Building your personal brand in MBA applications

Getting the acceptance letter from HBS and Wharton was one of the most thrilling moments in my life. I still log onto my account and check the admissions letter once every so often to make sure that it was real. I still cannot believe how lucky I was. Since then, I have spent a lot of time thinking about why and how I was accepted.

My stats were nothing spectacular. I did have a high GPA, a decent work history, and some good extra circulars, but then again, many veterans applying to top schools had solid GPA’s, good evaluation reports, and probably did something good/interesting/unique outside of school and work. Additionally, I did not have anything professionally “sexy” while in service like SOF or Fighter Pilot on my resume; I was just a regular Army Armor Officer with two tours to Afghanistan (which is the case for most Army Officers of my generation). Furthermore, my GMAT was 690, which is in the bottom 10% of H/W/S admits, so I actually had a handicap going into the application. However, as many people know, business schools look beyond the hard numbers of your application and will dive into the other qualities through the content of your work experiences, what you expressed in your essays, and how you talked about yourself in the interview. It was in these parts of the applications that I felt had the greatest impact on my acceptance. More specifically, I believe that my conscious effort to build a Personal Brand probably had convinced the admissions committee that I will be a good addition to their business school communities.

Before I dive into my personal journey of developing a personal brand, I would like to first explain my take on what a personal brand is and why business schools value them in a military applicant. In my own words, Personal Branding is packaging oneself with certain themes in your academic credentials, professional experience, extra circular activities, hobbies, and even superficial qualities such as choice of clothing, movies/music, and travel destinations. With all those things taken together, it will give someone reading your application a sense of where you came from, where you are now, and where you are going. Personal Brands don’t have to be complicated; in fact, they should be simple and can be described in a minute or less. A simple one could be based on a professional focus such as engineering or finance or culturally/geographically focused such as Asia or Latin America.

It is especially important for a military applicant to have a good and clear personal brand for several reasons. First, it allows the admissions office to reasonably predict your success in the field that you are transitioning to. Second, it shows that you as the applicant have good self-awareness in understanding where you came from and a sound plan to fulfill a passion or purpose in your professional life. More specifically, you had spent time thinking about and preparing for your transition from the military and you will be more ready than some other applicant who had decided to leave the service and just trying to see what he or she can get on the outside. Therefore, if you could convey to the schools what your brand is and how you plan to “market” yourself, then the admissions committees will know that you have at least started to prepare for the transition and will have a much better chance of success in school and the corporate world. 

So, how did I develop my personal brand? It started 3 years ago when I first started to look into business school applications. At that time, I knew I needed a post-MBA plan that fits logically into my background, so I looked back into my personal history and tried to connect the dots in my life.

The first theme of my brand was China. I was born in China and moved to Texas in grade school; I worked for a Chinese energy company in Houston and interned with a private equity firm based in Beijing; I was heavily involved with Chinese cultural activities during college; I am constantly reading books and news about China, watching Chinese movies (and instead of just watching them, I dove further into them by reading the reviews, studying the symbolisms, and formulated my own ideas about their significance with the society at large), and even wrote a few blogs in Chinese. I put all of these things into my application and even made it as my topic in my essay. I talked extensively about my connection, physical and emotional, with the country and how I was going to use my MBA to prepare my business career with China as its focus. Needless to say that the fact that China is a big focus for the business community right now also helped, but my knitted story of how I want to do business in the country of my origin and why it made sense to go to Harvard/Wharton (I did extensive research on what these schools are doing in regards to China) definitely had helped complete my application. I knew that this would be a major point of discussion for my interview, so I had also prepared for it, by having a few stories of bi-cultural interactions and reading much more about China the few weeks prior to my interview.

A second theme I used was finance: The Private Equity firm was used again; I had quite a bit of money invested in the stock market and spent a good amount of time researching financial markets; I started (and still am) studying for the Chartered Financial Analyst exam; lastly, I had reached out to many experienced financial professionals, sought advice from them, and learned insightful lessons about the industry that I could talk about in my essay or interview (This is actually quite easy, especially for a veteran, since people tend to like to help you; just a do a search for “Army/Navy/Your Military Branch + Finance/Banking/Your Desired Industry” on LinkedIn and message the folks from top to bottom). Furthermore, finance is also a unique factor that will set me apart from many other military applicants: I do not believe many military applicants, especially combat arms officers, are applying with finance as a theme. In doing so, I was able to make my application memorable to the admission committee, as it is a more interesting and diversified background than most of other applicants in our category.

Defining my Personal Brand took some time, in thinking about it myself and seeking advice and feedback from my friends and mentors, especially the ones who had already made the transition. If you are planning on applying to Business Schools in the near future, I recommend you to start looking back into your experience, achievements, and passion, whether from undergraduate studies, military specialties, or deployments, to see if there are any common themes you could highlight in an application. Afterwards, expand on those themes, develop the associated skills, and talk to experienced professionals to formulate a logical plan in employing them in a successful business career. Lastly, start embracing those themes, become the business professional that you were meant to be, so you are not just writing down some ideas on your application, but actually presenting yourself as a transitioning veteran with a strong personal brand that business schools will want in their classrooms.

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Written by a recent admit to the HBS Class of 2016