This question has several other different variations as well, the other variations include:
- An obstacle you’ve overcome. Tell me about an obstacle that you have overcome.
- Demonstrated leadership. Tell me about the time you demonstrated leadership.
- Demonstrated persistence. Tell me about the time you demonstrated persistence.
What Is Your Biggest Accomplishments?
What’s the interviewer is looking for here is:
- Leadership ability. They want to make sure you have leadership ability, they want to make sure you are not the kind of student that just sit at the back of the classroom and doesn’t do anything extracurricular. They want students who are going into their university to make contributions.
- Dedication. They want you to show that you are dedicated so when you are answering this question, pick something that you had to work on to be good at or something that you put a lot of effort to accomplish.
- Results. They want to see that you can get results. They want to find that will come to their university that can get results, that can get things done.
How to answer it:
To answer this question, I’ll recommend you use a framework called:
STAR Story
Here’s a breakdown of what constitutes the STAR story framework.
- S stands for Situation. First, start your story with the situation you are in. That way the interviewer will be able to picture what you are doing.
- T stands for Task. State the task you are trying to accomplish, that way they will know what your goal was.
- A stands for Action. What did you do? First I did this…. then I did that…
- R stands for Results. What did you accomplish? Don’t forget that.
Now tell the situation, the task, the action and the result. That way, they will be able to follow up and understand what your accomplishments were.
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Examples
Here is an example of a who is interested in education.
In this example, the student might answer what is your biggest accomplishment by telling a star story that looks like this.
"When I was a student in high school, I was a part of a tutors club and my task was to the freshmen improve their English grades. What I did was first I identified the areas that they are struggling in and their biggest was that they are having a hard time differentiating when to use an adjective and when to use an adverb. So I created a game where they would get a point for being able to recognize an adverb and an adjective and the students loved it. The students were very engaged because they liked the idea of scoring points and seeing when they are accomplishing something. And as a result, I was able to get that student from a C- student to having A in English.
That’s a really good example of an accomplishment that is perfect for somebody that is going into education. It explains the situation, task, action and result.
Here’s another example for somebody interested in communications.
If a student interested in communications is being asked what's your biggest accomplishment? He can say When I was in my junior year, I volunteered at an animal shelter. My task was to help the animal shelter find homes for dogs and they had been having a really hard time doing that. So I decided that we use social media, I created a Facebook page in which I posted videos of the dogs and I tell a short story about each of the dogs and a little bit about their personality, the kind of home that will be a good fit. I got very active at making posts on the page and as a result, we increased the number of dogs that were adopted by 40% and that was directly related to people who find the Facebook posts who came in and adopted the dogs.
That is a really good answer for somebody who is going into communication, they have a clear situation or a task, and they used their communication skills on social media to get the result.
So think about things that you have accomplished and break them down into what situation you are in the task, you are trying to accomplish, what actions did you take, and the results you got.
Make sure you pick things that have:
- Big impact. Now make sure you pick things that have a big impact, you helped the students, you helped the animal shelter, you accomplish something you got a reward for. Pick a really good story with a really good impact.
- Benefited others. Universities don’t want a bunch of students that are coming in looking after themselves, they want students that are going to make contributions to other people.
- Required efforts. Ensure you include something that requires some effort.
- And you got a clear result.
Things that do not make a good answer include:
- Common Things. Don’t include Common things, if you say my biggest accomplishment is that I got an A in math, most of the people applying for that university got an A in math. Pick something different.
- Don’t Be Vague. You want your results to be really clear so don’t say I make someone happy, say a took a student from a C to an A student or I increased the number of animals that were abducted from the animal shelter by 40% or something very clear where the result is.
- Don’t be Selfish. Don’t be too self-centred, don’t make it something where you got an advantage over somebody else and you benefited and it hurt them.
- Don’t make it easy. Don’t make something too easy make it something challenging.
So think through what are your biggest accomplishments and practice your star story. What are your situations, task, actions and results?
