The lights dimmed; the crowd began to hush. As I walked onto the stage, I saw that the club was packed with people. The butterflies in my stomach awoke and began fluttering about, and I felt the urge to turn and run off. In a dreamlike trance, I picked up my bass guitar and strapped it around my neck. A spotlight cut through the darkness and focused upon the stage, blinding me momentarily. I heard the drummer begin a four count. Suddenly the club came alive, and resounding music filled the Whisky-A-Go-Go, where twenty-five years earlier, The Doors had begun their musical career. An exhilarating sense of humility and wonder came over me as I thought, “How did I get here?”
My career as a bass guitarist in a rock and roll band has had the greatest impact on my life. Playing in a band was important to me because it represented a challenge: transcending the familiar confines of my life and entering completely unknown territory. I wanted to meet people from different backgrounds and go to places that I might never have gone otherwise. The dark, mysterious atmosphere of a Hollywood night club was a far cry from the neat and tidy math and engineering classrooms I had been accustomed to.
A year and a half before our appearance at the Whisky-A-Go-Go, bass guitar was about as familiar to me as Swahili. When I started playing, it was hard for me to believe that I would ever play for anyone outside of a garage, much less at a world-famous Hollywood club. I began playing bass at the age of twenty, with only a rudimentary knowledge of music theory. My only experience playing any kind of musical instrument was limited to two years of piano and one year of violin during elementary school. When some of my friends formed their band, they convinced me that I would make a fine bass player. (I believe their assessment was based more on our friendship than on any real evaluation of my musical ability.) I consented, and we started our first band.
We rehearsed in a friend’s garage. Learning to play an instrument was difficult; learning to play an instrument while learning how to play with a band was a test of sheer endurance and willpower. However, through persistence, patience, and constant, never-ending practice, my playing ability developed rapidly. We would practice three to four nights a week as a band, and I would practice at least six nights a week individually for several hours. We played mostly original music—a creative challenge that required a great deal of teamwork and interaction.
My participation in “Hipbone” is an example of my determination to be well-rounded and to improve myself continually in different areas: academics, the arts, and athletics. During college, I took classes in math, economics and computers alongside classes in theater arts and English. Prior to playing in a band, I had had only modest academic success. I initially entered college as an electrical engineering major, but soon discovered I did not enjoy the heavy emphasis on science. As a result, I was unmotivated, disillusioned, and found it hard to concentrate on any of my studies. I was reluctant to change majors for a long time because, being an extremely persistent person, I did not want to feel as though I had given up. At the beginning of my junior year, I finally changed majors and coincidentally began playing bass. The end result of these two changes re-emphasized the importance of having a well-balanced life and pursuing activities that I enjoy. My grades developed a steady upward rhythm, averaging 3.5 for my last two years.
The band progressed and began to play for live audiences. My first experience on stage was nothing short of terrifying. Afterwards, people told me that our performance might have been better had we not looked so much like frightened little children. Fortunately, we began to play for others more frequently and with greater success, and actually began to entertain our audiences as we became more confident in ourselves. As our successes grew, we began to regard our music more seriously and played at literally all the major Hollywood clubs (The Roxy, the Whisky-A-Go-Go, Gazarri’s, The Troubadour) and received airplay on several local radio stations. The pinnacle of our career was headlining at Gazarri’s for a crowd of over 300 people.
Unfortunately, we did not have a long-term plan in mind and the excitement of performing began to wear off. We had succeeded in drawing and entertaining fans, but not in attracting offers from any major record labels. Problems and arguments began to surface, and one of our players left the band. Eventually lingering conflicts broke us apart. We went our separate ways, yet still remained friends.
My experiences in “Hipbone” stressed to me the importance of doing things I enjoy and having a balanced life. I hope to realize these lessons at Top 10 B-School while acquiring a well-rounded business education balanced by extracurricular activities and personal development. Playing bass taught me to believe in myself and my ability at a time when my academic record was suffering. Going from complete ignorance of bass guitar to successfully performing for paying audiences in well-known clubs in the span of a year and a half has given me the confidence and knowledge that I can succeed in anything to which I choose to dedicate myself, including obtaining a business education and ultimately running my own business. My GMAT of 700 indicates I have the raw ability to succeed at business school. I look forward to using the creativity and tenacity I demonstrated in my rock and roll career to meet new challenges at the graduate level and later in my career in marketing, consulting, and entrepreneurship.
Will this student be successful at our school? This is one of the main questions committees are asking when examining your application. To answer this question, you will need to think of all your application components as complimentary; each essay (and your CV and other materials) will offer new insights about who you are, what you have done, and what you want to achieve. This essay is certainly unconventional and would not work as a primary essay in most cases. However, it would be a strong compliment to a main essay describing any business experience, as well as plans for the future during and after the MBA program. It also works well as a supplemental essay to explain why this student’s grades are slightly low and why they switched majors. Below, I will unpack why this works well within those contexts so you can think about how to approach essays that ask for more than the standard response.
This essay opens with a small story to set the scene. For an essay describing a creative activity, playing bass, this makes a lot of sense. A small story or anecdote can help the reader get engaged in the essay and put themselves in the applicant’s shoes.
The second paragraph is crucial because it explains why the applicant is writing about this (my career as a bass guitarist in a rock and roll band has had the greatest impact on my life) and, therefore, why the admissions committee should care about this story. The end of this paragraph also mentions the applicant’s more academic side, which helps connect this story to the other essays this person’s application.
The next two paragraphs (3 and 4) go into further detail about how this writer got involved in the band. However, more importantly, these paragraphs establish what kinds of skills the writer learned from this formative experience: determination; willpower; endurance; resilience; willingness to try new things, creativity, etc. This helps bolster why they are telling us this story and helps explain in further detail for admissions why this had such a positive impact on the writer’s life.
While all these previous elements are important, the key parts of this essay lie in paragraph 5. This is where the writer explains their GPA and change of major, connecting it to finding themselves through their band. While telling the story of their band is compelling, if this essay will be used to explain unusual things on their transcript (low GPA, many engineering classes from before they changed majors) we need to connect the two stories together clearly and explicitly. The writer also does not stay solely on the negative. Instead, they describe how their GPA has steadily risen after finding a better fit for their major and finding their talent through their music.
Paragraphs 6 and 7 return to the story of what happened with the band, covering both its rise and fall. When discussing activities outside of academia, it is important to still quantify and qualify your successes in the area. This helps give admissions even more context and can make the activity sound even more impressive. Being in a band is one thing, but being in a band that played in famous clubs, including in front of 300 people, and got on the radio is another.
The final paragraph clearly states what the applicant has learned from the whole experience. To do this, the writer uses clear phrases, such as “taught me” to explain this. I cannot stress enough that you should not make the admissions committee have to do work to make these kinds of connections for you–spell them out clearly in your essay! The paragraph does a lot of the complimenting work for this essay, placing this essay, story, and struggle within the context of the applicant’s future goals for business school and desire to attend the MBA program. One can assume these goals and plans are explained in much more detail in another essay from the application, but reminding the reader of how this essay connects to the others helps to create a cohesive application package, one which paints a well-rounded picture of the applicant.
Takeaways: Obviously, not everyone has been in a band. However, many people have issues or discrepancies that they wish to explain in a supplemental essay. One can certainly describe the situation in a short and straightforward manner. However, what makes this essay successful is that the writer decided to use this essay not only as a chance to explain their grades and change of major, but also as a chance to showcase an important and unusual part of their life. The essay, then, does double duty: it both explains issues AND helps add another dimension to the applicant’s profile, one which may help them stand out to admissions. This essay, coupled with a main essay describing the applicant’s academics, internships, and other usual MBA application topics, can really give admissions the sense that the applicant is a unique and multi-dimensional person–and who wouldn’t want someone like that in their MBA program?!
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