The following MBA statement of purpose is an example of a compelling story that reflects the original voice and personality of the applicant. Get inspiration from it and try to incorporate its strengths into your own essay.

MBA Statement of Purpose Example

For my admission at Harvard Business School (HBS), the odds are not in my favour. However, I owe a debt to all those before me who even made it possible for me to apply to HBS. In a tiny village, my father dared to dream of his freedom from poverty. His leap of faith made him walk sixteen miles to school every day, and eventually, he became the first graduate from the entire village. The son of a poor farmer, he earned freedom from poverty by working as an accounting clerk. An entire village followed in his footsteps, and today, every family in our village has at least one educated child.

My father dreamt of creating opportunities for my younger sister and me in a society that values only male children. But instead, he defied the odds, raised us like sons and invested his retirement savings into our education.

I dared to find my place as a pioneer woman in Science, Technology, Engineering Mathematics (STEM). Joining the class of 36 software programmers as the only woman, I went on to top the Software Export Board Exam. I earned the right to work in a software house of my choice, but the economic meltdown snatched it from me. 

As my first dream shattered, I dreamt only bigger and graduated in finance, entering another coveted “men’s club”. This time, again, my job in finance was beyond my wildest imagination. As the daughter of a poor villager, I managed a portfolio of projects worth US$49.6 Billion under the President’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) fund. Some of the largest international investments from Walmart and Apple originated from my desk. Yet a year later, I lost this dream job to the global financial meltdown.

After a couple of months, I accepted a high-profile job in the world’s financial hub, Singapore. I joined the cadre of a hundred women as part of the Bank’s Executive Committee. 

This job was the best of both worlds – I approved credit for the world’s largest corporates but for the world’s poorest women. In one of my projects, we dispersed loans across 180 villages to 13,000 women living below the poverty line. As the women’s businesses thrived, we recovered 95% of our loans. As a result, our borrowers won international microfinance awards. Yet I consider my real win when I was able to secure microloans for the education of 5,436 children who previously worked as child labourers.

That same year, floods washed away my entire village. I saw people clinging to barbed wires, desperately attempting to save their lives. As I watched in shock and horror, I refused to be a spectator. Instead, I left my job, set up an NGO, and talked my parents into working with me full-time. When I committed a year of my life to the flood victims, BBC ran a story on me. I was scared to live up to this expectation, yet six months later, we raised US$1,000,000 and saved 10,000 lives.

As relief efforts turned to rehabilitation, I started two schools. The children that came to my schools had either lost their families, homes, or both. They were part of the 3 Million children in the country who never attended a single classroom lecture. On their first day in my makeshift schools, these children shouted foul words, grabbed food and goodies, and threw stones at one another. But after spending a year in my school, they could now read and write, harbour dreams of a better life, and teach their communities about hygiene.

My projects were thriving a year and a half later, but I was under US$180,000 in debt. Hence, I supported my family by taking the first available job: university teaching to the first generation of college students. The university’s dean allowed me to design my courses. I chose entrepreneurial and development finance. Within a year, my students were already running successful semester-long businesses.

At age thirty-five, I joined the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), becoming the youngest woman market head across our 100 operating units. That same year, I married and moved with my in-laws as part of the culture. Despite managing family responsibilities, I lead my team to increase ACCA’s market share by 500% while bringing customer satisfaction to an all-time high of 92.7%. In addition, the executive team increased funding for our office, and the central headquarters did a case study on our office as a model for attracting new business. 

After three years of successful work at ACCA, I wanted to start my family because our lives should not be a choice between work and family. A year later, I was a proud mother to premature twin girls. A year of motherhood was worth a decade of experience as I put all my energies into tending to two human lives dependent on me for food, comfort, and survival.

The circle of my life was complete: My educated mother ignited in her daughter the dream to study, work and realize our potential. We did that. Raising my daughters ignited in me the drive to work for my daughters and those of others. Leaving the corporate world, I returned to my NGO to start the International Women’s Economic Council (IWEC).

I chose Dubai as IWEC’s first office. Dubai’s women are 51% of the population, yet they earn a fifth of a man’s salary and make up only 30% of the workforce. This lack of economic empowerment makes them victims of child marriages, domestic violence, maternal deaths, and social exploitation. At IWEC, I helped poverty-stricken or socially excluded women realize their dreams via training and networking. My bold dream is to use this platform to close the gender gap in the region.

This dream is greater than myself. I bring my vision to HBS because I want to empower female entrepreneurs so that they can transform their countries. My new skills in strategy will help me maximize scarce resources. Courses in Business, Government and the International Economy (BGIE) and Entrepreneurship and Global Capitalism (EGC) will help me understand why some countries are rich and others poor and how I can change that through government policy. In contrast, classes on Reimagining Capital would help me tap into non-traditional funding models for social enterprises. The case method will give me persuasion skills to deal with leaders in the private, public, and non-profit sectors. I will graduate with the skills needed to sustain and scale this social impact.

The odds have never been in my favour, but I know that in no other school would my story come to life.