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We all are aware of the role played by your academic stats in front of the Business school admissions committees. However, we speak to the admissions directors of top B-schools every year, and the one thing that is common across all of them is they care much more about who you are and how you fit into their community than just your GPAs and GMAT scores.
The B-school essays are your best chance to showcase a strong personality and sell the person behind the résumé. Your essays should be able to connect each dot of your application to build a coherent narrative and create an overall comprehensive picture of who you are, what you've achieved, and what unique experiences you will bring to the table.
One of the most generic but equally important questions that you would come across while drafting your B-school essays is what are your plans for making an impact on your class and in the school’s community or How would you drive an impact in class to enrich the school community (well it won’t be an exact replica, but the essence would be similar).
This article will help you understand what ‘Impact’ is and how you can build applications that showcase an Impactful leader.
Now one might ask why is this important? Well, business schools look for great leaders who can provide befitting solutions to real-world problems and create a huge impact in their communities.
This is why it’s so crucial for you to exemplify both past and future impact in your B-School essays – you want the adcom to have a clear idea of what changes you are capable of making and are passionate about and how the MBA from their school will specifically empower you to make even greater changes.
What is ‘Impact’?
Now that you are clear about its importance let us get down to business. First and foremost, it’s important to understand how we define impact.
Most candidates often feel that impact and achievements are synonymous; however, that’s not how b-schools perceive its definition. Instead, we consider the impact a broader aspect with achievements playing an important role.
Confused? Let us clarify. Driving an impact means telling a coherent story where your experiences and achievements have influenced others to cause a change in the project/system/organization/society/friends & family.
As for achievements, you can be an excellent sportsperson, swimmer, poet, or writer and have won several accolades and honors, but all of these are individual milestones that you have achieved and showcases your personality and leadership more than driving an impact on any change. However, this is not to say that achievement are not meant to showcase impact. They very much are. But you need to know what achievements are showcasing what aspect of you. For example, some can exhibit your personality, leadership potential, and impact. And you also need to know which ones to highlight, when, and how.
For example, suppose you don’t have a bunch of personal accolades and certificates. However, you were the first person to represent your club at nationals, which changed people's outlook towards the sports and attracted more and more candidates to be engaged in the activity, creating a ground for future achievers. That’s pure gold!! It’s ten times more important to create a winning environment than to win individually!
How to effectively illustrate impact in application essays?
First and foremost, you need to communicate to the adcom that you are a vibrant personality with strong leadership potential as business schools are interested in leaders and not applicants content with obeying the herd.
Next on, try and fill your essays with plenty of real-life examples. May it be volunteering & community service, critical projects, extracurriculars, and others. Detailed anecdotes and vivid attributes make a much greater impact than general claims and broad summaries. You must follow an in-depth approach to answer such effect prompts. We would suggest candidates use the well-renowned STAR approach as it’s by far one of the best ways of illustrating impact in these situations as it shouldn’t just highlight the success gained through your actions, but also the entire scenario as a whole along with what more you did beyond your occasional role.
But here is a catch! When we talk about strengths, we follow a STAR approach. However, we should follow the STAR approach with ‘i’ referring to impact when discussing achievements.
One of the biggest mistakes applicants make while talking about their achievements is they keep rambling about how they moved a KPI from one point to another. Still, by doing so, they are making themselves more and more comparable with no personality. Instead, you need to introspect and think about how your actions brought a huge long-term impact (think qualitatively) on the working of the organization/system/community.
The next crucial point is to avoid any unwanted generalizations.
A B-school essay full of generalizations and common examples shows that you don't have anything unique. Hence, try to be unique and specific with your criteria; there is no need to ramble upon your junior high and high school glory days. Adcoms don't care about you as a house captain or chief editor of the yearbook (these are important but not unique). The adcom expects its candidates to have practical work experience and more current examples.
Additionally, try to highlight professional and extracurricular examples that relate to the future impact you want to make as a part of the school community. The adcoms favor such applicants with well-defined plans for future impact. Hence, you must demonstrate that you have a plan.
Lastly, keep in mind that your aim is not to prove that you are the best and number one candidate for the program; it is to demonstrate how you will be an asset to the business school. So, stress on presenting your fit to the school’s community. And this brings us to our next part.!
Specify how the school’s MBA program will help you make an impact in the community
Impact essays are nothing but all about individual aspirations. No adcom is foolish enough to believe that you can accomplish everything you lay out in your B-school essays. Instead, they’re looking for people with aspirational & innovative ideas for making positive changes in the world.
Furthermore, they are interested in knowing how well you would thrive in their environment and help them grow simultaneously. Hence, before attempting such impact prompts, make sure you do your research on each school you are planning to apply to so that you are well aware of the communities, clubs, courses, faculty, and other opportunities that are made available to MBA candidates.
You can learn everything you need to know for your target schools here.
Then, take some time to think about which of these appear most relevant to you and where you can drive future impact. For this, it’s critical to be specific about how the upcoming opportunities relate to you and how they will influence your future. Finally, prove to the adcom that you have done your research and planning and their b-school, and you are a perfect fit for each other to contribute to each other’s goals!
Demonstrate vulnerability and a sense of humor. It’s fine! You're a real person, not programmed robots, and it's okay to show it!
