One of our consultants was recently conducting a ding review with a potential client who had applied to business school on his own but not been accepted. Together, they were exploring what the applicant might do differently this time, and our consultant asked whether the candidate had discussed any of his community service activities in his previous application.
He hesitated a moment before confessing, “Well, I have some volunteer experience, but I can’t write about it in my application. It has to do with my church.”
The truth was, this applicant had been involved with church activities for an entire decade—leading fund-raising activities, facilitating group discussions, organizing social events, and either participating in or leading extensive community service projects. But he believed (and in fact, had been told by an admissions consultant from a different firm) that because his efforts all fell under the umbrella of a religious organization, he should avoid sharing them with the admissions committee.
We disagree. Strongly.
At mbaMission, we have a simple rule of thumb for deciding whether to address potential hot-button topics such as religion and politics in your MBA application. If your intention is to convince your reader to agree with or accept your views, then you should not write about them. But if you are instead describing why the topic is meaningful to you and how you have been involved, then including it gives the admissions committee insight into your personality and value system, helping them get to know you better as an individual and candidate.
Sharing activities you have participated in within a religious context is certainly fine, but what about discussing your actual religious beliefs? Are those taboo? We have read compelling emotional essays from applicants about how they lost the religious beliefs they were brought up with, as well as essays from candidates who discovered and adopted religious practices and beliefs on their own. Again, our rule of thumb applies: as long as you are writing about your personal beliefs—not condemning anyone else’s or trying to push your beliefs onto others—the topic can truly be a powerful one.
(And as for the potential client in our opening anecdote, he ultimately became an mbaMission client, wrote about both his volunteer activities with the church and his religious beliefs and practices, and was ultimately accepted to multiple top-ten business schools!)
