{"id":45456,"date":"2019-05-10T03:32:06","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T10:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/business-school-application-failure-essays-series-part-iii-disappointed-others\/"},"modified":"2019-05-10T03:32:06","modified_gmt":"2019-05-10T10:32:06","slug":"business-school-application-failure-essays-series-part-iii-disappointed-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/business-school-application-failure-essays-series-part-iii-disappointed-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Business School Application Failure Essays Series \u2013 Part III: Disappointed Others"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Failure<\/a><\/figure>\n

[Don’t forget to dig into Part I <\/a>and Part II<\/a> of this series! Wahoo!]<\/p>\n

Dartmouth Tuck<\/a> used to ask applicants to \u201ctell us about a time you: received tough feedback, experienced failure, or disappointed yourself or others. How did you respond, and what did you learn about yourself as a result?\u201d<\/p>\n

The multi-part question is a lot to bite off, but the idea
\nbehind each of these sub-topics is the same: how do you handle failure? Do you
\ngive up, do you blame others, or do you take responsibility and improve? This
\ntopic is absolutely worth taking the time to think through, because it contains
\nbasically every version of the \u201cfailure story\u201d question all in one prompt. If this
\ntype of question doesn\u2019t come up on any of your application essays, it almost
\ncertainly WILL come up in the interview, and folks, this one is a biggie. <\/p>\n

Think of this as a drill you run in football practice. The exercise may seem like it has nothing to do with the game, but when you\u2019re at the season playoffs and you complete the game-winning pass you\u2019ll realize all that prep you did WAS relevant: you were building muscle memory. In this series, we\u2019ll break down this question and address each piece, building that muscle memory so that when you come across a \u201cfailure\u201d question either in an essay or in an interview, you can make like Tom Brady and bring home the ring. Here, we dig into Part III. <\/p>\n

Part III: Tell us about a time you\u2026disappointed yourself or others.<\/h3>\n

Again, if you haven\u2019t read the first two articles in this series, take a moment to give those a read; a lot of the principles apply here as well!<\/p>\n

This essay topic follows much the same theme\u2014you thought one
\nway about something, but you were WRONG, you fell short, or you suffered the
\nconsequences of a weakness. As a result of that failure, you learned ABC and
\ngrew in XYZ ways, becoming harder, better, faster, stronger, as Kanye put it.  The twist here is in the measure of failure:
\nrather than the classic business metrics of not hitting a pre-established
\ntarget, or simply screwing something up in such a way that money was lost, this
\nis all about what you or others EXPECTED of you. <\/p>\n

This emphasizes a much more personal note in an essay that
\nalready demands a deep level of vulnerability. For example, let\u2019s say you\u2019re
\nresponsible for hitting a revenue target, and you miss it by 10%, disappointing
\nyourself, your team, your boss, or all of the above. The key in this essay is
\nrecognizing that the disappointed expectations have little to do with the
\nactual revenue target (or whatever the goal is) and EVERYTHING to do with the
\nchoices you made along the way, and why THAT was your chosen course of action,
\none that would prove to be \u201cincorrect\u201d or \u201cmisguided.\u201d <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how you KNOW it\u2019s all about the decisions you made
\nand the path you took. In another version of this story, you could have
\nexceeded the revenue target by 20%, and still have chosen a course of action
\nthat disappointed yourself or those around you. Even though the outcome may
\nLOOK like a success, those expectations about HOW you achieved that outcome
\ntrump the outcome itself\u2014now what does THAT reckoning feel like? <\/p>\n

\n

Recommended Reading: <\/strong>Discussing Humble Leadership in MBA Essays<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The magic here lies in exposing that disconnect between what
\nyou DID and what was expected of you, remembering that you are measuring
\nyourself against EXPECTATIONS (yours or others\u2019), and not concrete results. Was
\nthere a moment you realized you had let down yourself or someone else? Was it
\npointed out to you? Take us to THAT moment, following the same principles we\u2019ve
\nexplained before, where you show us your thinking BEFORE the mistake in order
\nto really demonstrate that contrast with your thinking AFTER you realize your
\nfailure. <\/p>\n

A good indication that you are telling a solid story here is
\nthat this moment of realization should be a SURPRISE. If you made choices that
\nyou KNEW would disappoint your own standards or others\u2019, then that\u2019s not a very
\nexciting essay. \u201cWell, I knew that not speaking up when my boss asked who
\nforgot to submit that grant application by the deadline was wrong, but I just
\nreally didn\u2019t want to face my mistake.\u201d If you KNEW you were acting in a
\ndisappoint way AS you were doing it, then that doesn\u2019t make for an interesting
\nmoment of growth. Far more effective is the story in which you didn\u2019t even
\nrealize until later how you were falling short. Then, when someone called you
\nout on it, or you had an \u201caha!\u201d moment, THAT\u2019S when it hits you, and you
\nrealize how you\u2019ve disappointed your own or other people\u2019s expectations. Queue
\ngrowth. <\/p>\n

Following this surprise reveal of disappointed expectations,
\nwe should see some fundamental shift. Similar to the other failure essays, we
\nneed to see you identify how you got BETTER after this incident. One cool
\naspect of this particular version of the failure essay is it gives you greater
\nlatitude to delve into the personal, especially if you choose a story in which
\nyou disappointed YOURSELF. Expose the ways in which your own expectations for
\nyourself have deepened, and through that, how your aspirations for yourself
\nhave grown. <\/p>\n

A great measure here is to ask yourself, \u201cwho do I want to
\nbe; the guy who chose X easily achievable outcome, or the guy who chose Y hard
\npath?\u201d This is where you can really show the adcom what you are MADE of\u2014not
\njust by what you\u2019ve done but by what you EXPECT of yourself, and how you
\nrespond when you fall short of those expectations. This is a deeper level to
\nthe failure essay than we\u2019ve yet seen, and if done well, can really amp up your
\nessay. <\/p>\n

===<\/p>\n

***NEW Admissionado Products & Services for MBA\/Masters!<\/a>***Now, read up and get smart:<\/p>\n