3 Personal Stories I Used For My Business School Essay

To give you a feel for what types of examples to use in your essays and how to balance them, it might be helpful to take a look at some of the examples I used in one of my HBS essays.

My first example: going to high school in the US

For my first example, I described how I came to the United States during the last year of middle school. I didn’t speak English at all when I arrived, so going to high school was a very challenging process.

I went to a pretty competitive public school in California with a class size of 400. In addition to my efforts at distinguishing myself and doing everything I could to get into a good college, I had to struggle with learning English quickly enough to get through high school courses and prepare for college in the US.

This example helped demonstrate both my diverse background as a Chinese person attending school in the US and my academic dedication.

My second example: promoting understanding between China and America

For my second example, I wrote about my involvement in an organization called The Forum For American Chinese Exchange at Stanford. Some of my peers formed the organization the year before I enrolled. Its purpose was the promotion of mutual understanding between the future leaders of the United States and of China by organizing two student conferences every year.

Basically, students from both the US and China got together annually to share learning, share experiences, and to listen to prominent speakers we invited for the conference. I was very involved in the organization. Looking back, the organization really defined my undergraduate experience more than anything else.

My third example: a look at the human side of business

My third example was a bit unconventional, which is good. My work experience mainly consisted of consulting work and then my real estate work at a corporation.

My main goal with this example was to differentiate myself from the typical consultant. A lot of people in consultant work apply to business school, so setting yourself apart is really important. Throughout my essays, I didn’t mention a single word about my consulting work.

Instead, I mentioned my slightly unconventional move into working for a corporation. Instead of talking about specific accomplishments in the firm, like convincing a superior to adopt one of my ideas, I took a single incident and described how I went about resolving it, paying special attention to the human resources aspect of my work.

The company I was working for had just acquired a local department store and was in the process of integrating the two. Between the western organizational and cultural style of the company I was working for and the local management style of the company we acquired, there was a lot of friction.

We were planning on opening a new shopping mall, so we created a team out of both our own employees and the employees of the company we acquired. Predictably, the two employee groups didn’t work well together and after about 3 weeks, a group of 5 people submitted their letters of resignation. Our western management style just wasn’t the style they were accustomed to.

For my example, I focused on how I went about convincing those 5 people to stay with the company. I did this by emphasizing the fact that I came from a Chinese background and also grew up in the United States, so I could understand some of their discomfort. I was able to leverage my bi-cultural background to bridge the gap between the western and Chinese styles of management.

Over the course of a few months, I communicated with these 5 individuals and by relating to them on an individual level, I got them to agree to stay with the company. They are now integral employees that have helped the company grow.

My focus on the human aspect of business was an effective twist on the usual essay formula, helping me stand out from a lot of other applicants with similar work backgrounds.