HKS Mid-Career Essays

[rpwiki]

I am applying to HKS's Mid-Career program and wondered if anyone had any experience in how they framed their essays? It seems from other posts that the regular MPA program asks you to solve a policy problem whereas the MC/MPA program is asking me to describe my role in solving a problem. This makes sense given they are probably more interested in my overall work experience. Any suggestions about how to frame this would be appreciated! It's my last essay!!!

[dagger]

IMO, I would pick a situation in which you could quantitatively describe what you were able to do with regards to the problem. My general outline for framing things like this goes:

Background of the problem

End goals

What your plan of action was to solve problem

How you worked toward achieving your plan

End result (quantifiable with some set of data)

In addition, if you were able to pick a problem where you were able to enlist others to work towards achieving your goal that would be great to include. You could discuss the dynamics of getting others to work towards solving the problem, etc.

Again, IMO, the above outline is the ideal way to frame a these situations. However, each situation may not be able to described in such ways. I'd be interested to hear what the thoughts of others are.

[Cornell07]

Leadership, leadership, leadership! When I met with the HKS admissions people, they more or less said the keys to getting in are 1) Leadership and 2) Public Service.