The biggest challenge for anyone working in Private Equity, Investment Banking, or Technology is the lack of direct impact on a beneficiary that the admissions team could relate to. A lot of applicants overcome this challenge by quoting volunteering or entrepreneurial experiences that have a community as the beneficiary.
Some try to mention the secondary impact of an investment decision or a technology solution.
When you are risking the relevance of your story by mentioning a technology that is not the current news cycle, you must turn the essay into a narrative about the beneficiary.
In the Harvard MBA Growth and Curiosity Essay around crypto remittance, I couldn’t make the whole narrative about the technology and the applicant’s innovating thinking. It is just part of a larger narrative about child welfare and connecting his story with the story of the beneficiary.
The essay is one way to reveal an identity that couldn’t be revealed in the resume, application questions, or essays about goals or, success or failure. There is a human side that you have to bring out when you are competing against some of the best in the world.