Affecting A Significant Event in My Life on Thoughts - Admission/Application Essay Example

1. Describe a formative or significant event in your life and then explain how this event has influenced your subsequent thoughts and actions. (500 words) Challenges at times serves instrumental to drive you out of the comfort zone of the routine domain and aids to attain newer skills of leadership. So had been a significant event in my professional career which forced me to prove successful in a challenging arena of work. It was in the peak financial season of the year 2007, that I had to take charge of the challenging hot seat of FIC of project C. The incident of the FIC relieving from the organization at a stage where there were only two weeks left for the company’s annual audit really pressurized the whole team. The FIC was the lone person who held resourceful information on the accounts as he had a long term relationship with the client company. Moreover he was responsible for the completion of previous year’s annual audit and current year’s interim audit of that company. My previous track records found me as the best person to fit into his slot. The challenges in terms of adaptability, leadership skill requirements and information sourcing were immense. As a primary strategy I made my presence felt to the client company through extensive inclusiveness. An interaction with the client team and my team was initiated in which the time and the action plan of the project were reconstructed. The interaction further led the collection of resources with regard to the client demand, expectations and other vital information on the prior work done by my precedent counterpart. The team building process was a real challenge to my leadership skills. With the support of my supervisor, I built a working team and started to leverage the resources from relevant sources. The team was inspired to have a positive team spirit in the ice breaking meeting itself. The acknowledgement the team’s efforts and the sharing of leadership were continually assured. They were enlightened on the career growth envisaged upon the success of the program. The team was also warned on the impact of the failure that may result on the company. With all these relentless efforts, I could initiate a good work force. Tasks were assigned and the team started to work with all its spirit. Challenges were still on as the productivity of the team in terms of time management was posing concerns. The team couldn’t stand up to the pressure to deliver within time. I kept mentoring them and helped them to manage time by creatively intervening in their timesheets. By recording work process and timelines, they focused on efficiency, which consequently improved. Furthermore, I made them to review others’ work which empowered each team member as a leader. With increased work responsibility and better communication, the team worked in a more dedicated and efficient manner. Success knocked our door as the project concluded successfully. This significant professional accomplishment improvised my multidimensional leadership skills. In the road of managerial endeavors further on, this confidence and attitude would be a driving force to lead my teams to success despite the challenges which comes across. 2. Tell the Admission Committee about a time when you implemented an innovative solution to a challenge or problem and then describe the resulting impact on the organization or group to which you belonged. (500 words) To make a positive impact on the society you live in, would be a substantial achievement to cherish all through the life. When this achievement is gained striving across challenges and limitations, the magnitude of its glory is much more diverse. So was the substantial impact I made on the neighborhood while being a young girl. Being influential in the society without rich life experiences, a local reputation or an empowered authority was challenging but innovative. The problem in front of the neighborhood never had an easy solution. My neighborhood was a typical reflection of the infrastructural and life style limitations of rural China. Many of the over crowded buildings had acute limitations in terms of facilities. The building in which I used to live in, accommodated four households sharing the same kitchen and corridors. The scenarios in the neighboring buildings were much worse. Reflection of negative destructive energy among a frustrated society is quite obvious. I used to begin most of the days viewing conflicts differing in magnitudes among the neighbors. The replicas of similar conflicts existed in almost all the buildings in the premise. This had earned my neighborhood a bad repute in terms of social security and living standards. I realized a need to interfere so as to bring harmony among people. My general reading on the problem was that when an issue was raised, people approached such a situation emotionally which led to quarrels in between. They were not realizing that such an approach was on a longer term increasing the magnitude of the problem and was nullifying any amicable solution. The insight of the people was narrow, making them to approach simple issues with aggression and negative energy. The only possible solution was a scientific intervention into the mindset of the people. I took the help of the community committee association to initiate the innovative idea to launch a series of community courses to teach qualitative thinking to eliminate conflicts. I built a resource team, diverse in terms of expertise and experience including negotiating experts, psychologists, and neighborhood representatives. This gradually broadened the locals’ understandings on handling difficult situations and developed positive attitudes. I applied an experiential learning model in which individuals were promoted to change their roles for a set time .I designed different contexts while participants solved problems by playing others’ roles. This gave them an insight on other’s problem and persuaded them to think on an issue from the counterpart’s point of view. This learning model helped them build mutual trust and a deep understanding of each other. The efforts paid off as three months later, the community started to behave more harmoniously. Adding to the honor, within a year, our community was titled as the best community in our district. The application of my leadership skills in a social scenario with an innovative approach could yield fruitful results. This achievement is ranked as the best one in my career and would serve as a qualitative benchmark all through my life. 3. Other than national identity, describe a uniqueness you will bring to the Boston University community that will impact your classmates - both inside and outside the classroom. (500 words) To influence the people around me positively was a quality that I had inherited from my parents. Trying to be true to this quality I have always made substantial impact on the people around me, be it in the college or in the professional scenarios. Local Chinese dialects are always hard to master. I could realize a linguistic gap among my friends, when I was studying in Shanghai. Many of the new comers to Shanghai couldn’t understand the local students at all. This resulted in frequent misunderstandings between local students and newcomers. Meanwhile, the local students thought the newcomers were hostile and hard to get along with. I badly wanted to bridge this gulf. I realized that as I could handle Shanghai dialect quite well due to the extensive traveling opportunities I have had, and on the other side, being not of the area, as I had an insight on the problems with new comers, I realized my role to act as mediator to bridge the gap that existed. I motivated several Shanghai classmates to teach newcomers the Shanghai dialect. Furthermore, I organized engaging activities to promote communication, such as learning various dialects and introducing others to everyone’s home town. When on one side, the Shanghai students learned more about the outside world, on the other side newcomers overcame the language barrier and built their confidence. Gradually, relationships evolved and resultantly the gap was mitigated. I have also utilized my coordinative talents to make a substantial influence in the workplace as well. While initiating a project in Sichuan, acting as a translator between the local residents and my colleagues who where quite new to the local dialect, we could effectively establish close cooperation with the locals and could finish the project on time. The skills I had acquired while helping my mother to bake cakes and gift them to my neighbors could teach me how the culinary skills can be utilized to share joy among the people around you. I incorporated chances of cooperation within the staff by introducing cooking contest as a part of the organization’s welfare programs. This idea was quite acceptable to every one in the group as I had already evoked their interests while cooking for them in my spare time. They later started to enthusiastically exchange recipes and cooking tips with one another. This not only improvised the inter-personal relationships but also made the team health conscious. In my academic tenure with Haas, I can use my influential skills to contribute positively towards the study environment both inside and outside the class room. The coordinative and linguistic skills would aid me to be a binding factor among my classmates. The leadership of working groups while doing group assignments would never be a problem for me. The lesson I had learnt from one of the failed entrepreneurial trials in the past would enable me to have an integrated approach on leadership and would equip me to be a sensitive leader in managing conflicts. 4. (Optional) Provide any additional information, not addressed elsewhere in your application materials, which will help the Admission Committee learn more about your candidacy. Please address any employment gaps, strengths or weaknesses. (500 words) A gap in quantitative standards of my professional experience is substantiated by the qualitative standards I have acquired through out my professional endeavors. Although the length of my professional experience is only over three years, I have developed a solid preparation professionally while working for Earnest & Young and thus I have improvised my candidacy for MBA education. A solid foundation contributes to effective development of the career. A strong background in terms of professional skills in auditing and accounting has provided me the courage to deal with newer domains and to take each challenge which comes across as an opportunity to grow. The aggression in my attitude is quite evident by the fact that in mere two years, I became a registered accountant of Chinese Certified Accountant Association. Interdisciplinary skills and expertise is another unique qualitative feature which was highlighted in my professional expertise. My expertise went beyond auditing and accounting to taxation, financial management and economic law. In the past three years, I had also developed knowledge across industries, such as manufacturing, automobile, machinery, electricity, paper, clothing, beverage, supper market, insurance, banking, and real estate. I could develop a broader perspective on the auditing industry including the market potential, competition, business models, and logistics. The varied work base and interaction with officials of the clients from different departments and countries helped me to become more mature in teamwork especially in a global scenario. My leadership skills also have been tested for excellence all through my career. Multidimensional skills developed in harder situations of challenges have helped this process. When the company had to deal with a tough project with stringer standards, my manager decided to reduce the team’s chargeable hours to control the project budget. This posed concerns among the staff. Being the senior in charge in the project, I tried to make the manager rethink, but her hands were too bound with reference to the situation. So as to help her manage the situation, I immediately started communicating with the clients, colleagues, and other experienced senior managers to develop a plan. The developed plan was brainstormed in a meeting which was inclusive of staff from all strata. The issue could be amicably solved with due regard to the traditional policy of the organization to engage the team’s wisdom for supporting the integral ideas of the boss. I not only accumulated experience in leading both team members and management in solving problems in a time of emergency, but I also changed the corporate culture by utilizing a new way of cooperating with the boss. The “”Bravo Award” of Earnest & Young that won in 2008, reiterates my success and expertise in the professional career. In a recent one-week “lead an engagement” training and case discussion, I led my team to achieve the Best Performance Award. In totality, though my professional career had been short, it was eventful and qualitatively rich. This experience and expertise would compensate the shortness of the professional experience I have. Read More