How to Get Into HBS: Play the Piccolo, Not the Violin

When Motlagh hired Stark, he lived in New York, but was in the middle of a major life decision – whether or not to join the Molins de Rei water polo team in Barcelona. He was apprehensive about getting out of the business world to play a game, but Stark didn’t dissuade him. As she saw it, the experience would help him play the piccolo, further his athletic career, display a worldly bent and give him a chance to learn Spanish.

Water polo was an early love. Motlagh competed on a high school team that won regional championships each of his four years and nationals twice. He made Princeton’s team as a freshman. While many of his Princeton teammates went abroad to play professionally, he accepted the sales job from Microsoft. Sales comes naturally to him; his outgoing manner and self-confidence are so evident he could sell air conditioners to Eskimos.

“Selling is my focus,” says Motlagh, who is now co-president of Harvard’s Sales Club. At Microsoft, he reached his performance targets within’ one year to gain a full sales position. He continued to play water polo as an amateur until one day he impressed the coach of a Spanish team who offered him a chance to play professionally. “I was at a crossroads: do I stay with Microsoft, or do I dare to be great?” The reassurances he received from Stark helped him with that decision. He left Microsoft to play water polo.

Harvard requires all applicants to craft four essays that range in length from 600 to 400 words each. Two of the essays are mandatory, while the remaining pair must be chosen from five other options:

1. What are your three most substantial accomplishments and why do you view them as such?

 

2. What have you learned from a mistake? (400-word limit)

Please respond to two of the following (400-word limit each):

1. What would you like the MBA Admissions Board to know about your undergraduate academic experience?

2. Discuss how you have engaged with a community or organization.

3. Tell us about a time when you made a difficult decision.

4. Write a cover letter to your application introducing yourself to the Admissions Board.

5. What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you?

With coaching from Stark, Motlagh highlighted his “dare-to-be-great” decision by choosing one of the five options under which  applicants have a bit more freedom to riff on whatever they’d like.

Motlagh and Stark’s relationship was different than what they were used to. As a Princeton applicant, Motlagh had face-to-face sit-downs with his consultant. Stark, meanwhile, often sees clients at her home in New York City and continues friendships for years down the road. With the Harvard application, the pair only spoke for a few hours on the phone, and once he moved to Spain, they continued the conversation over dozens of back-and-forth emails.

Still, Stark got the opportunity to hammer him on his essays, especially the one on a mistake. Motlagh says he was at first stubborn and then impatient as he re-wrote the 400-word essay over and over and over at his consultant’s insistence. Now, though, he’s glad Stark never made the process easy. “I wasn’t paying her to be a ‘yes’ woman,” Motlagh says.

Despite the time and energy he poured into those drafts, Motlagh’s applications met with less than an enthusiastic response. One school after another rejected him. He got dings from Stanford, Columbia, Kellogg, and Sloan. Surprisingly, perhaps, Harvard didn’t reject him outright. Instead, it put him on the waitlist, often a wasteland of hopeful MBA candidates who often end up with a no, anyway. At many schools, fewer than ten applicants gain acceptance from a list of more than 200. This year, Harvard took 50 applicants off a waitlist that probably had as many as 300 applicants on it.

With the odds heavily against him, and with Harvard his last slim chance, Motlagh went into overdrive. Over the next few weeks, he made as much contact with HBS as he could, even though Stark told him it wouldn’t make much difference. Stark believes, “There’s absolutely nothing you can do to get off the waitlist. They don’t want to know that you have since won the gold medal in the Olympics at Beijing.”