The opening line is, "My mother worked three jobs to support my Father's ambition of building a technology product from our garage."
The opening line shows the sacrifice the applicant's mother made for her father's entrepreneurial ambitions. The typical American dream is captured through the opening paragraph to reveal the diagnosis of her father and the importance of being present for each other. One silver lining is that the parents understood the need to be present for the kids. This quality transcended all aspects of the applicant's life in how she interacts with friends, stakeholders, and partners. Such deep listening skills also helped her succeed. The opening line is not directly related to the theme but it gives us a realistic perspective about the 'world of an immigrant entrepreneur in the US'.
I have used a mentor – the father, who is an entrepreneur to reiterate why listening and being present is important. Once I leveraged 'the story of the entrepreneur' to reiterate the importance of the 'trait,' the applicant's growth in her career and the new opportunities she found are narrated to keep the focus on the one differentiating quality.
The tone of the narrative is reflective and emotional – a style that is different from other 'What Matters essay' examples that I have captured in F1GMAT's Stanford MBA Essay Guide. It is purposefully phrased to differentiate from a crowded Edu-Tech applicant pool.
Read the Preview of the Essay Example: To Savor Every Moment and Be Present
Download F1GMAT's Stanford MBA Essay Guide