MBA Blog: Visualise your Game Plan for Life

Financial Times has published the first blog contributed by current CUHK MBA student Harish Sivashanmugam. In his blog, he shares his advice with MBA aspirants on how to create a compelling application essay.

In his first blog published in Financial Times, current MBA student Harish Sivashanmugam advises MBA aspirants that “visualising yourself after 10 years in a place you want to be, and charting a path on how to achieve it, can help create a compelling essay.”

Here is Sivashanmugam’s blog published in Financial Times (PDF) on 16 September, 2016:

I had a slew of rejects before my first acceptance from a business school, but the one thing that ran repeatedly through my mind was that of all the skills required to get an MBA, communication is top. As I enter the final stage of my programme, I still believe this and to get that spark of interest in your applications, essays are vital.

When I first started my essays, I went on a consulting spree to hear opinions on what is expected. After speaking with colleagues, career advisers, current students and doing a tonne of research online, I had a long list of what to cover. So I set about carefully engineering my essays.

It did not work. Why? It was because the essays turned out to be a checklist of the must-haves or, at best, a neatly arranged bullet point presentation. They lacked a coherent story of who I am and where I want to go, etc. They did not fit the overall game plan for my life, not just my career.

I realized this after the first few rejections. And it was not until I provided a flavor of what I was like as a person, beyond my career, that I felt I was on the right track.

In my management consulting classes, my professor highlights that goal visualization exercises he conducts with top managers are a first step towards creating the long-term plan. The technique applies to MBA aspirants as well. Visualizing yourself after 10 years in a place you want to be, and charting a path on how to achieve it, can help create a compelling essay.

Source: Financial Times
Date published: 16 September, 2016

Harish Sivashanmugam, current MBA student