Here is the personal statement of an applicant who got admitted to several top graduate schools for a degree in business and management. Variations of this personal statement got scholarships of upto $250,000 at Columbia, Harvard, and NYU. Read this essay to understand what a top scholarship personal statement should look like.
Sample Personal Statement that Won Scholarship
“The world is your oyster. It’s up to you to find the pearls.” – Chris Gardner, The Pursuit of Happyness.
This part of my life is known as helplessness. I was sitting alone in the factory office on a Saturday morning, crying my heart out. I truly and deeply felt I had nowhere to go. Never in my life had I felt more marginalized. What could have possibly gone so wrong in these eight months? My varsity had given me everything; I had been a tennis captain, a top debater, a mentor for my juniors, a leader in organizing humanitarian efforts for various social causes, and a co-editor of a middle eastern magazine.
Right after graduating, I was inducted as a Trainee Engineer at one of the best employers in Dubai. And yet, eight months later, I had stuttered in my professional career. I decided to quit my job that morning and return to my native city, Doha. There was something wrong in either my career choice or my job that had accentuated my decision to give up rather than gritting it through.
This part of my life is known as a struggle. After coming back, I had two options; either seek another engineering job or switch careers. I enrolled in a local MBA program, where I realized what had gone wrong in my first job. As I studied through courses on general management, I came across two concepts that perfectly summed up my reason to quit: “Person-Organization fit” and “Authenticity.” While the former contributed towards leaving my job, if only I had been more aware of the latter, I would have had the courage to say no to an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering and seek what excited me.
It was purely peer pressure that made me take up the degree in the first place. I come from a family of engineers and doctors. My parents belong to a generation that solely believed that every intelligent being should automatically take up a career in STEM. In my case, I belonged to the top 5 percent of students based on my high-school scores and had scored in the top 1 percent of the entry test takers for the undergraduate engineering program. So even though my English teacher beckoned my parents to help me consider an undergraduate degree in Economics and Finance, they were convinced I had to live the family pride and become an engineer.
My teacher’s advice was based on my off-the-class discussions on regional economics, trade barriers, and the industrial revolution and how these conversations had enthralled me. While my journey through my undergraduate degree was tumultuous, I never felt more at home during my MBA classes. My life finally had a purpose. As I was sitting in a Corporate Finance class, the professor started discussing how to calculate the enterprise values of firms. I can never forget that brimming feeling in my body. I had just experienced an epiphany.
I finally understood the financial and economic aspects of engineering and innovation. Throughout my MBA, I fell in love with every course on Finance. I participated in “The Global Investment Research Challenge” hosted by the CFA Society, where we had to write an equity research report on a leading food FMCG company in Saudi Arabia. Our business school participated for the first time in this competition, and we secured 2nd in the local round and received the “Outstanding Research” award. After graduating from business school, I was inducted into a Management Trainee Program in the Corporate Banking stream at a top local bank in Doha. From there on, I have never looked back.
This part of my life is known as resilience. I had become a phoenix. As I rose from the ashes of regret, criticism, and inertia, I felt myself resembling Mike Ross from the hit TV series “Suits.” A prodigy ready to make his mark on the banking industry in the middle east. I grew in my banking career at an exceptional rate. Within two years, I landed myself a role at a top multinational bank (“Standard Chartered Bank”) in Dubai in their “Corporate & Institutional Clients” team. The USD 20 million asset portfolio, which comprised Large Corporate clients, was being run on an ad-hoc basis for the past six months: without an Associate or a Relationship Manager (RM). The clients were furious with the service being provided, and we needed more time to pull out of the fire and rebuild the whole portfolio. With the help of my RM, I rebuilt the portfolio and the relationships from scratch. I increased portfolio utilization and cross-selling by more than 100 percent in less than three months. By the end of the year, our portfolio had achieved an increase in revenue by more than 15 percent.
Not only have I successfully managed all external stakeholders, but I was also identified as a critical resource in writing top-quality credit applications and understanding various internal bank policies. Although I was making progress in my career, my passion was to move on from commercial banking into mainstream Corporate Finance roles. In 2020, based on my performance, I was allowed to attend a two-week boot camp on Financial Modeling in London. From mastering techniques on making three-statement forecasting models using Microsoft Excel to advance corporate finance valuation topics such as Leveraged Buy-out and Mergers & Acquisitions, I attended the training with the brightest of associates. This exhilarated me.
During my stay in London, I networked with the senior management of the Corporate Finance team within the bank. I needed to take my next step toward a more prominent role in Finance. I could either stay in the bank and apply for various Corporate Finance roles in its Dubai / Singapore / London offices or achieve something more than just becoming an investment banker or a corporate finance specialist. After much deliberation, I concluded that to achieve my personal and professional goals, I need to pursue a graduate degree from “Harvard Business School.”
This part of my life is known as happyness. When Gardner saw the word happiness spelled incorrectly, it did not hit him at that time what he was trying to achieve. It was only when he was able to secure something whose value was far greater than its tangible value did he comprehend. Gardner equated his “happyness” to his raison-d’être. For me, my happyness does not lie in becoming the best banker in the world; rather, it lies in shaping Qatar into one of the best economies in the world. My long-term goal is to set up a venture capital fund in Qatar, which is focused on incubating startup companies and helping them create net positive value.
Qatar is currently ranked 39 on Global Competitive Index and 27 on Global Innovation Index. A population of 3 million people where more than 45% are under 25 years of age – there is some drastic change required in the leadership. The current leadership, be it on the government or corporate, is broadly reactive and not active in resolving various challenges they face. Sadly, the reactive leadership has trickled down on the youth as well. My long-term goal can be achieved through my short-term goals, doing a genuinely global business degree and initially working at private equity firms.
My recent experiences have taught me the basic skill set required by any top banker. Still, it has been broadly lacking in helping me become a better leader who embraces diversity and bridges the entrepreneurial finance gap. So, what other place than HBS to cultivate these traits and skills? In her book “Harvard Business School Confidential,” Emily Chan talked about a particular characteristic of active leadership when she said, “Speak so that people listen.” So, not only do I want to learn about leadership, but I also want to talk about it with my peers by joining various Clubs and Activities at HBS.
With a Harvard degree, I can advise startup companies on exemplary leadership, proper management, and the right capital structure to maximize their enterprise value. After I have achieved this and developed the right network, I shall shift back to Qatar and replicate this model locally.
In a precarious world where advanced countries are becoming less receptive towards open borders and getting lost in hate and fear rhetoric, now is the time to embrace diversity. Imagine a country that can tap into its youth and make it’s living immersive. Imagine a host of enterprises from Qatar that eventually turn into Fortune 100 companies and are admired for their innovation, openness, and global outreach worldwide. Imagine, behind all this, a business school believing in its candidate and his happyness.