Harvard MBA Management Statement: Personal

Harvard MBA Management Statement: Personal Life Plan

Early in my educational career, I made a conscious decision to apply my educational interests and intellectual aptitude in a focused direction to maximize my ability to achieve financial success, and as early as possible in my chosen career.

Luckily, my academic strengths are consistent with the requirements for professional success in a challenging career that is also among the most lucrative.

My academic strengths have allowed me to develop the ability to understand complex relationships and to apply those formulae and analytical principles to particular problems in my chosen field. My current position as a mutual fund analyst does allow me to apply my academic training to real world situations, but within narrower parameters than some of the opportunities required in my long-term vocational aspirations within investment banking. Because my current position is comparatively one-dimensional, it provides more incentive to perfect similar types of analyses and transactions than to make full use of my analytical talents in the full spectrum of more varied applications.

More recently, I encountered some philosophical writings that have redirected my long-term goals in some respects while sharpening my focus in others. Specifically, I discovered (by accident, while researching the writings of other philosophers) that Albert

Einstein had published several works detailing his social views. Knowing of his unparalleled brilliance in the realm of science, I was immediately curious to know his thoughts on issues like human motivation, social concerns, moral values, and defining long-term goals of life. At first, I was disappointed to find that Einstein viewed some of my initial professional goals with fairly harsh criticism:

When considering the actual living conditions of present day civilized humanity one is bound to experience a feeling of deep and painful disappointment at what one sees....Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one's fellow men.

This competitive spirit prevails even in the school and, destroying all feelings of human fraternity and cooperation, conceives of achievement not as derived from the love for productive and thoughtful work, but as springing from personal ambition and fear of rejection."

As much as I wanted to reject that characterization, the eminence of the author forced me to consider it with a more open mind, and in so doing, I recognized both its truth and also its contemporary societal applicability, despite the fact that it was authored half century ago. If anything, elements of modern American culture exemplify the concepts even more than prompted Einstein's observations; the more I thought about it, the more connections I recognized.

It is particularly difficult in an election year to argue against the predatory image suggested by the "ruthless striving for success at the expense of one's fellow men." But even beyond the political campaign model, specific components of my own industry like the commercial trading of collective debt essential to investment banking do seem to support the pejorative connotation. For just one obvious example, the current collapse of the subprime home mortgage market was not perpetrated by debt traders.

Granted, the situation was triggered by unrealistic desires of under-qualified home buyers themselves. On the other hand, precisely because collective mortgage debt had been developed into a such a valuable negotiable commodity, lenders and subsequent assignees of collective debt began all but ignoring the due diligence requirement of verifying lender qualification despite common knowledge of purposely inflated income among debtors. Essentially, once lenders came to view mortgage debt as a negotiable commodity rather than a risk associated with default, the only real incentive for verifying debtor qualification were protection of the debtor.

In retrospect, the degree to which this risk failed to ensure diligent debtor qualification standards by lenders illustrates a relative lack of concern with the potential consequences to borrowers. On the other hand, to be fair to my colleagues, Einstein's observation that "... conceiv[ing] of achievement not as derived from the love for productive and thoughtful work, but as springing from personal ambition and fear of rejection" is at least as accurate a characterization of mortgagees: no doubt, many of those now facing foreclosure of properties in the $500 million range could have lived very comfortably in smaller homes with corresponding financing debt more appropriate to their actual income. Therefore, many of those whose homes are most at risk are victims of their need to live beyond their realistic financial means, mainly for the sake of living up to a social image and impressing their neighbors.

In principle, the issue pointed out by Einstein applies equally to "overly ambitious" first home buyers in the half-million dollar range as to Wall Street debt traders for whom that same amount represents the price of water craft more than primary residences. Obviously, the comparison was not something completely foreign to me before, but the words of Einstein impressed the idea on me in a more meaningful way nevertheless, especially in combination with some of his other observations, such as:

The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, can see in the service to the community their highest life achievement.... Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs."

To be sure, the idea of devoting one's life to the betterment of the world is a hackneyed goal probably more suited to parodies of beauty pageant contestants than to realistic motivation behind aspiring investment bankers. Still, I believe it is also possible to combine the intellectual satisfaction of professional achievement within my field with the sentiments expressed so eloquently by Einstein.

First, the examples set by the philanthropic efforts of Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Ted Turner demonstrate that personal achievement and the accumulation of material wealth provide some of the greatest opportunities to contribute to the betterment of society and to its less fortunate constituents. Undoubtedly, aspiring to benefit society by becoming a cardiac surgeon is also a commendable goal, but it is difficult to compare the overall contribution of even the most accomplished health care provider with a financier whose efforts establish clinics employing hundreds of surgeons.

Furthermore, when I consider Einstein's observations about the most common psychological motivation underlying professional goals and human achievement, it seems that it applies as much even to the most worthwhile aspirations, (such as becoming a physician), as to professional careers that are more directly related to finance.

To be perfectly honest, Einstein's writings clarified my perspective on aspects of my professional goals about which I already had certain ambivalent feelings, but which I had not yet been forced to confront or analyze in great detail. I have a genuine intellectual passion for the analytical elements and the challenges inherent in my chosen academic field. However, the financial excesses and moral transgressions associated with my field in various relatively recent high-profile cases has troubled me simultaneously.