just need to be believable and interesting, they have to be convincing. You are trying to get admissions to take a specific action after they read your file: admit you or invite you for an interview. Thus, essays must convince them to take action, they have to see why you should be admitted.  I help my understand how to do this and give very specific advice on how to do so.

Your reader should be interpreting your essay the way you intend.  In writing, there is always room for misinterpretation.  If you have not effectively interpreted yourself, there is always the possibility that your reader will draw opposite conclusions from what you intended.  I help my clients make sure that they understand and correct for all such negative interpretations.

If your essays succeed based on the above, you will be well on your way to being amongst those who get an HBS interview for the HBS Class of 2027. My three-part HBS interview prep series starts here.

Best of luck!