Everyone was Korean in Seoul. No one was Korean in Prichard. Motorcycles and mopeds crammed Seoul’s roads. Trees and flowers lined Prichard’s streets. In cosmopolitan Seoul, I was a favorite son showered with attention from a large circle of extended family. In suburban Prichard, knowing no one but my parents, I was the only Asian child in the neighborhood. Indeed, immigrating to the U.S. from Korea and settling down in a suburb of Mobile as a twelve-year old child dramatically changed my life. Uprooted from the people I knew and the things I was used to, I felt lonely, helpless, and uncomfortable in my new surroundings. However, I redirected the negative feelings into a force of strength that propelled me to excel in academics. Furthermore, the immigrant experience gave me adaptation skills that helped me as a foreign exchange student in Japan and as a businessman working with people of different cultures and backgrounds.
Pampered materially and nurtured emotionally in Seoul, I lived with relatives close by and a helping hand available whenever I needed it. My school, while stiflingly competitive and committed to regular doses of corporal punishment, presented a system with which I understood and was familiar. Although the neighborhood lacked open areas, it was a closeknit community where children addressed the lady next door as “aunt” and housewives frequently shared recipes. I was completely at home, ethnically, linguistically, and in every other respect.
My new life in Prichard contrasted sharply with my old one in Seoul. The neighborhood, while serene, lacked the extended support network of friends and family I had back home. School frustrated and demoralized me because I had learned only the first fourteen letters of the English alphabet and a few basic words before our arrival. After a fourteen-hour workday in the family restaurant, my exhausted parents were unable to help me. Further compounding my difficulties, I experienced racial bigotry for the first time in my life. Ethnic slurs and insults, which I managed to understand with rapidity, made me painfully aware I was different from others. In the face of these obstacles, I started to question the purpose behind immigrating to the U.S. Seeing my parents’ exhausted silhouettes seven times a week, I began to understand the motivation behind the move that forever altered my life: a chance at a brighter future in the U.S. Because no one could help us, we had to help ourselves.
Armed with this reinvigorating realization, I began to hoist myself out of loneliness, helplessness, and discomfort.Since my school did not offer remedial English classes for immigrant students, I began studying with only the help of an English-Korean dictionary and free online language videos. Although I was focused and determined, streams of below average grades accompanied my first year in school. Nonetheless, by expending two to three times the effort of others, I started to notice signs of improvement. A well-timed vote of confidence came from my seventh-grade reading instructor, Mr. John Smith. In his class, the highest possible grade—a B—was given to only one student per school year. Aiming for that coveted prize, I managed to improve my grades from a D in the first semester to the B in the final semester. At the year-end award ceremony, Mr. Smith specifically commended my achievement in front of the student body. While I received many other academic accolades in later years, no one validated my efforts and boosted my self-confidence more than that short yet significant praise.
Although it has been fourteen years since I arrived in Prichard, the immigrant experience has strengthened my character in ways that will be professionally and socially beneficial for years to come. As an immigrant child, I learned how to transition from one culture to another. This skill helped me when I had to make that transition again as a foreign exchange student in Japan. Additionally, having experienced the degradation of ethnic bigotry, I have learned to be sensitive toward different people and cultures.
When evaluating your essays for an MBA application, it is important to consider them as complementary; each essay offers a different facet of your story, while still making sense in the context of what you have written about in your other essays. The background essay should focus on elements of your personal narrative that help explain how you have become the applicant they see before them. It should NOT be a rehash of what you discussed in other essays or another run-down of your resume. However, it is important to strike a balance between what is just personal detail and what is actually relevant for admissions to know. Here are some ways in which this essay succeeds in adding complementary and relevant information to this applicant’s overall story:
The essay opens with a storytelling mode–it adds detail (Trees and flowers lined Pritchard’s streets) to create interest in the story we are about to hear. While you may not want to start other essays for the MBA application this way, in a background essay you are trying to allow the reader into your personal life a bit more and these colorful details help engage the reader in that process.
The essay’s opening paragraph is very important–ideally the reader should be able to get the gist of your essay's message/theme by the end of the first paragraph. To achieve this, this applicant moves from a storytelling mode and ends the first paragraph with a summary/thesis statement indicating the overall message of this essay (“I redirected the negative feelings into a force of strength that propelled me to excel in academics…the immigrant experience gave me adaptation skills that helped me… as a businessman working with people of different cultures and backgrounds.”) by the end of the first paragraph we know that this essay will focus on the challenges of the applicant’s immigrant experience AND how that has helped shape who he is and what values and skills he will bring to their MBA program. While telling a story about your past is important, tying it directly to the assets you bring to the table is equally important. When you make these connections for your readers, you make it easy for them to understand why this story is relevant to your overall profile as an MBA student and future person in business.
The body paragraphs follow a logical progression: The second essay paragraph details life before this big change, which helps illustrate the contrast between before and after. The third paragraph details the challenges he faced in his new life in the US. The fourth paragraph details how he began to overcome these challenges/what he learned from this experience. Finally, the fifth paragraph details how he has already applied these lessons/skills/understanding to business, showing that he understands how to apply what he has learned and will do so in the MBA program. It can be tempting to include twists and turns or flashbacks or many other kinds of techniques to try to make your essay exciting. However, this essay needs to be legible to someone who is skimming or reading quickly and so, following a simple situation set up/challenge/lessons learned/lessons applied approach can really help the clarity of your essay. In other words, let the story speak for itself and keep the structure of your essay simple!
Final thoughts: Are there ways we could improve this essay? Of course! For example, the applicant could add in a reference or two to the ways in which he has applied these skills/lessons to help him during specific projects (instead of broadly in business). A brief mention of a project that is explained in depth in another essay for the application can add some of that nice connectivity we are after. However, overall this essay helps the admissions committee learn something new about the applicant, specifically lessons learned and skills developed through overcoming a particular and significant challenge, which is very helpful to better understand what kind of MBA student/businessman he will be–and whether he is a good fit for the program!
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