Should MBA essay be glamorous or genuine?
Hello. I am 31 yrs old Asian women, thinking of applying an MBA(hopefully TOP school) at this Round 2.
I started my career in 2005 fall as a chartered accountant. I worked in Deloitte, PwC, and a government owned bank, gained wide range of professional experience, i.e., audit, financial advisory (M&A, restructuring), and corporate loan.
Back in that time I had seen several colleagues who went to prestigious MBA in the US, so I also tried GMAT to follow the trend and got a decent(?) score, 690.
However, I really didn't buy the whole idea of going an MBA with such extravagant cost since majority of them came back and doing pretty much same job.
Currently I am working in corporate finance team of a local company. It is one of the most global company in the world, Fortune 50, so I luckily have an opportunity to develop international transactions for the first time in my career.
I found myself really enjoying a challenge coming from global environment, but at the same time, I found some limitation to deepen my profession in the current company as my function is sort of management, not a frontal function.
Considering my aspiration to work in the front office of a global company and my professional experience in finance, I assume that working in IBD of global BB is most desirable. That is why I am seriously thinking about an MBA as it seems to be the most effective, or probably only way to land at my dream job.
My concern is how genuine I can be on essay.
It seems that for those many brilliant candidates who are white, US citizen, and Ivy grad with excellent work experience are also looking for an MBA for the same career goal.
Given the fact that I am not an average in many aspects, i.e, GMAT, age, and ethnicity, I concerned my essay might need to have more glamorous and outstanding career goal, like being an entrepreneur, dedicate to local economy or something.
I would like to share WSO ppls’ candid opinion.
Thank you very much.
You are probably looking at this the wrong way.. It does not matter if your essay is glamorous or genuine - what matters is that you stand out from the crowd. BS (business schools - which is mostly BS :) ) focus on diversity in their class - so you are competing with other corp fin people for a spot, not with entrepreneurs or fashion designers. So you need to show how you are a better investment for the business school compared to the other corp fin people.
You seem heavily weighed down due to your ethnicity/citizenship. I dont know why and I am not even going to ask. My experience is that as long as you can get along with people that should not be an issue
Not even that, but there's a ton of asian women in MBA programs, probably more than even white women, so I don't understand her "not an average applicant" angle from that regard.
Currently a round 1 applicant at HBS and Booth and have received interview invites to both. I wrote my essays sincerely.
I don't think being Asian women is a negative to bschool admission...some schools such as wharton like Asian women a lot (high double digit Chinese women and single digit Chinese guys in one year for example).
But ur GMAT is nowhere near decent, especially as Asian. I believe the current GMAT standard for Asian M7 applicants is like 740. 690 would almost guarantee a ding given your average other background (big 4 audit/consulting)
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