Deconstructing Harvard Business School’s Optional MBA Essay Topic

And while we're deconstructing Harvard's MBA essay prompt, let's not forget the cutely deceptive disclaimer: "Believe it or not, the essay is optional." Don't believe it. As Harvard's admissions director Dee Leopold has admitted, only 10 applicants last year took the 'optional' instruction seriously, and only one got in. Not very inspiring odds. So if you are one of those exceedingly rare applicants whose MBA résumé, recommendation letters, and 'numbers' (GMAT, GPA) speak for themselves – because you've started a multimillion-dollar company, saved thousands of souls through your NGO, or survived some extreme experience like imprisonment in North Korea – then, by all means, take Harvard's optional instruction seriously.

So if Harvard's MBA essay prompt is not at all what it purports to be, what should you write about? To repeat, you certainly can write about experiences from your resume and extracurricular activities. But given that the challenges you have overcome, your personal evolution, will at best only be hinted at in the other parts of your application, consider letting your MBA recommendation letter talk about your professional evolution (to the extent they can within Harvard's 550-word recommendation letter). Save your 'optional' Harvard essay to focus on how key life experiences (or even a single key experience, if it's significant and powerful enough) have enabled you to grow into who you are. Thus, one of my clients admitted by HBS last year described how an unexpected crisis in his homeland forced him to embrace his family's legacy, another about how a quixotic non-profit she started redeemed an earlier entrepreneurial failure, a third about how his innovative pursuit of operational excellence at an iconic tech company confirmed his commitment to his family's business.

What did the MBA essays of these and other successful HBS clients share? Again, they ignored Harvard's false advice to write about something other than your resume, academics, extracurricular activities, and goals. Though written by as demographically diverse a set as you can imagine and focusing on very different specific experiences, they all shared an ability to zero in on key experiences that, when taken together with their MBA résumé, recommendation letter and application, revealed what made them tick and what they valued. They all chose experiences that challenged them and, in that testing process, made them grow and understand themselves better. Sometimes these experiences were accomplishments, sometimes they were failures, but they changed the applicants and showed them reaching toward a better understanding of themselves – being brave enough to put themselves on the line in order to become better, truer versions of themselves. This is what your 'optional' Harvard Business School MBA essay should also strive to do. All of Harvard's deceptively helpful guidance is a smokescreen to convince applicants (and Harvard Business School) that the world's most powerful business school isn't really passing judgment on your life story. It is, of course, so make sure you're bringing the best story you have.

Paul Bodine is the founder and president of Paul Bodine Admissions Consulting and the author of Great Applications for Business School. A graduate of University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins, he has been helping applicants gain admission to elite business, medical and graduate schools since 1997.