Harvard MBA Essays: Tips to Write a Winning Application

Key Takeaways:

• Decode the unique Harvard MBA essays prompt that challenge candidates to showcase their authentic leadership potential
• Learn strategic approaches to highlight your professional achievements while revealing your personal growth and character
• Understand the critical elements that Harvard's admissions committee looks for in standout MBA application essays
• Discover insider tips on balancing professional accomplishments with personal insights and future vision

Harvard Business School (HBS) MBA essays are a pivotal part of applying to one of the world’s most prestigious MBA programs. These essays go beyond mere questions—they offer a platform to showcase your journey, values, and career aspirations. HBS seeks candidates with leadership potential, a clear purpose, and a vision to make an impact. Crafting these essays requires deep self-reflection and an authentic narrative that highlights your uniqueness and potential contributions to the HBS community.

Each year, HBS challenges applicants with prompts designed to uncover defining moments in their lives. This is your opportunity to demonstrate leadership skills and share how your experiences have shaped your path. With HBS’s competitive acceptance rates, standing out through compelling essays can significantly enhance your chances of success.

Harvard MBA Application Essays 2023-24

Crafting compelling essays becomes pivotal as you begin your application journey for the Harvard MBA program. These essays allow you to express your distinctive qualifications, motivations, aspirations, and alignment with the program's values.

We'll offer personalized insights and tips for addressing each essay question in the Harvard MBA essays, enabling you to tailor your responses to resonate effectively with the admissions committee.

Harvard MBA Essay 1

Question: 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)

Tips for Writing Harvard MBA Essay Question

When addressing the Harvard MBA essays question, it's crucial to use this opportunity to provide the admissions committee with insights that are not readily apparent from other parts of your application. Here's a structured approach to crafting your response: 

1. Inspiration: Commence your essay with a concise narrative elucidating the inspiration behind your decision to pursue a degree in your respective domain.

Additionally, you could expand upon this narrative by delving into specific experiences, influential individuals, or pivotal moments that further solidified your passion and commitment to your academic pursuit. This could include personal anecdotes, academic achievements, or relevant extracurricular activities that showcase your dedication and alignment with your chosen domain.

For instance, if it is management, "During my upbringing, I observed my grandparents' entrepreneurial ventures with their mango farms, igniting my fascination with business and innovation."

2. Education: Describe your undergraduate journey, including your course and college name, studied subjects, and the skills acquired. 

For instance: "I pursued a BBA degree from Narsee Monjee College, where coursework in finance, marketing, and business laws equipped me with problem-solving and strategising skills."

3. Academic Projects: Provide detailed insights into one of your most significant academic projects or research papers using the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) approach. Highlight your role, achievements, and positive impacts made.

• Your role and contributions: Elucidate the tasks you undertook and your specific contributions to the project.
• Project overview: Provide a succinct description of the project's scope and objectives.
• Project significance: Clarify the project's purpose and relevance within its respective domain.
• Tools and methodologies: Detail the tools, techniques, and project execution strategies.
• Impact and benefits: Discuss the positive outcomes or impact generated by the project.
• Project grades: Mention your grades or evaluations received for each project.

4. Extra-curricular Activities: Showcase your holistic development through involvement in extracurricular activities. Discuss one or two activities using the STAR approach, emphasising skills like leadership, teamwork, and organisational abilities.

For example, you can include any Leadership Role in a Student Organization or club, Team Captain in a Sports Team, Volunteer Work or Community Service, Event Planning or Coordination, Participation in Competitions or Debates, etc.

5. Internships/Work Experience: Share the most significant experiences from internships or work roles using the STAR approach. Discuss your responsibilities, positive impacts, and contributions to the organisation.

• Contextual Background: Provide a brief overview of the organisation and the specific department or team where you completed your internship or held a work role. 
• Challenges Faced: Describe any challenges or obstacles you encountered during your internship or work role. Discuss how you identified and addressed these challenges, demonstrating your problem-solving skills and resilience in overcoming adversity.
• Learning and Growth: Reflect on the key learnings and insights you gained from your internship or work role. Discuss how these experiences contributed to your personal and professional development and how they align with your career aspirations and academic pursuits.
• Collaborative Efforts: Highlight instances where you collaborated with colleagues or team members to achieve common goals or solve complex problems. Discuss the dynamics of teamwork, communication, and collaboration within the organisation, showcasing your ability to work effectively in a team-oriented environment.
• Innovative Solutions: If applicable, share examples of how you contributed to developing or implementing innovative solutions or strategies within the organisation. Discuss any initiatives you spearheaded or innovative ideas you proposed and their positive impact on the organisation's operations or outcomes.

6. Skill Gap or Motivation for Master's and School Choice: Explain why you wish to pursue a master's degree and choose Harvard University. Link your motivations to your latest work experience or any knowledge gaps you aim to address through the program.

For a gap, you need to mention the skills you realised you lacked during your professional experiences. Through your latest work experience, mention any obstacle or doubt you faced during any task or project you feel can be rectified by a master's degree.

7. School Offerings: Highlight the key benefits of the Harvard MBA program, such as courses, professors, diverse student body, alumni network, and industry partnerships. Connect these offerings to your goals and aspirations. Things you need to discuss are:

• Specific courses or electives are you interested in at the school
• Particular professors or industry veterans at the school that you admire or would like to study under
• Ways you envision learning from a diverse student body. Mention if you are interested in cultural exchange, collaborative projects, or gaining different perspectives.
• Discuss how important the alumni network is to you. Mention if you want to leverage alumni connections for internships, job opportunities, or mentorship.
• Provide any specific examples of the school's industry partnerships. Discuss whether you are interested in participating in business contests, case study challenges, or other collaborative initiatives.

8. Goals (Short-term and Long-term):  Clearly articulate your short-term and long-term career goals, ensuring they are realistic, specific, and aligned with your interests and aspirations. Explain how the Harvard MBA program will help you achieve these goals.

For the Short-term goals, kindly discuss the following: 

• What specific field or industry are you interested in working in?
• Do you have any preferences for the type of role or position you want to work in?
• Are there any specific companies or organisations you admire or aspire to work for? Why?
• What skills or knowledge will you gain from working in your short-term goal role/company?

For the Long-term goals, kindly discuss: 

• How does your short-term goal align with your long-term goals? Can you describe the connection between them?
• Do you wish to be self-employed, or do you wish to be associated with an MNC/top-tier company at a higher position?

9. Value Addition: Discuss how your unique experiences, both academic and extracurricular, will enrich class discussions, projects, and campus life. Emphasise your potential contributions as a brand ambassador and active participant in academic and extracurricular activities.

Here are some points that you can discuss here

• How do you envision leveraging your involvement in teams and student organisations to contribute to the school community?
• Can you provide names of clubs and societies you wish to join and contribute to
• Discuss if you have any ideas for starting a new club or niche activity that would benefit the school and its students.

Harvard MBA Essay Sample Answer

I've been an all-rounder in school since the beginning – from being the class representative/leader for consecutive years to being the sports captain and head boy. I possessed excellent grades, over 95%, but in everyone's academic life comes a turning point, a downfall and a moment where you feel no matter how hard you try, you aren't going to cross that mark.

During 8th grade, I received my results and scored 36% in mathematics; I felt I had no way out. I loved the subject the most and never scored less than 90%. This was my turning point, a moment of self-realisation. 

Seeing such low scores, taking math tuition would be the only resort possible. However, due to limited resources, I could not enrol in education, so I began to work harder. I transformed my way of learning by making each class lecture look like an interview of questions with a series of doubts. Moreover, I dedicated 4 hours a day to this subject and slowly began to see a change in my grades. Finally, my hard work paid off, and I scored 100% in 10th grade, topping the school in mathematics and being the second topper overall. 

Inspired by my steep learning curve, despite financial constraints, I established Peters' Tutorials in 2015 to provide free tutorials to students with a low family income. I borrowed Rs.1000 from my sibling, bought a blackboard, and began teaching on my terrace. I spread the word, attracting many aspiring students struggling with mathematics and willing to learn the subject. The All India Anglo-Indian Association primarily recognised Peter's tutorials and their success was published in the yearly magazine, where I was awarded the National Youth Icon of the Year 2018. 

Alongside running the tutorials, I pursued my graduation and excelled with a high GPA of 9.64. After my undergrad, I was employed at Amazon Transportation Services to pursue my short-term goal of being a supply chain manager. Balancing a professional life while running a charitable establishment would take much work. I didn't give up; I continued to run Peters tutorials for the past seven years. Over 180 students have lost their fear of mathematics and excelled in their examinations in the past seven years as Peters Tutorials held a 100% passing rate.

However, when Covid19 pandemic struck us hard and due to social distancing norms, Peters Tutorials had to suspend offline classes. To address this problem, I conducted regular online classes for 4 hours daily, established an open forum meeting for any student of any age group or class to join seeking help in mathematics, and recorded the sessions for review. As a result, Peters' tutorial recorded the highest student presence, 132 students, for a single day's class.

At Amazon Transportation Services, I briefly studied the Amazon Supply Chain and its logistics, which helped me grow in knowledge and the process—I led the 3P Program as a sub-process from India, identifying new businesses with third-party sites and Amazon. While placing new third-party businesses, I also led the Asset Management Process, working with several cross-functional teams after my shift and successfully launching 80+ Amazon and third-party sites.

This led to my quick promotion to Supply Chain Manager. As a Supply Chain Manager, I understood my role and responsibilities, which led me to analyse the American and Indian logistics sectors and their significant differences and growth opportunities.

I aspire to establish a logistics venture. With minimal knowledge of entrepreneurship and innovation, Harvard's Entrepreneurship Program will take me a step closer to my long-term goal of establishing a pollution-free logistics venture that contributes to the world's environment. 

I would study courses like Entrepreneurial Management at Harvard to hone my decision-making and innovation skills. Moreover, electives like Law, Management & Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Sales & Marketing will help me gain in-depth knowledge in entrepreneurship and marketing. Electives like Venture Capital & Private Equity and Entrepreneurial Failure will contribute mainly towards my venture establishment.

I would join the Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Club and the Venture Capital & Private Equity Club to broaden my knowledge of Entrepreneurship and enhance my innovative skills. Additionally, Harvard's Case studies would help me broaden my thoughts and problem-solving abilities, directly contributing to my goal.

Moreover, I will commit myself to my Harvard community and am eager to bring my vibrant energy to Harvard's student life. Whether I'm engaged in representing Harvard in a spirited sport or serving on my cluster council, I'm eager to build classroom camaraderie. I would work towards becoming an executive committee member of the Student Association.

Meanwhile, I hope to bring my passion for fitness to Harvard's Health & Wellness Club and my spiritual faith to the Christian Fellowship Club and Catholic Students Association. Possibly even organising events and workshops for my comrades. While I am energetic, I would enjoy unwinding and joining Harvard's Entertainment & Media Club and bringing my passion for singing, acting and dance to the #1 community on campus – The HBS Show.

I would also portray my never-ending love towards sports by joining the Soccer Club and representing Harvard in the various annual events. I would finally end my long weeks establishing enduring friendships.

You can check the Harvard MBA admissions page to get more information.

MBA Application Tips: Recommendations

Useful Links:

• Harvard MBA GMAT 
• Harvard MBA Fees
• Harvard MBA Salary
• Harvard MBA Interview Questions
• Harvard MBA Scholarships
• Harvard MBA Deadlines
• Is Harvard Business School MBA Worth it?

Conclusion

Harvard MBA (is one of the top MBA college in USA) is perfect for you if you want world-class education, leadership development, and access to a global network. It’s a place to grow, innovate, and make an impact. In your Harvard MBA essays, show how the program aligns with your goals and how you’ll contribute to its community. It’s the ideal choice to take your career to the next level.