MBA Blog: Visualise your Game Plan for Life

In his first blog published in Financial Times, current MBA student Harish Sivashanmugam advises MBA aspirants that “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.”

Here is Sivashanmugam’s blog published in Financial Times 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 program, 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.

Media: Financial Times
Section: Business Education
Date published: 16 September, 2016
Harish Sivashanmugam (Full-time Class of 2017)