Over the last few years, my GSB clients have achieved remarkable success (with over a 50% success rate) and the key has been to create real, honest, and authentic essays. To do this YOU HAVE TO DIG... and DIG DEEP!

The DIGGING PROCESS goes like this:

• Take the thesis (“I care about sustainability”) and ask WHY. A lot of people don't care about sustainability, some pay it lip service, but few people truly care and want to devote their lives to it. So why are you different? You can’t just say that you care more than others or observe more closely or are more in tune. There has to be an underlying reason that set the stage. We are starting to dig…

• Next layer down, we ask questions to see if there was a “moment of influence” that directly connects to the topic at hand:
o Did someone teach you to value this?
o Did you go on a trip that showed you we have to care about this stuff?
o Did you read a book or watch a movie that made the lightbulb go on?

• It’s possible that you will solve this in the above series of questions, but it’s also possible that nothing jumps out from the above and you find yourself going "I don't know, it's weird, I guess I'm just inclined to see the big-picture and not getting dragged down by short-sighting thinking, and that just leads me to sustainability, naturally," then consider this:
o WHY are you inclined to be the sort of person who thinks big-picture and avoids the "sha, la, la, la, live for today" traps of most of your peers? And we dive back into our questions:
 Did anything early in life teach you to think big picture and consider the long view?
 Did you ever have an analogous experience that taught you this lesson (committing to fitness, finishing a novel, etc., something that took a long time and required maintaining sight of a far-off goal)?
 Were you ever rewarded for thinking this way?
 Or, conversely, did you ever double down on this point of view because someone tried to shame or chastise it?

See where this kind of thinking takes you. I coach all of my clients to peel back several layers - or many more feet down in the dirt, to use the digging example - to get at some of these rich, interesting WHY elements. The “why” behind what matters most to you is almost never the first thing that pops into your head. Sometimes it can be a person or experience that informs your value (and that is fine, by the way – some of the best essays I’ve ever seen landed here; sometimes you hit paydirt earlier in the digging process), but other times you have to figure out why you are the kind of person who might have grown to care about what you do – and that takes even more digging. So get your shovel ready.

For more in-depth insights into the GBS essays and application process, as well as other MBA programs, I invite you to reach out and schedule a free initial consultation at https://www.amerasiaconsulting.com/contact. You can also contact me directly at drewhoff@gmail.com.

I am here to assist you and provide guidance throughout your application journey.