Chicago Booth Fall 2010 Essay 2
Sep, 20, 2009
This is the second in a series of five posts on the University of Chicago Booth’s MBA application essays for Fall 2010 admission. The parts are Essay 1, Essay 2, Slide Presentation, Optional Essay, and Overall Plan.
In this post, I will analyze the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Fall 2010 MBA Question 2:
2. Please choose one of the following (500 – 750 words):
Describe a time when you wish you could have retracted something you said or did. When did you realize your mistake and how did you handle the situation?
or
Describe a time when you were surprised by feedback that you received. What was the feedback and why were you surprised?
Whichever question you write on, chances are great that your first impulse will be to write on a professional topic. Given the constrained nature of the Booth essay set and the fact that the slide presentation is clearly focused on the personal, I think a professional topic here is a very reasonable choice. Still, I would say if you have a great non-professional topic, it is certainly fine to write on that here. The core consideration is always what topic will best enable admissions to learn about you and see why you possess the self-awareness and maturity to become a part of the Booth community.
The official tip for this is worth keeping in mind:
This essay is about self awareness. At Booth, you’ll constantly be asked to evaluate and re-evaluate your personal development. Both questions give us a sense of your life experiences; specifically, how you handle feedback and how you bounce back in those not so positive situations. What did you learn from the experience and how will it impact your future actions? In order to be powerful, we often find that situational essay questions command authentic stories.
Therefore, you must make certain that your explanation is not a mere description, but also provides a strong analysis of how you would speak or act differently. The tip above relates the self awareness aspect of the question to the Booth curriculum. Actually the question specifically relates to the only required course in the MBA Program, LEAD, which involves the ability to both give and receive extensive feedback.
Describe a time when you wish you could have retracted something you said or did. When did you realize your mistake and how did you handle the situation?
A core consideration here is to have a clear theme that reveals an important insight into your values and the way you handle failure, setbacks, mistakes, and/or awkward situations. The structure of this essay might very well resemble
Wharton 3 or
HBS 2, but make sure that you provide an answer that really addresses what Chicago is asking. The answer should contain the following elements:
-Your action that you would change completely or your statement that you wish you would disavow
– An explanation of why you would want to retract your statement or action
-State clearly when you realized that you should have retracted the statement or action
-If you realized that you should have retracted the statement or action after the situation had ended, explain what you learned and how you applied it to a new situation
-If you realized that you should have retracted the statement or action during the situation, explain what you learned and what you did to fix the situation
By the way, if you think this question is so odd, you can easily find its origins in the previously mentioned Wharton and HBS questions as well as a question that
Haas asked last year (See short answer 1).
Describe a time when you were surprised by feedback that you received. What was the feedback and why were you surprised?
It is possible to write this based on the topic used for a standard failure essay (see links to HBS and Wharton above), but that is only one possibility. The basic structure for this essay is clear enough:
1. Briefly describe the situation where you received feedback.
2. Who did you receive it from and why?
3. Why were you surprised by it?
4. Specifically state your response to the feedback. This might take the form of a brief summary of your action steps or description of your change in attitude.
5. Explain what you learned. Often the best way to help your reader understand this is to provide them with a different situation where you applied what you learned.
Those also applying to Tuck will see a great similarity between this question and the
Tuck 3, but the surprise aspect of Booth’s question makes it different.
In the abstract, what is surprise about? Why that aspect of the question? To be surprised by something is to gain a new sudden insight and/or to be shocked and/or to realize that one’s assumptions are not accurate. How do you handle such experiences? Some realizations come slowly, but in this situation the feedback you received produced an immediate impact upon you. Why did it to do so? By answering the question Booth admissions will not only gain insight into how you react to feedback, but to what you consider to be surprising. You will be revealing not only how you react to feedback, but to the kind of feedback you had previously never considered that you would be receiving.
Questions? Write comments or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com. Please see my FAQ regarding the types of questions I will respond to. If you are looking for a highly experienced admissions consultant who is passionate about helping his clients succeed, please feel free to contact me at adammarkus@gmail.com to arrange an initial consultation. To learn more about my services, see here. Initial consultations are conducted by Skype or telephone. For clients in Tokyo, a free face-to-face consultation is possible after an initial Skype or telephone consultation. I only work with a limited number of clients per year and believe that an initial consultation is the best way to determine whether there is a good fit. Whether you use my service or another, I suggest making certain that the fit feels right to you.
-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
シカゴ、ビジネススクール, MBA留学
