The mbaMission Podcast

Ep 55 | Strategies for Nailing the HBS Application Essays

• mbaMission • Season 2 • Episode 55

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Last year Harvard Business School changed it's MBA application essays for the first time in nearly a decade. The changes were significant, and caused anxiety for many business school hopefuls. After working with applicants on the new HBS essays for the last year, we're sharing what we've learned. In our latest episode of the mbaMission podcast, Harold Simansky, Jeremy Shinewald, and Gatehouse Admissions founder Liza Weale share their reactions to the essay changes and discuss effective strategies for tackling each of the Harvard Business School essay prompts.

00:00 How to write the new HBS application essays
01:28 Our reactions to the new essays
02:13 How the HBS essays changed
03:54 HBS Business-Minded essays
07:21 Approaching the essays as a collection
09:34 HBS Leadership-Focused essay
17:47 HBS Growth-Oriented essay
24:41 How should your essays fit together?

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when you have to write something that's really short it's really hard 250 words it has to be a really sharp essay what I love about these essay prompts is there's so much variety it's making for a really fun read and applicants don't need to be one thing you have to prove it if you say you're curious about something well show me that you've been curious about something word on the street is that the admissions committee at HBS has really enjoyed reading these essays

harvard Business School turned heads in spring 2024 when they introduced three all new essays at the time reactions range from dismissive to downright dismayed it was hard to find anyone excited about the new essay prompts but that was a year ago so in today's episode of the NBA Mission podcast we're going to pick up the conversation and discuss what we learned how we feel about the essays and strategies for crafting responses to them we know what we've seen at NBA Mission but we wanted to get additional perspective so we invited Liza Wheel founder of Gate House Admission and a past colleague of ours at MBA Mission to join us so I'm here today with Jeremy and Liza you two wrote a book specifically focused on Harvard and Stanford essays and this book by the way you can get on online it's free now one of the reasons it's free is because Harvard changed his essays and changed them in a dramatic way really updating the book right they did change their essay significantly right and we're a year into the new essays and Liza just give me your general impressions what did you think last year with the essay when the essay happened what do you think now about the essays now we we've gone through it at this point a couple of rounds of essays when I read the first or the questions at first there was just so many parts of the new questions i just I felt very constricted or I I felt like the they were too narrowly focused i thought they were too suggestive of what they were looking for and as you know as consultants as advisers and helping people tell their story I've come full circle i actually loved working on them i thought they were hard i thought they pro provided challenge which is good for all of us um but I came around really really liking the questions so maybe we should maybe we should talk about what what they had before so before they had this you know big sprawling prompt at one point it had no no words down to 900 words and it was just basically a blank slate which I think was great for applicants and and became I I think became untenable for the admissions committee during a chat GBT era where I I think they just felt like they had to get way way way more particular to get to move away from the general towards the specific where you can't fudge it's very hard to fudge the specific so I think this was all a reaction to that three short essays 300 250 words lots of moving parts right and and they are short let's pause here to say they are short and it's the old when you have to write something that's really short it's really hard it is really hard to get down to those 200 or 250 words or 300 words whatever it is and it takes so long to get to something really good at that length it it's kind of you know when you think about how many times you iterate on a 300word essay and how much it grows and evolves over time it's kind of it's kind of amazing but just because it's shorter I'd actually argue it makes the challenge that much harder what's the old writing cliche it's like if if I had more time I would have written a shorter letter exactly and uh and that's it's very very hard to write something where you're you're actually getting all of the pieces like there's so many specific requests in in in these prompts like you're kind of you have to include like three four five things to to nail this in 300 words maybe would you want to should we read the prompt let's like pause here and let's read the actual questions liza would you do us the honors sure the businessminded 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 deserve all of that in up to 300 words so break it break it into parts like you have to reflect on your past experiences how they've influenced your career choices to date yeah also how your experiences and it's a little bit ambiguous in languages and in the language but also how your experiences have influenced your aspirations and then also talk about the impact you plan to have on businesses organizations and communities you plan to serve in 300 words i mean that there there are four or five specific requests with maybe a couple sub requests businesses organizations and communities maybe maybe it's a maybe it's a good question to ask you like do you feel like every single applicant is nailing every single aspect of these or are you like you're getting Yeah yeah or really that's that's my thinking is how could they Yeah so maybe you're getting like four or five or maybe you're talking about like Yeah i'm talking about the impact on an organization or community but not on my business or stuff like that and I think that's leaving some applicants a little bit of anxiety like I know I'm I know I'm pretty close to answering all this right but have I nailed everything and so I I don't think it's a requirement that you know you want to get pretty close i mean if you can nail all of them of course that's awesome right and I think that is actually I think that's why HBS does almost include all those prompts because they're letting they're letting the applicant make the strategic choice the judgment that works for them which of course is very unsettling and slightly terrifying if you're not going to answer all those prompts but I've seen drafts of essays that try to address all those prompts and they're there's no doubt no no it's hard to pull off yeah yeah it's really hard to pull off so Liza how do you even start with a question like this well I think a lot of it I'll share also what I've seen when when we first started working on this essay um we focus a lot on you know thinking about sort of how someone got to where they are in their career and where they're um thinking about going forward and what we found is a lot of it was I went to college and I took a finance class and then I got fell in love with investing so then I went to um investment banking where I learned a lot about deals and there I saw an industry I was interested in so I went into private equity and very this like this like and then and then and then and then and no real moments pivotal moments that really character values like that yeah so I think what we learned over and this was really in round one where every single we meet um every other week and we were all reading um each other's clients essays to try to understand really what works and and what we found is like what's essential what our advice is always to really start with okay where are you headed what are you inspired to go do and then start connecting the dots between that and where you've been because probably you're focused on what's inspiring you those are where the best stories are going to be yeah yeah No absolutely and I just want to pause here to recognize a few things when you're working with three essays and you you mentioned sort of and then and then and then the admissions committee is seeing three essays they're also seeing your resume they're also seeing recommenders so the reality is is the three essays have to fit together they also have to fit together with the resume they also have to fit together with other real estate including the recommendation so I think on the one hand yes it's three individual essays but also it's more like a jigsaw puzzle how do you take these three essays how do you put them together and tell one story about yourself and I mean in that respect I think I think you need to keep the reader learning like they need to be on on you know substantively different topics or different values like yes you could talk about you know two business experiences in your business or leadership essay theoretically but they have to be showing two totally different dimensions yourself someone's learning something very new about you i think ideally you're you're situating them in different environments if you can right um and and still showing new values or you know still revealing your character yeah but um yeah I mean I I I think the the key that applicants need to start with is like how do I how do I keep the read so the how do I get to the point where the reader is at the third essay going wow like I learned a lot about this guy in the first one or this woman in the first one i learned a lot about her in the second one right like I'm in the third essay and I'm still saying there's something really interesting going on here i think that a lot of other firms say like oh well you have to brand yourself we've talked about this before you're a brand like you're not a brand human beings aren't brands you're not you're not detergent you're not right you're not a simple product you can be several you can you can have different dimensions of yourself you can be a leader at work and you can be a synergist on the board you're at and you can be a creative thinker a good grandson or granddaughter that's all a piece of who you are do you want to learn more about your target business schools check out OnTrack by MBA Mission where we have in-depth modules on all the top business schools covering everything from what makes them unique to how to tackle the application essays and short answers and so much more you can also practice for interview and video questions all done on your schedule on demand we appreciate your dedication to our podcast and we want to offer you 30% off any ONTRA subscription use the code MBAM pod to get 30% off any ONTRA subscription check it out at ontrack.mbam mission.com jeremy let's pause here for a minute and would you please read the second essay we'll help people start thinking about how they all go together okay the second prompt leadership focused essay what experiences have shaped who you are how you invest in others and what kind of leader you want to become and this one has fewer words than the last there's a little gift at the end there i wonder how they said to themselves yeah this one we only need 250 the other one we needed 300 this one 250 words i agree and believe me you're fighting for those 50 words or you're fighting to go from 300 to 250 in my mind I think about this and I look at this and I say to myself what kind of leader do you want to become is a very nuanced piece of this question it there first have to recognize there are many different types of leaders then you have to align it to who you are as a person and then you have to be able to articulate that so I actually found this to be a very difficult prompt of the three right how you invest in other like what influences how you invest in others that's a very complicated question right and you know it's just it's something that I think as we've said before you can't just sit down and start typing that one like oh I'll just I'll get to 250 on this one you've got to really think about how you're answering each piece of the each piece of this of this puzzle and I also think the wording how you invest in others it leads folks lots of applicants and lots of young professionals thinking about mentorship um because a lot of if you think about a lot of the young professionals we work with they haven't managed people they haven't necessarily been an official leader so they look towards when they've mentored somebody and that was definitely the probably I would argue the most frequent yes example that came up in this essay at least as a starting point and so I think a lot of our uh role and guidance and and when we how we were a sounding board with this question specifically was to help them see the way they invest in others outside of mentorship mentorship is explicit investment right but there you know whether it's listening to your team and um you know or even just sharing your ideas and so that you can move the group forward there's lots of other ways to invest in each other in in one another beyond mentorship yeah yeah like even even theoretically like like investing your time in an organization and trying to grow it and trying to influence it can be can be investing in others you know it doesn't have to be like explicit onetoone you're right mentorship yeah I think people people perceive this as being limiting um and I I I think that there I mean there is the implication in the question they're anticipating you have invested in others like people people who are leaders are investing in others they're not asking how have you invested in yourself right they're asking how you have enabled others to grow but there are lots of ways to enable others to grow in 250 words right and listen that also gets to this notion here that is probably relevant for other applications that leadership comes in many forms sometimes it's down the food chain sometimes it's horizontal but then also sometimes it's up the food chain in the sense of if you have have not had direct reports yourself have you nudged maybe a boss in the right direction have you actually gone from being sort of someone who reports to a boss to actually be something of a thought partner with that boss and again that's just another example how you should think about this question in terms of how you invest in others it's hard to have a conversation with your boss and you say to them you know what here's how I think we can things do things differently and actually I had a client who was very successful with that story and this idea here of maybe that is something that you have to do dayto-day that you don't even realize what about what kind of leader do you want to become is that is that do do you think of that as as a role or do they have more like spiritually like who you how you want to develop as a human being or both yeah and do you think about is are there weaknesses you currently have that you want to shore up or is it actually your your secret power that you want to amplify right and and that's a tricky balance and I personally um you know when I'm coaching folks on this essay I I am less interested in the future of the unknown i want to hear more about what people have done so I think one you know it's hard to have a here's who I want to be be more than a little just a little bit of this essay because otherwise it's too much supposition going on like here's who I want to be all this no no no let's focus on who you've been and then draw some inferences draw some sort of conclusion about where that leads to who you are going to be in the future there's there's so much cause and effect in this in in these questions like there all these individual linkages what experiences have shaped who you are how you invest in those so these are experiences that are influencing you today and then and then and then that also is giving you you know a linkage to the future right so so you know what kind of person what kind of leader do you want to be in the future it it's all got to be linked there's got to be cause and effect it can't just be utter conjecture yeah I'd like to be the leader of a great organization it's like well that's not who doesn't that's not that's not what they're what they're asking they're asking more specifically that's right how your experiences have allowed you to be a certain kind of person and what you'd like to develop Right exactly and listen it works all sorts of different ways and it is very popular to say you want to be an empathetic leader that may be true but first you have to prove to me that you're an empathetic person that's really that's really what it comes from and at the same point there is no flavor of the month when it comes to leadership what I mean by that is yes empathetic leader is great but I had a client of mine very successful client of mine who said listen I'm the boss for a reason and I'm the boss because I'm able to motivate people i'm able to really achieve the aims we as an organization we want so I'm not exactly an empathetic leader in fact he wasn't an empathetic leader the bottom line is he made a very compelling case that he was more of the of the traditional command I hate to put these terms command and control leader which is the idea he was a visionary and he was also going to make sure that everything was aligned people knew what they were doing and that was very very compelling but first he proved it first and like that person can say doesn't need to say I'm going to change my style going forward that person can say I'm the kind of leader I want to become is is one who communicates these expectations even more clearly command and control isn't for everyone i want to I want I want to you know work on my communication skills theoretically that person say lots of different things i mean that person could could could there there are many different avenues but like I guess my core point is I think to to to your point applicants don't need to be one thing and they shouldn't be striving like okay well it's politically correct to say like I'm going to create a you know a warm environment where everyone's included well there's nothing wrong with saying that if that's who you are and that's where you want to develop and that's something you have to work on but you shouldn't feel like you have to be doing that that there's no there's no pres there's there's no prescribed uh answer for for you know to how what to the organization you're going to develop or the type of person you're going to be so how do you think about even just a strategy for the essay going forward so I think one thing we encourage people to do is think about those like the the most challenging moments that involved other people or just involved in their career and their community where they felt like they had to rise to the top usually there is some good leadership in there start there instead of the they they found the you know the perfect definition of leadership over here where they didn't learn anything that's not going to be an interesting story let's figure out where you yourself really had to rise to the occasion that's number one the other thing I think about is let's get some balance we talked about this before right these we talked about how this is a puzzle and we have to think about the different pieces and I generally you know if this this entire essay is purely around college that can you know if it's the vast majority of it that could work but I wouldn't want to short change who you are today you yeah because we don't want to we you know and and you know I have been um working with you guys I've known you for years so a lot of the things that come out of my mouth might might sound familiar because I've heard them from you but we don't want the admissions committee to think your best days were in college we're all behind you and you know so that's another thing to balance it out and show if possible some sort of arc of your development as a leader would be two two my thoughts who wants to do the honors on the third uh the third third essay question okay who's the most curious about it growthoriented 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 up to 250 words not not one word above there is a word counter i'd like to meet the person who's like I've answered this in 125 words said up to up to 200 words we'll just we'll just leave it at that i I love this one because I think that it's Yes curiosity can be seen in many ways but demonstrating curiosity is kind of about revealing passion it's there's like there's a a real like this is so wide open and the in the answers are so vast and and different and you really get to know someone's personality through kind of how they how they've just nerded out on something or developed their their interest in something and so I I think that it's like I always talk about inordinate like it can't be it can't be something you're like yeah I like movies like that's not that's not curious like I always use the word inordinate because I think you've got to have like an unusual amount of curiosity in something it can't just be something you're like kind of passing interest in and you have to exhibit that that's right you have to prove it it has to be yes prove it you have to prove it if you say you're curious about something well show me that you've been curious about something you That's an important piece of this essay and the reality is again 250 words it has to be a really sharp essay and like if you're if you're writing that that that essay on how uh you were learning a new language okay and um and you're talking about like how you took lessons whatever like that's not going to do it but if you're talking about how you learned a new language in order to read a specific book in that language and that's like that was your your challenge level of proficiency if I do say so myself I did that I tried to do that in French i was like if I if I can just read by I can really I can say I'm a French speaker right i'm not saying to them I learned French that's not the point the point is I'm like had some tenacity and something interesting about me and was goal oriented and was you know maybe intellectual you know or there there's something about me that would push me to like that level right and so you know just listening to Dolingo in your car or whatever it is that's not enough to curiosity right where's it going it's about I guess what I'm saying is it's like about something broader generally than just curiosity you're you're you're sending a message about your character through this i I think that's right very quickly though uh Jeremy probably France i my French is actually has actually diminished since I read that since I read that book but

it's Oh my god i don't speak a word of any other form you know you obviously hasn't haven't been listening to to mine and Liza's French podcast exactly right i say French podcast i was going to try and deliver it in French like how to get an NBA i was going to try to say in French but I'm like I'm too reticent with the way my accent is these days right um I was going to say something about this uh essay because I agree with you that this one is also a really fun one to work with on client or work on with clients because sometimes they're like "Okay here are the three things." And they kind of fall into those buckets that you were just saying where one thing I hear a lot is "I'm curious about everything show me the money." You know let's let's look for the proof there or they they really they don't see their these moments where they really you know stood up and tried and reached for something and I love what you were saying about um having a deep passion and exploring it but sometimes the answers actually aren't the best answers are actually say more of a fleeting moment but what someone learned through that experience that's right so you know that's what I love i'm coming a little bit back to what we where we started but what I love about these essay prompts is there's so much variety and again it comes to taking a stand but you know I've seen effective versions of this essay where somebody went on a limb maybe failed at something and what did they learn through that experience they didn't become the expert they weren't doing it all the time but what did they learn about that and where did that shape who they are in the or how did that shape who they are in the workplace today so just another angle that we're often thinking about with our clients it's very important to remember though that curiosity can be seen in many ways and it it need not lead to your profession at the end of the day many people think about they have to write this really perfect story about I got really when I was in fourth grade i basically you know picked up some trash sustainability was was very important to me i put solar panels on my house and then that's why I want to build a life in sustainability you know what that's a wonderful essay but it doesn't always have to do that because most people's lives don't work that way and the reality is is you may be curious about something and it just may manifest in other ways other than professional and you don't be afraid to share that and it doesn't always have to be like totally altruistic like I I have a candidate um a couple years ago who just very intentionally walked every single block of the city of Manhattan that's that's that's that's cool it's fun but you know he's he really really explored isn't it took him a very very long time um an applicant many years ago who was inspired by the LA Times food critic Jonathan Gold who since passed and and went out because this guy would just go like super deep into like a narrow type of food and went out and tried like like dozens and dozens and dozens of cappuccinos across her entire I feel like I remember this but yes and it was just like it it wasn't about coffee per se it was just about it was about just kind of getting out there and doing things and exploring other neighborhoods and meeting other people and you it was it was a really fun metaphor for who this person is so like you might say to yourself like well I don't know I've drank a lot of coffees like that's not the point the point is coffee has been a vehicle for me to learn a lot about my you know my environment in a world where everyone is staring at their screens i'm out there looking around and I'm in every corner of my city meeting and talking to people no I think that's right i have a great essay about online gambling throw in the fact that what percentage of people stick with it more than six months meaning that they've had enough gains that they want to keep on going it is an incredibly small number i've heard like 1% 3% whatever is incredibly small number so and of those who keep going it could be very unfortunate yeah it could be very unfortunate so I had a client who basically said I was a terrible online gambler and I wanted to really and I was really became curious about what does it actually take to win at online gambling and he went down the online gambling route that basically brought him to things like data analysis that this notion here is actually data analysis is sort of interesting and he really enjoyed it and data analysis also happens to be a great profession it is a great thing to be studied at business school so for him there was this great circularity almost to his application right that is that is a good one i was I was a little anxious but as we talked before some applicants take risks and they work but that that one doesn't sound that risky because you got to a place where it like really it manifests and he was able to talk about it in a really sincere way so we spent some time talking about three essays but we also don't want to imply there are three separate essays working alone let's take a minute just to think about okay how do all these essays fit together i disagree they fit together you disagree that they fit together hold on this may be an important point we said we're allowed to you know good good podcast good friends we can all disagree i don't I mean I don't think they need to fit together and that they need to to be totally harmonious i as I said at the beginning I think you have to keep the reader learning about you right and so I I don't think they need to like be thematically bound to each other they can be three totally discreet glimpses into who who an applicant is listen I'm going to sort of flip that around and say who is an applicant there obviously there are many different pieces to happen and a very human process here and if we don't show a connection though between these three pieces of who you are then suddenly I don't feel like you're coming into focus as a person well I mean I think I think that sort of happens because there's other glue like there's other glue through your resume there's other glue through your short answers and so it's not like you're saying hey here are three wild things that you've never you could never have imagined about me i mean your you know your businessoriented essay is going to relate in some way to your professional experience like you know your leadership essay yeah maybe you're maybe you're expanding on something else that that that you know some community endeavor or some different aspect of yourself within your professional world you know some it could be anything could be your your personal life you could be you could be leading your family in a unique way or whatever it might be you know your curiosity could be illuminating of something totally different about you like I don't I don't think they they all need to need to be like very linear and connected right i will say one thing let me summarize what you just said so really all of these pieces have to fit together they can't be in contradiction probably maybe that's a better way to take all we have lies in here i mean I I I think I think what I'm saying I guess you're right that's interesting is that your your entire application is going to make sense because it's all about you and you're living your life like it doesn't need to be intentionally dis I mean intentionally disjointed and it it it should naturally make sense that you're capable of all these things I will say so two things number one it's important that we state this it's what the end of February and people are probably watching this in May June we're going out on a little bit of a limb right now because we don't know actually at this point is HBS going to change the questions I I do want to do a quick poll on what your bets are on on the topic of online gambling do we think they're going to change or not we'll we'll do that but I um that's one thing but one thing that gives me why I would bet that they're going to stay pretty similar is that word on the street is that the admissions committee at HBS has really enjoyed reading these essays for I think a lot of that reason that you were just talking about Jeremy is that because we are discovering a person in um these little glimpses these little just snapshots of who they are um it's making for a really fun read and probably more engaging certainly different than the cadence that they were getting used to with that longer essay that we wager you guys want you want to end this on a wager gambling okay so who thinks they're going to keep uh the essays the same yeah I I Yeah I definitely think they're going to keep them the same maybe like slight tweaks to words i think they're going to tweak the leadership one i think they might tweak the leadership one but spiritually the same right right as you're listening to the podcast you will see who is right it better be me and if if they do change it I voted for that way too no one ever looks back on pundits anyway exactly right all right Liza thank you very much for joining us today again Liza is here from Gate House Emissions and Jeremy thank you very much for joining me today thanks for having me it is awesome being back with you guys every time so thank you for having me of course if you want to be one of our success stories sign up for a free consultation with a member of our full-time MBA admissions team since we've worked with tens of thousands of applicants over the past two decades we can give you our honest opinion on your chances and help you put together your very best application that is not a sales call but rather your first session with one of us for free we can give you a profile evaluation answer specific questions about the process review your resume talk about your school choices and so much more sign up at mbammission.com/cconult we look forward to working with