Spoiler: they just want to hear your real story.
I recently had a chat with a family friend, a high schooler applying to college, that reminded me of some of the conversations I have had with MBA applicants through the years. He said something along the lines of “I want to major in X, but in my applications I will be saying that I want to major in Y.”
I asked him what he meant, and he shared that his college admissions consultant wants him to write about a topic he is not interested in, because it ties more directly to some of his high school extracurriculars.
Through the years, I have faced many variations of this conversation. The finance professional who wanted to pivot into retail, but was afraid that schools would not understand such a big pivot. The applicant who tried to adjust their career story based on each school archetype, drafting essays that told Stanford she wanted entrepreneurship and Kellogg that she wanted marketing, and Wharton that finance was her passion. The applicants who think they do not belong at Kellogg because they are not interested in marketing, or those who think they do not belong at Wharton because they do not have a finance background. The banker who really wanted to get into early stage startups, but thought writing about going into his family business was a safer story.
My response in all of these cases: just be yourself.
I am not saying not to be strategic. We certainly will play up the values, strengths, experiences, and interests that we believe are compelling and paint the version of you that demonstrates your fit for the MBA classroom. I am simply saying that, for the strongest story, the strategy should be grounded in the real you.
If you want to make a big pivot, there must be a reason. Why is retail your new path? How did you get to that conclusion? How will you bring the skills you gained in finance to the role?
If you adjust yourself to what you think a school’s strength is, you are playing a losing game. Stanford certainly can’t take a class full of entrepreneurs and Wharton can’t only have finance people. They are looking for a diverse class of people who bring different strengths, and they may just happen to need someone with your strengths. If you underplay your actual strengths and interests in favor of what you think makes a better story, you might miss that opportunity.
And, family business is not a safer story. In this case, it was a riskier story. The safer story is the one that shows your authentic self. That first draft, when the applicant tried to write about a goal that was not his true passion, fell flat. It was hard to read, and it was not believable. There was little emotion, and weak reasoning. His real story, when told well, was far stronger, as we could understand why startups suited him so well. Admissions committees see tons of essays and can easily tell when a story feels forced.
As for the college applicant who was told his major should be a straight line from his extracurriculars, I would much rather he do a bit of heavier lifting in his essays. He can share why his target major is what it is, and how those extracurriculars will help him to be successful. He certainly has a reason why he chose those extracurriculars and that major, which likely says a lot about who he is and how he thinks, so he simply needs to showcase that.
