| Emily |
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| Below is one of Emily's essays for her Asian Institute of Management application. We present the essay in its original form, with just cosmetic changes made to protect the author's identity. We then provide comments and suggestions, based on the advice available in Your MBA Game Plan. |
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| The question that she answers in this essay is: |
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| Evaluate yourself as a person, discussing in order of importance, the personal characteristics you feel are your weaknesses. |
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If I were to briefly describe myself as a person in a sentence, it would be: "Ambitious person who loves to live life in all its fullness by accomplishing an excellent balance between relationships, career, knowledge and contribution to society." I believe that life is lived to its fullness when an individual manages to strike a synergistic balance between the four aspects of life as described by Stephen Covey in his book "First Things First"– To Love, To Live, To Learn and To Leave a Legacy.
Some of my personal characteristics that I feel are my weaknesses are:
Relentless Future Focus - I have a very strong tendency to be focused about the future. To begin with having a future focus is a very positive characteristic but then there is a limit beyond which the focus instead of contributing positively starts to yield negatively. It is important that lessons are learnt from the past and plans are made for the future, but what’s more important is that, one has to live in the present. This is where I sometimes don't succeed. I focus and think about reaching the destination to such an extent that I fail to enjoy my journey to the destination. Of late, I have been ensuring that I appreciate not only my goal but also my path to the goal.
High Productivity Sensitivity - At times, I am very obsessed with productivity!! Getting things done, effectively and efficiently all the time is what I target to achieve. On a first look, this is a nice way to approach life. Here again, beyond a certain point, constant monitoring of productivity and constant pressure to achieve greater levels of productivity can be harmful. This, on occasions, makes me an unkind individual both to others and myself. Ensuring that I maintain a healthy balance between productivity drive and relaxation time is something that I am currently working on. |
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This is always a tricky question to answer, both in essays and in interviews. Emily's approach is to provide a high-level overview of her personality, followed by two weaknesses. |
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The high-level overview is good to include, but it unfortunately doesn't tell us anything truly unique about Emily as a person. The phrase that she uses -- "Ambitious person who loves to live life in all its fullness by accomplishing an excellent balance..." -- could probably describe almost every person who applies to business school. We recommend that Emily revisit her overall positioning in her application (i.e., what she wants admissions officers to remember most about her) and think about including some elements of that here. Ideally, this part will include at least something that most other applicants wouldn't also be able to say about themselves. |
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Emily's two weaknesses are okay, but they both sort of sound like strengths in disguise. We are all sometimes tempted to say something like, "I'm too much of a perfectionist" or "I work too hard" when asked about a weakness, but this is not the best way to answer this question. As scary as it seems to write about a true weakness, this really is what a school is looking for. And, while it feels like you're just giving them a reason to reject you, you're not. If you can demonstrate a high level of self-awareness, admissions officers will be very willing to believe that you are going to improve on your weaknesses. |
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Whenever possible, give concrete examples of how you have made strides in improving on your weakness. Ideally, your answer will read like, "I have a tendency to ______, but I have been working hard at this, and just last month I took a big step in correcting it by ______. I will continue to work on this aspect of my professional development." Any admissions officer who reads this will be hard pressed to reject you for having that weakness. |
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One other point about "weakness" essays: Try to focus on professional traits, rather than personal traits. Professional traits -- such as "I have little experience leading large teams" -- are easy to improve on with experience, while admissions officers know that personal traits -- like "I tend to get angry when I don't get my way" -- are much harder to change. You may not be able to completely avoid discussing a personal trait (and we realize that this essay question specifically asks for "personal characteristics"), but be a little more careful when writing about these. |
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Overall, we recommend that Emily give more thought to how this essay fits into her overall application positioning, and to consider discussing slightly "riskier" weaknesses in this essay. |
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