Application Questions: "What is your toughest challenge to date and why?"

This is quite a common investment banking application question, essentially testing your attitude when facing challenges, stress and tough situations, which is a very common situation as an investment banker.

You can take any example, doesn't really matter: it can be an example at school (i.e. you had a group project due, but a member became sick and so you had a major issue) or in extra curriculars (your team was loosing because badly organised or the team spirit wasn't good, etc.), or personal experience (you were lost in some foreign country) What matters is how you handled the challenge, and you need to demonstrate logic in your thought process.

You need to structure and address the following points (some high-level example in parenthesis to give you an idea)

1. Set out the situation and what the challenge / problem was (i.e. You were lost in a foreign country with no map with a group of friends)

2. Explain why it was the toughest challenge to date (i.e. it was your first time overseas, you were responsible for a group, and nobody could speak the language)

3. Detail what your action was to try to solve this problem (you calmed down your friends, discussed about many possible solutions, and decided to use everybody's memory of the trip to retrace your steps)

4. Explain what the outcome was (you finally made your way, and the experience taught you how to stay calm under stress etc., etc.)

If you have space, ideally you should mention what you learnt from the experience. Bankers typically like students to write about tight deadlines, and new situations that you never faced before.

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