We worked with a Brave Supplicant recently who was having a tough time implementing some of the feedback we were offering on their Harvard essay. They were trying to write about their professional experiences but things weren’t coming together cohesively.
In case you need a reminder, the prompt for Harvard Business School is:
“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?”
In the review we sent back, we were concerned about how the stories they’ve chosen were fitting together into a cohesive theme.
Here’s what we offered to this applicant:
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The feedback we offered to this applicant is specific to them, but as you can see, it’s also fairly universal, in terms of guiding on overall execution of the strategy in putting together the content.
A content strategy is the most important thing to get right with your essays, and for the entirety of the application. This will need to be set on a school by school basis. At the same time, once you go through that process once, for your first school (say, using our Complete Essay Package protocol to guide you) then you’ll be in good shape to apply the same structured approach to developing your content strategy for the other schools you’re applying to.
Harvard’s question is unique, but the thought process you have to go through to construct a solid strategy is going to be similar for other schools too.
Want more insights into HBS specifically? Our SnarkStrategies Guide for Harvard Business School helps you tackle both big-picture and also detailed decision-making at each step of the way.
Tell us what you think.