标题: ESSAY话题：为什么会有"what matters most to you"这样的Essay题目 [打印本页] 作者: bigpig 时间: 2010-5-25 15:52 标题: ESSAY话题：为什么会有"what matters most to you"这样的Essay题目
Stanford 的essay题目里有一篇著名的"what matters most to you"，其他一些学校如yale也会拐弯末角地问这样的问题 (what are you most passionate about? )，2010-2011赛季，CBS（Columbia Business School ）也加入战团，别出心裁地问了一个“Please tell us about yourself and your personal interests. ”看来，ADCOM的读心术越来越不直来直去地问了。
以下为博主搜索到的一篇参考文章，希望对有疑惑的朋友提供一些有益的思路。
Teaching Commitments
By Ben Mattison
A new program in the Yale Management Integrated Curriculum helps students turn their values into action.
There’s a certain point in the first semester of an MBA program, saysJeff Metzner ’08, when it’s easy to lose perspective, “when all you canthink about is the economics problem set that’s due Friday.”
Metzner is a second-year advisor in the Yale SOM Leadership DevelopmentProgram, a new program for all first-year students. As he tells it,part of his job is to say, at that stressful moment, “Hey, wait aminute. Let’s go back to when you were applying to business schools.Let’s think about why you came here.” The LDP is designed to helpstudents maintain and enhance — amid the pressures of classwork, thejob search, and other activities — the core values that brought them toYale SOM, and to turn those core values into action.作者: bigpig 时间: 2010-5-25 15:52
“SOM is a community that believes in the power of personal andinstitutional values,” says Professor Heidi Brooks, the director of theprogram. “We ask students to think about what matters most to them —about what their most deeply held beliefs are. Each student comes toSOM with a different set of aspirations about the kind of impact theywish to have on the world; we want to support and encourage the growthand development of these aspirations, so that as students learn theskills in the curriculum, they will be able to pair those skills withthe motivation to put them into action.”
In the short term, the LDP is intended to help students make decisionsat SOM — what classes to take, what corporate presentations to attend,what clubs to be involved with, and what kind of career to pursue —that are consistent with their values. But it also serves as trainingfor the kind of leadership that they will need to exercise later intheir careers, when external pressures will be even greater.“Sometimes, the demands of daily life at SOM offer the opportunity forleadership learning,” Brooks says. “Ultimately, that’s what leadersneed to be able to do: to act in integrity with what matters inhigh-pressure situations.”
In a note on “Leadership and Commitment” written for the LDP, ProfessorJames Baron, Dean Joel Podolny, and Brooks argue that effectiveleadership is not possible without personal values. “Only a leader whois motivated by deeply held values and beliefs will sustain thesincerity and consistency needed to draw forth the continued efforts ofothers,” they write. “In order for a value to become a foundation forleadership, the value must become a commitment, which we define as asalient obligation that an individual consciously embraces.”
Brooks explains, “When people lead and engage in a way that is alignedwith what matters most to them, they will have a greater sense offulfillment in their work and come across as much more convincing andcompelling to others.”作者: bigpig 时间: 2010-5-25 15:55
In order to illustrate the transformation of values into commitments,the LDP began with the experiences of SOM alumni. During the summerbefore their arrival at SOM, members of the Class of 2009 watchedvideos of Mark Walton ’79, Nancy Yao Maasbach ’99, and Charlie Zelle’83 discussing their career paths, and then considered how eachconverted his or her values into specific commitments. Then, over thecourse of the first semester, students worked to define their ownvalues, the commitments that result from those values, and the actionsthat are necessary to follow through on those commitments.
Kim Yerino ’09 says that the process proved to be both more challengingand more rewarding than she expected. “I consider myself a prettypurpose-driven person, but when you give me a piece of paper and tellme to write down my purpose and what actions I need to take in order tomake it happen, it’s really difficult to do.”
But, she adds, “I started to look forward to the LDP meetings assomething that was a real refresher. SOM is such a fast-pacedenvironment that you really have to stop, take a deep breath, andthink.”
For the LDP, the first-year class is divided into groups of about 20students, each of which is led by a faculty member and two second-yearadvisors. The groups meet several times each semester, and each studentmeets individually with his or his or her faculty advisor and asecond-year advisor.
The same groups travel together on the International Experience tripthat takes place in January of the first year — a link that enhancesboth programs, according to Yerino. “It was really helpful to go to aforeign country with people to whom I already felt close,” she says.“It made me confident enough to take advantage of the experience.”
The LDP is a work in progress, Brooks says; the program will evolve asshe gathers student reactions and, eventually, data on how success inarticulating values and commitments correlates to success in theprofessional world. But, she says, “we’re on the right track” inpairing the LDP with the Yale Management Integrated Curriculum. “Ithink if our students can learn to articulate what matters to them andunderstand that in the context of a complex curriculum, theirleadership will be more effective.”
“I would like their time at SOM to be a high-water mark,” she adds.“I’d like them to say, ‘I was at my best at SOM. I discovered at SOMwhat my best could look like.’”作者: chuju 时间: 2010-5-25 16:12
从这个话题体现出 申请人的价值取向
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