How to Write An Essay: for Stanford GSB [MBA Applications]

how many times in your life have you had to start with a blank page and create something from nothing I can't even imagine the number of times and I don't really have the answer for that but that's exactly what I was doing in the

summer of 2017 when I decided to apply for my Stanford MBA and I had to answer their most infamous admissions question what matters most to me and why oh yeah

and by the way do that in 650 words distill the depths of your soul in 650 words on a piece of paper now I don't know about you but I was not someone who

actually knew how to do that uh and it took me a lot of work and no matter how many essays you see that are the final product I actually narrated mine my successful Stanford G GSB essay and my

successful Borton essay so if you want to check that out it's in the links below even though I had done it well I don't necessarily know that when you look at those essays you entirely see the process that every individual puts

in to figure out that answer for themselves and I imagine the answer and the approach is very different for every single person depending on their life story and their style of writing so how

did I answer that question for myself how did I understand what story I wanted to tell and then how did I take my Concepts and stories and then craft it into a personal essay that ultimately

got me in right there were many different parts of the application but how did I do the essay so today's video is a love letter it's a love letter to

that frustrated confused girl and version of myself that I was in the summer of 2017 who was trying to figure out how to answer this question this video is also for all of you who are

trying to answer this question either for yourself or for the MBA admissions process or really if you're trying to apply for anything in life I think this methodology will work for you just fine

today's video is going to go into three different topics one brainstorming how did I brainstorm number two curation how

did I select and organize the stories that I would then use in my final essay and number three writing and editing yes

we are going to go into my tips and tricks that I kept in mind when I decided to write a personal narrative essay which is something that not a lot of people talk about so let's dive

in the point of an essay in an application at Stanford at an MBA program in college or really anything is

to tell a story it's to tell the story of who you are as a person beyond the resume and the transcript that you've given to someone so everyone will see the outcome right so they'll see all the

inputs of what you did and they'll see the results but then who is the person that then made those results happen this is a chance for you to story tell and

it's your story to tell you are the protagonist but then how do you figure out what story you need to tell about yourself like which which stories your life is maybe 25 plus years at that point you've probably had a lot of

different life experiences so you need to curate which stories but first you need to deeply understand yourself and how do you understand yourself well you

brainstorm so this guy this document right here this is a result of one week of brainstorming that I did before I

started writing any essay for any MBA admissions program it is a 35 page

document type 10 or 8 aial font face is that yeah Ariel Ariel Ariel yeah of all the details that were important and

meaningful to me personally professionally uh socially all the different ways uh in my life up until that point and I think this is the crown jewel of any application to

anything that you do whether you're applying to a job whether you're applying to college whether you're applying to an MBA program whether you're applying to Stanford it's you need to self-reflect on your life

now it helps to have a structure and so I was not someone that could just look at a blank piece of paper and say hey Pua just brainstorm no I had to structure it for myself and so I

structured it by looking at five different pillars of my life and so this section is going to go into the brainstorming that I did the five different pillars that I looked at the questions that I specifically answered

feel free to lift all these questions off of me create your own you know 35-page document this was one of the most rewarding experiences that I

had pillar number one is family background and personal upbringing here I really delved into who I was growing growing up and what impact did my

childhood influences have on the woman that I became today or at that moment of time so I looked at where did I grow up who are my siblings who are my parents what if any influence did they have on

my life growing up what were the cultural influences growing up in my life what did I spend my time doing growing up what were my major interests and hobbies did I speak other languages what motivated me to learn those

languages have I traveled did I live anywhere for an extended period of time what was was the purpose of my travel when I did travel was it trkking was it volunteering was it study abroad what

was it and then if I looked at when I lived in different countries it was like okay what brought me there what was the impact that it had on my life who were the most important people in my life what role did they play these were all

the different types of questions that I answered in this section and so I'll give you an example of how I wrote and I wrote free form without without feeling as though anyone was going to read it uh

so here's what I wrote um I spoke spoke about my parents so I'm the first generation daughter of Indian immigrants my parents are two of the most influential people in my life my father grew up in poverty in India and built

his entire life based off of scholarship to become a physician in the United States today he was one of seven family members I spoke about my grandmother I spoke about the impact of my grandfather

bringing my family here and I spoke about the impact of knowing that I came from a Heritage that was quite frankly destined to not survive or not Thrive

and how because of the power of education and the understanding of the immensity of what the doors education can open am I still sitting here today in the privileged position of even

thinking that I could apply to a program like this and this understanding of how compound interest is a very powerful vehicle of growth across

Generations uh is something that has always fascinated me and so I never take any sort of chance to be educated or to grow for granted because I know if

I had just existed maybe just a few years before or in just a different family I likely would have been relegated to A Life That's so far different than the life that I sit in today even sitting here and talking to

you on this camera right and so these are the types of stories that I just started writing about and it actually like not even for a Stanford essay but it is phenomenally rewarding to take

your thoughts and put them on a piece of paper on your child and your upbringing and you might uncover things that are not so great right but the point is is that you're reflecting and you're

synthesizing and you're feeling you're feeling the emotions that you need to to understand eventually what may matter most to you and why the second pillar of my brainstorm

was my professional background here I listed every single role that I had since the time that I was in college to the moment that I was brainstorming and I listed a few particular key things I

focused on number one my motivations so why did I take that specific job why did I join that particular industry and why did I join that company what were my motivations behind it number two I

talked about promotions and changes in responsibility so I talked about every single promotion I had every shift in a role What drew that shift to happen if it was a promotion what was it that I

did that allowed for that to happen and anything interesting right so if it was an early promotion I wrote that down number three I wrote about anything not linear so if I had any Gap years or any

time that I had taken off I wrote exactly why that happened and I wrote what I learned from it and what was the reasoning behind it so I'll give you an example there was a free form and there

was a structured format for every individual Story free form sort of went like this and you'll notice that if you listen to my Stanford GSB essay a lot of

it was lifted from here so this place was call was called choosing Consulting and choosing IBM as a young child I can only remember having one desire I wanted

to travel the first time I saw a globe I wanted to go to every country I could see on that sphere so I could meet every single person that existed on this planet I was curious to know them what

their lives were like how they looked how they spoke I had an innate desire to connect with every single human being on this planet the desire to travel then informed every single decision

afterwards my choice to attend an undergraduate business school my life goal to attain fluency in five languages my desire to live on every continent at some point in my life save Antarctica

and just hang out with the Penguins while I was there and eventually the Consulting profession that I chose so essentially I took it way back I took it

way back to the time that I was born and I also right when I looked at the all the job offers that I had in banking trading and Consulting cuz i' applied to everything cuz I didn't know what I

wanted right I chose based off of the life that I wanted to create which was seeing the world and the closest thing that would get me to that is traveling and so even though I had much more

prestigious business school offers in banking and trading at different banks in New York City I chose Consulting at IBM because I knew it would take me one step closer to the life that I

envisioned for myself which was pursuing international business to connect with people all over the world so this goes on and on and on I

basically paint pages of every single motivation that drove me from one thing to another and I just rote my heart out so that's the that's the way I

brainstormed on my professional experience then I listed every single major achievement and accomplishment that I had in every single role and I

listed not the responsibilities but instead I listed the outcomes and the the results really this is all going to go into your resume

eventually so it's really good to meet do a detailed brainstorm so I used the Star Format I learned this when I was recruiting in junior year for jobs in college and it was a very quick and

effective way of communicating stories and results with interviewers and I documented all of my professional stories in the Star Format star stands for situation task action results and it

helps you figure out a beginning so the situation and the task is the beginning the action is the middle and the result is the end and then finally I talked

about any sort of significant team experiences that I had and my role in moving successes forward or backward this is a fairly in-depth process the

third pillar that I brainstormed on was extracurricular and community activities and here I listed any sort of organizations professional work committees anything with family and friends that I

was involved in and I used a similar Star Format so I listed out my accomplishments I listed out what my motivations were I listed out the nature of my involvement the role that I had and then I told specific stories similar

to the Star Format in the exact same format but I did it for community and extracurriculars the fourth pillar that I brainstormed on was College activities here I listed two different

extracurriculars that I were inv that I was involved in in college the impact that I had in that organization what role I held what were the motivations and success stories behind it in a same

star for in the same Star Format and then I also listed any sort of academic accomplishments so any honors Awards the context of getting those Awards anything and if I had more I listed them

there pillar five was anything additional that wasn't included in those earlier buckets here I focused on listing what are the top three accomplishments that I absolutely wanted

to communicate to admission what are five words that my family and friends would use to best describe me I actually surveyed my family I surveyed my friends like how would you describe

me to anybody um here I also what else um I spoke about unique circumstances that I've had a unique impact in someone's life or a very meaningful impact in someone's life I'll give you

an example I helped raise a family friend's son when their house burned down he lived at our house and he lived with me for maybe 2 or 3 years and so the impact of having him in my life when

I was growing up while he was growing up was very very significant on my my heart in a lot of different ways and so I spoke about that so essentially this brainstorm document if you do it really

really well with a lot of intention a lot of intentionality it can become this like massive it can become this massive document that is one of the most rewarding things to have because even

today I can sit here and look at exactly who Pua was in the summer of 2017 through all her life experiences and it actually like who knows but I think for inter for everything in my

life after this was a very very powerful experience to do so highly recommend everyone do it step two is curation curation is where I selected and organized the

stories that I would then use to answer the question what matters most to me and why but before I figured out the stories that I would use to interweave together I actually had to answer that question

for myself and this is why this process was such a powerful process of self-discovery for me now I think this is probably one of the most powerful experiences for anyone to do when you can single-handedly look back at your

life and be like wow what did I choose and why did I choose it and wow I might have a pattern here some are great maybe some are not so great you do the work to be honest with yourself and then you obviously choose what you want to share

and not share with an admissions committee but you do the work and how do you figure out what matters most to you and why well you have to pattern

recognize for your values now listen to what I'm about to say really really carefully you need to pattern recognize for your values your

actual values not what you think you value and this is a really clear distinction because in our heads a lot of times we think we might value something but the point of your Stanford

MBA admissions essay is to look at how your values have played through through the actions in your life and so if you say that in your head that I value XYZ

thing but you haven't really done things in your life that align with that well then you're not going to really demonstrate to them who you authentically might actually are it might be less convincing you might not have the detail you might not have the

results and it'll likely Fall flat so you need to genuinely and authentically figure out what matters most to you and why and it might be a bunch of things for me it was a bunch of things right

but you do that so how do you actually go from having the brainstorming document which is not here but oh it's

here so how do you go from this 35 page little Extravaganza document how do you go from here to then figuring out what actually matters most to you and why well let's look at this little

brainstorming document a bit deeper what I did is I looked at all the major inflection points that existed in my life mine as an individual were related

to Big Life Changes such as the the college that I chose the professions that I chose the industry I went to and different countries that I chose to go

and work in and so all of those things in it had a lot of different types of motivations behind it so I'll give you an example when I had my first job I had

opportunities to go into trading and into investment banking at Premier investment Banks right and I chose to go to IBM and do Consulting and a lot of people were scratching their heads they

were confused they were like what what is she going after is she not going after Prestige is she she's a finance major what is she doing I understood that the thing that lights up my world

is when I'm traveling and interacting with people and cultures everywhere and I knew the closest thing to getting to that life of

connecting with people all the time in different cultures across all different GEOS was if I was on a plane traveling for work and while it was likely close

to Impossible that I would ever get on a project as young as I did that would take me outside of the United States I knew getting on a plane every week even if it's going to rural Bloomington

Illinois which is where I went from my first work experience um I knew that that was closer to the life that I wanted than sitting 700 a.m. to 700 p.m.

at a trading desk all day every day and I knew that wasn't going to get me to the life that I wanted I knew this would right and so I was so motivated by that Vision that desire to see the world and

to travel and to explore cultures and to connect with human beings that I made a life choice that a lot of people had actually at the time didn't approve and

didn't support and so that hides what my value is right my value is that I want to explore the world to grow to connect with human beings and that value in many

moments of my life played out similar to me you definitely have choices that you've made in your life and whenever you have made a choice in your life while you might not 100% know it in the

moment you have definitely chosen not to do something else and I think your values are hidden in the answer to the question why did you choose to do X and

not choose to do y and as you ask yourselves those questions over and over again at all the most powerful inflection points that you feel change the trajectory of your life you'll start

on covering the things that have motivated you you think about the moments where you were truly the most proud you were the most inspired you were the most sad you felt like you

failed you were in the lowest moments of your life well then you ask yourself why did I feel so proud what was it that I was doing what was it aligned with so

deeply and personal to me that made me feel excited and proud in that moment and when I fell flat or when I fell at this moment and I wasn't able to figure

out how to get out of this or I had this failure I felt so down and why did I feel so down because somewhere there was something that I expected or I valued

that didn't play out and it's in this type of introspection and in this type of work that you actually uncover the answer for yourself what matters most to you and

why I I feel like doing this big brainstorm and then leading up to this kind of self-reflective work is a much better way of answering these questions rather than just brainstorming the

answers to the questions and then trying to retroactively go in and pull stories because there are stories in your life that you might not actually think about of interweaving that come organically from the brainstorm and then the

thinking about what actually matters most to you and why so that's how I did it I eventually found out through all the different stories that I had that I really just loved exploring the world

and so my what matters most to me and why became living life within Explorer's heart or exploring this world as though I were mellin like I had this image of like if I existed in a different time

period PUO would be mellin quite frankly I would have hopped on a boat and I would have tried to go past the Horizon to discover far off lands and that's who I would have been in a different time it's found expression in so many

different ways in the 21st century but that's What mattered most to me and why did it matter most to me well because I felt like my person personal growth was the most Amplified when I was exploring

the world in this way that I grew the quickest I grew the fastest and that I had the most human connection when I was meeting people of all different parts of the world and that made me more aware of

humanity and our similarities then the crazy differences that this world is constantly always trying to tell you on the news and social media right and I value that because when I die I know

that I want to know that I've lived right and so that is the energy that I feel about my life and that was then the

energy that I wanted to communicate in the form of an essay so now I got that down right but then once you do the work to understand the question to yourself there's likely a bunch of things that

you care about you then have to think about the school so you go to Stanford jsb's website and you read about what they put out about their school and what they

value and then you see whether there's synergy now I had done the work before I wanted to apply to know that I wanted them and only them because I felt like

if they were looking for a person I was that person and vice versa because I just the way I have lived my life is very much aligned with what Stanford GSB values and looks for in students and

so that's why I knew that that was the school that I wanted to go to that being said let's take a look at the website let's look at how I read through this and what I saw Stanford Graduate School of Business is a place where anything

and everything is possible it's where the boundaries of knowledge are pushed Beyond what's imaginable where diverse ideas and perspectives are not just

accepted they're encouraged and they're embraced and in this unique en environment of innovation and collaboration principled leaders emerge

faculty students staff and alumni develop the courage to take risks the passion to lead and the motivation to make a positive impact on on themselves

and the world so the things that stood out to me courage to take risks passion to lead motivation to make a positive impact on the world now if you look at

my Stanford gsbs that actually got me in you'll notice that a lot of the things that naturally come out in my personality and in my life in the way that I show up is courage to take a risk is a is that I'm risk-taking is that I

have a passion to step up take initiative and lead and that I do want to have a positive impact on the world so in some way shape or form while this wasn't the intent of my Discovery work I

discovered that those values align and so I'm more inclined to want to share those stories because it's a Synergy I hate that word Synergy I don't know why I just use that but it's a con it it

aligns right so if we look at the website a little bit more they highlight a few things principled leadership

transformational experience breakthrough knowledge and positive impact so they define principal leadership as we

Empower high potential individuals from across the globe to become responsible impactful leaders who motivate Inspire

and lead with empathy and compassion right so that tells you the types of leaders that they're looking for the types of things that they value if you have stories and it actually aligns with

what matters most tun why share it that is how you think about what you need to put into your essay the second piece transformational experience well um they

encourage learning from each other and the world right and resulting in transformation of the whole self I am a sucker for transformation and quite frankly that was what I went after when

I moved to all these places trying to do all the things that I did I wanted transformation I wanted to impact the world I wanted all of it and so wasn't

very hard to make my my stories align with what they're looking for right another one breakthrough knowledge you push the boundaries of knowledge this concept of pushing

boundaries crossing boundaries going beyond what you think you're capable of that element was definitely in my stories although I wouldn't say it was in knowledge maybe it was I don't really know but you know subject to

interpretation and then finally they talk about positive impact so being an accelerator for change that takes on the world's greatest challenges business

social and political iCal issues right I'm going off this is Circa 2013 artificial intelligence is not even a thing no one really knows what it is

right and so there in that I am breaking through trying to face one of the world's biggest new technologies emergence into the commercial sector

that's not something that's been really done before at that time 2013 is fairly nent while it looks good connecting the dots backwards in the moment it was genuinely a process C of self-discovery

I was discovering What mattered most to me and why and then I was looking at what Stanford valued and I realized they actually were entirely aligned and my life in some ways was a

manifestation of the type of leadership and the type of student they were looking for and that's why I applied that's why I wanted to go there whether they wanted me or not I was like you don't even know it but you want

me so this is one of my biggest pet peeves about education just generally you go through life you go through English class you go through English in college and no one really emphasized to

me at least I don't know maybe they did in your schools but maybe I just didn't go to that kind of school how important writing is and more importantly how important different

styles of writing will be in different parts of my life the type of writing that you write for a personal essay like this is called a personal narrative I ain't writing no personal narratives

when I'm at work or when I'm you know writing the these YouTube videos well kind of you're writing personal but you you get what I'm saying personal narrative writing is a completely different style than the daily forms of writing that we do when we're texting

when we're writing emails when we're doing homework assignments in school unless you are a journalism major in college I don't know how many times anyone's getting a rep in actually

writing a personal narrative and so when the there's two processes if you decide to go to college and if you decide to go to grad school there are two big inflection points in your life that

require the the capability and the Finesse of being able to tell your personal life story in 650 words and we are just not trained to do it so when I

became an adult in life and I started realizing this was a thing and it was a skill that my school didn't prepare me for I started supplementing it and so I took classes on personal essay writing

and I firmly believe that you need to constantly be upscaling your writing and you need to be doing in different types of ways today today there's long form content there's short form content

there's professional there's a lot of explaining writing like telling writing you're constantly just telling people and you need to master concision and being able to do that really well and

then there is this illustrative descriptive knowledge and then there's research reports which I never gravitated towards cuz that just always there was too many words I was I clearly

am a businesswoman but this art of writing a powerful personal narrative is a very important skill in life and while you might have all the inputs

into being in a great application and you might have done all the things you equally need to communicate it in the written word in a format that is going to do you justice your life Justice and

also be compelling this is actually why a lot of people end up hiring MBA coaches because there are a lot of people that are in fields very good at what they do Finance people and all

these others that actually are really good have really good stats maybe have good stories but they don't know how to communicate them and this person helps them edit it so to each their own I

think if you can figure out the principles of personal narrative writing you can look online you could probably put together something very very good for yourself and so what I want to go into are a few tips and kind of

principles of personal narrative writing that I reminded myself on when I started writing my essay that I think is useful to anyone not only applying to the Standford gsv but really to any sort of program where you have to write a

personal essay and a personal statement personal narrative number one it is an act of Storytelling okay you are telling a

story and so there's one major principle when you're storytelling it's called the three C's right it's character so who's the charact who are the characters in this case you're the only you're the

character you're the protagonist so you have character you have conflict there's something that needs to get done and you are going from point A to point B and there's something happening and there's

a journey to be had okay so there's conflict and then there's change so that shows you that the hero the protagonist went from here went on this little journey and transformed in some

meaningful way at the end and there was transformation or there was change so you want to make sure that when you are writing a personal narrative you are focusing on having character conflict and

change it's another thing to be said that you want to have growth Reflections and lessons in a personal narrative the

point is to demonstrate how you think or how you see the world through the words that you use and the stories that you share and so you want to make sure you

focus on the inner sort of perception of how you see the world or how that motivated the choices that you've made okay next you want to build your

character in this case you have to build this robust World about who you are as a person this is called characterization so how does an author or a Storyteller

build out character they usually rely on four different things for the process of the Stanford MBA essay that I wrote I focused on two of them number number one

is interiority so when you share the interiority of a character meaning their hopes their dreams their fears their

motivations when you share these forces that exist within a character you share a lot about who that human being is you share a lot about how they make choices

and how they make decisions in their life number two the actions that a character takes the actions that a character takes reveals a lot of about

how they move through their life and so these are the two things that I heavily relied on in my Stanford GSB essay what were my hopes dreams missions fears and what are the actions I took in my life

to manifest them and what were the outcomes results and then what was the transformation in my life as a result of that two other pieces of characterization that are used but I

don't know that I used it very much and if you use it you you need to do it strategically one is dialogue you can't have something too dial heavy but if the dialogue is there to serve to move the

story and drive the story forward then dialogue is used and then there's physical description so physical description of the character of this and

usually this is more free form not for an MBA essay type thing um and you demonstrate physical descriptions through the use of a mirror or a

photograph this is really key you need to show and need to not tell most writing in day-to-day writing is you're just telling people you're just explaining things this is something where you need to illustrate through

your words I'll give you an example I could have written I love to travel and meet people dead it was I chased her across the globe Kali Bacau Port Moresby I was only six when I traveled the world

albeit virtually I was chasing Carmen in the game where in the World is Carmen San Diego the next tip is that good writing has good Rhythm so I find this is a personal

preference I find that the most enjoyable pieces of writing especially for a personal narrative or a personal piece is when you see concision and

Clarity also alongside sentences that are long so there's a rhythm there's a dance to writing there's a flow to writing it's not like you are using five words for

every sentence but you have occasional small sentences and then you have the long s sentences that are a lot more illustrious so it's when you play with writing when you create dance through

your writing that it becomes even more enjoyable and more personable and when people read it they feel like you're speaking to them directly the last tip is that you want

to make sure that every sentence and every word is relevant and needed did so a good trick because you only have 650 words right so the a good trick is if

you remove a sentence does the entire story still stand and if it does still stand that sentence was not needed so I think that was the method that I really

used to edit because at some point you're going to you're going to have to cut it down to 650 words and it is not an easy task so you become really py you become really aware that every single

sentence that you write has to be needed to drive the story forward if it doesn't drive the story forward cut it and that's how you end up getting to a 650w

essay also between the what matters most to you and why and the why Stanford collectively it needs to be in a certain range so be able to EB and flow between what you think you want to give to one

essay over another but overall I gave around 750 words to my why what matters most to you and why and I gave the rest to the Y Stanford so that was today's video if

you want to check out my Stanford essay I narrated this video here and I also did my Wharton MBA essay as well so hopefully you can see how the final product looks like this will give you a

sense of how I uncovered that process for myself and my hope is that you can use some of these tips and tricks or use this to inspire you or inform you in anything that you're trying to do in

your life um I just ask one favor if there are things that you found specifically very helpful that I did that I did well in this video if you'd leave it in a comment below and let me know what worked but if there was

something that was vague or that you think I could improve from let me know that too cuz I am a big fan of feedback um let me know if there any other sorts

of things that you want me to create videos about to I would love to be just useful to everyone here and I sending

everyone lots and lots of positivity and lot of love signing off but just because you a rockstar let's say you a rockstar okay just because you

a rock star it don't mean that you can communicate that you a rock star you got to communicate it