Most Significant Challenge College Essay Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

I work on a bunch of stuff in our office, including the blogs you're reading right now. But the underlying philosophy remains the same. the common application opened today, effectively inaugurating another college admissions cycle. Instead, for a variety of reasons, we use our own application, hosted locally at mymit. One of the differences between the common app and the mit application is that we don 39 t prompt for a single, longform essay. Instead, we ask our applicants to provide short 100 250 word answers to five questions. They are very simple, very straightforward, and this year, they go something like this: we know you lead a busy life, full of activities, many of which are required of you. How has that world shaped your dreams and aspirations? tell us about the most significant challenge you rsquo ve faced or something important that didn rsquo t go according to plan.

How did you manage the situation? now, i 39 m on record as saying that the college essay is often one of the most overthought components of an application, so please don 39 t spend too much time over thinking these questions or your answers to them. However, i also know that many of you will be very busy with your academics and activities this fall, and you may want to start thinking about the answers to these questions with the comparative free time you may have during the summer, so i wanted to share these with you. When and how you work on these essays is up to you! my only advice is to read chris s. Good luck and happy writing!

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14 8 / 2013 ldquo what rsquo s going on? rdquo i said. Ldquo really, it meant nothing, nothing, really, rdquo jared said stupidly, avoiding eye contact.

Rdquo ldquo i want to know why you rsquo re crying, selena, and i want to fucking know why, rdquo i spat, ldquo why you rsquo re both acting like i caught you in some sort of god damn crime. Rdquo jared rsquo s eyes flashed suddenly and he cut in: ldquo look, no! enough, all right? enough. We were hellip rdquo i barged forward and threw the desk they were standing behind aside. Ldquo you, rdquo i breathed, chest pounding, blood ramming like pistons into my ears. Ldquo you were ndash rdquo ldquo playing monopoly trade , rdquo she finished for me. Rdquo ldquo it isn rsquo t right, what you rsquo re doing to her! rdquo burst jared.

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Ldquo the way you treat her just isn rsquo t right! i rsquo m here for her because she rsquo s special and you could never see that! rdquo ldquo enough. But right now an awful concoction of rage and indecision saturated my entire being. Could i control myself? could i see how, really, this was all my fault, that jared spoke the bitter truth? could i overcome my greatest challenge hellip myself? no, not really ndash i rsquo m kind of an asshole. Anyway, i rsquo d just been watching a quentin tarantino film so i had no qualms with brutal, unnecessary, extreme violence. But that rsquo s life, for ya, eh? just state the facts they speak for themselves. It’s a classic mba essay question: write about a time when you overcame a challenge. How did you handle it? what did you learn from the experience? let’s start by easing one worry you may have.

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Not everyone has faced a significant challenge at work by the time they apply for an mba. If that is your situation, think of another significant challenge you have faced in another realm: a community or volunteer organization. It’s important that the challenge be something in the recent past – preferably within the last two or three years. If the challenge you write about is farther back than that, it will need to have that much greater impact or significance. what makes a good challenge for the purpose of this essay? the possibilities are almost limitless, but here are a few strong examples:   joe’s boss informed him he was going to fire freddy, a new hire joe had been mentoring, for poor performance. Joe believed in freddy’s technical skills, and felt freddy’s shyness and lack of english fluency had hurt him. He convinced his boss to give freddy another chance, and coached him after hours, directed him to a language fluency program, and engaged in role playing to help freddy gain confidence.

Freddy began to thrive, kept his job, and became the go to guy in his department for certain technical knowledge. At no time did joe complain about his boss or call him unreasonable or insensitive. At no time did joe play the martyr, patting himself on the back about the extra steps he was taking to work with freddy. Lori believed in the organization’s goals, volunteered to spearhead a membership drive, which was successful, and then ran for president of the organization and won. Then, she worked to create more dynamic programming, a social media presence, and added appealing incentives for people joining or renewing membership. Joe made a huge impact on one man, and by extension, an impact on his organization. Neither joe nor lori made themselves out to be heroes by describing their exhaustion because of long hours spent on their respective projects.

They simply stated the circumstances, why they believed in their mission, and related what they did to fix what was wrong around them. Presenting their stories in a just the facts, ma’m manner make lori and joe sound like exciting management material: filled with vision, creativity, incentive, and energy. Gary had written a marketing plan to boost awareness and fundraising at the non profit where he worked. His ceo at first approved his plan, then suddenly nixed it, replacing it with his own plan. When gary couldn’t get the ceo to reconsider, he appealed to others in the organization who had the ceo’s ear.

Fortunately, they were willing to speak to the ceo, who then agreed to gary’s original plan. Now, based on the first few examples we’ve seen, you will already have guessed that in this case, gary did not complain about the ceo, call him short sighted or stingy. He did offer some explanations for why the ceo might have seen the situation as he did, but nothing pejorative was written. Gary’s workaround to his challenging situation showed boldness, initiative, and perseverance.

At no time did he complain about the added workload of having to unravel this situation, or make himself sound like he had saved the day. let’s recap: a strong challenge example will allow you to show direct impact on either your organization or another individual. Ideally, it will be something that happened in the last two or three years, unless it was a monumental achievement. Finally, do not cast blame on others who may have helped create the problem/challenge in the first place, and do not sound like a martyr in describing the efforts no matter how great you made to get the job done. Simple, direct writing about the challenge will make it abundantly clear that you have the initiative, problem solving, communications, and organizational skills a good mba program looks for. related resources: while adult students must overcome a vast array of hurdles in pursuing higher education, three of the most significant are cost, access and balancing their many commitments. Choosing to return to school can be a life changing decision, whether it’s been one year since you graduated or a decade since you sat in a classroom.

The good news is these challenges are being recognized by many educational institutions, and non traditional educational opportunities are becoming widely available. School and institutions are realizing the increasing importance of making learning accessible to everyone and are, consequently, offering more flexible options for students. Many institutions offer evening and weekend classes, as well as online or distance education options. As more adults return to school, more services and resources become available to assist with this challenging but worthwhile endeavor.

Ultimately, adult learners face a very unique set of challenges when deciding to enter or re enter the educational sphere. Three of the biggest challenges facing adult learners are balancing school and life, accessibility and costs: 1. School and life responsibilities – the balancing act as any postsecondary student can attest, school is a huge time commitment. There is time spent in class, time spent preparing for class and then the time needed for essays, assignments and other homework.

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