mba essay about leadership

How to Effectively Demonstrate Leadership in MBA Essays

May 14, 2021

UPDATE: This article was originally posted on April 12, 2019. It has been updated with new information and tips below. 

Sitting down to compose your MBA admissions essays, you may be wondering what you should write about in the first place. While there are many different strategies that can lead to an effective essay , there is one thing that you definitely need to include: a will and capability for leadership .

Leadership, more than almost any other single quality, is one of the top things schools look for in their candidates. Some schools have even decided to dedicate an entire essay to their value of strong leadership. Take Kellogg’s essay A prompt, for example, which reads:

“Kellogg’s Purpose is to educate, equip & inspire brave leaders who create lasting value. Tell us about a time you have demonstrated leadership and created lasting value. What challenges did you face, and what did you learn?” (450 words)

Other schools, on the other hand, specifically ask about leadership as an element of essays or understand leadership to be an implicit part of the answer they are looking for, like Chicago Booth’s essay 2 prompt: 

“Chicago Booth immerses you in a choice-rich environment. How have your interests, leadership experiences, and other passions influenced the choices in your life?” (250 word minimum) 

This means that it is absolutely imperative that you clearly demonstrate your leadership capabilities in your essays . 

Your essay may be a masterful piece of writing, but only with the element of leadership is it likely to be successful and land you a spot in your top MBA program. 

Why is demonstrating leadership so important for elite MBA programs?

All business schools value leadership in their candidates. However, leadership has many different facets and forms , a fact that becomes clear when looking at schools – and what they value – in depth. 

Berkeley Haas, for example, connects leadership with their value of innovation . Specifically, Berkeley’s full-time MBA program features four Defining Leadership Principles . These include Confidence without Attitude, Question the Status Quo, Students Always , and Beyond Yourself . Berkeley sees each of these as an integral part of good leadership.

London Business School , on the other hand, sees leadership as an inherent and essential value for a global outlook,  one of their most important values. They write : 

“We nurture our students to challenge the status quo, to question the norm and to develop the skills to become the world’s best business leaders. Over the years we have adopted a truly global outlook tackling challenges faced by international businesses and their leaders.” ​  

For LBS, the qualities of leadership and having a global mindset go hand-in-hand.

This list goes on and on. IESE sees leadership as an essential prerequisite for impact , one of their greatest focuses; Wharton specifically offers training for global leadership capabilities through their Leadership Ventures ; Booth – a school heavily focused on community – views leadership as a fundamental element of that value . 

Given the different forms of leadership that each school values, how you showcase your own will change depending on which application you’re completing. So be sure to choose stories and lessons learned that align with the school you’re applying to. 

Of course, not only do these schools look for leadership in their candidates, they also offer explicit opportunities for developing and polishing leadership skills in their students. 

It is clear that leadership is extremely important in MBA programs, the work you do post-MBA, and of course, to the MBA admission committee. 

Leadership comes in many different forms

As you can see from above, there is no one definition of leadership that schools adhere to . In fact, because leadership can be tied into so many different values, there are many different ways to demonstrate it effectively in your MBA admissions essay. 

Here are some ideas about how to show leadership:

1. Innovative ideas

Leadership can be shown through an ability and desire to innovate . This can be coming up with a new product at a company, developing a new idea for a business, or helping an existing company capture a market opportunity that may not have been obvious before. By coming up with a creative new idea, you can show that you took the lead to help a company become more successful. 

Take a look at this example. Here, in his essay for Harvard Business School , our client Bruno demonstrated his capacity for leadership by applying data: 

“While working on a marketing and sales project for a large telecommunications company in Brazil, I was responsible for translating all the knowledge we had created with machine learning into segmented offerings, client retention actions, and up-selling initiatives. Combining industry expertise with the insights generated, I identified a 10% margin increase in the company’s mobile business, a market that is highly competitive and usually seen as margin-deteriorating. This experience made me realize that corporations need people who can guide them to make intelligent use of data.”

As you can see, identifying an opportunity to grow a business can be used to help show off your potential as a leader, especially as an entrepreneur. 

2. Helping others

This can be applied to both personal or professional situations. Maybe there was a time when your family was struggling financially, so you stepped in to offer your support? Maybe you had a colleague who couldn’t get their work done on time, so you helped them organize their priorities better and grow as a professional? Both of these instances show how you guided others through challenging experiences by relying on your leadership skills. 

This value can also be strongly related to impact and community , ideas that are becoming increasingly important within MBA programs . In many instances, leadership skills can be connected to a professional endeavor that helped a company create value for others. This is a great way to show how helping others revealed or helped you train your own leadership skills. 

Take a look at this example from a client’s application to Wharton last year:

“To escape Rio de Janeiro’s perilous, impoverished favelas, education and employment are the only way out. During university, I came to understand this while mentoring a group of underprivileged students. Despite wanting to attend school, my students often missed class due to active shootouts between gangs and police, on top of the many other challenges of living in favelas. Through this experience, I became aware of my role in society and how I could directly impact other’s lives.”

Here, our client Conrado used his experiences of mentoring others to understand his ability for impactful leadership. Not only does this help you underline the impact of your achievements, but also reveals a deeper aspect of your personality.

3. Taking initiative

Showing your desire and ability to be proactive can easily overlap with either of the two suggestions above. Often, recognizing a problem – either in your personal life or professional environment – and deciding to do something about it is a great way to demonstrate leadership. 

This is especially true if the problem was something nobody else had identified – or even blatantly denied existed. Here, your will to take the steps to fix it might be the perfect way to show your potential as a leader and self-starter while highlighting your drive and motivation.

4. Community and teamwork

A sense of community and working in teams is an essential value for many top MBA programs. Highlighting your leadership role does not mean you were working individually or only at the head of a team. Leadership can be also demonstrated through your ability to promote teamwork and collaboration. 

An important part of teamwork is being a team member who is not afraid to speak up, proactively solve problems, include others, or put new ideas on the table . 

By taking on a leadership role, even a minor one, within your community or team, you help further collective success and often multiply your impact. This is an awesome quality to demonstrate in your MBA essay. 

This can be a great opportunity to utilize extra-professional examples in your MBA essays. Take a look at another strategy Bruno used in one of his Columbia Business School essays:

“We’ve just stopped to catch some air, a scarce resource above 6000 meters. All members of the expedition are feeling mental exhaustion, but we fight it with team spirit. I nod heads with each member, making sure signals are clear. Each and every one of us is responsible for encouraging the others not to give up and for knowing when to tell a teammate to stop because going forward might risk their life. Lucky for all of us, now is not that time.”

Here, Bruno does an excellent job utilizing storytelling to help show how he is a leader within the group. As you can see, leadership can be evident even in stories of personal and group achievement.

5. Taking a leap of faith

Good leadership is not just about making data-backed decisions. Much more, it entails taking risks and using your intuition to navigate the complicated worlds of interpersonal communication, timing, and networking. 

This can not only highlight your courage but also your ability to push the envelope and create new solutions and possibilities.

For example, you could demonstrate leadership by telling the story of how your confidence in a subordinate helped them grow to become a more mature professional and enrich your team as a whole. It may also manifest itself through the idea to start a new business, despite not knowing if you will reach success. 

6. Getting out of your comfort zone

Leadership can also be recognized in the desire to get outside one’s comfort zone. Adcoms are looking for individuals who are ready to take full advantage of their MBA programs, which requires a willingness to learn and grow. This is an especially good tactic if you want to show attributes of global or international leadership, a characteristic that is especially valuable for European schools like LBS, INSEAD, or IESE. 

For example, spending a year in a foreign country can help you understand intercultural connotations of business in ways you could never have experienced before or how to communicate in completely new ways. 

Demonstrating leadership by getting out of your comfort zone can be expanded to experiences about polishing foreign language skills, helping international colleagues understand your home region, or expanding a business internationally. All of these can reveal and train global leadership skills and intercultural competencies – something all schools are looking for in their candidates. 

7. Straightforward leadership positions

Of course, we cannot forget the most obvious way to demonstrate leadership. If you have taken on an explicit leadership position within your company or organization, this is a great way to express this value to the admissions committee. 

Professional leadership positions can include leading teams, guiding clients through transformation processes, presenting results to senior leadership, or taking on a senior leadership position itself. If you have had experiences like this, be sure to include them – and the challenges you faced – in your MBA admissions essay. 

These ideas not only help you demonstrate leadership in your MBA essay, they might also give you bonus points for connecting leadership to other values a school might share, like community, innovation, teamwork, creativity, and a drive to make an impact. 

Tips for demonstrating effective leadership

Naturally, just explaining one of the above situations in your essay will not cut it. There are a few other things that you should keep in mind and try to apply when focusing on leadership in your MBA essay. 

Use the STAR method

Telling a story that thoroughly highlights your leadership role does not automatically mean it will be compelling. Often, candidates fail to show how leadership was necessary – in other words, what the problem was that required them to take on a leadership position in the first place.

That is where storytelling – and specifically the STAR method – comes in. The STAR method will help you highlight not just the problem that you faced, but also your specific role in solving it that led to success. 

STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action , and Results . If you want to make your story about leadership convincing, you must include all of these elements. This translates to:

Situation – clearly presenting the context for your story.

Task – demonstrating that there was a problem to be solved or a challenge to be faced.

Action – showing exactly what you did to solve that problem or overcome that challenge.

Results – the outcome of your actions. This can range from personal growth to helping other individuals to producing company-wide results. 

In this example, our client Karen effectively used the STAR method in her Kellogg essay to show leadership initiative at her mother’s store:

“I learned the value of hard work early, as a child helping in my mother’s gift shop, serving customers and wrapping gifts. (Situation) Once the boom of social media started, I saw the opportunity to leverage this technology to improve our business – this could attract more customers, increase revenues, and keep our financials organized. Simultaneously, I realized I wouldn’t be able to help in the store once I left for university (Task) , so I taught my mom to use the computer to manage our Facebook page and financials (Action) . The fulfillment of providing my mother with the tools and skills necessary to run and improve her business – increasing sales by 10% – is indescribable (Results) .”

Using STAR is a great way to make your leadership role very clear throughout your essay and utilize storytelling strategies successfully. 

At Ellin Lolis Consulting , we believe that one of the keys to a compelling essay is effective storytelling. This technique transforms your example of leadership from a stale image that adcoms have heard a thousand times to a colorful journey that highlights you as unique and valuable to their community.

Highlighting your role

Your MBA essay is the place to discuss your personal achievements . Don’t sell yourself short in your essay! Telling a story about leadership that does not thoroughly explain your part will not be a good demonstration of leadership. 

This means that it is important to show the admissions committee what you specifically did in your story. Just saying that you were part of a team that produced fantastic results will not achieve this. Instead, you must show them how your work – what you did and how you did it – was essential for collective or individual success. 

Even if a success was only possible due to the work of your entire team, it’s still important to show how your actions complemented those of your colleagues. Not only does this allow the readers to see your contributions, but also demonstrates your capacity for collaboration!

Combining personal and professional examples

We have already established that leadership can manifest itself in many different forms, and that admissions committees see it that way, too. 

This means that the adcom is not only looking for your professional leadership experiences – or that they will condemn you for demonstrating leadership in your personal life. In fact, a good mix helps the adcom understand that you have a well-rounded, flexible understanding of what leadership means. 

For example, last year, our client Thais wanted to show leadership via the theme “grow by growing others”. To do so, she included the following stories in her Berkeley Haas essays :

• Teaching fellow children how to read as a child
• Mentoring younger students during university
• Professionally mapping NGO efforts to coordinate the distribution of their impact more evenly throughout Brazil

Don’t be afraid to include personal examples of leadership – this may help to reinforce your multi-faceted capabilities as a leader even more in your MBA essay. This is also a great way to show a clear pattern of leadership.

Show a pattern of leadership

When writing your MBA essay, it is good to not just show a single instance of leadership, but instead to demonstrate how your tendency for leadership is part of your brand using multiple stories. 

Of course, this only applies to prompts that do not ask for only a single experience (unlike Kellogg’s essay B!)

For example, you could show how you led a school club as a teenager, started a project at an NGO during college, and went on to lead recruiting initiates at your current consulting firm. This way, the adcom has a number of examples to go on to understand that you will make for a good leader in the future. 

Often, the greatest way to demonstrate a pattern of leadership is by establishing it via your central theme .

Leadership and theme

A theme is a great way to connect your message to your reader. A theme is a central topic that is reinforced throughout your essay via one or more stories. If you are curious about how to effectively apply a theme in your MBA essay, check out this article .

Many candidates decide to use leadership as their central theme in one or more of their essays. This is a great strategy and is definitely a winning possibility. However, you can also choose a theme with a bit more subtlety and still create an effective argument for leadership. 

To demonstrate, let’s take another look at Kellogg’s essay B. Their question specifically asks candidates to talk about a (single!) past leadership experience.

Last fall, our client Carolina began her essay with: 

“While the choreographed movements of a ballet dancer are polished and graceful, the journey to reach this result is full of setbacks. Although I no longer practice ballet, I have benefited from the discipline and determination I developed as a ballet dancer, applying these strengths to my professional and personal life.”

Here, Carolina uses ballet to help the reader visualize discipline and determination. She goes on to explain that she later used these traits to successfully demonstrate her leadership capabilities to overcome hurdles while implementing a membership program at her company. 

She ends her essay like this: 

“Although the membership program was successful, it required overcoming many setbacks through a rigorous execution process. Like ballet dancing, the completed project shows little of the work that went into it or the learnings I acquired along the way. Ultimately, it gave me the opportunity to lead a very diverse team, learn about a new industry, and strategically collaborate to achieve impressive results.”

As you can see, she uses the theme ballet to focus the reader on specific leadership qualities (discipline and determination) that helped her succeed in her career.

This strategy will work for other schools and essay prompts just as well. If your answer to Stanford’s What Matters Most to You and Why is quality leadership, you may be able to express that best with a metaphor. 

Our client Isabella, for example, began her essay like this: 

“What matters most to me is watering plants. Not any plant, but the ones that insist on growing, even when lacking nutrients and sunshine.” 

She continues her essay by explaining how, by overcoming bias and obstacles in her own life, she was able to grow into a leader who helped others overcome their own obstacles as well, thus “watering plants that insist on growing.”

As you can see, it is possible to demonstrate leadership in your MBA essay indirectly and implicitly – and even in unique, creative ways. Choosing your theme like this may even help reveal a new side of your personality that the admissions committee might not have otherwise been exposed to.

Don’t be afraid of conflict

In life, we work hard to avoid conflict as much as possible, yet when it comes to stories, conflict and tensions are not only important, but essential to captivating attention. 

Would Breaking Bad have been as interesting if Walter White was already an established drug lord when the show started? Probably not. Watching him take the news of his cancer diagnosis and find an unusual way to drum up the money for treatment is just what makes the show so addictive. 

Conflict and how our “hero” (in this case, you!) solves the challenge is at the core of any good story, so make sure you use the STAR method to clearly set up the conflict you needed to navigate and then show how you took steps to turn this roadblock into one of your standout moments. 

Let’s take this essay for example. In an early version, the story was conflict-free. 

Upon joining MBB after graduation, another experience inspired personal growth. While abroad, I participated in recruiting processes for top consulting firms, and saw firsthand that MBB lagged behind in recruiting students pursuing dual degrees abroad. After joining, I created a dedicated process to recruit these top performers. Four months later, we had the first online connection event, which attracted more than 40 interested students. The program has since become an essential recruiting tool. I am proud to lead this internal team in contributing to MBB’s long-term success as we attract the talent we need to deliver high-impact results to clients.

Though this shows initiative on the applicant’s part, it is far less compelling than this version of events:

After graduating, I joined MBB, as it allowed me to channel my intellectual curiosity, explore various sectors and be an agent of change. While abroad, I participated in recruiting processes for other top consulting firms, and saw firsthand that MBB lagged behind in recruiting dual-degree students. After joining, I spoke with several partners about creating a program to solve this issue. The partners were hesitant, however, concerned they could not adequately evaluate candidates remotely. After demonstrating the implications of overlooking these high-potential candidates, I received permission to create a dedicated dual-degree recruiting process. Four months later, I had mobilized 10 colleagues, leading them in organizing BCG’s first online connection event. The program has since become an essential recruiting tool, bringing in more than 10% of our hires since inception.

Here, not only does she show initiative, she also shows she has an ability to clearly communicate and add value to her firm , even when the odds are stacked against her. This tactic shows development and engages the reader, making your story more memorable.

So, when writing your leadership essays, make sure to give your stories some much-needed drama to really demonstrate how much impact your actions generated!

Still struggling with leadership in your MBA essays?

There are many factors to consider when deciding how you will demonstrate leadership in your MBA essay. 

On the one hand, it is good to consider the multi-faceted nature of leadership. You will want to demonstrate multiple environments and ways in which you have been able to create impact. And just because you have never managed a team or become the leader of a school club does not mean you cannot show your leadership capabilities to the admissions committee. 

In fact, you may be able to prove to them that you are a leader through a number of other situations, like taking the initiative or innovation, and even simultaneously connect those situations to other things the school values. 

On the other hand, just selecting a story that demonstrates leadership is not enough – you must also present it in a way that is convincing . Using strategies like STAR, a mix of professional and personal examples, and reinforcing the message through your theme, you can make sure that the admissions committee remembers your unique value as a leader. 

Of course, understanding these concepts and applying them is not the same thing. 

Even more importantly, we can help you effectively highlight your desire to grow as a leader in your top MBA program and the global world of business beyond. After all, as Kellogg’s admissions point out , growth is a challenge confronted by every organization – and every leader. 

If you still find yourself struggling with these issues, we are happy to help! Our MBA essay editors at Ellin Lolis Consulting have the expertise you need to identify the right stories and approaches to discussing leadership for each school you’re applying to. We can help you polish your essay to really make your leadership experiences shine. 

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Tips for an Effective MBA Essay on Leadership

Do you want to get admitted into your dream business school? Doing so requires a good deal of forward thinking, especially when it comes to crafting a winning MBA essay on leadership. While there’s no miracle formula that guarantees acceptance, applying the right tips and tricks can give you an edge and make your application stands out from the rest.

If you’re wracking your brain for creative angles and insights about what makes great leaders tick, don’t worry – we’ve got some amazing advice that will help boost your chances of submitting the best possible leadership essay!

What is leadership and why is it so important in the MBA application process?

Leadership is an important quality to possess, especially when it comes to the MBA application process. Leadership is generally understood as the ability to motivate and guide a group of people towards a shared outcome or goal. Strong leadership skills are essential for any business professional because they demonstrate that you have the energy, confidence and organizational skills necessary to be successful in a managerial role.

In the MBA application process , admission committees look for applicants who have established leadership credentials through their academic and professional accomplishments, extracurricular involvement, community service and entrepreneurial activities. They also consider how applicants interact with peers during interviews and assess their communication, problem-solving and decision-making abilities. These qualities can be demonstrated through examples of leading teams in any context: professional, academic, extracurricular activities, community or volunteer work.

The size of the project or team doesn’t matter as much as your commitment to taking initiative and driving progress. The committee is interested in seeing how you have handled obstacles and challenges and worked towards positive outcomes. They want to see that you have actively sought out leadership roles and taken on responsibility for your success, no matter how small or large the project was. Ultimately, MBA admissions committees are looking for evidence that you are a leader who is capable of bringing vision, energy, and innovation to your studies and future career.

Here are a few tips to highlight your leadership skills in your MBA essays:

Prepare Ahead of Time

Starting early is important when it comes to writing an MBA essay on leadership that effectively presents your skills and experiences in a unique and compelling way. The earlier you begin the process, the more time you have to brainstorm ideas, research topics, edit drafts, and perfect your essay. In addition to having plenty of time to craft an exceptional essay, starting early allows for ample feedback from peers or mentors who could help identify any areas of improvement or provide additional insight into how best to highlight relevant experiences. By beginning the MBA essay-writing process early on, you can get an edge over other applicants by ensuring your application stands out for its originality and quality. This will not only make your application stronger but will also create a lasting impression on admissions readers—something that could make the difference between getting accepted and being rejected .

Showcase Your Vulnerability

It’s often easy to think of leaders as untouchable, all-knowing beings who possess all the answers. To effectively demonstrate leadership in your MBA essays , start by showcasing your vulnerability. Admissions teams are looking for individuals who can lead by example and inspire others to follow their lead. Therefore, it’s crucial to show that you’re human, just like everyone else.

This involves acknowledging personal weaknesses and mistakes that you have experienced in the past, as well as demonstrating how those experiences have shaped your ability to lead with confidence and humility. Additionally, talking about any moments of self-reflection or growth when it comes to developing your leadership skills is a great way to demonstrate vulnerability. Don’t be afraid to talk openly and honestly about the challenges you’ve faced while attempting to develop yourself into a better leader; such stories will show admissions officers that you are not afraid to take risks and that you’re willing to accept constructive criticism.

Lastly, make sure to emphasize how these lessons have informed your current leadership style so that it’s clear you have come a long way since the moments of vulnerability. Doing so will show that you are confident and resilient in the face of any leadership challenges you may encounter in the future.

Emphasize On Your Strengths

When writing your MBA essays , focus on your strengths as they directly align with leadership. Enumerate how you have applied these strengths in your professional or personal life, and how you plan on utilizing them in your MBA program and beyond.

You should focus on the ways in which you have effectively managed teams or projects in the past, how you have demonstrated a capacity for creative problem-solving, and how you have successfully communicated with colleagues and stakeholders. Examples of such strengths could include motivating those around you to strive for excellence, inspiring others to work collaboratively towards a common goal, or making sound decisions quickly under pressure. Additionally, when discussing your achievements be sure to provide specific details rather than generalizations as this will help create a stronger case for your candidacy.

Demonstrate Selflessness

To stand out, showcase your willingness to serve those around you, rather than solely focusing on your achievements. Leaders who are selfless are often given the most significant tasks and responsibilities. Highlight your contributions to your workplace or the community at large, and how your actions helped those around you. Additionally, highlight how you seek out the opinions of those you lead in decision-making processes.

For example, you can highlight how you took initiative in organizing volunteer activities or encouraged a team to work together towards shared goals despite personal sacrifices. Other examples may include how you used your expertise and resources to help those less fortunate than you and how you were able to generate enthusiasm within a team even when faced with great challenges.

In addition to showcasing tangible examples of selfless leadership, your should also be sure to explain why you chose to act in a selfless manner. By writing about your motivation and thought process, you can better illustrate the depth of your character and commitment to serve others.

Make your essays thoroughly engaging

Writing MBA essays can be challenging as they can seem lengthy and uninteresting. To capture the attention of your reader and avoid rejection, it’s important to make your essays engaging and unique. One way to achieve this is by using wit and humour while remaining relevant and professional.

To make an MBA essay on leadership truly engaging, it is also important to focus on developing a well-structured argument that carefully considers both the practicalities and theory of leadership. Begin by outlining your main position regarding leadership, then use evidence from personal experience as well as examples from notable leaders in history to back up your arguments. Make sure to utilize data and research whenever possible, as well as provide clear explanations for why you believe your specific approach is effective.

Finally, don’t forget to include relevant anecdotes or stories that illustrate how the ideas discussed can be applied in real-world situations. By taking this comprehensive approach when writing MBA essays on leadership, readers will find them far more engaging and interesting than if they were simply a list of facts.

Another great way for your essays to be engaging is to avoid rambling and stay on course.You can achieve this by using the STAR method. The STAR acronym stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result; each word representing an aspect of a successful application essay. By considering these four components together when crafting essays, you can create an impactful narrative that highlights your individual accomplishments in a cohesive manner.

The Situation component describes the context and circumstances surrounding the accomplishment or experience being discussed in the essay; this includes when and where it occurred.

The Task outlines what was expected from you in regards to the situation at hand; here you explain what obstacles had to be overcome to reach success.

The Action portion details how you went about completing the task – including any strategies adopted – to reach the desired result.

Lastly, the Result part of the STAR method is where your write about what was achieved and you demonstrate why it was a success.

By following this format, you can effectively highlight your achievements while also exhibiting strong storytelling skills that will help set you apart from other candidates. Ultimately, utilizing the STAR method when crafting an essay ensures that both admissions officers receive a comprehensive overview of an your capabilities as well as how you approach difficult challenges in your work environment.

Show your leadership values

Leadership is more than just power and authority. It’s also about possessing crucial values like integrity, empathy, and accountability. In your MBA essay on leadership, showcase how you incorporate these values into your leadership style. For instance, share stories about times when you took initiative by initiating projects or solving problems. Talk about instances where you displayed strong communication skills in order to effectively collaborate with others. Showcase any moments where you demonstrated resilience while overcoming difficult challenges or tasks. All of these examples will help emphasize your leadership capacity and prove that you are prepared to take on the demands of an MBA program. By effectively conveying your leadership values and qualities, you can make a strong case for yourself as an ideal candidate for admissions.

Additionally, providing examples of how you have led in past experiences can also be beneficial to demonstrate your commitment to becoming a better leader. Talk about any opportunities or initiatives that you took part in that helped build up your skills such as joining student organizations, attending seminars and conferences, or participating in team projects. These activities help showcase your drive and capability to continue learning and growing which makes for an even more compelling essay.

Highlight your unique leadership style

Every person is different; similarly, every leader has a distinct style that suits them. Highlighting your leadership style in your MBA essay will show the admission committee how you differ from other applicants and your potential as a future leader. This can be done by discussing specific examples of occasions when you have demonstrated leadership qualities such as taking initiative in a difficult situation, demonstrating creativity and problem-solving skills, or displaying strong communication and interpersonal skills. You may also want to discuss how you have learned from mistakes or challenges which were difficult for you at first, but that you overcame successfully. Doing so will help demonstrate that you are self-aware and reflective about your own strengths and weaknesses as a leader. Highlighting these moments in your essay will give admissions officers a better understanding of the type of leader you are and how well you will fit into their program.

Show how you plan to grow as a leader

Your MBA program is an opportunity for you to grow into a better leader. So, use your MBA essay to show the admission committee how you plan to take your leadership skills to the next level. You can talk about the specific skills you want to learn or the challenges you want to take on in the program. This will demonstrate your eagerness to grow and be a standout leader in your field.

Examples of ways to demonstrate this could include discussing how taking courses related to leadership will help expand your knowledge and understanding of the topic, or how participating in professional development activities such as conferences and seminars can help hone existing abilities and develop new ones.

Additionally, showcasing examples from past experiences of when you have successfully navigated difficult situations by demonstrating strong leadership qualities can be a powerful way to demonstrate your commitment to improving yourself. These types of anecdotes provide a tangible example of the kind of growth you are willing to pursue and provide an opportunity for the admissions committee to envision you as a successful leader in the future.

By demonstrating your desire and ability to grow, you can show that you are serious about developing yourself as a leader and will be ready to take on any challenges that may come with it once enrolled in an MBA program.

Demonstrating your leadership skills effectively in your MBA essay on leadership is a must to stand out from other applicants. It’s not just about displaying how great or impressive you are, but rather how you can lead and add value to the MBA program and the business world. When you focus on your individual power and potential, your story can be empowering and engaging. Your journey has its own value, so share it when you are writing about leadership. Believe in yourself and have confidence in the story you want to tell. Make a memorable essay that showcases your leadership abilities and sets you apart from others. If you need further help with crafting your MBA essay, don’t forget to check out our MBA essay services . We’ll make sure your application essays show off the very best of who you are – taking your application to the next level! Got questions about the application process or would like to get a quick assessement of your existing draft? Sign up for a consultation or send us your draft for a free assessment, it’s FREE!

With a Master’s from McGill University and a Ph.D. from New York University, Philippe Barr is the founder of The Admit Lab . As a tenure-track professor, Philippe spent a decade teaching and serving on several graduate admission committees at UNC-Chapel Hill before turning to full-time consulting. With more than seven years of experience as a graduate school admissions consultant, Philippe has stewarded the candidate journey across multiple master’s and Ph.D. programs and helped hundreds of students get admitted to top-tier graduate programs all over the world .

Follow me on Instagram and TikTok for tips and tricks on navigating the grad school application process and weekly live Q&A sessions!

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20 Must-Read MBA Essay Tips

Business school admissions committees care about more than (just) your  GMAT scores and GPA —they want to know who you are and why you belong in their program . Your MBA essays are your best chance to sell the person behind the résumé. They should tie all the pieces of your business school application together and create a comprehensive picture of who you are, what you've done, and what you bring to the table.  Here's a roundup of our best MBA essay tips to keep in mind as you begin to write.

How to Write an Unforgettable B-School Essay

1. communicate that you are a proactive, can-do sort of person..

Business schools want leaders, not applicants content with following the herd.

2. Put yourself on ego-alert.

Stress what makes you unique, not what makes you number one.

3. Communicate specific reasons why you're great fit for each school.

Simply stating "I am the ideal candidate for your program" won't convince the admission committee to push you into the admit pile.

Read More: Find Your Business School

4. Bring passion to your writing.

Admissions officers want to know what excites you. And if you'll bring a similar enthusiasm to the classroom.

5. Break the mold.

Challenge perceptions with unexpected essays that say, "There's more to me than you think."

6. If you've taken an unorthodox path to business school, play it up.

Admissions officers appreciate risk-takers.

7. Talk about your gender, ethnicity, minority status or foreign background....

But only if it has affected your outlook or experiences.

8. Fill your essays with plenty of real-life examples.

Specific anecdotes and vivid details make a much greater impact than general claims and broad summaries.

9. Demonstrate a sense of humor or vulnerability.

You're a real person, and it's okay to show it!

BONUS: Don't Make These MBA Essay Mistakes

1. write about your high school glory days. .

Admissions committees don't care if you were editor of the yearbook or captain of the varsity team. They expect their candidates to have moved onto more current, professional achievements.

2. Submit essays that don't answer the questions.

An off-topic essay, or one that merely restates your résumé, will frustrate and bore the admissions committee. More importantly, it won't lead to any new insight about you.

Attend UNC's top-ranked online MBA program without putting your career on hold. See how.

3. Fill essays with industry jargon.

Construct your essays with only enough detail about your job to frame your story and make your point.

4. Reveal half-baked reasons for wanting the MBA.

Admissions officers favor applicants who have well-defined goals. However unsure you are about your future, it's critical that you demonstrate that you have a plan.

5. Exceed the recommended word limits.

This suggests you don't know how to follow directions, operate within constraints or organize your thoughts.

6. Submit an application full of typos and grammatical errors.

A sloppy application suggests a sloppy attitude.

7. Send one school an essay intended for another—or forget to change the school name when using the same essay for several applications.

Admissions committees are (understandably) insulted when they see another school's name or forms.

8. Make excuses.

If your undergraduate experience was one long party, be honest. Discuss how you've matured, both personally and professionally.

9. Be impersonal in the personal statement.

Many applicants avoid the personal like the plague. Instead of talking about how putting themselves through school lowered their GPA, they talk about the rising cost of tuition in America. Admissions officers want to know about YOU.

Read More: How to Ace Your MBA Interview

10. Make too many generalizations.

An essay full of generalizations is a giveaway that you don't have anything to say.

11. Write in a vacuum.

Make sure that each of your essays reinforce and build on the others to present a consistent and compelling representation of who you are, what you've done, and what you bring to the table.

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The Ultimate M7 MBA Essay Guide

Everything you need to know to write a killer essay for your M7 MBA application, including prompts, deadlines, expert advice, coach recommendations, additional free resources, and more.

Posted March 12, 2024

Deferred Admissions Panel: Crush Your MBA Interviews

Friday, may 17.

12:00 AM UTC · 60 minutes

Table of Contents

Your essays are perhaps the most important element of the MBA application. They’re also one of the parts of the application where applicants struggle the most. In this guide, we break down a system to help you brainstorm ideas, create a structured outline, write a powerful essay, and polish it into something you are proud to submit.

Also, be sure to read: The Road to the Prestigious M7: Tips to Secure Your Spot

What Are You Trying to Accomplish with Your Essays?

When you’re about to leave for a trip, you would never leave before figuring out where you’re going. The same goes for your essay-writing journey; before you get started, you have to know your goals.

Many of our candidates struggle to choose the right angle from which to approach their essays. Before you start writing anything, let’s first identify what you are trying to achieve with your essays. With the essay, you are trying to accomplish three main goals:

• Answer the specific essay prompt;
• Show the admissions committee (adcom) who you are; and,
• Communicate (directly or indirectly) why you are a fit for their program.

Let’s explain each of these a little more in-depth:

1. Answer the Specific Essay Prompt

To an adcom reviewing MBA applications, there’s nothing worse than reading an essay that completely ignores the prompt. Actually, there is: reading an essay that not only ignores the prompt but also answers the prompt of a competing school!

So first things first: write an essay that answers the question and doesn’t come across like repurposed content. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t repurpose any content at all; you should absolutely leverage content when applying to multiple schools. However, it shouldn’t read like copied-and-pasted content to the admissions committee. It may sound simple, but make sure you are responding to the respective essay prompt.

2. Show the Adcom Who You Are

Almost every other part of the application shows what you have accomplished (GMAT scores, resume, activities & interests, honors & awards, etc.), but the essays are about showing the adcom who you are . You are an individual with dreams, worries, goals, doubts, passions, and insecurities – not a walking application. Adcoms know this, and they aren’t looking to admit applications; they are looking to fill their schools and create a cohort of exemplary individuals.

The essays are your opportunity to highlight the complex dimensions and special qualities of yourself that are too difficult to cover in other places. Chances are, you are not the first person applying to these schools with your GMAT score, university, or career path; but you are the first you applying, so take advantage of this to stand out among other applicants with similar credentials!

3. Communicate (Directly or Indirectly) Why You Are a Fit for Their Program

At the end of the day, each school is looking for leaders who will make a positive impact on the world. However, each school has a different take on what the formula might be to accomplish that. They want to know that your background will be a good fit for their program.

Avoid simply listing reasons why you will be a good fit for their program; instead, be mindful of what the school is looking for, and authentically highlight how you have those traits. Show that you are passionate about that specific school.

A few questions from some schools’ applications directly ask you to explain why you are a good fit for their program and read something like: “Why did you choose our school?,” or “How does our school fit into your professional goals?” But while other schools don’t directly ask you why you’re a good fit for their school, they still certainly intend to understand why you’re going to contribute to their unique program.

No matter which essay prompts you are responding to, every word you write should point to why you are the perfect candidate for that school.

Brainstorming Answers to Each Essay Question Type

We are finally ready to start writing! The first step is to brainstorm. Based on the essay prompt, brainstorming could go in a few directions. We break the essay prompts into three main categories. Almost without exception, every prompt can fall into one or more of these essay types:

1. Personal statement prompts: Ask for a general personal statement related to who you are or what you value (HBS, Stanford GSB, Kellogg, Booth, MIT Sloan)

2. Why an MBA/Why this school prompts: Ask why this school will help you, or why you’re choosing that school (Stanford GSB, Wharton, Booth, Columbia, MIT Sloan)

3. Behavioral prompts: Ask a behavioral question, or ask for a story (Stanford GSB, Kellogg, Columbia)

Let’s do a deep dive to explain a little more about each type of prompt and to get you started with your brainstorming.

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Essay Prompt Type #1: Personal Statement

Adcoms ask these kinds of questions because they want to find out who you are, what makes you different, and how you became who you are today. They already have a dozen other pieces of your application to judge you by; now, they want a deeper look into your character, sense of self-awareness, and individuality.

These prompts may sound like:

• What matters most to you, and why? (GSB)
• As we consider your application, what else would you like us to know? (HBS)

To help you choose the right direction to take in writing a personal statement essay, type or write two lists of five bullets each. Please note – there is a space for you to answer these brainstorming questions at the end of this section.

Strengths, important experiences, top skills, and/or achievements that you feel are your strongest strategic differentiators against other applicants. Try to back up each point with one or a few personal or professional experiences that have built that characteristic or led to your achievement in that area.

Personal characteristics that you feel like you'd be remiss to not mention. These are key aspects of you that you feel will fill in essential pieces of the overall picture of who you are, and that aren't adequately captured in your resume, recommendations, etc.

You probably won’t end up including everything in your essays, but that’s not the point. This exercise will help you consider enough options to choose the most important characteristics to cover.

Here are a few additional questions to ask yourself when making the two lists:

• Who are you? As in, if someone were to describe you, what would they say about you? (It may be helpful to ask your close family and friends what they think are your defining characteristics.)
• Reflect on your life, who you are, the decisions that you’ve made, and the direction you want to go. Which themes or common threads emerge? Are there stories, quotes, or anecdotes that may illustrate that theme?
• Make a list of important events, decisions, or people in your life. How are they connected?
• If you had to give a TED Talk about your story, what would you say? (Note that “your story” is not the same as your professional story.)
• Have you experienced any struggles, setbacks, challenges, or hardships? What did you learn from these experiences? How have they affected you and made you a better person and professional?

See what our Founder, John, wrote on his own brainstorming list as he began writing his MBA application essays:

List #1: Strongest differentiators in experiences, achievements, etc.

• Church Mission in Brazil - Dedicating 2 years of my life to helping and empowering others in a foreign country
• Entrepreneurial/Professional Leadership Experience - Kore, Uber, etc.
• Investing experience through several internships in VC/PE
• Community Service – Google, youth mentoring, BYU Tech Club
• Family Situation - Ability to lead and inspire others during challenging times through positivity, strength, and a genuine concern for others

List #2: Important characteristics

• Strategic hustle and ownership of personal development/career path
• Pattern of leadership throughout life - mission, Kore, Tech Club, Uber, etc.
• Deep desire to help and empower individuals around me and those who are at a disadvantage in life
• Relentless pursuit of self-improvement and success; not to be "better" than others but to be my very best self
• Ability to think independently, solve challenging problems, and make things happen

Essay Prompt Type #2: Why Our School?

This type of question comes in a few forms, such as:

• Why Stanford? Describe your aspirations and how your Stanford GSB experience will help you realize them.
• Why do you feel Columbia Business School is a good fit for you?
• How do you plan to use the Wharton MBA program to help you achieve your future professional goals?
• “... introduce yourself to your future classmates via video. Include a bit on your past experience and why MIT Sloan is the best place for you to pursue your MBA.”

Keep in mind that the adcoms don’t just want to know why you will take advantage of the opportunity if admitted to their school; they care even more to see why the school will benefit from your attendance. The good news for you is that answering the former also answers the latter, and here’s why: If you can prove that you will treasure the chance to go to their school, they will count on you to get great grades, participate in the community, not drop out, and go on to be a highly successful representative of the program.

That’s why, almost always, the best way to answer these types of prompts is by looking forward rather than backward. It may be worth mentioning your alumni lineage or other notable connection to the school, but as a rule of thumb, talking about the past should be a peripheral part of your essay.

To brainstorm for this essay, follow these steps:

Think about your own life plans. What are your ultimate career goals?

• List 1-5 long-term career goals for the biggest accomplishments you hope to achieve, positions you want to hold, and/or the company you most want to work for.
• For each goal, write down 2-5 steps (or smaller goals) that you can take that will get you to your top goal. Think about necessary career moves and hard skills you need to learn (becoming an assistant manager, learning high-level accounting, studying and applying data science, etc.), but also the soft skills you need to improve on in order to qualify for your goals (leadership skills, active listening, teamwork, etc.). Pro tip: Here, you want to be ambitious and inspiring in laying out your future career, but not naïve. Walk the line between shooting for the stars and sounding dreamlike and uninformed.

Think about the school you are applying to.

• List the top 3-5 items about the program’s strengths and purpose that resonate with you. (Refer to their mission statement, website, and/or social media accounts.)
• Identify which of those items resonate with you and your goals best. Circle, underline, or otherwise emphasize those items.
• With these points in mind, specifically write about how this school will help you achieve your long-term goals, your smaller goals, or both. How will this program, specifically , supercharge your career? Pro tip: To demonstrate that you've done your research, and to help the admissions committee envision you in their program, indicate which classes you might take when earning your MBA and why, which professors you might hope to study with, and in which clubs you might participate.
• If you have a story or other reasons you chose to go to this school, list them as well. (You may or may not end up including them in your essay, but go ahead and get them off your chest so you can examine their strength and relevance.)

Essay Prompt Type #3: Behavioral Prompts

A behavioral question asks for a story from your past that illustrates who you are, including your character, skills, and personality. They are also common in the interview portion of the admission process, so you have more than one reason to master this type of question.

• They want to see what lessons you have learned and real-life examples of your actions. Here are a few samples of what that may sound like:Tell us about a time within the last three years when your background influenced your participation at work or school. (GSB)
• Share a time in which you engaged with a perspective, identity, community, or experience that was different from your own and how it impacted your worldview. (Darden)
• Think about times you’ve created a positive impact, whether in professional, extracurricular, academic, or other settings. What was your impact? What made it significant to you or to others? (GSB)

Behavioral questions can be a little more subtle, so you may not know right away they are asking for a story. Here are a few examples:

• Tell us about your favorite book, movie, or song and why it resonates with you? (CBS)
• Describe the biggest commitment you have ever made. (Yale SOM)

Here’s a big hint for knowing if an essay prompt is actually a behavioral question: the truth is, a lot of MBA essay questions (particularly the general personal statement prompts) are actually behavioral questions in disguise. For most of these essays, the adcoms want to hear a story. That’s why behavioral prompts are so important to study and really nail.

To choose the right story, first, pick a few options from your life that you might want to talk about. Don’t write out the whole story at this point; just jot down a few notes to identify the main points. For each option, write down at least one powerful result from the experience. To choose powerful results, think about how you have changed as a student, professional, friend, or person as a direct result of the experience. The strongest story results prove that you allowed the experience to change you and make you better, more committed to your morals and ethics, etc.

Creating Your Essay Outline

Once you’ve brainstormed some ideas for the main ideas and elements you want to include in your essay, you’re ready to begin creating an outline.

After brainstorming, a lot of people try to jump straight into writing a full essay from beginning to end. While you can just start from the beginning, we strongly recommend beginning with at least a general outline. If you are like most people, it will make the writing process easier, keep you on topic, and make every part of the essay focused on the endpoint. Remember, your final essay may or may not resemble your outline, and neither way is bad. An outline is about making the process easy and the outcome effective.

No matter which of the three prompts you respond to, your essay should read like a story. Therefore, although there are many acceptable ways to make an outline, we recommend building your outline like a story.

Here are two ways to think about it:

Beginning, Middle, and End

This is the story format with which most people are familiar. The most important part of your story is the end , so know what point you want to drive home. This should be reflected in your essay outline.

The story you write may or may not be very chronological; rather, it should show personal development, an increase in strength of the points you bring up, and/or another positive change.

Your beginning doesn’t need to look like “once upon a time,” and it doesn’t need to mean the beginning of your literal academic or professional life. Remember, this is just the beginning of your essay . You decide where it begins!

If the essay is a meal, this part is the setting of the plate and silverware, with a small appetizer and maybe a few dressings. Set the scene and get the reader ready for what’s coming next.

What kind of energy level do you want to begin with? Do you want to start on an emotional note? With something funny? How you choose to begin sets the tone for the direction of the rest of your outline and essay. Start with something compelling, but save a little space to develop the story.

The beginning should take up very little of your essay, and your outline should reflect that. From the elements and ideas you brainstormed, ask yourself which story, theme, idea, and/or tone you want to emphasize, and pick just one or two of them to start with.

The middle is the carbs, the bread and potatoes of your essay. This is where you collect all your ideas and develop them toward an end.

Which points do you want to use to build on your beginning, and to lead toward a powerful ending? These could be anecdotes, lessons learned, or just the details of a story. Make a list of those points, and try to order them in a way that each builds on the other.

This is the meat of your essay, the protein that’s going to stick with the adcom for a while after they’re done reading.

This should be the most compelling part of your essay, and it should answer the big question: “So what?” Here, you need to spell out for the reader why all of what you said not only answers the prompt, but sets you apart as a person, a professional, and an applicant. Your essay should make you go from one of a million, to one in a million.

Your ending should explain why you are the hero of the story, how you changed, and what you learned. You could also include a final short anecdote or emotional strong point.

When writing your outline, it may be helpful to begin by choosing the end before the beginning and middle. That way, you know where you are going every step of the way and the adcoms will be able to trace your steps without even thinking about it.

The STAR Method

The STAR Method is a powerful choice to outline any type of essay, but for the third type of essay prompt–behavioral questions–we strongly recommend you use the STAR Method. As already mentioned, behavioral questions also come up in interviews, and you need to be ready to answer with the STAR Method. Keep in mind that the STAR Method can outline your entire essay, but you also may want to incorporate a few smaller stories into your essay using the STAR Method on a smaller scale.

In other words, bookmark this page for future reference!

Each letter of the STAR Method can make up a part of your outline: Situation, Task, Action, and Result.

S - Situation

Set up the situation for your story. In these essays, your goal is to make the situation as short as possible while still giving enough context for the reader to easily follow your story.

Especially as you are just making your outline, this part can be as simple as:

S - “During my internship in Ecuador, …”

While similar to the situation, task is just a little more specific scene-setting. It can also be very short. For example:

T - “I was assigned to help an elderly couple assess and grow their small artisan jewelry business that was struggling to keep its doors open.”

This is the part where you really start to shine, and that’s why the situation and task parts should be as short as possible. Get to the good part as quickly as you can!

At this point, write about your actions . Other people may have been involved, and you should give credit where it’s due, but put maximum focus on explaining what you did to save the day. How did you solve the problem and come to a great decision? What people skills did you use? What did you do that proves both your aptitude in your industry but also your work ethic? Use active language: “I decided to,” “I proposed,” “I designed,” “I executed,” “I negotiated,” “I built,” etc.

In the end, this essay part will be quite a bit longer, perhaps one to three paragraphs, maybe more, depending on your story.

For your outline, just write out three to five bullets of things you did to take action, with strong verbs.

This is as important as (or more important than!) explaining your actions. Result is when you tell the adcom exactly why what you did matters.

You can write about measurable results: productivity improvements in percentages, revenue changes in dollar amounts, etc. However, in your essay, the adcoms care less about how your actions helped your organization and those around you; mostly, they want to see how this experience changed you . How did you become a better businessperson, student, and person because of what happened?

In the end, this section should make up the largest and the meatiest part of the essay, roughly half (or more). The results are the most important part of your story! While you can mention objective results, try and focus on the subjective results that show how you changed as an individual.

Starting to Write

Writing the first couple paragraphs can be the toughest part of high-stakes essays. As you begin, set aside 30 – 60 minutes to get going without distractions. Keep your outline and brainstormed ideas nearby.

When you’re just getting started, remember: the most important thing is to get the content on the page. Don’t worry that what you’re writing is inadequate; it’s probably better than you think. Plus, it’s okay and even normal if you end up deleting much of what you write.

Keep your outline, the ending, and the big ideas in mind. Of course, don’t be married to anything. Especially in these early phases, you can absolutely change your mind. If you start writing and you decide you want to go a different direction completely, just go back to your brainstorming exercise and see what other options you could explore, and build a new outline accordingly.

Unless you really have the creative juices overflowing, don’t burn yourself out all at once. Write as much as you can within 30 to 60 minutes, then take at least a few minutes away. (Get up and walk around, away from screens.) Come back with a refreshed mind and fresh eyes, ready to see what else you should add.

Extra Essay Writing Tips & Tricks

From the earliest to the latest phases of writing your essays, here are some extra tips and tricks to help you out:

• Give yourself lots of time: Don’t try to write your essay all in one day. The writing process will take weeks to go from brainstorming to polishing up. Writing your essays is a very self-reflective process and will require sufficient time to be deeply thoughtful.
• Remove distractions: To make the most of your writing time, go somewhere away from distractions, silence your phone, and close or minimize irrelevant computer tabs.
• Take advantage of your voice: If you struggle writing out big ideas, record yourself or use dictation as you talk through your ideas and tell your stories. Some people find this to be helpful. Once you have at least a rough draft written, read it out loud to yourself. This can be very effective in helping you hear what it might read like to somebody else, identify where your story needs work, and catch errors.
• Frequently check your goals: Frequently throughout the writing process, check what you’ve written against the prompt, your outline, and the big idea you want to drive home to the reader. Make sure you stay on track and laser-focused on your goals.
• Ask for help: Talk through your ideas with someone else, and ask them to read your essay. (See next section.)

These next tips came from Isabella J. , an expert MBA Leland coach with a writing background:

1. Carefully read the essay prompt.

Every essay prompt has slight nuances that affect how you should structure your essay and choose which stories to highlight. Understanding what kind of question it is can help, but make sure to also pay attention to the details of the wording to understand where the committee is placing emphasis. Before beginning your essay, verify that you know precisely what the question is asking for.

2. Be succinct, less is more.

Complex sentences with fancy words do not necessarily translate into good story-telling skills. Also, with limited word counts, it’s important to go straight to the point. Don’t make the adcom think too hard about what you’re trying to say. Share the key highlights and delve deeper into the important details.

3. Showcase how you can add value.

When considering candidates, the adcom is looking for someone who will enhance classroom discussions, improve the experience of other students, and become a valued alum who will continue to contribute to the community. Use your essays to demonstrate how you will be part of this larger community and benefit it.

4. Avoid jargon and use simple, approachable language.

As a general rule, don’t assume that your readers are familiar with your job or the language that you use on a daily basis. You don’t want your accomplishments to be lost in out-of-industry translation so make sure that everything you have written down can be understood by someone who doesn’t know what you do. Nothing you have in your essay should take two or three reads in order to be understood.

5. Proofread, proofread, proofread.

This might sound trivial to some, and overstated to others. However, it is so important that your essay reads well to an outsider and is free of any grammatical or spelling errors. Seek out fresh perspectives and make sure your arguments are logically clear to your readers. If you want any essay writing help or other professional writing services, book a free intro call on my profile to get started.

School-Specific Essay Advice

Our coaches have attended the highest caliber of business programs, including all of the M7 schools and more. Here are their tips for nailing each school’s specific essays, with prompts and deadlines included.

Stanford GSB

Stanford requires two essays from its MBA applicants, the combined length of which cannot exceed 1,050 words. The goal of the essays is to see who the applicant is outside of their professional and academic achievements. Stanford emphasizes that there is no “right answer,” and that the best essays are those which accurately portray the applicant’s values, passions, aims, and dreams.

2023-2024 Application Deadlines

Round 1: September 12, 2023

• Decisions Released: December 7, 2023

Round 2: January 4, 2024

• Decisions Released: March 28, 2024

Round 3: April 9, 2024

• Decisions Released: May 23, 2024

Deferred: Can apply in any round but Round 3 is the most common

The prompts for the two essays are as follows:

What matters most to you and why?

With a recommended length of up to 650 words, GSB asks applicants to self-reflect and write from the heart. Consider what different people, life events, and experiences have shaped your perspectives.

Why Stanford?

This essay has a recommended length of up to 400 words. Applicants should describe their dreams and goals and what role GSB will play in helping fulfill them.

Expert Advice

1. Answer the Question

Though it may sound obvious, many applicants struggle with this point. As both prompts are quite open-ended, it is easy to go off on tangents and include irrelevant details. As you’re writing, continue to ground yourself by asking “What is the question? What am I trying to answer?” If the information does not directly relate, then reconsider its pertinence and necessity.

2. Differentiate

A mentor of mine once asked me, “What makes you go from one of a million applicants to one in a million applicants?” Almost everyone that applies to GSB will have a great resume, test scores, and GPA. However, no one has the same story. Your job with the essay is to differentiate yourself from the crowd; show how you are unique from the other 7,000 applicants. You are who you are for a reason and the essay is your chance to prove that to Stanford.

3. Have a Vision

Especially relevant to the second essay, having a vision and being able to communicate it to the admissions committee is key. It’s important to spend time self-reflecting on your past and your future aspirations. Why do you want an MBA? Why do you want to go to Stanford? How will your Stanford degree help you reach your professional and personal goals? Having these answers in the back of your mind will make your argument more powerful and help keep a thread of continuity throughout your responses.

I’ve worked with many applicants who feel that their personal story is not special, crazy, or inspiring enough to grant admission, but they are wrong . Everyone can write an essay and present a convincing reason why they deserve to go to GSB. Lean into the parts of your vision that are the most important to you. If you didn’t have a noteworthy childhood, then focus on your vision for the future, or what you’re doing now to make it happen.

4. Build and Flow

Both of your essays should have a structure that flows and builds to a point. They can be written well and have perfect grammar and syntax, but if they don’t build to a point, the reader will end up distracted and confused. The GSB admissions committee wants you to present a story. They do not want disjointed paragraphs that portray an inconsistent picture. Each part should lead to the next and tie into the overall theme. This will also help you pare irrelevant information to make sure you stay focused on the question at hand.

5. Give Yourself Enough Time

For many people, writing the essay is the most difficult part of the application. It can be hard to organize your thoughts and put them down on paper in a clear and succinct manner. For this reason, it’s important to start the essays early, at least three months before the application deadline. Write a draft and then put it down for a few days so that when you next pick it up, you have a fresh perspective. It’s also important to have a peer or mentor review it, ideally someone with experience writing. An alum/na of the school is an excellent choice as well. I recommend getting a solid draft together at least six weeks before the application deadline so that you have time for final reviews.

- Ben L. , GSB MBA, ex-McKinsey, Essay Expert, Policy and Speechwriting

Stanford GSB Sample Essay

Type : Personal Statement

Traditional MBA – Stanford GSB

Prompt: What matters most and why? (650 words)

What matters most to me is a fuzzy, yellow tennis ball, because like a tennis ball, I have learned to always bounce back.

Like many kids in my town, I grew up playing sports. My childhood summers were spent running through sprinklers, horsing around with my siblings, XXXX and YYYY, and long, sweaty hours on the tennis court. Despite the oppressive ZZZZ heat, I remember loving those months.

Unlike most kids, the summer before my fifth grade year, our parents sent us to a tennis academy in AAAA. Driven and intense, my parents saw tennis not as a summer activity, but a means to an end. That summer, they made that end clear: we were expected to attend either Harvard or Stanford, and for me and my sister, we were expected to also play tennis at one of these schools.

This tennis academy was intense. Conditioning began at 6:00am, and practice ran from 8:00am to 6:00pm, with a half hour break for lunch. Worse, my siblings and I were separated based on our age. Tennis, previously a joy, became a grind. I was homesick, constantly sore, and the closeness I felt with my siblings disintegrated as we began to crack under the strain. My skills improved and I won more matches, but the pressure from my parents to build a college-ready record only tightened, like the strings of a racquet.

After a year of full-time training and boarding school in AAAA, I returned to ZZZZ. This time, though, I had a new coach. BBBB, a former tennis professional with a scruffy beard and bald head, was brutally demanding. I found myself in constant battles with him until, one evening, things came to a head. The humidity enervated me as we entered our fourth hour of practice. BBBB told me we could go home— as soon as I hit one hundred forehands in a row. Ninety minutes later, I still hadn’t succeeded. My feet felt cemented to the court, my eyes burned, and the skin was peeling from my palms. I wanted to quit, to slam my racquet into my bag, and to walk the fifteen miles home. But then, something happened. I realized I had a choice. I didn’t have to play tennis. Not for Troy, not for my parents, not for anybody. There on the court, I asked myself, “Do I want to play tennis? For myself?” And something deep within me answered, “Yes.”

I grit my teeth and kept going, eventually crushing those one hundred balls. I fell to the ground with relief as BBBB congratulated me. That night, I finally understood his coaching technique—BBBB cared about me and every time he pushed me, he was trying to get me to bounce back, to build my identity, make my own decisions, and stand by them in the face of pressure. That night, I chose tennis for myself because deep down, I still remembered those early summers with my siblings, and realized my true love for the sport. That night, I found a power, an agency unlike anything I had ever experienced. In the following months, I rapidly improved, stopped squabbling with BBBB, and began winning tournaments.

My true test, however, came my junior year of high school: the college decision. XXXX had left home for Stanford, YYYY for Harvard. Proud as I was of them, this only increased the pressure on me. Both were fantastic schools, but Stanford and Harvard’s competitive athletics meant I would not be able to play tennis at either one. Once again, I had a choice: pursue my parents’ dream schools, or make a choice for myself and choose my own path and play tennis at a school of my choosing.

For months, I struggled. Stanford and Harvard are two of the best schools in the world, for good reason. But when I remembered my training with BBBB and the power I felt bouncing back, I knew what I had to do. I decided to attend CCCC—to “fail” in meeting my parents’ expectations, but to succeed in setting my own.

Arriving at CCCC, I felt an enormous sense of agency, and I knew I had made the right call. It was my decision to be here. This was my school. In the classroom, I dove headfirst into my passion for science and sustainability, and on the tennis court, where I captained the team, I pushed my teammates hard, not to fracture them, but to establish a sense of camaraderie, like the one I felt all those summers ago with XXXX and YYYY, and to empower each of them with their own ability to bounce back.

Tennis has given me the power to choose my path. Because real resilience isn’t measured in games and sets, but in committing to your own choices and deciding to succeed for yourself when everyone around you is telling you to do something else. What matters to me most is a fuzzy, yellow tennis ball, because tennis has taught me to be resilient under pressure, follow my own trajectory, and always, always bounce back.

Harvard Business School

Round 1: September 6, 2023

• Decisions Released: December 6, 2023

Round 2: January 3, 2024

• Decisions Released: March 27, 2024

Deferred: April 25, 2024

As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program? (900 words)

On its website, Harvard advises applicants, “Don’t overthink, over craft, and overwrite. Just answer the question in clear language that those of us who don’t know your world can understand.”

1. Tell a story

Your job with this essay is to paint the most accurate picture possible of who you are and why Harvard should accept you. The essay is the one part of the application that shows character and as such, it can make a big difference in your application. Capitalize on your individuality and demonstrate to HBS that you understand yourself, and are aligned with its missions and values. At the end of the day, you want your answer to the question, “Could this essay also describe someone else” to be “Absolutely not.”

2. Be concise

The HBS essay has only recently added a word limit. As you’re writing the essay, it’s very important to not ramble. As you’re writing, ask yourself, “Does this admissions committee need to know this?” If not, it’s probably safe to take out. Include relevant information and paint an accurate picture, but do so in a clear and concise way that doesn’t bore the adcom.

3. Don’t Just Answer “Why HBS?”

Unlike most of the other top business schools, HBS does not explicitly ask you to respond to the question, “Why HBS?” With that being said, many applicants feel like they need to use the only essay to answer this question. Most of the time, this is not the right approach. Your essay, at the end of the day, should be about you. The exception is if your reason for wanting to attend HBS makes your overall essay stronger. If that’s the case, then include it. However, the same adage from earlier applies: If your “Why HBS?” story could also apply to another applicant, don’t include it.

4. Build, Build, Build.

As you write your essay, make sure that there is some thread of continuity connecting the different pieces together. Introduce a theme or lesson, and touch on it every once in a while. Then, use the conclusion to tie everything together. This will not only make your essay more interesting, but it will also prevent it from coming off as disjointed. Also, sticking to a theme will help you ensure that everything you include is actually relevant.

HBS Sample Essay

Traditional MBA – Harvard Business School

Prompt: As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program?

When I was 12 years old, my father was fired from his job. He had joined a new company four years prior with a promise from its founders that he would one day be made a full partner. They reneged on that promise, so he started exploring other options; when word got out, they fired him. I watched helplessly as he started multiple business ventures over the next six years, each one ultimately doomed by a seemingly endless string of injustices—an otherwise meticulous business partner consumed by a concealed drug habit, or an employee who secretly embezzled company funds. Family savings dwindled, and after my sophomore year of high school we were forced to foreclose on our home and move to a different state. Changing schools not only meant abandoning all of my friends and starting from scratch socially—a terrifying prospect for an introvert like me—but it also cost me a chance to qualify as my high school’s valedictorian, an unspoken personal goal I had silently worked toward for years.

My instinctive reaction was to be angry at the injustice of it all—angry at how unfair it was for my dad, and especially angry at how it was impacting me. But my parents never complained, and they never gave up. They helped me see that the seeming injustice of my circumstances did not excuse me from trying my best. Following their example, I decided that even if I felt it was unfair that I couldn’t be valedictorian, I could still finish high school with perfect grades—and I did.

I hated the powerlessness I felt while my family was experiencing setback after setback, none of which seemed deserved. But when I was able to overcome my circumstances and still excel, I felt a tremendous sense of liberation and accomplishment. I knew I wanted to help others facing injustice to experience that same empowerment.

I have always been keenly sensitive to the sting of injustice. To me, justice means both equality of opportunity and consistency of consequences. Everyone should have the same opportunities in life regardless of arbitrary circumstances. Outcomes should also align with the merit of our own actions rather than with chance. These convictions feel like an innate part of me—they are simply how I believe the world should be. Ever since that pivotal experience in my youth, I have felt deeply motivated to overcome injustice whenever I encounter it, and I have dedicated considerable effort to studying and fighting it.

In college, I worked for four years with a favorite professor researching business ethics. The topic appealed to me because it involved not just establishing clear rules for how moral people and businesses should act, but it also delved into shades of gray. What should you do when you make a promise, but unexpected events make you question whether you should keep it?

Together we published several academic books and articles, deepening my understanding of morality and how it is often challenged in the world of business. As a result, I felt better equipped to identify and address issues of injustice going forward.

Midway through college I took a two-year break from school to volunteer as a full-time missionary in XXXX. I wanted to share the joy I had found in religious life with others and to empower those less fortunate than I. My first assignment was in a remote mountain village where we spent 10 hours a day knocking on the doors of the town’s tiny lamina shacks—often as torrential rainfall soaked us to the bone—trying to find people to teach. As door after door closed on us, I began to despair. I wondered if I would ever have the chance to touch these people’s lives in the way I had hoped.

Then one Sunday, a local churchgoer brought her new husband, YYYY, with her to Sunday services. I noticed that YYYY’s head was covered with jagged scars. He was slow in understanding and responding to us—and not just because of the language barrier. YYYY had been hit by a car when he was a child, causing permanent damage. But he had a pure heart and was willing to listen to our message. We taught him the gospel and he accepted it, transforming his life and filling it with joy in the process. He worked tirelessly in the fields during the day making a meager living, but he came home with a smile on his face.

He began showering his wife with love and affection. And he was always making jokes and laughing: one time he surprised us at the door in his wife’s apron and gave us an enthusiastic curtsey.

Like many of his countrymen, YYYY was a victim of terrible injustice—he was born into poverty and had limited future opportunities. But through the gospel, he found hope and joy. I knew that my efforts had helped him feel empowered despite the unfairness of his circumstances, and I felt that my sacrifice had been worth it.

I have also had opportunities to confront and overcome unfairness in the workplace. When I chose to enter the field of management consulting after graduation, I knew my new job would present me with dilemmas. Consultants are famous for getting to solve big, strategic problems—which appealed to me— but also for ruthlessly cutting workforces and laying people off—which did not. As a consultant, I knew I would have to be extra vigilant to try to reduce the injustice around me instead of contributing to it.

I encountered just such a dilemma while serving one of my very first clients. My project involved me working directly with ZZZZ, the client business intelligence manager, who in our first meeting together was confrontational, belligerent, and completely uncooperative. I knew ZZZZ’s team would need to maintain our tech solution after we left, so I wasn’t willing to proceed without her participation. I made time to meet with ZZZZ one-on-one and discovered the source of her distrust: past AAAA teams had consistently developed solutions without her input and then thrown them to her team to manage before moving on. When glitches arose or the solution needed to be updated, she came under fire even though her team hadn’t been involved. I immediately saw how unfair this was to her team and assured her this time would be different.

I approached the partner on my project and proposed that we co-create the dashboards with ZZZZ, which would involve weeks of extra work and expense. The partner vehemently disagreed, suggesting instead that I bypass her and build our solution independently since we already had the support of her superiors. But I felt strongly that unless we treated ZZZZ fairly, it ultimately didn’t matter if we finished the project in six weeks instead of eight. According to our firm’s values, we were committed to “building client capabilities to sustain improvement,” and I knew that’s what ZZZZ and the client deserved. I eventually convinced him, and with ZZZZ’s full support we built a great product that both teams were enthusiastic about.

I am proud of these small but significant choices I have made to foster fairness, but I want to do more. I’ve always been a strong advocate of the power of business to promote justice; free-market capitalism has provided economic freedom and abundant opportunity to billions of people. However, I’ve become increasingly troubled by the ecological destruction and income inequality that have accompanied capitalistic striving. To me, these are issues of fairness. Corporations escape the true cost of the externalities they create, cheating future generations of the beautiful world we enjoy today. At the same time, the fruits of economic production are unfairly concentrated in the hands of the owners of capital, sending executive compensation soaring while working class wages stagnate. Just as I have always wanted to empower victims of injustice, I feel compelled to do something to level the playing field.

Four months ago, I decided to take a stand. I put my consulting career on hold and moved cities to join an education startup. Income inequality starts with inequality in education, and traditional higher education has become increasingly more expensive and less relevant over the last thirty years. At this startup, I’m on the front lines of disrupting higher education by developing affordable online pathways for students from all backgrounds to develop the skills they need to succeed in their career. I’m being paid far less, but it’s worth it for me to be able to help people in need.

The more I learn about these issues, though, the more I realize that lasting change will only come by transforming the deep-seeded incentives that perpetuate the unfair realities of today’s system. Potential solutions like internalization of costs, negative-interest monetary systems, and gift-based economies have the power to rightly shift incentives while preserving the potential of free enterprise, but achieving such a transformation will require innovative policies and coordinated effort across business, government, and society. I feel empowered to help bring that future about, and that’s why I want to attend Harvard Business School.

At Harvard, I will have the opportunity to strengthen my leadership, equip myself with the tools to amplify my impact, and learn from the perspectives of an incredibly diverse student, faculty, and alumni network. I believe Harvard is unique among business schools in its commitment to leading systemic change. I’ve confirmed that through dozens of conversations with alumni—my father, uncle, and others— who have described to me how many of the students at HBS share my convictions, as demonstrated by Dr. Serafeim’s packed class each term on reimagining capitalism. I felt that energy firsthand when I visited Harvard last Spring and attended classes at both HBS and the Kennedy School. I’ve chosen to apply to the business school because I believe the key to creating effective policy is understanding how it will be interpreted and implemented by those it affects. But I also plan to cross-register in HKS classes and collaborate with professors like Dr. Risse and Dr. Robichaud, as I did at BYU. With your consideration, I look forward to pursuing an MBA at Harvard as the next step in my journey to create a more just world.

University of Pennsylvania Wharton

Round 3: April 2, 2024

Deferred: April 24, 2024

How do you plan to use the Wharton MBA program to help you achieve your future professional goals? You might consider your past experience, short and long-term goals, and resources available at Wharton. (500 words)

Wharton’s essays ask two complementary questions: how will Wharton help you, and how will you help it? For this first prompt, make sure you have a clear understanding of yourself and your goals. Dig deep and find characteristics that are unique to Wharton.

Taking into consideration your background – personal, professional, and/or academic – how do you plan to make specific, meaningful contributions to the Wharton community? (400 words)

The class size at Wharton is small, and the school wants to make sure that every MBA candidate is bringing something to the table. With this prompt, prove to Wharton that you will be an asset to the program. What will you bring that’s different from everyone else applying, and how does it fit into what Wharton is looking for?

Wharton Sample Essay

Type : Why MBA/Why This School?

Traditional MBA – Wharton

Prompt: How do you plan to use the Wharton MBA program to help you achieve your future professional goals?

My dream is to become Founder/CEO of a supply chain company that uses technology to innovate packaging and shipping logistics in a sustainable manner. The industry is ripe for disruption and given companies like Flexport's success using technology to improve operations, I am confident that there is room for a company of my own. Like Flexport, I would use technology to innovate the industry, but also use packaging to decrease weight, allowing distributors to transport more packages per trip, reducing trips and emissions per delivery. I would use renewable energy to fuel vehicles, allowing for clean transportation while maximizing travel efficiency. In the short term, working as a Logistics/Operations Director doing supply chain management at an e-commerce company like Amazon, I would learn how they operationalize two-day shipping and remain profitable, observe how they build customer-friendly websites, and develop a culture to motivate employees into operational excellence as I move toward becoming an effective CEO.

Growing up in XXXX, my parents pursued their passion for medicine and created their own medical practices as entrepreneurial surgeons and instilled in me the idea of creating my own business. After becoming infatuated with stories related to climate change in high school, I went to XXXX and enrolled in its YYYY program [and played NCAA ZZZZ]. There, I realized that to pursue my passion for renewable energy, I needed to learn about the macroeconomic implications of the energy industry and majored in economics and environmental science. Professionally, I've worked at XXXX in investment banking, YYYY, a solar energy company, and part-time at ZZZZ, my mother's entrepreneurial skincare firm where I manage finances, manufacturing and packaging partnerships. At XXXX, I was an analyst in the XXXX group where I learned financial analysis, modeling, and business valuation, and covered YYYY as a possible investment opportunity. I was drawn to YYYY’s innovative solar leasing model, its female CEO, and the opportunity to learn to manage operations in the nation's largest public residential solar company.

To become Founder/CEO of a sustainable supply chain company, I hope to attend Wharton because of its case method learning which give students exposure to diverse professional perspectives. I am excited to learn from Morris Cohen, who founded D3 Analytics, a company that applies concepts of machine learning and big data to a new paradigm for supply chain management. In Professor Cohen's Ops Strategy Practicum, I hope to learn evolving patterns of operations strategies adopted by firms for sourcing manufacturing, distributing products, and managing product designs. I would take Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation to learn finance of technological innovation with a focus on the valuation tools in the venture capital industry and equip me to raise capital when launching my business. I am interested in taking Entrepreneurial Marketing to learn new approaches to drive growth for my company by gaining customers and driving revenue while recruiting A-level employees to scale my logistics business.

Kellogg School of Management

Round 1: September 13, 2023

• Decisions Released: December 13, 2023

Round 2: January 10, 2024

Round 3: April 3, 2024

• Decisions Released: May 8, 2024

Kellogg Leaders are primed to tackle today’s pressing concerns everywhere, from the boardroom to their neighborhoods. Tell us about a time in your life where you’ve needed a combination of skills to solve a problem or overcome a challenge. Which skills did you use? What did you accomplish? (450 words)

In asking about leadership and challenges, Kellogg wants to see that you have a) made an impact, and b) grown as an individual. Make sure the experiences you talk about demonstrate both of these points.

At Kellogg, our values are based on research that concludes organizations comprised of leaders with varied backgrounds and perspectives outperform homogeneous ones. How do you believe your personal and professional experiences to date will help to enrich the Kellogg community? (450 words)

With this question, Kellogg is asking what your candidacy will bring to the program. They want to see who you are, outside of a resume and list of accomplishments. It may be helpful to work backward for this prompt. Start with a list of your major and minor life experiences, accomplishments, challenges, hobbies, etc, and see if there are any themes that weave them together.

Video Essay

In addition to the written essays, Kellogg requires a video essay to give you a chance to show your personality in real-time. The video will consist of three questions, each intended to help you showcase your unique characteristics. This aspect is technically optional, but it is a great place to show an aspect of your candidacy that can’t be found anywhere else in the application.

The three questions include the following:

Please introduce yourself to the admissions committee. —What do you want your future Kellogg classmates to know about you?

What path are you interested in pursuing, how will you get there, and why is this program right for you? —Why are you getting an MBA and why do you want to go to Kellogg?

This question will be based on a challenge that you’ve faced and what you’ve learned from it.  — Don’t use the same experience that you used in the first essay; instead, use this question to highlight another impactful story. Also, don’t skimp on explaining in detail what you learned from it. How did you grow? How did you change? How was your perspective altered?

For these questions, you will have 20 seconds to think about your answer and then one minute to give your response. The video essay is due 96 hours after the application deadline and a link to the submission will appear on the status page after the application and payment have been uploaded. In total, it should take around 20-25 minutes to complete.

1. What part do you play on a team?

Kellogg loves the concept of teamwork. Part of what sets Kellogg apart from the rest of the top-tier MBA programs is the emphasis on working in groups. Even the Kellogg (not so serious but kinda serious) dance team is called Groupwerk. In the essays, you'll want to make it 100% clear where you fit in on a team. What has your team counted on you for? How have you been able to match your skill set with team needs? If you can demonstrate through your essay that you can quickly identify and address gaps on a team, you'll stand out.

2. Connect your past, present, and future

Kellogg is hyper-focused on finding leaders who are open to new perspectives, new relationships, and new experiences going forward. The "values" essay, however, asks you to talk about how you've been influenced in the past. Kellogg wants to know more about the impact you'll create while enrolled, but they'll also want to know about what has made you, you. Being able to craft a clear narrative around your values that focuses on past, present, and future you will paint a better picture of the uniqueness that you can bring to campus. Remember, though, to focus on quality over quantity.

3. Don't stress about the video

I spent hours agonizing over the video interview. What would I wear? Where would I record the videos? What will happen when I (inevitably) mess up my first take? On the day of the interview, nothing came out the way I had imagined or rehearsed. The questions caught me off guard, and I definitely rushed a few answers. I didn't even finish my sentences for a couple of the questions before the time limit expired. And yet, I was admitted. Kellogg wants you to be yourself. They will, for the most part, appreciate the imperfections. You can't go into the interview totally unprepared, but don't freak out if you stutter, hesitate, or get cut off by the timer. Take a deep breath and don't get in your head. Approach the interview like a stimulating conversation with a friend and you'll crush it.

- Dallin H. , Kellogg MBA, Big Tech, Startups/VC

Kellogg Sample Essay

Traditional MBA – Kellogg

Prompt: Kellogg’s purpose is to educate, equip and inspire brave leaders who create lasting value. Provide a recent example where you have demonstrated leadership and created value. What challenges did you face and what did you learn?

In 2017, XXXX’s parent company, ZZZZ, acquired YYYY and merged the two companies to become ZZZZ (later ZZZZ). At the time, I oversaw video for XXXX.com, and roughly 35 percent of XXXX.com’s overall revenue was driven by video monetization. Leadership looked to our team to help translate our successes onto YYYY.com, which was not monetizing its video placements despite a staggering number of views.

I noticed that the videos on YYYY’s homepage were too small to be discernible as videos and thus were unlikely to attract viewers, and in turn, advertisers. I suggested increasing the size of the video player to boost engagement to YYYY’s technical leadership within the first month of

our teams merging, but they initially brushed off the idea. Tensions were high since layoffs were expected, and there was magnifying glass on headcount redundancies. It took four months of persistent convincing to even get the new product on the roadmap.

YYYY and XXXX might seem like similar companies that could seamlessly integrate, but headquarters on different coasts along with very different organizational designs and cultures made collaboration tough to navigate. I was very comfortable in pitching and ushering new products at XXXX, and I initially made the mistake of assuming YYYY would have similar processes in place. In reality, XXXX’s culture championed cross-functional collaboration to a greater degree, while YYYY had a much more vigorous vetting and user testing process. To mitigate these challenges, I first created a biweekly video product touch-base between key engineering, product and content stakeholders, which maintained momentum for a dedicated Slack channel with nearly 30 key participants to provide project updates and a forum for feedback. At the same time, XXXX’s video reporting infrastructure was more robust than YYYY’s. Prior to launch, I worked with business intelligence to identify the metrics needed for proper measurement. One week into testing the new product, the Analytics Lead revealed staggering results and even suggested the reporting tools may be erroneous. The figures were found to be accurate; the team had just never seen such significant and immediate uplift. The numbers continued to grow and we were able to pass off the newly found viewable video supply to happy sales teams. A quick glance at the YYYY homepage shows that the optimization is still live today.

I was initially frustrated by the red tape and extensive user testing that YYYY implemented, but I came to appreciate how their measured procedures led to more efficiencies down the line. At the same time, I still appreciated the need to balance process with agility -- a hallmark of XXXX. Lastly, I saw how involving all stakeholders helped foster a team spirit and feelings of mutual respect that set the stage for more collaborative projects as our teams continued to integrate.

University of Chicago Booth

Round 1: September 21, 2023

• Decisions Released: November 30, 2023
• Decisions Released: March 21, 2024

Round 3: April 4, 2024

Deferred: April 4, 2024

• Decisions Released: June 13, 2024

How will a Booth MBA help you achieve your immediate and long-term post-MBA career goals? (Minimum 250 words, no maximum)

This prompt is one of the “Why MBA/Why this School?” question types. The important things to remember are to demonstrate self-awareness and clearly articulated goals as well as an understanding of Booth and its values and characteristics. Your answer to this question should be completely unique to Booth.

An MBA is as much about personal growth as it is about professional development. In addition to sharing your experience and goals in terms of career, we’d like to learn more about you outside of the office. Use this opportunity to tell us something about who you are… (Minimum 250 words, no maximum)

Similar to Wharton’s prompt, this question is the adcom’s attempt to see what makes you interesting and unique. They want to know what you will bring to the table and how your background and experience will contribute to the Booth community. What makes you, you?

1. Speak to your global experience.

Booth cares about its candidates having global experiences. The school is built on the foundation of bringing a global perspective to its diverse student base. What's more, there are two additional campuses in London and Hong Kong. So when considering which stories to highlight in your essays, I recommend weaving a global thread throughout. This will show the admissions team what you'll add to the school as a student as well as how you'll succeed in the world post-graduation.

2. Paint a picture of a Boothie.

Essays are like self-portraits, and the stories you tell are what will determine whether you look like the Mona Lisa or Michelangelo. Chicago Booth has a reputation for economic genius and Nobel Laureates. So show the admissions team how you fit into this culture by demonstrating a well-rounded blend of leadership and analytical ability. It's easier to highlight one over the other, but those who can show a balanced mix will find success.

3. Reference Booth’s mission, professors, or classes.

The more you can show your excitement about Booth to be genuine and authentic, the more successful you'll be. I'm not recommending the “fake it 'til you make it” approach, but essays that can reference Booth's mission statement, specific hot classes or professors will have a very distinct feel about them. These aspects of your essay will separate you one level above the majority of applicants who project a more superficial interest.

Ryan W. , Booth Part-Time MBA, Salesforce APM

Booth Sample Essay

Type : Why MBA/Why This School

Deferred MBA – Booth

Prompt: How will the Booth MBA help you achieve your immediate and long-term post-MBA career goals?

I want to start a geothermal company that will help lead the energy transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy—by targeting existing oil wells as sites for geothermal plants. Oil fields are close to electric grids and have high nearby subsurface temperatures, making them ideal sites for geothermal plants. By building geothermal infrastructure nearby, my company will produce cleaner, cheaper energy, making it more profitable for operators to switch from oil to geothermal. As oil companies decommission their wells, I’ll negotiate for their land rights, so I can use their existing wells for new geothermal vents. I want my company to prove the case for economically viable, carbon neutral energy production.

After getting an MBA I want to start a geothermal company which will help me lead the energy transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. I plan to target developed oil fields in Texas, where, in many places, producing wells are flowing enough hot fluid to generate clean energy. Using this geothermal heat, the carbon footprint of oil and gas extraction will decrease as fewer fossil fuels are utilized to power surrounding infrastructure. As the wells approach their economic life, I will negotiate the lease from various operators, saving them millions in plug and abandonment costs, and retrofit the wells for direct geothermal energy production via closed loop binary fluid systems, bringing emissions to zero. To accomplish this goal, I need to shore up my knowledge of energy economics and entrepreneurial finance, develop a strong sense of leadership, and build a network of like-minded individuals that will help me lead the transition and I believe I can get those things at Chicago Booth.

My immediate career goal is to develop my first co-production site in Shelby County, Texas at the Blanton well site, which produces abnormally heated fluid from the flanks of an active salt dome. Before investing in capital expenditures, developing a strong sense of energy economics and broader markets is necessary to verify financial feasibility. University of Chicago, through the Graduate-Student-At-Large: Business program, is already allowing me to accomplish this goal with my enrollment in “Microeconomics” with Professor Andrew Mcclellan. His instruction helped me understand the impact taxes and subsidies have on market equilibrium, an important aspect of renewable energy as green energy tax incentives continue to change on a yearly basis. As my company continues to grow, having a strong finance and accounting foundation is imperative to building and sustaining a healthy company. Electives such as “Accounting for Entrepreneurship: From Start-Up through IPO” will provide the skills I need to be successful by following the life-cycle of a business that originates as a start-up, and covers topics such as building an initial accounting infrastructure. I understand that execution of the business is as important as developing the idea and proof of concept, and Booth is the best place for me to develop financial fluency.

Leading the energy transition will require a strong sense of leadership. Not only will I need to lead those I get to work with over my career, but to lead the energy transition, and reverse the impact fossil fuels have had thus far, I must have the emotional intelligence to inspire others to join me in my journey. The “Interpersonal Dynamics” course at Booth will allow me to develop my communication skills and better understand the emotions and perceptions of my colleagues. These skills, synthesized with leadership development acquired in “Leadership Practicum” will prepare me to act as a relational leader, who understands the needs of others. As a relational leader I hope to foster an environment which promotes happiness, and maximizes efficiency, not only to make our efforts in changing the world more successful, but to excite other people to join our cause.

To find the greatest chance of success in leading the energy transition, I will need a network of like-minded individuals who can provide a diversity of thought. Chicago Booth provides the opportunity to develop that network through different community experiences. The Energy Club’s “Energy Forward” conference, which designates time to topics in oil and gas and renewable energy will allow me to hear from industry leaders, build meaningful relationships with peers and contribute my sector experience to the public forum as I learn from those around me. Opportunities through the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Group such as “SeedCon” will help me connect with successful entrepreneurs and early-stage investors whose ideas and funding might change the course of my venture’s trajectory. Even in the GSALB program I have had the opportunity to connect with other students in various sectors, including the energy industry. I hope to continue to strengthen those connections and continue building new ones with matriculation into the full-time program.

Columbia Business School

Early Decision : September 23, 2023

Merit Fellowship: January 5, 2024

Regular Decision: April 3, 2024

Jan. 2024 Entry Regular Decision: September 13, 2023

Deferred: Mid-April (not yet released for the new cycle)

What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (50 characters maximum)

For this question, be succinct and answer the prompt directly. You don’t have much space to answer and want to make every letter count. Show that you understand how a CBS MBA will affect your career trajectory.

(NEW!) The Phillips Pathway for Inclusive Leadership (PPIL) is a co-curricular program designed to provide students with the skills and strategies needed to develop as inclusive leaders. Through various resources and programming, the goal is for students to explore and reflect during their educational journey on the following five inclusive leadership skills: Mitigating Bias and Prejudice; Managing Intercultural Dialogue; Addressing Systemic Inequity; Understanding Identity and Perspective Taking; and Creating an Inclusive Environment.

Describe a time or situation when you had the need to utilize one of more of these five skills, and tell us the actions you took and the outcome. (250 words)

Kellogg is looking for applicants to demonstrate their understanding of and experience with inclusive leadership skills through a specific example. Although the question involves PPIL, you don’t necessarily have to know a ton about the program or even want to join it to answer the question effectively. The prompt asks you to describe a time or situation when you had to use one or more of the five inclusive leadership skills in action. Showcase how you have applied these skills in a real-life scenario and the outcomes of you actions.

We believe Columbia Business School is a special place. CBS proudly fosters a collaborative learning environment through curricular experiences like our clusters and learning teams, co-curricular initiatives like the Phillips Pathway for Inclusive Leadership, which aims to equip students with the skills and strategies necessary to lead in an inclusive and ethical manner, and career mentorship opportunities like our Executives-in-Residence program.

Why do you feel Columbia Business School is a good fit for you academically, culturally, and professionally? (300 words)

In asking this question, CBS wants to know why you think Columbia could be uniquely positioned to help you in your career. Do not start writing this essay until you have a clear idea of what makes Columbia different.

1. Essay #1

CBS dedicates a significant portion of the application to understanding your goals. A few pointers: 1) Your short-term goal should be attainable….something you can realistically achieve based on your past experience. 2) Think big when it comes to long-term goals. In asking for your “dream job” rather than your “long-term goal,” CBS invites you to share your passions. 3) Use the ample word count to weave a narrative that connects your past to your future and offers examples of impact, leadership, and interests.

2. Essay #3

Columbia’s fit essay is a crucial part of the application. CBS is notorious for managing yield. They are more likely to accept you if they think you will accept them. The best way to show that you are invested in CBS is to show that you understand its value proposition. This means doing your research; going beyond the surface; and finding a personal, unique take on their offerings. Sure, Columbia’s NYC location is a huge plus for anyone in finance. But how will you specifically leverage the location to advance your goals? The same could be said about the family business program, the retail offerings, or the value investing program. Here’s my recommendation: ask yourself whether ten other candidates could write the same thing. If so, it’s not unique enough.

- Pamela J. , CBS MBA, Pro Admissions Coach

For tips on Essay #2 (PPIL), please read: NEW MBA Essay Prompt for Columbia Business School (2023-2024)

Columbia Sample Essay

Traditional MBA – CBS

Prompt: Tell us about your favorite book, movie, or song and why it resonates with you.

I know every single line to the eighty-eight-minute, 1988 movie, Mulan, by heart – and not just because I played Mulan in my middle school’s production – but because of how she herself inspires me with her resilience. Mulan always forges ahead to do what she believes in, despite any restrictions that come her way. Living in a society that thought women should be seen and not heard, Mulan did not allow gender inequalities and social pressures to keep her from doing what she believed in – fighting for her family.

Her resilience taught me to persevere in the midst of challenges I have faced, be it in the workplace, or my own home. The Emperor in the movie said: “The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.” Remembering this quote and Mulan’s strength has seen me through some tough moments: when I spent every free moment outside of work going home to handle the arrangements and support my mother when my father passed, to when I joined the recruiting team on top of demanding client work to increase the diversity of the candidate pipeline, to when I continued to persuade the leadership at my firm to establish the DEI function despite pushback and many no’s to make sure others had a voice.

Mulan inspired my core value to persevere in tough situations throughout my life. I would not be enjoying the benefits from successes I have achieved without having channeled my own inner “Mulan.”

Round 1: September 27, 2023

• Decisions Released: December 12, 2023

Round 2: January 17, 2024

• Decisions Released: April 5, 2024

Round 3: April 8, 2024

• Decisions Released: May 16, 2024

Deferred Round 1 : TBA for 2023-2024 cycle

Deferred Round 2: TBA for 2023-2024 cycle

Cover Letter:

MIT Sloan seeks students whose personal characteristics demonstrate that they will make the most of the incredible opportunities at MIT, both academic and non-academic. We are on a quest to find those whose presence will enhance the experience of other students. We seek thoughtful leaders with exceptional intellectual abilities and the drive and determination to put their stamp on the world. We welcome people who are independent, authentic, and fearlessly creative — true doers. We want people who can redefine solutions to conventional problems, and strive to preempt unconventional dilemmas with cutting-edge ideas. We demand integrity and respect passion.

Taking the above into consideration, please submit a cover letter seeking a place in the MIT Sloan MBA program. Your letter should conform to a standard business correspondence, include one or more professional examples that illustrate why you meet the desired criteria above, and be addressed to the Admissions Committee (300 words or fewer, excluding address and salutation).

The word count for this cover letter is very limited so again, for this prompt, make sure that all the information you’re including is directly relevant and necessary. Pay close attention to the wording of the prompt; Sloan points out that it wants applicants who will take advantage of the academic and non-academic opportunities at Sloan and benefit the other students. They want people who will be innovators and problem-solve the world’s biggest problems with creative solutions. How can you show this in your cover letter?

Video Statement:

Introduce yourself to your future classmates. Here’s your chance to put a face with a name, let your personality shine through, be conversational, be yourself. We can’t wait to meet you!

The video portion is a chance for you to show off your personality in a way that’s difficult to do in a written response. Prepare for it as you would an interview. Have a plan for what you will talk about and practice multiple times. You want to come off as confident and a good presenter. Don’t talk about your professional accomplishments or anything else that can be found in another part of your application; instead, focus on your interests, passions, and who you are as an individual. It is short, so definitely think about how you can best use the time you have.

Optional Short Answer Question:

How has the world you come from shaped who you are today? For example, your family, culture, community, all help to shape aspects of your identity, please use this opportunity if you would like to share more about your background. (250 words)

1. Focus on your past success

Unlike other schools with open-ended essay prompts, Sloan “believes that your past is the best predictor of future success.” They aren’t looking for you to pontificate on future goals or passions. They are looking for you to demonstrate that you’ve accomplished great things in the past (with the assumption that you’ll continue to do so!). Use your cover letter and video statement to elaborate on successes, achievements, and impacts. Treat the video statement as an essay.

The video statement can seem scary at first. Really, it’s just another essay that you speak into a camera! Treat it just as you would any other essay: type out a rough draft, get feedback, and iterate. Aim for ~175 words, which should be just enough for a 1-minute video.

2. Focus on the Sloan values

It’s good if Sloan admissions say, “Wow, this person is impressive.” It’s GREAT if Sloan admissions say “Wow, this person is the perfect fit for Sloan!” How do you get them to say the latter? You make sure that everything in your cover letter and video statement ties back to the values that Sloan finds important.

3. Have fun with the video statement!

MIT Sloan received over 7,000 applications in 2021. Want to stand out from the crowd? While staying within their recommended guidelines, record your video in a unique location or use a prop. The admissions staff who reviews your video will thank you!

- Tanner J. , Sloan MBA, VC and Tech Strategy, Engineering

Sloan Sample Cover Letter

Phone Number | Email Address

April 1, 2019

MIT Sloan School of Management Global Programs

1 Main Street E90-9th Floor

Cambridge, MA 02142

To The Assistant Deans of Admissions, Rod Garcia and Dawna Levenson:

Thank you for the opportunity to apply to the MIT Sloan School of Management’s MBA Early Admission Program. My name is XXXX XXXX and I recently graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science. I had the opportunity to study the intersection of business and technology while also learning how to break down and analyze problems.

Outside of my formal education, I had the opportunity of launching a tech startup company called YYYY. YYYY is a company that ZZZZ. I was heavily involved in designing the product experience, managing a team of interns, and leading the go-to-market strategy. This experience taught me so much about persistence and commitment to a team I believed in.

In addition to my experience as an entrepreneur, I also had the opportunity to work as a product management intern at Microsoft. During this internship, I collaborated with the UX designer and software engineers to create a new experience for Microsoft customers. I personally conducted dozens of prototype usability tests with enterprise customers, summarized findings, and led the product strategy for a team of six.

My startup opportunity coupled with my internship experiences at Cisco and Microsoft solidified my passion for technology. I’ve realized that my deepest aspiration is to build technology that helps others capture their full potential. I am confident that MIT Sloan is the best place to pursue an MBA because of their focus on leadership development, innovation and inventing the future. I have no doubt that the classes, resources, and people found at MIT Sloan will lay a solid foundation for me to realize my aspiration to build technology that will help others capture their full potential.

Best regards, XXXX XXXX

Collecting Feedback and Polishing

One of the best—and worst—things about essay writing is that you are never done. Even if you catch every single spelling and grammar error, there is always more you can do to tweak the story, change up your formatting, perfect every sentence, or improve each word choice. The trick is finding as many opportunities to improve as you can.

Do all you can to read, reread, and reread your essay again to see where you can make it better. Give yourself enough time to take breaks between revisions so you can review it with fresh eyes. Alternate reading it in your mind and out loud. Imagine reading the essay from the adcom’s perspective. Does everything make sense? Is it moving? Being able to come back to your own essay and see it with fresh eyes is a difficult skill to master.

This is where collecting external feedback comes in. We highly recommend asking for help reviewing your essay. You will have read your story so many times that you may miss things, and it is always necessary to make sure others reading your essay understand what you’re trying to illustrate.

Most people know to ask for help with proofreading, or catching spelling and grammar errors. While this certainly is important, it is even more important that you ask for feedback on how well your essay answers the prompt, how moving it is to read, and how well it works as a cohesive story.

Try to get outside your comfort zone and let people from various areas of your life read your essay. Ask for feedback from close family, good friends, people from school, and/or work colleagues. A mentor or coach is also a great person to ask. At Leland, we’ve got lots of coaches who specialize in MBA essays, many of whom are expert writers and attended top business schools. See them all here .

Thank everyone who gives you feedback, even if it seems negative. Don’t be afraid to make changes based on their suggestions. You might even want to start over with a new idea. However, feel free to take feedback with a grain of salt. If you get negative feedback about something that really matters to you, and you think it is important to your essay, then keep it. Remember, this is your essay for your future.

You may find it helpful to talk through ideas with people during all stages of your writing process, so don’t put off asking for feedback because you’re not sure your essay is done yet.

We also encourage you to talk with other successful candidates and read through their essays.

Common Essay Pitfalls

We’ve seen dozens of essays, between our own and our clients’, and even the best applicants often make similar mistakes. Before, and as you begin writing your own essays, check this list of common pitfalls and make sure you don’t fall for them:

• Try to cover too much - The adcom is much more likely to remember how they felt while reading your story than all the facts, anecdotes, or stories you share. Going deep on a few stories may be much more powerful than covering everything.
• Talk too much about accomplishments - These essays are meant to help the adcoms get to know you on a more personal level, so if all you do is talk about how amazing you are, they will be turned off. Make sure to be humble, and if you talk about an accomplishment, check with others to make sure it doesn’t come across as boastful
• Force a theme when it doesn’t fit your story - Applicants often choose a theme and try to push it so hard even when it just doesn’t seem to fit. If you find yourself having to repeatedly explain why stories fit your theme, then consider picking another theme and/or new stories.
• Regurgitate your resume - Walking through your resume in your essay is incredibly dull for the reader and not the intention of the essay portion. Reiterating your professional experience will come across as incredibly boring, and it won’t add any value to your application. You can talk about the things on your resume, but rather than go through everything, pick one or a few experiences that really matter to you to write about in-depth.
• Cover stories that are discussed in other parts of the application -In other words, don’t regurgitate another part of your application! Each piece of the application should bring something unique and essential to the table. Let other parts of the application do their jobs and focus your essay on what really matters.
• Write stories that are too professional - It’s fine to talk about how your life lessons have affected you professionally, but that shouldn’t be your entire story. Nothing makes someone feel more robotic than not talking about anything except work.
• Try to guess what the adcom wants to hear - Be authentic. Be authentic. Be authentic. Adcoms know when you are BS’ing them. Don’t copy someone else’s story or guess what leadership traits you think the adcom wants to see. There is something amazing and special about each of us; you just need to find it. The adcom will like that unique part of you! (And if they don’t, you don’t want to be there anyway).
• Not going deep enough -Many of the questions (e.g., “What matters most?”) ask you to dig deep, and it’s not an easy task. When getting ready to answer those tough prompts, be prepared to think about it, talk about it, and write about it for several weeks before even being able to articulate what it might be for you. That’s okay, just make sure you don’t cut that time short.
• Recycling too much - It may be possible to recycle some content and big ideas between your applications to different schools, but if you do that, each essay must read as though you wrote each one for each school individually. Count on doing much more original writing than copying and pasting.

Bottom Line

Spend a lot of time brainstorming, writing, and revising your application essay(s). Do not procrastinate or underestimate them; it is extremely important you take the time necessary for them to all come together. Be personal and open with the admissions team so they can really get to know you personally. At the end of the day, authenticity is the most important thing you can convey through your essays.

Where Can I Start?

Hiring an admissions coach can make all the difference between putting together an average application vs. a competitive application. We have a network of 150+ coaches on our platform and are here to help you find one to meet your budget, background, and goals. Below are some of our top recs, but you can find all of them here . We have someone for everyone.

For more free resources, guides, and coach-written articles, visit our MBA Library . We are constantly updating it with the most current information to help you as you research and apply for business school.

Here are a few specific articles that can help get you started on your applications:

A Comprehensive MBA Application Timeline–With Chart

How to Craft the Ultimate MBA Resume–With Examples

How to Get the Perfect MBA Recommendation Letter–With Examples

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MBA Essay Tips: The 4 Admissions Essays You’ll Likely Encounter When Applying to Business School

It can seem like there are an infinite variety of MBA admissions essays. With famous examples, like the Stanford GSB application’s “What Matters Most to You, and Why?” or the Duke Fuqua application’s “25 Random Things”, it is easy to get overwhelmed thinking that you will have to write a completely different essay with a different subject for every question on every one of your business school applications. While each type of MBA essay does need to be tailored to each b-school, you can simplify and streamline the process of essay writing by embracing the idea that most admission essay prompts can be categorized into core themes.

Let’s get to know them below:

MBA Application Essay #1: The Personal Statement

MBA admissions committees care about your core values, your moral character, and the passions that motivate you. For example, UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School has four stated defining principles :

• Question the Status Quo
• Confidence Without Attitude
• Students Always
• Beyond Yourself

Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business is interested in accepting genuinely nice people . Duke’s Fuqua School of Business is interested in people’s “ decency quotient .” These business schools look to recruit people with worldviews that are compatible with these values and it is your job, in this category of essay, to make sure that comes across.

Luckily, you can talk about almost anything in these personal essays. Applicants will often discuss relationships with friends and mentors. Others might talk about the hardships they overcame or difficult experiences. However, there are some things to avoid which we discus here: 4 Mistakes Applicants Make when Writing the Personal Essay .

At the core, your business school personal statement should serve to illuminate who you are as a person and demonstrate that you live according to a code that is in line with your target business school’s own approach to education.

Yaron Dahan on the Importance of Your Story:

Mba application essay #2: the career goals essay.

Business school admissions committees want you to have a good job when you graduate from their MBA program. This is for three reasons:

• Business schools want their employment report to look good! That means that a very high percentage of graduates receive job offers (currently 98.4% at Wharton , for example), and those jobs have high compensation.
• Business schools want you to get not just “a job”, but a job that you really want. Satisfied students who achieved their goals are likely to promote the school to other potential students and speak well of the program.
• Business schools hope for (some of) their graduates to make enough money to eventually become donors.

Even though getting a good job is important, this isn’t everything. In order to stand out from other candidates, the job needs to be a bit inspiring as well. If you are not ambitious enough in outlining your goals and the impact you want to make in your future career, it is possible to come across as a boring candidate who is more or less content to stay in their current position with slightly better pay. Business schools will likely take a hard pass on those applicants. That said, if you are not somewhat realistic with what you want to accomplish, you can end up sounding naïve or unserious.

The goal here is to walk the line between the two. It is your job to convince the school that you have goals which are meaningful, but also grounded in your past experiences and considered enough that your success is assured.

To hear more on this, check out: Career Goals for MBA Essay Writing and More .

Demonstrating School Fit

After you state your goals, you’ll also need to explain how the MBA is a necessary part of achieving those goals. This is a chance to show that not only do you need an MBA , but that the particular program you’re applying to is exactly the right fit with your development needs.

What MBA programs really want to know is that you have done your homework and researched the school in detail. Admissions officers DON’T want to see copy/paste from the course catalogue. It is important to network with schools beforehand and then use what you learned to show that only their institution really has the resources to make your goals a reality.

Rebecca Heath Anderson on Researching Career Goals:

Mba application essay #3: school participation essay.

Business schools are selfish! They want to know that you will add something to their institution by attending. Schools rely on students to run many programs, such as professional clubs, and want to know that you will be an active participant in the campus culture. In fact, MBA programs tend to do almost every class and activity in groups.

In order to answer questions like these effectively, you will need to map out the kinds of school-sponsored clubs, conferences, and activities in which you are interested in participating. Consider where you can make helpful contributions to campus life: how can you benefit your classmates as well as the school as a whole?

MBA Application Essay #4: Behavioral Essays

An MBA program might ask about your previous experiences, both to gauge whether you’re ready to benefit from the school’s leadership development programs and to know your moral values as a leader. These questions can come in a number of forms.

They might prompt you by saying “Tell us about a time when you led a team” or even “Tell us about a time when you failed.”

What schools really are looking for, in this instance, is some sign that you are self-reflective. They want to understand that you have experienced some leadership setbacks that have made you interested in and prepared to take in the knowledge they have to offer.

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MBA Leadership Essays and How to Write Them

What makes you a strong leader? This can be a difficult question to answer. If you have a lot of leadership experience, your challenge is to tell your story in a compelling and authentic way. And if you don’t have a lot of leadership experience, your task is to be creative about how you answer the prompt, so that you can demonstrate to admissions committees the type of leader you’ll be.

In both cases it’s important not to exaggerate the truth. As soon as you inflate what your actual experience was, you call into question not only your response to the leadership question, but also the truthfulness of the rest of your application.

When shaping a response to the leadership question, you should first think about all of the people you interact with at your job: your manager, colleagues, team members of other departments, office staff, and HR. Consider your role on this team, and what your contributions were.

If you truly had a leadership role, reflect upon your experiences—good and bad—in leading a team. Admissions committees want to see not just your successes, but also your resilience and ability to learn from mistakes. If you weren’t the leader, you can pull from examples of good leadership that you have encountered, and demonstrate how you embody those skills, perhaps by describing non-work-related leadership positions you have held.

Questions to Consider for Leadership Essays

When developing your response to the leadership question, it is important to provide as many specifics as possible—particularly in your earliest drafts. Here are some questions that can help you make your essay convincing and engaging. (You don’t necessarily need to answer all of them; they are just a starting point.)

• What did you do in your role to fix problems?
• How did you handle situations where you had to escalate the issue to management?
• How did you work with people who weren’t members of your team? How did you get what you needed, even from people who couldn’t care less about you?
• If everyone in the office was down, what did you do to perk people up?
• Did you ever informally mentor junior colleagues?
• What fears or problems did you overcome in order to lead successfully?

Writing about Difficulties, Failures and Weaknesses

A common question in MBA essay prompts concerns a failure or setback in your career. These are a few examples of essay prompts that top MBA programs have used to ask about this topic:

• Tell us three setbacks you have faced.
• Describe a situation taken from your personal or professional life where you failed. Discuss what you learned.
• Discuss a time when you faced a challenging interpersonal experience. How did you navigate the situation and what did you learn from it?

These can be unpleasant topics to write about. How should an applicant respond to questions like these?

Pick a Genuine Failure or Weakness

Although it may seem tempting to tell a story in which your own failures are minimized, this type of response is unlikely to be effective, because it does not give you the chance to show self-reflection and personal growth. Moreover, an example where you give a ‘faux failure’ is much less likely to engage the reader than one where you describe a genuine failure of setback.

For example, imagine that you decided to write about an important project that failed due to an error by someone in the team you supervised. You may be tempted to write that “the team member was unable to take the responsibility and should have been monitored more closely.” Although this may be part of the story, a better response would include some reflection on your personal contribution to the problem. Instead of giving the trite insight that you should have monitored the team more carefully, you could write about the shortcomings in your management style and ability to motivate the team. By doing this, you show that you are honest and able to to reflect on failures, and you give yourself the chance to go on to describe what you have learned.

Don’t Turn a Failure Essay Into an Achievement Essay

For instance, in the above example, do not draw the attention away from your failure in managing the team by pointing out how hard you worked on the project yourself. You do not want to give the application committee the impression that you only want to talk about your successes, but are reluctant to reflect on your weaknesses.

Describe What You Learned

End your essay by describing what you have learned from your failure or setback and give an example of how you used your new insight. This is an expected topic even if it is not mentioned in the text of the prompt.

An average essay draws trite lessons. Sticking again with the example above, you might write that “each team member has a unique style and should be motivated accordingly.” A better response includes more details: Why did you fail to connect with the problem team member? Were there warning signs that you could have seen? A great response includes an example where you put your fix into action: you can mention, for instance, how you worked successfully with the same team member on a later project or were able to spot a potential problem early on in another team you managed afterwards.

By taking the courage to write honestly and directly about your failures, and then showing how you have put your learnings into action after the failure, you will have tackled this difficult essay topic successfully.

Now that we have looked at the main categories of MBA essays, let’s talk about one of the persistent myths about the MBA application process: using example essays and templates.

MBA Essay Examples and Templates–A Bad Idea

It is tempting to think that you can model your business school essay off of someone else’s successful essay. People spend time and money searching for “the perfect MBA essay sample” to use as a guide. First, you may hope to avoid the effort of having to write the essay yourself. Second, this is the sort of cargo cult thinking that says: if I copy what a successful applicant did, then I will also be admitted.

The truth of the matter is that sample essays don’t work. People get admitted to MBA programs for many reasons. Menlo Coaching has bought and reviewed several editions of the Harbus Essay Guide , which contains a number of successful HBS essays… and some of the essays therein are absolutely terrible. One essay spent its entire length bragging about the writer’s vast family wealth and all the celebrities the writer knew. Clearly, that applicant did not get in on the merits of their essay-writing skills.

Former HBS director of admissions Dee Leopold famously said that “Applying to Harvard is not an essay writing contest.” As per our MBA applications and admissions guide , people are accepted to MBA programs not on the quality of the writing, but on the quality of the thinking that went into the essay. As a result, “the perfect essay” is actually the one that answers the question based on your perspective and experiences.

By focusing on these broad categories, you can avoid some of the pitfalls of the essay writing process. Try to keep in mind what your overall MBA story is and don’t get lost in some of the things that don’t matter, such as “sample essays” or figuring out the exact language you are going to use.

Remember, the best application essay is the one that addresses the question in a way that is tied in to your personal experience.

Discover what sets standout MBA application essays apart from the crowd with expert guidance from our experienced MBA admissions consulting team .

Read more on MBA essays

• Taking the Stress out of the MBA Essay Writing Process
• Best strategies for the Harvard MBA Essay
• What Matters Most: Conquering the Stanford GSB Essay A
• Give & Take in the Wharton MBA Essays

GMAT Prep Online Guides and Tips

7 tips for writing a winning mba application essay.

Nervous about your MBA admissions essay? You’re not alone! Many applicants wonder how to put their best foot forward in a business school entrance essay.

In this article, I’ll tell you what admissions committees look for in application essays and offer MBA essay tips on how to make yours stand out. We’ll also take a look at the different kinds of business school essays and a few examples of MBA essay prompts.

Why Do Business Schools Ask for Essays? What Do They Look For?

Business schools ask for essays for several reasons, all of which help admissions committees determine whether you have the skills and traits to succeed in an MBA program.

First, MBA admissions committees want to see how you write. Communication skills—including concision, clarity, style, and fluency in English—will be essential to your success in business school. One way of discerning your level of writing ability is to require an original writing sample. In an MBA essay, you have to get your point across straightforwardly, elegantly, and concisely; being able to do this is a key element of succeeding in business school and the world of business in general.

Also, MBA admissions committees want to get a sense of who you are on a more personal level. MBA application essays tell admissions officials about you not only through what you say, but in how you say it. Are you self-aware, for example, and can you reflect on past challenges or mistakes in a thoughtful way? Do you demonstrate insight into who you are and your goals? How you answer questions about yourself, your career, and your journey can help MBA admissions officials discern your level of critical thinking and personal insight.

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You can have countless accomplishments, but to succeed in business school, you’ll also need to fit in with the campus climate, work well with your peers, and contribute to campus diversity in a meaningful way. The MBA essay is a place for you to talk about the background or experiences you have that are unique to you and that you believe could differentiate you from your colleagues and/or provide a fresh perspective to campus.

Finally, essays are a way for you to showcase the qualities that most MBA programs say they are looking for in applicants, such as leadership skills, community involvement, problem-solving skills, communication skills, clear goals, and a strong sense of ethics. Some of these traits might not be readily apparent from a resume alone, and an MBA essay can be a place for you to elaborate on how you’ve cultivated them in yourself.

MBA Entrance Essay Sample Prompts

Most MBA entrance essays ask you about one of several things. Many of them are variations on similar questions: the open-ended question, the leadership question, the personal growth question, questions on short- and long-term academic and career goals, and the diversity question. For each one, I’ll give an example of a real MBA essay prompt from 2016 or 2017.

#1: Open-Ended

The open-ended MBA application essay question is just that: open. It allows you to tell your own story, giving you quite a bit of freedom but also little to no guidance. For that reason, many applicants find it to be the most challenging MBA essay prompt.

Harvard Business School has only one essay for its MBA application, and it’s the quintessential open-ended MBA essay question. This is the prompt for 2017-2018 applicants.

As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program?

Note that, as in other open-ended MBA admission essay prompts, this question asks you to decide what you’ll write about. Successful Harvard applicants and HBS admissions counselors have advised applicants to use the prompt as a chance to demonstrate their past use of an especially desired trait, such as problem-solving skills. For example, many successful applicants use the prompt to describe a scenario in which they faced and overcame a challenge, especially as a leader or alongside a team.

Notably, Harvard also doesn’t list a word limit, so you can decide the appropriate length for your essay. However, most admissions counselors will advise you to keep it concise and straightforward.

#2: Leadership

Another common MBA essay prompt asks you to demonstrate your experience and skills as a leader. Leadership qualities are listed by nearly all MBA admissions counselors as fundamental to a career in business and, thus, to a successful business school application.

Let’s look at a sample leadership MBA essay prompt from Kellogg.

Leadership and teamwork are integral parts of the Kellogg experience. Describe a recent and meaningful time you were a leader. What challenges did you face, and what did you learn? (450 words)

In a response to this kind of prompt, you should be as specific as possible. Name the company you were working for or specifically describe the project you were heading. Who was on your team? What were your objectives? Did you meet them? How could you have done so more effectively?

While you shouldn’t be overly self-deprecating, don’t be afraid to address the challenges you met and how you overcame them (or would overcome them now, with more experience and knowledge). Remember that one important aspect of leadership is accountability, so if there were problems, don’t solely blame your team for them. Instead, reflect on how you successfully worked with your team to solve the problems, and/or on how you could have done so more effectively or efficiently.

#3: Personal Growth

The personal growth MBA admission essay prompt will ask you how you’ve changed in the past and how you want to grow in the future. Here’s one example from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.

Pursuing an MBA is a catalyst for personal and professional growth. How have you grown in the past? How do you intend to grow at Kellogg? (450 words)

Don’t be afraid to get a bit personal with these kinds of prompts . They’re meant to gauge something about your personality and who you are, rather than only what you’ve done.

Many successful MBA admission essays that respond to these kinds of questions follow a past/present/future format. Ask yourself what traits you’ve gathered over the years that have benefited you personally and professionally, how you’ve improved, and what you’ve learned. What experiences have shaped you? Be as specific as possible.

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Then, take stock of yourself now: your career, your education, and where you see yourself in the future. What do you need in order to get there?

Finally, most essay MBA prompts in this vein (like Kellogg’s) will ask you how they can help you move towards that personal or professional goal. Be as specific as you can, focusing on the particular strengths of the prospective MBA program and how they match up with what you want to improve about yourself as a person, colleague, and leader.

#4: Your Plan

Some MBA application essay prompts will ask you about your career goals and how attendance at a particular business school will help you to achieve them. Let’s look at one from the USC Marshall School of Business.

Essay #1 (Required) – What is your specific, immediate short-term career goal upon completion of your MBA? Please include an intended position, function, and industry in your response. (word limit: 100)

As you can see, questions like these often request brief responses. So get straight to the point, and give details. Name a specific job you’d like to hold, what you’d like to do there, and even particular companies if you can.

Questions like this one will require some research. Research alumni from your prospective business school who’ve ended up in positions comparable to ones you’d like to hold in the future, particular companies and positions that match up with your personal and professional goals, and specific coursework or industry experiences offered by your prospective business school that would help you get there.

#5: Diversity, Culture, and Community

Finally, some MBA essay prompts will ask you how your unique background and experiences would contribute to the overall diversity and collegial atmosphere of a school’s campus climate and community. Here’s one example from USC.

Essay #2 (Required) – At Marshall, we take pride in the fact that our students work collaboratively, both inside and outside the classroom, to create a culture, a community, and an environment that truly defines what we call the Trojan Family. Please describe the contributions you expect to make to your classmates during your time at USC. How will they benefit from your presence in the program? (word limit: 500)

You can respond to questions like this, depending on the wording of the original prompt, by discussing your cultural background, identity, and/or personal experiences that have given you particular insight into a given community or that have lent you a unique perspective that could be valuable to your colleagues as you collaborate.

You can also discuss past community service projects or issues you’re passionate about and how you plan to carry those experiences and passions into your work at your prospective MBA program.

7 MBA Essay Tips

Writing MBA essays takes a particular skill set. Let’s go over the top seven MBA essay tips for making your application essay shine.

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#1: Write Early and Often

Even though MBA entrance essays are brief, they take a lot of polishing. Writing MBA essays takes time.

Don’t expect to write yours at the last minute or knock out a quality essay in a day. Most students need several drafts to make sure they’re getting their points across as elegantly and clearly as possible.

Start your essay well before the application deadline, when you don’t yet feel any pressure. For several weeks, don’t try to write at all. Instead, before crafting your essay for MBA admission, take notes on your past, present, and future. What have you learned? What unique experiences have you had? What have been the most meaningful projects you’ve undertaken? Ask friends, family, and mentors to tell you what they value most about you or what they see as your greatest personal and professional assets.

Only once you’ve gathered this material should you begin your first draft of your MBA application essay. Start with an outline for each one that includes the story you want to tell and the main points you want to get across.

Once you have a clear outline, you can start drafting. Taking the writing process seriously from start to finish will give you a much better product in the end than trying to write something hastily right before the deadline.

#2: Show, Don’t Tell

MBA admissions committees want to be able to tell that you have the qualities that are necessary to succeed in business school, such as leadership skills and integrity.

Your MBA admissions essay can be a great place to showcase those qualities. However, remember to show, not tell. Saying “I have strong leadership skills” doesn’t tell an admissions committee much. Through an anecdote about, say, meeting a difficult deadline or overcoming an obstacle, a reader should be able to tell that you have the qualities of a strong leader without your having to say so explicitly.

#3: Research Your Goals

When describing your future goals, be as specific as possible. Business schools know that your goals may change in the future, but stating specific goals now will show that you’ve done your research and have an idea of what you want and how an MBA program can help you get there.

Before writing your essay for MBA admission, research the ins and outs of the industry you want to enter, the position you’d like to have, companies you might like to work for, and coursework and internships or fieldwork that could aid you on your way to those goals.

#4: Keep It Concise

Never, ever go over a stated word count limit when you’re writing your essay for MBA admission. It might be tempting, but business schools want to see that you can get your point across concisely and straightforwardly.This rule goes for MBA essay prompts that don’t have specific word counts, too: sometimes, less is more.

One of the biggest mistakes applicants make in writing an essay for MBA admission is to use too much flowery language to come across as more professional. If you do this, it can be distracting and cause the admissions committee to miss the main points you’re making.

Bottom line, trim anything extraneous from your essay —that is, anything that doesn’t actively support the main point(s) you’re trying to get across.

#5: Show Self-Awareness

It might feel tempting to use the MBA admission essay as a space to list all of your accomplishments (and since your resume is already part of your application, this is unnecessary), but MBA admissions committees would rather see that you have insight into both your strengths and weaknesses. No one is perfect, and in your essay for MBA admission, you shouldn’t try to come across as if you’ve never made a mistake or faced a challenge that you’ve had to learn from.

Also, in business school and the business world at large, bouncing back from failures, being flexible, and problem solving are all essential skills. All of them require a thick skin and awareness of what you could do better.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t showcase your achievements, but if you’re asked about personal growth or an obstacle you’ve overcome, be clear about what you could have done more effectively in the past (at a job or in your education, for example) and the steps you’ve taken or will take to sidestep that mistake in the future.

#6: Share Your Personal Journey

Many applicants would prefer to focus only on their professional backgrounds and goals in their MBA essays, but you shouldn’t be afraid to get personal in your essay. You don’t need to tell your whole life story, but especially in response to questions that ask about your growth over time, you should showcase your personality and give the admissions committee an idea of your personal background and experiences.

#7: Ask for Edits

It might seem obvious, but many applicants don’t do it: proofread your work! When writing MBA essays, revision is key. Turning in an MBA essay with typos and other errors will come off as thoughtless and unprofessional.

You should also get a second (and, perhaps, a third and fourth) pair of eyes on your essay to make sure it’s coming across as you want it to. Going through several rounds of drafts is a necessary part of the writing process to ensure that you’re putting your best foot forward in your MBA entrance essay.

What’s Next?

Worried about how your GMAT score matches up to other applicants’? Find out more in our list of average GMAT scores by school.

Concerned about your chances of getting into an MBA program? Our guide to business school acceptance rates will help.

Ready to apply to business school? Check out our top eight tips for applying to MBA programs here.

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Author: Laura Dorwart

Laura Dorwart is a Ph.D. student at UC San Diego. She has taught and tutored hundreds of students in standardized testing, literature, and writing. View all posts by Laura Dorwart

How to show leadership in MBA essays and interviews: Focus on these 3 types

Here’s a list of the most common leadership essay and interview questions in MBA applications.

What’s your leadership style? Tell us about a leadership experience. When was a time you lead a team? Narrate an example of leadership in action from your experience.

These are just some of the questions you may encounter as you work your way through the nerve-wracking MBA interview process.

But even before you get to that phase, you have to get to that phase!

MBA admission committees (adcoms) have to find enough evidence in your application pertaining to leadership to decide to talk to you and ask some of the above questions. Read How to write powerful MBA essays  

How to show leadership in MBA essays

3 leadership types that are likely to matter.

This means that like those crafting these essays, you too have to take a nuanced, layered approach to showcasing leadership skills while addressing the main thrust of whatever the actual essay prompt might be.

While that articulation would vary by school, applicant, essay, this article is about trying to get our heads around what constitutes leadership – is it only about leading a group of people as a manager? Could there be something more?

A quick google search throws up more confusion than answers. Depending on what you read, there could be 4, 5, 7 or even 12 types of leadership out there.

Let’s try to cut through the clutter, make things simpler and see the leadership aspects that actually matter and are likely to be present for the median 80% of the population applying to a bschool – we’ve whittled them down to just three.  

People / Team Leadership

This type of leadership is by far the easiest to show and understand.

In simple words, it means that you are formally responsible for a team of professionals; most places would call you by some designation that has a ‘manager’ attached to it.

Because it’s the most straightforward, it is also the most self-evident. A simple line in the resume could suffice and then, you can showcase how you’ve been leading your team by narrating one of your biggest accomplishments.

Most of the times, if you are a people leader, your biggest achievement would coincide with the team’s achievement and you can use the two interchangeably.

It is important to clearly bring out the team size you manage and in case you’ve managed bigger teams, to mention that too.

Another thing schools would be interested to know is how you’ve enabled/empowered your team, meaning, got them to grow not just in skills, but in the hierarchy too or through formal recognition.

Some schools even have explicit questions (e.g. Tuck) on how you’ve helped someone else succeed. Within this could be various different versions.

For instance, you could be a leader who is extremely democratic , meaning you empower and trust your team fully.

You could be an autocratic leader, though that is almost never a good thing and worth changing/reassessing.

One of the ways of rethinking that last bit would be you are a stickler for details (read micromanager ) – this can be defended only if a particular job literally dictates you to be super hands-on and breathing down the entire team’s neck at almost all times (for instance maybe while designing a NASA rocket?!).

Another version of being democratic is being a facilitator wherein, you drop in only as needed and facilitate the entire goings on.

That being said, this is also one of the rare forms of leadership available in the MBA aspirant pool.

Reason – given that the average experience is 4-5 years for MBA entrants globally , it is not easy to formally get a team reporting to you.

So, while bschools would want to have leaders, the selection model is such that they’d rarely have formally anointed ones.

But then there are other ways to showcase leadership as well as leadership potential. Let’s see how.  

Cross-functional/Ad-hoc Leadership

For all practical purposes, you are an individual contributor. Your designation says something of an Analyst or say a Consultant or some such exotic one.

You think that that’s the end of story for you since you don’t manage or lead a team. You accept this as a potential hurdle in your profile and hope that other bits would carry it through.

After all there are a bunch of factors that matter in an MBA application . But before you give in, think again.

This next brand of leadership would be amongst the most common that typical MBA candidates would have (even if they don’t know) and can showcase.

Even if you don’t command a team, it is rare (except cases such as a trader in the investment banking world) that you would not be interacting with people – both in your own team/department and/or outside.

The way to build leadership quotient if you are in such a situation is to take on opportunities where you become the ‘de-facto’ lead for a project, or take more and more initiative so that you get officially designated as a team leader for a project.

The project team may not report to you formally, but you are the one who is driving them for all practical purposes. Such a team could be inter or intra -departmental (in the latter case, becoming an example of cross-functional leadership). Some aspects of the versions in the previous leadership style would apply here too.

Be sure to explain how you got such an opportunity and how you managed various team dynamics related episodes.

In this case, your biggest accomplishment might have been a purely individual one but in the larger scheme of things and depending on what is being asked in the application essay, you may want to de-prioritize it for a team related experience.

The other important element to bear in mind here is to get one (or both) of your recommenders to vouch for what you have claimed.

It is very easy for a member in a team to claim in the application that he/she led the team. This is where your recommender can lend that all-important credibility to your claims.  

Thought / Strategic / Innovation Leadership

You’ve crossed out the above two types and are still wondering if there is something you can do. Well, sort of.

This next version of leadership comes into play typically when you don’t have the luxury of the previous two.

It should ideally be because of the type of job/project you are on and not because you didn’t take the initiative.

And you have to convince adcoms that that is indeed the case otherwise they are smart enough to know that neither do you have potential nor a quotient!

One example of this could be a Research Analyst producing an industry research report that gets his/her company a bunch of new clients or a lot of positive PR.

Another could be that of a Financial Trader who creates a new/improved algorithm/investment thesis that changes the course of investing for his larger team/company.

Still another could even be a Consultant who produces knowledge/research paper that is presented at a big industry conference (better still that he/she delivers it), building the firm’s brand and knowledge equity.

The point here is to excel, and excel in a way that draws in others, inspires them, changes/challenges the usual way of doing things, even if you did so in isolation as an individual worker.

This particular version is harder since doing something so substantial at scale is not easy, especially at the early juncture of one’s career.

But if you showcase this, you’d also be carving a big niche for yourself and solidly differentiating yourself.

For the rest, be mindful of the above two and keep them in your crosshairs.   Also read: – How to write MBA essays – Career goals in MBA Essays – How to customize your MBA essays for business schools – Best MBA Application Tips from Students & Applicants

Mini-MBA | Start here | Success stories | Reality check | Knowledgebase | Scholarships | Services Serious about higher ed? Follow us:                

7 thoughts on “How to show leadership in MBA essays and interviews: Focus on these 3 types”

I am Kavita, I am an E&TC Engineer, working in totally different field – as Area Sales Manager for Sula Vineyards for over 7 years now.

My father in law was interested in setting up winery in Maharashtra so post my Engg I did diploma in wine technology to study how wine is made & marketed. And was involved in the setting up project for 3 years.

But we didn’t continued with project but then I ended up working for leading wine producer in India, as individual contributor to heading entire sales for HORECA segment in Pune.

Now I see stagnancy in growth, and low salary as compare to other peers, work satisfaction and limited opportunities with good companies ( in other domain ) as I missed doing my full time MBA.

Before I start preparing for GMAT wanted to have fair idea considering on things which now can’t change. So have 3 questions 1. What are the chances in getting selected for IIM ABC or ISB. ? 2. Am I too old ? 33 years currently. 3. My academics – 10 th – 71 12 th – 78 BE – 64 4. During my Engg there was 1 year YD. Not because of poor academics but due to some distractions – now I can’t change this fact – can my application still get considered. Please guide. As I have 5 years daughter and husband is quite supportive on family front, so can take good career leap but wanted to be sure on my time and money investment.

I am working as a Support Executive. This is my first project and my work experience is 1 year. I want to pursue an MBA but I have a doubt. Can I do MBA with my present role after an year or should I shift to a better role and then pursue it?. Will BE + 2 years work experience in Support project + Management skills be sufficient? Can u please guide me in this regard?

I had Completed my Company Secretary Course and had been working in an organisation for an year. I don’t know why but i am not finding it interesting any way and want to do something in which i have some interest. I have passion in some other field which is entirely different from my work i.e. music acting journalism but i dont know what should I do to pursue my passion as i am not getting any way to do something related to passion as i am already wasted major part of my life doing this CS course and I know its never been too late but then too i have no idea as to how to start something fresh. please guide.

I am having 12+ years of experience in Mechanical design and analysis after my M Tech in machine Design. Now I am in Middle level management as Technical Manager for engineering services company at Hyderabad. I had plan to pursue MBA from long but because of my financial situation It was difficult,but at least now I would like to complete in any reputed B’school. I am having skills in strategy to get the business and customer listening and would like to enter into leadership rolls immediately. Please advice me fro best fit executive MBA program which is bearable cost for me around 5 Lacks.

Narsee Monjee is having one executive MBA which costs around 5 Lacks but I am not sure about that school.

@Kavitha – that’s a pretty interesting career trajectory you have. For reasons mentioned here ( https://www.mbacrystalball.com/blog/2011/10/26/how-not-to-select-business-schools-mba-application-don%e2%80%99ts/ ), I am afraid we don’t speculate on school selection chances. But given your age range, the 3 IIMs might be a better fit. Depending on your post-MBA plans though, ISB should be ok too. The break will matter but score high on GMAT and clearly explain the reason for the break; then, hope for the best!

@Karthik – if you are talking about GMAT based MBA programs, the usual expectation is 4-5 years of solid professional experience. Read here: https://www.mbacrystalball.com/blog/2018/10/08/average-age-work-experience-mba/

@Monica – you may find some useful stuff on our other website about off-beat career options here: http://www.careerizma.com

@Shaikshavali – EMBAs should be done after a lot of research. Read here: https://www.mbacrystalball.com/blog/2013/06/25/why-regular-full-time-mba-or-executive-mba/ and here: https://www.mbacrystalball.com/blog/2016/02/22/executive-mba-worth-it-or-not-emba/

I am an Electronics Engineer , working in IT from 6 years in Pune. I am planning for GMAT to aim ISB/IIMs. From today I have started preparation for GMAT. I am also planning to work on essay and interviews prep in Parallel of GMAT . Could you please guide me how to start for Essays and Interviews ?

Sure Shashank. You can reach out to us on mcb (at) mbacrystalball (dot) com. We can help.

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• MBA Admissions
• ISB Admissions
• MBA Application Tips
• MBA Essay Tips
• Business Schools

Expert MBA Essay Tips and How to Write a Great MBA Essay

Admit expert.

• MBA Application Tips , MBA Essay Tips
• April 27, 2024

Writing an MBA essay can be a pivotal step in your journey towards earning a coveted spot in a top business school. It’s a chance to let your personality shine, communicate your goals, and explain why a particular institution is the perfect fit for you.

In this comprehensive article, we delve into the importance of MBA essays, the various types you might encounter, expert MBA essay tips, and provide a roadmap for crafting impeccable B-School essays. Whether you’re pondering “Why MBA and Why Now?” or tackling the intricate “Why this Business School?” question, we’ve got you covered. Dive into the world of MBA essays, where your aspirations and abilities find their voice.

The Importance of MBA Essays 

Types of mba essays , how to write a great mba essay, 10 common mistakes to avoid while writing mba essays .

• How we’ll help you write amazing essays 

MBA Essay – FAQs 

MBA essays are a perfect opportunity to showcase your strengths and explain any weak points in your application. A well-written essay can provide context to a low GMAT score or GPA, but strong numbers will never make up for a weak essay.

Renice Jones, Ex. Assistant Director of Recruitment and Admissions at Schulich MBA program rightly said:

“Candidates who are below average can use the other components of the application, such as the essays, to exhibit why they may be a great fit for Schulich.”

MBA essays also become very important if you are from an over-represented pool of candidates, such as an Indian male IT/software engineer. Like you, many candidates will have similar work profiles and experiences. You cannot change your work experience but can make sure that you portray your spikes to the admission committee through your essays.

Stanford MBA admissions committee gives this advice to its applicants every year,

“There is no typical Stanford MBA student, no ideal for applicants to chase. Our advice is to just focus on you and ensure that your application is a true reflection of yourself.”

MBA Essays – A way to showcase your personality 

A compelling MBA essay helps the Adcoms get a peek inside your personality. Chad Losee, HBS Managing Director of MBA Admissions and Financial aid, pointed out that their primary goal in the essay is to get to know you better. The decisions you have made, your motivations, or any formative experiences. However, you must not shy away from your personality in the process.

The MBA admissions team at Yale School of Management held a webinar , where they talked about what they are interested in knowing through its essay.

How to impress the MBA admissions committee in the admissions events. Here are a few tips in this article .

Yale SoM MBA essays are generally open-ended, like – “Describe the biggest commitment you have ever made.” For this essay question, the admissions committee is interested in knowing how you approach commitments and the behavior that supports them. It can be a personal or a professional story, as long as it is something distinctive to your life and helps them know more about your personality. 

It is the story that you put together about your passion, experience, goals, and how business school fits into that mix that sets you apart from other candidates.

Looking for expert help for MBA essays?

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Although the MBA admissions essay questions differ across schools, they tend to evaluate you based on who you are, what you have done, and what value you can add. 

Thus, there are a certain set of questions that help the Adcoms evaluate your candidacy. The length of an essay can range from anywhere between 200 – 1500 words, depending on the business school. But, remember each question is crafted in such a way that helps the Adcoms to know you better and evaluate your fit with the B-school.

We have helped many students craft their MBA essays and created a list of 6 most common essay questions that you can expect on your MBA application: 

Here are the 6 most common essay questions that you can expect on your MBA application:

• Why MBA and Why Now? 
• Why this Business School?

Leadership essay 

• Video essay 
• Open-ended essay 
• Community/Contribution essay 

Why MBA and Why Now?  

This essay is the most common question, which requires you to logically craft a link between your past experiences, your future aspirations, and how pursuing an MBA fits in. This essay aims to understand your motivation to pursue an MBA. In hindsight, this type of essay question can also incorporate your goals. 

However, you can even get a question that is just focused on what your short and long-term goals are? For example, Tuck MBA question on why MBA and how your prior experience and MBA from Tuck fits in. 

Why this Business School? 

This essay aims to see how your goals fit into applying to XYZ business school. In this essay, you need to state how pursuing an MBA from that particular B-school will enable you to achieve your short and long-term goals. 

The admissions committee wants to know if you have done your research on the business school.

For example, Kellogg is known as one of the best business schools for Marketing. So, if you aspire to become a successful marketer, schools like Kellogg can be a good fit for you. 

Leadership qualities are ones that every top business school looks for in a candidate. This essay aims to know about instances where you have shown leadership.

Remember, you don’t have to be a manager or lead a team to showcase leadership qualities. Cases in which you have changed opinions, shown integrity, take crucial decisions, displayed structured thinking, etc. can also demonstrate leadership skills. 

For example, essay questions that ask you to provide instances where you have shown leadership and challenges related to ethics you have faced (HEC Paris).

ISB also has a question on similar lines –examples of the most important personal quality that will lead you to become a successful leader. 

Video Essay 

The video essay evaluates your language skills, confidence, and capability to think on your feet. It is an opportunity for you to create a good first impression on the admissions committee. 

Moreover, video essays give a chance to the Admissions committee to put a face on the application received. 

Kellogg and MIT Sloan are a few business schools that ask candidates to submit video essays. MIT Sloan asks you for a 60-sec video where you need to introduce yourself to your future classmates. Kellogg’s video essay consists of three questions – An introduction about yourself, the path you are interested in pursuing, and the challenges you have faced.  

Open-ended essay (Value-based/personality)

This type of essay question evaluates your values and personality. For example, describe your biggest commitment (Yale), values that have guided your life and work (Kellogg), or showcase your personal characteristics by providing instances (INSEAD).

Community contribution

Contribution to the community is an integral part of many top business schools. The aim is to reflect upon your unique background and think about the values you can add to the community. For example, the Cornell essay analyzes your desire to impact communities and organizations positively. They want to understand how you will make a meaningful impact on Cornell’s MBA community. 

Do you want to impress the MBA Adcom with your essay?

Crafting a compelling B-School essay can be the key to unlocking the door to your dream MBA program. Here are some expert tips to help you write an unforgettable essay that stands out from the crowd:

1. Showcase Proactivity: Business schools seek leaders who are proactive and innovative. Emphasize your ability to take initiative and drive change.

2. Embrace Uniqueness: Highlight what sets you apart from others rather than focusing solely on achievements. Showcase your individuality and what makes you truly unique.

3. Tailor Each Essay: Provide specific reasons why you’re a great fit for each school. Avoid generic statements and demonstrate your understanding of the program’s unique offerings.

4. Inject Passion: Let your enthusiasm shine through in your writing. Admissions officers want to see what excites you and how you’ll bring that energy to the classroom.

5. Break the Mold: Challenge conventional perceptions with unexpected essays that reveal different facets of your personality and experiences.

6. Embrace Your Journey: If you’ve taken an unconventional path to business school, embrace it. Admissions officers appreciate candidates who have taken risks and overcome challenges.

7. Address Identity and Background: Discuss your gender, ethnicity, or minority status only if it has influenced your perspectives or experiences significantly.

8. Use Real-Life Examples: Enrich your essays with specific anecdotes and vivid details that illustrate your qualities and achievements.

9. Show Your Humanity: Don’t be afraid to show vulnerability or humor. Admissions officers appreciate authenticity and want to connect with the real person behind the application.

10. Be Authentic: Write about what truly matters to you, not what you think the admissions committee wants to hear. Your essays should paint a clear picture of who you are, what drives you, and what you’re passionate about.

Kris Mercuri, Director of Admissions, Recruiting and Outreach at the Yale School of Management  states , your essay is an “opportunity to speak in your own voice about something meaningful and distinctive in your life.” Don’t waste this opportunity by writing about something inauthentic that you think will make you look better, but is actually a pretense.

11. Structure Matters: Follow a clear structure for your essays, including the setup, the pivot point, and the future. This helps you present your story cohesively and effectively.

12. Answer the Prompt: Ensure your essays directly address the questions asked. Don’t get sidetracked by showcasing all your achievements; focus on what’s relevant to the prompt.

13. Be Succinct: With word limits becoming stricter, keep your essays concise and impactful. Highlight essential points and let your voice shine through without overwhelming the reader with unnecessary details.

14. Focus on the Business School: Tailor your essays to each business school, demonstrating your understanding of the program and how you’ll contribute to its community and culture.

The admissions committee reads thousands of essays every year. For your essay to stand out, you must put a comprehensive picture of who you are and how you fit into the B-school program.  Your essays need to be interesting and unique if you want to grab Adcom’s attention. 

Here is a stepwise process that you should follow to write an essay that Adcom would want to read: 

Step 1 – Start Early 

One of the mistakes that candidates make is to start writing their essays near the application deadline. Writing compelling MBA essays needs deep introspection. You need to take a step back and look into various instances in your life, such as:

• Your past experiences that led to where you are today.
• Your future aspirations
• The turning points and defining moments in your life
• Your accomplishments – past, present, future
• The decisions that helped in shaping your core values
• Your learnings from failure
• Your perspective and experiences that shaped your passion 

Jotting down such instances requires you to sit down, clear your mind, and think about everything that has led you to become who you are and what you want to be. Thus, it would be best to give yourself enough time to introspect. Your mind will respond better when you don’t have a deadline to meet. 

It’s recommended that you start your essays at least 5-6 months before the deadline. This way you’ll get enough time to self-reflect and inculcate the process of thoughtful introspection in your routine. 

 Identify incidents around some common skills that Adcoms look for – Academic Excellence, result-oriented, Leadership, Team management, and Learning. 

Step 2: Know your Whys 

You must get familiar with the most common essay questions:

• Why MBA? 
• Why is it the best time to do an MBA? 
• Why XYZ MBA Program?

Although not all business schools ask you these questions, they are bound to come up in the interview if not in your essays. Moreover, answering these questions can help you get clarity and focus on how to position yourself. You must create a logical link between these three questions by connecting your goals and aspirations. 

Tips on answering the ‘Why’ MBA essay questions

Here are a few tips on how you can go about finding the answer to these questions:

• Why MBA? Look into your future aspirations and how pursuing an MBA fits into them. You should establish a clear, logical, and career-oriented reason for pursuing an MBA. 
• Why MBA Now? Look into your past experiences and provide context as to how pursuing an MBA now fits into your plans. You need to make sure that Adcoms understand that it is the right time for you to pursue an MBA.
• Why XYZ MBA Program? Evaluate how aligned the business school is with your career goals. For example, if you are looking for leadership development during the course, check if that B-school offers such a program. You also need to align your values with the school. Go to the selected business school website and see if their values align with yours. For example, ISB values openness, passion for excellence, collaboration, initiative, and innovation. So, if these values are in-line with your values, ISB is a good fit for you. 

Step 3: Decode the essay prompt 

Once you self-reflect and get familiar with the standard essay questions, it’s time to decode the essay prompt. Each B-school has a unique essay question through which Adcoms evaluate a specific set of things. Understand what the Adcoms are looking to know from that particular question. For example, essay prompts such as, “Describe what you learned from your most spectacular failure?” Here, the Adcom wants to know how you overcame your biggest failure and learned something meaningful from that experience.

Step 4: Create a draft and respect the word count 

After understanding what is required in a particular essay question, create a draft within the word limit. Chad Losee from HBS points out that essays should be about the right length. Use your judgment and be clear and concise in your writing. Moreover, you need to make sure that your essay adds new information. What more is there to you apart from your resume, LOR, and numbers? 

Here are a few tips for writing an essay: 

• Provide instances wherever necessary. Write instances in the form of stories. We suggest using a SAR format – Situation, Action, and Result. Start your story by providing a context, and mention the action you took and the results of your actions. 
• Make sure the essay is in a flow. Have your story structured so that it conveys the overall message. 
• Make sure that your essay has correct/genuine content. It should be concise, cohesive, clear, and convincing. 
• Your Essays should be in line with your overall MBA application.
• Do not be afraid to show your vulnerability. Adcoms are more interested in knowing how you tackle them. 
• Invite inputs from others. 

Step 5: Review and Submit 

You must review your application before submitting it. Readout your essay aloud and ask yourself, could this essay also describe someone else? If yes, it’s probably not personal enough to add to your overall application. 

It helps to get a fresh perspective on your essay. Ask your friend, family, or colleague to read it. Their inputs can be valuable as they know who you are and provide characteristic traits that you might have missed. Moreover, they can also help you understand how others perceive you and if it is consistent with what you have written.

Here is a quick overview of mistakes that you should avoid while writing essays:

• Going over the word count. 
• Lack of the 5C’s – Correct content, cohesive, concise, clear, and convincing. 
• Too many instances.
• Not providing something new. Repetitive content. 
• Lack of introspection. 
• Candidates tend to copy/paste the same answer that they used in a different B-school application. 
• Not proofreading.
• Not addressing each part of the question. 
• Lack of flow.
• Lack of reason for why MBA, Why now, and Why XYZ B-school?

We hope that this article provides you with insights into how to write your MBA essay. We can help you write amazing essays.

Our MBA admission consultants have been part of the actual MBA admission team and interview panel at top global B-schools. Therefore, we know what the MBA admissions team actually looks for in a candidate and can guide you accordingly. 

How we’ll help you write amazing essays  

Our MBA admission consulting services are structured considering the above points. Broadly, our services cover the following: 

• Narrative building by a lead consultant, who is a top B-school alum and has got extensive admission consulting experience 
• Identifying your leadership personality trait 
• Identifying and Shortlisting incidents from your personal and professional life having a significant impact and leadership traits 
• Aligning your post MBA career goals with these skills and leadership traits that you have displayed in the above incidents 
• Customizing the narrative by school mentors, who are alumni of the B-schools you are applying to 
• Customizing the narrative by an industry mentor, who is a top B-school alum from your industry/function 
• Essay editing – multiple iterations 
• Essay review by school mentors 
• Resume and Letter of Recommendation guidance 
• Interview prep 

If you follow the above method, you can crack any B-school essay. For more information on our plans and pricing, please visit our  plans and pricing page . For a free profile evaluation, please write to us at  [email protected]  or fill out the  form . 

MBA essays are your chance to showcase your worth to your target business school. They are an excellent means to distinguish your application and let the admissions committee know the real you.  

Yes. Essays are the only place in your application where you can reveal your aspiration, why an MBA makes sense as the next step in your career path, and address any drawbacks in your application. They help the Admission committee know the person behind those facts and figures in your application. Thus, an MBA essay is a crucial part of your application. 

The length of your MBA essay depends on the program, but generally, essays are anywhere between 200-1200 words. The important thing to remember is that you should not go over the word limit and if the limit is not set by the program, make sure your essay is cohesive, concise, and clear. 

To start an MBA essay, make sure that you self-reflect and do some introspection about your life and career. Think about your past experiences and how they have shaped you. Get yourself familiar with the common essay questions like why MBA and why now. It is important that you identify incidents around some common skills that Adcoms look for – Academic Excellence, result-oriented, Leadership, Team management, and Learning. 

Do you want to get into your dream business school?

Take the first step towards your MBA dream and schedule a free 1 on 1 application strategy call with us.

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MBA Essay Examples, Tips, and Analysis

Y our MBA application essays are your best opportunity to share meaningful life experiences that hide in the “white spaces” of the resume and to tell admissions officers not only “what” you have achieved but also “why” those achievements are meaningful to you.

Your MBA application essays are going to be crucial if you are competing for a spot at one of the world’s top business schools.

These resources will show you how to excel in the rigorous MBA essay writing challenges ahead of you, provide you with the guidance to create MBA essays that will impress admissions officers, and share MBA essay examples that illustrate our advice in action.

Second, we survey the five most frequently asked MBA essay questions. We preview video essay questions and link to detailed guidance on how to tackle this emerging class of application essays.

Third, we will teach you how to choose topics and stories for your essays and share a story-outlining technique to help you tell those stories.

Common MBA Essay Forms: Persuasive versus Narrative Essays

There are two primary forms that MBA application essays take: persuasive essays and narrative essays. In a persuasive essay, you must persuade your reader that your argument is a sound one. An op-ed column in a newspaper is one example of a persuasive essay.

The classic “What Will You Contribute to the Class?” question is an excellent example of a persuasive essay question that MBA programs like to ask. The essay you write must persuade the admissions committee that you will enrich next year’s class. You will generally present evidence from past experiences and achievements to support your claims about what you can offer the MBA community.

The other style of essay you’ll encounter in your MBA applications is the narrative essay. Certain MBA essay questions don’t sound like questions at all; they are, in fact, an invitation for you to tell a story. We refer to these as narrative essays – but others call them behavioral essays or expository essays.

The Leadership Story Essay is a perfect example of a narrative essay. It’s one thing to claim to be a leader – but it’s quite another to show the admissions committee that you’re a leader by telling a captivating leadership story in which you played the starring role.

While MBA essays often fall into these two categories, the actual prompts will differ from school to school. Let’s discuss the five most frequently asked MBA essay questions. ↑ To the Top

The Five Most Frequently Asked MBA Essay Questions

Every business school application requires you to answer one or more MBA essay questions. Although the essay prompts differ from application to application, we identified five types of MBA application essay questions that appear again and again.

Career Goals Essays

A career goals essay question regularly appears in one form or another on just about every MBA application. Even if you aren’t required to write this type of essay, you will almost certainly be asked about your post-MBA career goals during an admissions interview.

Admissions committees ask about your career plans because they want to understand what you aspire to do after your MBA and how the MBA degree fits into your career plan. As it turns out, a strong career goals essay is one of the best tools in your application to stand out from MBA candidates who don’t have a compelling career vision or haven’t effectively articulated their professional goals in their MBA application essays.

Leadership Essays

Leadership essays are your absolute best opportunity to convince MBA admissions committees of your leadership abilities. Remember that MBA admissions officers will be interested in your leadership achievements both inside and outside of work.

You probably won’t be asked directly, “Are you a leader?” Instead, you’ll be asked to tell stories about your leadership achievements. When given the opportunity, you need to supply evidence that you can rally other people and motivate them to work together to achieve an important shared vision or goal. Therein lies the objective of a great leadership essay.

Why MBA? and Why Our School? Essays

The “Why MBA? Why Our School?” essay is your chance to convince admissions officers that their school is the perfect fit for what you need from an MBA program. The best answers to these types of questions are both personal and specific. You need to effectively convey what you are looking for in an MBA program and tell the admissions committee why their school will best satisfy your learning goals and help you achieve your career development objectives.

“What Will You Contribute?” Essays

The “What Will You Contribute?” essay presents you with an opportunity to tell the MBA Admissions Committee why you would be a valuable addition to their incoming class. The schools are looking for candidates who can put in just as much as they take out. One critical thing to understand when preparing to answer these questions is that concrete and tailored answers about what you can contribute to each MBA program are crucial.

Professional Experience Essays

The professional experience essay is an executive summary of your career thus far. A resume is a record of jobs and achievements — a Professional Experience Essay provides the connections and interrelationships between those jobs and brings your resume to life. An effective Professional Experience essay will give the admissions committee a sense of the career decisions you’ve made, your major achievements in each step of your career, and the skills and knowledge you’ve acquired along the way.

MBA Application Video Essays

MBA admissions committees are increasingly relying on technology to help them evaluate and manage their growing applicant pools. MBA application video essays are becoming a popular tool, as MBA programs can use them to learn far more about candidates than the traditional application permits. In recent years, leading MBA programs including Kellogg Northwestern , MIT Sloan , and Chicago Booth have incorporated a video component into their evaluation process. Video essays are excellent screening tools that allow admissions officers to assess candidates’ professional presence and communication skills.

Free MBA Essay Writing Course

Please enter your email below to gain 30 days of free access to our MBA Essay Writing course. Learn about the five most frequently asked MBA application essay questions and access our brainstorming tools and sample essays.

No matter which type of MBA essay question you are tackling, your primary objective is to provide evidence that proves you possess the qualities that admissions committees value most. By doing so, you will move one step closer to an acceptance letter from a top business school.

Now that you have a better picture of the classic MBA essay questions you’re likely to face, let’s cover selecting the strongest stories to present in your MBA application essays.

How to Choose the Best Stories for your MBA Essays

Story selection is something all MBA applicants wrestle with. When you first read the MBA application essay questions, it may be hard to figure out which topics to cover or which of your stories to tell. We’ll explain how to go step-by-step to choose your best stories. Here are the steps:

Research the School’s Fit Qualities

Categorize the question.

• Brainstorm Topic/Stories

Choose a Topic or Story

To choose your best stories, you need to know what qualities MBA programs truly value when evaluating applicants. You want to tell stories that prove to the admissions officers that you possess the attributes they seek in MBA candidates. We refer to these as the school’s Fit Qualities . You might think of them as the highest-common denominators among the candidates who are accepted.

Early in your MBA essay writing process is the time to make some strategic choices about which qualities and strengths you will put front and center in your MBA essays. If you attempt to feature all of your strengths, you run the risk that admissions officers will finish your essays with no clear idea of any of them. Instead, select three or four of the qualities that your research tells you the school you are applying to prizes most of all.

Second, study the essay question to determine if it falls into one of the five essay categories discussed earlier in this article.

By categorizing each question, you’ll have a better idea of what the admissions committee will be looking for in your response. You’ll know the criteria for scoring top marks in that essay style, which will guide your application essay design decisions.

Brainstorm Topics/Stories

Third, you are ready to start brainstorming potential topics and stories. Remember that your central objective is to find opportunities to feature the key elements of your application strategy .

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you to choose your best topic or story:

Are you the star of the story or supporting cast?

With very few exceptions, you need to write stories where you play the starring role. Don’t make the mistake some applicants make of writing a thrilling story about their parents’ hardships and triumphs, leaving little room for their own.

Did the experience occur recently?

It is usually best to choose stories that happened within the last three years. If an older story is incredibly compelling, then keep it on your list. However, bear in mind that admissions officers are rarely interested in reading about your high school glory days.

Does the essay feature several Fit Qualities?

Review your topic ideas objectively and ask yourself if they exemplify the school’s Fit Qualities. Because you’ll be limited to telling only a few stories, you’ll want to choose the ones that feature a few different Fit Qualities if at all possible.

Once you have selected your best stories, it is time to create an outline to organize your thoughts before jumping into the writing process. ↑ To the Top

How to Outline Your MBA Essay Stories

The persuasive essay writing style is prevalent in university and work settings, so it may have been some time since you were asked to write a story. For that reason, we want to share a powerful outlining technique called the STAR framework that will help with the “story-telling” essays you may be asked to write in your MBA application.

The STAR framework is designed to help you tell a concise story with a beginning, middle, and end.

The “S” in STAR stands for Situation .

The Situation is the time, place, and context of the story; you can think of it as the setting, but it might also include the broader challenge or conflict you or your organization faced. In essence, this is the set-up of the story.

“T” in the STAR acronym stands for Task . The Task is your role and goal in the story. What were you expected to accomplish by the end of the story? An effective story has built-in conflicts and complications.

The Action of the story is what admissions officers are really interested in because this is their chance to see your strengths and qualities in action. While it won’t be necessary to write down every step you took at the outlining stage, you’ll want to jot down the highlights.

Below is an MBA essay example told using the STAR framework. It outlines a story written by a candidate who served as a donation chair for a fundraising event for a non-profit organization.

Task: Assigning specific jobs to committee members, checking on their progress, helping teammates meet agreed-upon deadlines for obtaining the donations, and offering other assistance

Action: Motivated my team by having them meet Literacy Now children. Assigned tasks and checked in regularly. Successfully mediated team disputes. Visited 20 restaurants and called 12 wineries. Ensured deadlines were met.

Sample MBA Essays: MBA Applicant Beware!

MBA Prep School’s guide is replete with essay writing tips, and we do provide excerpts from sample essays to illustrate the most common MBA essay categories. However, while you will find page-after-page of helpful advice and building blocks for constructing your own original MBA essays and stories, we don’t publish an extensive catalog of MBA essays written by MBA Prep School’s past clients.

The problem with collections of sample MBA application essays is that they can mislead you into thinking that if you can just replicate one of those sample essays, you’ve got your golden ticket into business school. Unfortunately, the opposite can be true. The reason those essays “succeeded” is because they were an integral part of a complete story about an impressive human being whom the admission committee concluded belonged at their business school.

And the scary truth is that reading MBA essay examples might even harm your chance of admission for several reasons:

1. They might stunt your creativity and ability to express yourself. If you are trying to mimic someone else’s essays – the content, the style, or the approach – your story and voice are likely to get lost in the process. Admissions committees want to be impressed – but they want to be impressed by you. Feature the traits and tell the stories that depict “you” at your best.

2. Sample MBA essays can undermine your confidence in your MBA candidacy. The essays that get published as samples are often truly eye-catching, dramatic, and sensational – stories of exceptional accomplishment, rare feats, or extreme obstacles. It may seem, in comparison, that none of your stories stack up. The good news is that the whole package is what matters, not a single defining moment in a candidate’s life.

The last thing you need is to doubt your abilities or have a crisis of confidence when you’re trying to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard). Trust in your own experiences and tell stories about what you – and only you – will bring to the MBA program.

3. Admissions officers can tell when you’ve “sampled” from sample MBA essays. The pesky thing about MBA admissions committees is that they’re filled with brilliant people who know how this game is played and what resources are available. They can spot themes and clichéd stories inspired by sample essay collections. More importantly, they can sense when you’re telling someone else’s story or when the story doesn’t ring true to your MBA application’s other elements. Don’t give an admissions officer reason to doubt your authenticity by risking even the appearance that you “sampled” from MBA sample essays that are swirling around on the Internet.

At MBA Prep School, we work with clients we believe in and help them tell their stories, not someone else’s. Remember that the MBA application process is not a storytelling contest; even if it were, the winners would be chosen based on the authenticity, originality, and integrity of the stories they tell!

Final Thoughts

Critics of MBA essays often wonder if they still have a place in the application process when admissions committees can rely on quantitative data points to choose among applicants. However, your transcripts, test scores, and resume are historical documents that only tell a fraction of the story. Your MBA essays represent a powerful opportunity to communicate your goals, strengths, reasons for applying, and potential contributions to the class.

The process of writing MBA essays provides you with a rare opportunity for self-examination and self-expression. Many applicants value the introspection required of them in the MBA essay-writing process and find they can better articulate their strengths and goals during their subsequent MBA interviews as a result. By putting ample thought and effort into brainstorming and writing your MBA essays, you will almost certainly increase your odds of being accepted to a top MBA program.

Related Articles: Essay Examples

• Career Goals Essay Example
• What Will You Contribute? Essay Example
• Why MBA? and Why Our School? Essay Example
• Leadership Story Essay Example
• Professional Experience Essay Example
• MBA Video Essays
• Consulting Terms & Conditions

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How to Approach the Top MBA Essays

While there are an increasing number of compelling MBA programs around the world, with impressive rankings and strong alumni networks, the M7 schools continue to be attractive choices for MBA hopefuls.

For those planning to apply to one or more of the M7 schools this winter, Personal MBA Coach is here to help you navigate the essay-writing process.

Accessible to all Personal MBA Coach newsletter subscribers, our free  M7 Essay Analysis e-book features our exclusive guidance on how to approach the 2023-2024 application essays for each of the M7 business schools.

Below, Personal MBA Coach shares the required essay questions for all of the M7 schools, as well as some quick tips for how to respond successfully to these top MBA program essays!

Stanford GSB Essays

Number of Required Essays: 2

Essay 1:  What matters most to you, and why? (650 words suggested) 

Personal MBA Coach’s Quick Tips: Take considerable time to reflect upon what you are most passionate about. In an ideal scenario, you have acted on this passion, and it is reflected in more than one aspect of your life. Think carefully about why this passion is important to you, and do not forget the WHAT here. At the end of the day, a cause or passion that you have done nothing with will not resonate strongly with the admissions committee (or be very believable).

Essay 2:  Why Stanford? (400 words suggested)

Personal MBA Coach’s Quick Tips: For this second Stanford GSB essay, start by setting up why you want an MBA, including your goals and the skills needed to make these goals a reality. Then, make it clear how Stanford specifically will help you fill these skill gaps, mentioning classes, clubs, and programs that interest you. Do not forget to detail what draws you to Stanford’s culture as well!

For more Stanford GSB essay advice, check out Personal MBA Coach’s full blog here .

Wharton Essays

Personal MBA Coach suggests that you consider each Wharton essay individually while also making sure that your two responses complement one another.

Essay 1:  How do you plan to use the Wharton MBA program to help you achieve your future professional goals? You might consider your past experience, short- and long-term goals, and resources available at Wharton. (500 words)

Personal MBA Coach’s Quick Tips: The first Wharton essay gives applicants the opportunity to reflect on their high-level aspirations. As you consider your future, think about your skill gaps and how attending Wharton will enable you to close these gaps. Cover the opportunities you want to avail yourself of on campus and be sure to demonstrate a clear understanding of Wharton’s culture.

Essay 2:  Taking into consideration your background – personal, professional, and/or academic – how do you plan to make specific, meaningful contributions to the Wharton community? (400 words)

Personal MBA Coach’s Quick Tips: This second MBA essay question gives candidates a chance to showcase previous accomplishments and potential contributions to the Wharton community. Applicants can choose from impressive extracurricular accomplishments, specific talents, and/or distinct professional skills. A powerful response will highlight multiple contributions that clearly unite your personal story , career goals, and passions!

Get Personal MBA Coach’s detailed guidance on Wharton essays 1 and 2 here .

Harvard Business School Essay

Number of Required Essays: 1

Essay:  As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA Program? (900 words maximum)

Personal MBA Coach’s Quick Tips: The HBS essay is an invitation to reveal what is truly interesting about you and let the admissions committee “meet” the person behind your MBA application.

That said, responses will vary significantly for everyone. Do not try to write what you think the admissions committee wants to read. Instead, consider the unique value that you will add to the HBS community.

Strong essays often share a detailed personal story, or at least some kind of personal anecdote, which is usually tied to a recurring theme within your HBS essay. However, be wary of trying too hard – you do not need to describe a super traumatic personal experience to impress the admissions directors.

Looking for more HBS essay advice? Visit our full blog here .

MIT Sloan Cover Letter

Rather than asking applicants to submit a standard MBA essay, MIT Sloan requests that candidates submit a cover letter.

Cover Letter:  MIT Sloan seeks students whose personal characteristics demonstrate that they will make the most of the incredible opportunities at MIT, both academic and non-academic. We are on a quest to find those whose presence will enhance the experience of other students. We seek thoughtful leaders with exceptional intellectual abilities and the drive and determination to put their stamp on the world. We welcome people who are independent, authentic, and fearlessly creative — true doers. We want people who can redefine solutions to conventional problems, and strive to preempt unconventional dilemmas with cutting-edge ideas. We demand integrity and respect passion.

Taking the above into consideration, please submit a cover letter seeking a place in the MIT Sloan MBA program. Your letter should conform to a standard business correspondence, include one or more professional examples that illustrate why you meet the desired criteria above, and be addressed to the Admissions Committee (300 words or fewer, excluding address and salutation).

Personal MBA Coach’s Quick Tips: Here, applicants must think about their most noteworthy accomplishments, making it clear what they will bring to the Sloan community. Approach the MIT Sloan cover letter as you would approach any other professional cover letter. This means that you must tell the reader who you are and specifically ask for a place in the MIT Sloan class.

Get more of Personal MBA Coach’s MIT Sloan cover letter advice here .

Chicago Booth Essays

Essay 1:  How will the Booth MBA help you achieve your immediate and long-term post-MBA career goals? (250 words minimum)

Personal MBA Coach’s Quick Tips: This first Chicago Booth essay is a standard goals question (for more tips on how to approach this as well as other types of application essays , check out our How to Write Winning MBA Essays blog ). Think about your short- and long-term goals, highlighting how you developed these goals and identifying your higher-level aspirations. Do not forget to think about your skill gaps and how a Booth MBA will help you achieve your post-MBA goals. You will want to detail the classes, programs, or clubs that you hope to take advantage of.

Essay 2:  An MBA is as much about personal growth as it is about professional development. In addition to sharing your experience and goals in terms of career, we’d like to learn more about you outside of the office. Use this opportunity to tell us something about who you are… (250 words minimum)

Personal MBA Coach’s Quick Tips: This MBA essay prompt encourages candidates to reflect upon the personal aspects of their profile. Use this as your opportunity to show what differentiates you from other applicants. Possible topics to cover include values, passions, extracurricular activities, and hobbies.

Learn more about tackling the Chicago Booth essays here .

Kellogg Essays

Essay 1: Kellogg Leaders are primed to tackle today’s pressing concerns everywhere, from the boardroom to their neighborhoods. Tell us about a time in your life where you’ve needed a combination of skills to solve a problem or overcome a challenge. Which skills did you use? What did you accomplish? (450 words)

Personal MBA Coach’s Quick Tips: While most share a professional story for this first question, leadership examples in your extracurriculars could also work here. A successful response for this Kellogg essay will showcase your strengths and specific skillsets.

Essay 2: At Kellogg, our values are based on research that concludes organizations comprised of leaders with varied backgrounds and perspectives outperform homogeneous ones. How do you believe your personal and professional experiences to date will help to enrich the Kellogg community? (450 words)

Personal MBA Coach’s Quick Tips: This second Kellogg MBA essay is new, replacing Kellogg’s longstanding “values” essay. When answering this prompt, ask yourself what makes you special— and tell the admissions committee how you will bring your unique traits to Kellogg.

For more information, visit Personal MBA Coach’s full Kellogg essay analysis blog here .

Columbia Business School Essays

Number of Required Essays: 3

Essay 1:  Through your resume and recommendation, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals over the next three to five years and what is your long-term dream job?  (500 words)

Personal MBA Coach’s Quick Tips: This Columbia Business School essay prompt enables you to show how you envision your career unfolding. The school asks for a short- and long-term dream job so make sure you include both. Although candidates should have lofty goals here, these goals should also align with their short-term goals and story as a whole.

Essay 2: The Phillips Pathway for Inclusive Leadership (PPIL) is a co-curricular program designed to ensure that every CBS student develops the skills to become an ethical and inclusive leader. Through PPIL, students attend programming focused on five essential diversity, equity, and inclusion skills: Creating an Inclusive Environment, Mitigating Bias and Prejudice, Managing Intercultural Dialogue, Addressing Systemic Inequity, and Understanding Identity and Perspective Taking.

Tell us about a time when you were challenged around one of these five skills. Describe the situation, the actions you took, and the outcome. (250 words)

Personal MBA Coach’s Quick Tips: This question directly addresses a topic that is continually top of mind for admissions directors at most business schools: DEI. It is ok to think about DEI broadly here. As you write this essay, be direct and authentic and of course avoid being preachy or judgmental.

Essay 3: Why do you feel Columbia Business School is a good fit for you academically, culturally, and professionally? (250 words)

Personal MBA Coach’s Quick Tips: CBS’s third MBA essay gives applicants a chance to share what attracts them to CBS. This is the perfect opportunity to talk about the classes, clubs, and additional programs that interest you, such as speaker series and immersion seminars. Be sure to cover classes and programs that are specifically unique to Columbia Business School!

Columbia Business School applicants can access our additional CBS essay advice here .

Ready to get started? Check out our Comprehensive Packages to see how Personal MBA Coach can help you craft your MBA application essay to any of these schools!

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20 Great MBA Application Essay Samples (With Links)

Want to ace your MBA application? A stellar essay can be your golden ticket.

With elite business schools like Harvard and Stanford boasting acceptance rates as low as 10% and 6% respectively, every aspect of your application counts. While GPA and GMAT scores matter, your essay can be a game-changer. Recognizing its weight, we’ve gathered top-notch MBA essay samples, endorsed by admission committees from premier institutions. Dive in and let’s craft that standout application!

What is an MBA Application Essay?

An MBA application essay is a detailed write-up about your personal and professional goals and aspirations. It also explains how the MBA program will help you attain your objectives for the future. Your essay is your one shot to convince the admission committee to consider you for the initial interview.

What Admission Committee Look for in an MBA Essay?

• Academic ability
• Impressive work experience
• Career Course
• Authenticity of goals
• Competencies, leadership , dedication, challenges, and growth
• The right reason for pursuing an MBA
• Your compatibility with the culture in which the program is being offered

If you want to learn more, here is the complete guide on how admission committees process MBA applications.

20 Great MBA Applications Essays Samples

Now you have known that what makes a great MBA admission essay, the next step is to write one for yourself. Before writing, check out this list of expert-vetted MBA application essays that secured admissions to top-rated business schools in the world. Admission consultants have shared these samples and they can be helpful if you read and analyze them carefully. If you’re completely unsure about how to get started, there are also custom essay writing services that can help you structure your essay with the help of professional editors.

Sample 1: Leadership-focused MBA application essay

This sample is particularly focused on leadership traits. If your essay is about explaining your leadership quality experience, this sample is right up your alley. The best thing about the essay is that it is written in a simple, engaging, and humorous style. It defines a great experience in a very conversational style.

Sample 2: Self-focused MBA application essay 

If you are asked to write about your strengths, weaknesses, aims, and goals in your application essay, this sample will help you. The applicant who wrote this got accepted to the INSEAD business school. It doesn’t merely describe her strengths and weaknesses, but it presents a complete picture of herself as a person. It highlighted the events and incidents that shaped her personality.

Sample 3: Life-hardships-focused MBA application essay

If you want to explain your life’s hardships and the events that turned you into an ambitious person, this sample is for you. In this application essay, the candidate has defined three phases of his life and how he survived through each adversity. He beautifully explained why the MBA program is important to his future.

Sample 4: Continuous growth and learning-focused MBA application essay

This essay was submitted to Harvard Business School. The best thing about this piece is that the writer has explained her learning and professional development journey in a very sequential and engaging manner, which is truly admirable. A useful thing to remember about the MBA essays included in this list is that you can merge them into a single printable and perfectly formatted file with Sodapdf or another PDF editor. Having all of them stored in a single PDF is going to be quite helpful when it’s time to write your piece. But guess what? There are more examples to explore below, so let’s keep going…

Sample 5: Best MBA application essay for low scorers

Have a low GPA? What would you write about academics in an MBA essay to convince the admission committee? Do not overthink! MBA essay is not all about high achievements and sterling background. It is also an opportunity to atone for your past mistakes. This MBA essay was written by a student who obtained very low academic grades, yet got admitted to her desired business school. Her turning point? A powerful application essay.

Sample 6: A guitarist’s application essay for the MBA program

Suppose you are ambitious in a skill or profession that has nothing to do with the MBA program, yet you need the degree for certain reasons. How would you showcase that irrelevant skill in your MBA application essay? This sample essay will show how you how. A guitarist who got selected for the MBA program wrote this one. The applicant has intelligently defined his passion for guitar as a way of developing discipline, determination, leadership, and success. He explained how his passion affected his academics and how the guitar helped him cope with the challenges.

Sample 7: An engineer’s essay for MBA application

If you come from a technical or engineering background and have the ambition to pursue an MBA degree to boost your engineering career, this sample essay will help pave the way for you. This essay was submitted by a mechanical engineer to Harvard Business School. The writer explained how his engineering experience motivated him to pursue an MBA and how the program is important to his long-term goals.

Sample 8: Harvard Business School MBA essay

This essay was written by a candidate who got accepted to Harvard Business School. Check it out to know what the prestigious academic institution looks for in your essay.

Sample 9: Wharton Business School MBA essay

This essay has been honored as one of the best MBA essays ever received by the Wharton Business School in Pennsylvania. Check out the structure, organization, and flow, and adapt the same to your essay.

Sample 10: Columbia Business School MBA essay

The Columbia Business School’s admission committee shared this MBA essay. They explained why the applicant who wrote this was instantly accepted to the program and why they appreciated its content.

Sample 11: Stanford Graduate School of Business MBA essay

This essay was written by a candidate who got accepted to Stanford Business School for an MBA. If you are aiming to get your MBA at Stanford, this sample will give you a deep understanding of what convinces the esteemed school’s admission committee to accept applicants into their fold.

Sample 12: University of California Business School MBA essay

This sample was taken from a pool of successful MBA application essays submitted to the University of California business school. Read it carefully and analyze its structure, words, and substance before you compose your own fantastic MBA essay.

Sample 13: University of OXFORD business school MBA essay

If Oxford Business School is your target destiny for earning your MBA, then check out this outstanding application essay. The person who wrote it managed to grab the admission committee member’s attention.

Sample 14: London Business School MBA essay

This essay was written by a candidate who got accepted to the London Business School. The school’s admission consultant shared this sample as a reference to other MBA aspirants. This piece will specifically help you understand the tone, writing style, formatting, and overall flow of the MBA application essay that meets the school’s standards.

Sample 15: A goal-oriented MBA application essay

Sometimes the MBA admission portal may demand an essay specifically focused on your future goals. In such a case, you must be very sure about yourself and must convey your goals and future directions based on your experiences and planning. Check out this sample to get an idea of how a successful candidate writes about personal goals.

Sample 16: Executive MBA essay

This successful MBA application essay was submitted to the MIT Sloan Executive MBA Program. EMBA essay requires you to show strong potential, impact, leadership, and the ultimate need for the program. Read this essay if EMBA is on your horizon.

Sample 17: MBA video essay

Many business schools are turning to video-based essays for MBA applications. A video-based essay is a better option to express yourself directly to the admission committee. A successful candidate for the Kellogg School of Management submitted this sample. Listen to the video and appreciate how beautifully the applicant has explained his journey from beginning to end. Want to learn more about video MBA essays? Here is a complete guide.

Sample 18: Short-answer-based MBA application essay

Some business schools require candidates to respond to short questions to get insights into their personalities and suitability for the MBA program. More or less, most of the questions revolve around the same theme. The key to success is to grasp the intention of the admission committee behind the questions and to stick to your identity . These successful answers submitted to the Tepper School of Business will help you in formulating your answers.

Sample 19: MIT Sloan School of Management

This essay was submitted by a successful candidate for the MIT Sloan School of Management MBA program. See how this applicant smartly answered the essay questions.

Sample 20:  Michigan Ross School of Business MBA program

The Michigan Ross Business School asks a diverse range of questions from candidates to analyze their competencies from multiple perspectives. If Michigan Ross is where you intend to get your MBA, this essay submitted by a candidate who got admitted to the school’s MBA program will help keep you on track.

What Should be Included in the MBA Application Essay?

• Your background: What shaped you into what you are now? Including ethnicity, obstacles, and struggles.
• Self-reflection: Your values, characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses.
• Your goals : How do you envision your future?
• Aspirations: Why MBA is important to you and how this program will help you in shaping your future?
• Justification: If you have low academic grades, explain the reasons you did not do well and what you learned from it.
• Experience and achievements: What have you achieved so far?

These are the significant components of an MBA essay. Just adjust the sequence, play with words, and come up with a persuasive yet realistic picture of yourself.

What Makes a Great MBA Application Essay?

• Be school-specific. Explain why you are passionate about the MBA program of the school to which you’re applying.
• Avoid edition. Write simply and engagingly. Let the reader read a meaningful story about you.
• Make it 100% typo-free. Grammatical errors and typos will ruin your essay. Apply standard essay format and structure guidelines , scan your piece several times for errors, get it reviewed by an expert, and present a very professional piece to the admission committee.
• Be original. Do not copy-paste from any source. Strictly follow plagiarism guidelines.
• Write an overwhelming introduction to urge the reader to keep reading and conclude your essay with a strong declaration.
• Be authentic. Write what you are, not what the committee wants to read.
• Be concise, as many schools impose a limit on the essay word count .

Do you want more tips? Here is a complete guide to writing a compelling MBA application essay.

The application essay is a core part of the admission process in the increasingly competitive MBA program. If you do not want to miss the chance of getting selected, you need to know what will make your essay stand out . The expert-vetted list of MBA application essay samples we cited here worked for the top business schools. Learn them by heart, and who knows, it may work for you too. Put your other activities aside, read and analyze the list carefully, and start writing your MBA essay to land in your dream business school.

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December 23, 2021

Executive MBA Essays: How to Make an Impact [Sample Essay]

The following is an example of a successful Executive MBA essay for the MIT Sloan Executive MBA Program. Applicants to Executive MBA programs need to demonstrate significant leadership, impact, potential, and the legitimate need for the degree to be accepted, and this essay shows all of those qualities.

Statement of purpose (one page)

Prompt: The MIT Executive MBA Students and Community are: Open, Collaborative and Inventive. Please tell us why you are pursuing the MIT Executive MBA, and what you will contribute to your classmates and the community at MIT. Include examples of success working with organizations, groups, and individuals. For those reapplying, please highlight developments since your last submission.

As a founder, board director, and executive officer of a growth-stage technology company, I bring a unique set of experiences and a need for an innovative, transformative education that I can apply to my business immediately.

As an executive with both immediate challenges and wide organizational influence, I am particularly drawn to the action learning philosophy of the Sloan program. I am eager to transform my own mind and create immediate positive impact across my organization. I am inspired by the experiences of current students who implement their new learnings when they return to the office on Mondays. I am eager to do exactly that. My business is significantly more complex today than it was in the beginning when we provided a simple set of tools to small teams. Today, we are a multinational organization that provides tools and training to large enterprises seeking to implement Lean transformations of sophisticated processes in IT operations and multiple other industries. Throughout this journey, I have constantly challenged myself and my organization to learn, grow, and change. I seek to participate in this program as another step in my personal commitment to learning and adapting to the needs of the future. Now is the moment of maximum impact, whereby my organization and customers will be most receptive to, and benefit the most from, lessons and experiments that I intend to bring back and implement.

As a shareholder that has negotiated a significant amount of angel and institutional investment, I am keenly aware that my investors seek a positive return on their investment. I seek to prepare not only for the immediate needs of growth and complexity, but also for the mid-to-long term opportunities that may accompany that growth, such as a change of control, a liquidity event, or an opportunity to integrate my teams into a larger vision.

As a community leader, I seek to bring what I learn from the program back home and share it widely. I aim to broaden my understanding of business practices and theory beyond my focused experience in tech so that I may maximize the value of what I pass along to the aspiring entrepreneurs, technologists, and leaders in my community who, with ever increasing frequency, honor me by seeking my guidance and assistance.

Similarly, I have a strong desire to share my experiences and the details of my company and my journey with my classmates. I understand how valuable it is to be completely transparent with a group of peers who are eager to learn and share. I am excited to share my successes and my failures with them, open my business to their scrutiny, and make my organization available any time it aids in the learning experience.

Jennifer Weld, former Assistant Director of Admissions at Cornell’s EMBA program and  Accepted admissions consultant , provides insights into what this Accepted client did correctly when writing his Executive MBA essay.

A couple of strong points to this essay:

1. No nonsense approach

The writer immediately gets to the point of explaining why an EMBA is a necessary next step for their career. In the very first sentence there is an acknowledgement of all the writer has accomplished, but the clear recognition that further education is necessary to attain their goals.

2. Complete lack of verbosity

It is obvious the writer has had a very successful career thus far, but that is not what comes across. Instead you understand that the writer recognizes the constant need for learning and adapting to the ever-changing business environment.

3. Give and take

The writer discusses taking the learning from MIT and applying it to oneself, but also bringing key learnings back to the writer’s community. The writer also acknowledges that having classmates critiquing his business will be extremely beneficial to him, but also by opening up his operations to his classmates, they can learn a lot as well. This shows a generous spirit, which is the type of characteristic an admissions committee would be looking for in terms of representing the school after graduation.

For expert guidance with your executive MBA applications, check out Accepted’s EMBA admissions consulting services . You will be assigned an individual consultant, who will provide you with advising, editing, interview coaching, and resume assistance for your EMBA applications.

Related Resources:

• Ace the EMBA: Expert Advice for Rising Executives , a free guide • EMBA: The Ultimate Guide for Applicants • How to Get Accepted to a Top EMBA Program: The Experts Speak

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Essays help us learn about who you are as a person and how you will add to our community. We seek candidates from a broad range of industries, backgrounds, cultures, and lived experiences.

Our distinctive culture is defined by four key principles - Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself. We encourage you to reflect on your experiences, values, and passions so that you may craft thoughtful and authentic responses that demonstrate your alignment with our principles. 

Below are the required essays, supplemental essays, and optional essays for the Fall 2023-2024 application cycle. 

Required Essay #1

What makes you feel alive when you are doing it, and why? (300 words maximum)

Required Essay #2

How will an MBA help you achieve your short-term and long-term career goals? (300 words max)

Required Essay #3 - Video

Required Essay #4 - Short Answer

Optional Essays

The admissions team takes a holistic approach to application review and seeks to understand all aspects of a candidate’s character, qualifications, and experiences. We will consider achievements in the context of the opportunities available to a candidate. Some applicants may have faced hardships or unusual life circumstances, and we will consider the maturity, perseverance, and thoughtfulness with which they have responded to and/or overcome them.

Optional Information #1

We invite you to help us better understand the context of your opportunities and achievements.

Optional Information #2 

Supplemental Information

• If you have not provided a letter of recommendation from your current supervisor, please explain. If not applicable, enter N/A.
• Name of organization or activity
• Nature of organization or activity
• Size of organization
• Dates of involvement
• Offices held
• Average number of hours spent per month
• List full-time and part-time jobs held during undergraduate or graduate studies indicating the employer, job title, employment dates, location, and the number of hours worked per week for each position held prior to the completion of your degree.
• If you have ever been subject to academic discipline, placed on probation, suspended, or required to withdraw from any college or university, please explain. If not, please enter N/A. (An affirmative response to this question does not automatically disqualify you from admission.)

Video: Extracurricular Supplement Tips

Senior Associate Director of Full-time Admissions, Cindy Jennings Millette, shares how we look at, and evaluate, extracurricular and community involvement.

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Socially responsible leadership: how business school students are making an impact.

Tudor Dima (pictured) graduated from ESMT Berlin in 2023

From addressing urgent healthcare needs to accelerating the growth of social impact startups—find out how business school students are embracing socially responsible leadership

Thu May 9 2024

The rising emphasis on ESG (environmental, social, and governance) coincides with shifting priorities among business school students . This trend is driven by businesses and investors recognizing the influence of ESG measures on long-term company performance and social responsibility. 

Business schools are increasingly adapting the curriculum to provide students with business knowledge and ESG expertise, which can help them succeed in impactful corporations. This includes both theoretical and experiential learning initiatives. 

Social initiatives play a pivotal role in equipping future business leaders with the skills, experience, and passion for wide-scale social and environmental impact in business. Through various social impact projects, students build a wealth of skills in project management, problem solving, and a commitment to creating positive change.

Here’s how business school students are embracing socially responsible leadership:

Esmt berlin student leverages responsible leaders fellowship.

With a ‘pay it forward’ ethos, ESMT Berlin’s Responsible Leaders Fellowship places MBA and master's graduates with impactful organizations tackling social challenges in developing countries.

Through this fellowship, Romanian-native Tudor Dima landed a Venture Builder Analyst position at 2.5 Ventures, a Brazilian venture builder specializing in B Corps—businesses certified for their positive social and environmental impact.

During his six-month experience in Campinas, Brazil, Tudor witnessed first-hand the importance of organizations such as 2.5 Ventures. Providing mentorship and fundraising support, venture builders accelerate the growth of businesses that balance social impact with financial gain.

“My understanding of sustainability and its importance in business evolved since seeing the work of backbone organizations such as 2.5 Ventures who are supporting the creation of impact,” says Tudor. 

Tudor leveraged the skills he acquired during his Master in Management to conduct market research for a potential ESG investment platform, craft business cases for early-stage social impact ventures, and improve financial processes for the company.

Seeing the positive impact of ESG-driven businesses cemented Tudor’s decision to pursue a career focused on sustainability.

“My mentality changed completely. I started prioritizing learning skills that might help in the future regarding impact ventures and their effectiveness. I would now like to focus my career on supporting the transition towards a more impactful business world,” says Tudor.

With a passion to drive positive change and the proven ability to apply business knowledge to complex problems, graduates such as Tudor enter the workforce well-equipped to make an impact on the industry.

Wharton students tackle global health challenges with impact consulting

At Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania—a top M7 business school —students from various academic backgrounds lead impactful consulting projects with the Wharton Global Health Volunteers (WGHV) initiative.

For a full semester, students partner with under-resourced international healthcare organizations committed to social impact.

This is an opportunity for students to hone their business acumen and address pressing healthcare needs.

Building a model for high-impact healthcare in India

Over the spring semesters of 2019 and 2020, three WGHV teams developed an impact assessment of the Makunda Christian Leprosy and General Hospital in Assam, India. 

Specifically, students assessed the hospital’s healthcare provisions and subsequently created an impact rating system to score hospitals in low-resource settings based on impact potential. 

This analysis of Makunda’s charity care practice had an influence beyond this hospital, enabling Makunda to share best practices with other low-resource and high-impact hospitals around the world.

Expanding access to women’s healthcare in East Africa

In 2022, a team of WGHV students partnered with Kasha Inc., an e-commerce platform offering affordable and discreet access to women’s healthcare products to avoid social stigma.

Through market research and stakeholder interviews, the students developed a geographical expansion strategy to expand the company’s reach. 

The team’s assessment of the industry landscape in the target country informed their recommendations for Kasha, including potential partners and actionable next steps. 

The Rwanda-founded company had previously expanded operations to Kenya. In the time following their collaboration with WGHV, Kasha has developed plans to reach more of West and Central Africa by the end of 2024, with aims to expand globally in the future.

As social impact in business gains momentum, the evolving business landscape presents exciting opportunities for students who are passionate about making a difference. By equipping students to implement ESG principles in real-world settings, business schools are preparing grads to be the driving force behind a more sustainable future in business.

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Columbia, Stanford And More: Top STEM MBA Programs In The United States—And How Much They Cost

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Home News What Are the Prerequisites for an MBA Program?

What Are the Prerequisites for an MBA Program?

Looking to take your career to the next level? Perhaps you dream of launching your own business or are striving for more of a leadership or managerial position with your current employer. Regardless, it might be time to explore a master’s in business administration (MBA) as a means of advancing your career and building crucial skills.

Are there prerequisites for an MBA? In short, yes, and by understanding the common requirements for this type of program, you can plan and prepare with confidence.

Understanding the Basics of MBA Prerequisites

One of the most essential MBA degree prerequisites that applies to all graduate-level business programs is having a bachelor’s degree already under your belt.

The Importance of a Bachelor’s Degree

A bachelor’s degree (which usually entails a four-year program) is required for admission into any MBA program. That previous experience in a rigorous degree program is critical to being prepared for the coursework of a master’s degree program. Likewise, an undergraduate degree can provide you with valuable foundational knowledge that will transfer from your general education credits.

Evaluating Your Undergraduate Major’s Impact

Sometimes, a bachelor’s degree in a field related to business (like accounting or finance) may be preferred to gain admission to an MBA program; however, this is not always the case. It is not uncommon for students who majored in a subject completely unrelated to business to pursue MBA degrees, either as part of a career shift or as a means of gaining valuable business experience in their respective fields.

Standardized Test Scores: GMAT and GRE

Certain MBA programs will also require applicants to submit standardized test scores. The two most common graduate school exams are the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE)—but how can you know which is right for you?

GMAT vs. GRE: Which Should You Take?

Always check with your school to determine if they require one test over the other, as this will help you make the right decision. If your school or program accepts either test, then you’ll want to consider some other factors.

Generally speaking, the GMAT is more geared toward business schools, but the GRE is becoming increasingly common as an admission requirement. Both are offered in  similar formats  and cost about the same to take, and scores for both exams are valid for five years.

Minimum Score Requirements and How to Prepare

The GMAT and GRE are scored differently, with scores for the GRE ranging from 130 to 170 in one-point increments. The GMAT, on the other hand, offers a composite score that ranges from 205 to 805 in larger 10-point increments. If the business school you’re applying to has a minimum score requirement, it will be posted on the admissions page.

The best way to prepare for the GRE or GMAT is to choose a reputable study guide and take plenty of practice exams. In addition, be sure to give yourself plenty of time to study for the exam.

Work Experience Requirements for MBA Applicants

Some business schools may also require MBA applicants to have a certain amount of relevant professional experience before they can be admitted into an MBA program.

The Role of Professional Experience in Your Application

Professional experience in the business world is key when applying to an MBA program because it will give you some of the foundational knowledge needed to succeed in an advanced program of study. Without any professional experience in business, you may struggle with some of the basic concepts throughout the program.

How Much Experience Do You Need?

The amount of work experience you need will vary from one program to the next. However, there’s a good chance an MBA program could require anywhere from three to five years of related work experience. In other instances, applicants with less experience may be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Academic Performance and GPA Considerations

Many business schools also have academic performance and GPA requirements for MBA applicants, so how well you did in your undergraduate degree program could affect whether or not you get accepted into an MBA program.

Understanding GPA Requirements

It is not uncommon for a business school to require a minimum of a 3.0 GPA for applicants who completed an undergraduate degree in a related or unrelated field. For non-business bachelor’s degree holders, a 3.0 average will be especially essential in courses related to statistics, calculus, and English composition.

Strategies for Overcoming a Low GPA

Usually, a lower GPA alone won’t be enough to disqualify an applicant from an MBA program—but this will differ from school to school. If you had less than a 3.0 GPA in your undergraduate program (or whatever the minimum GPA for your MBA program is), the best course of action is to reach out to an admissions counselor before you submit your application.

Essential Skills and Competencies for MBA Applicants

Do you need prerequisites for an MBA? Yes, but you may also need to demonstrate that you possess some essential skills and competencies required to get through an MBA program.

Leadership and Management Skills

MBA graduates often go on to work in leadership and other management roles, so being able to bring some of these basic skills to the table is key at the beginning of your MBA program.

Communication and Analytical Skills

Additionally, successful leaders and managers need to have solid communication skills. Not only should you be able to communicate effectively in person, but those skills should translate to your writing as well. Likewise, strong analytical skills are also crucial in an MBA program and beyond.

Analytical and Critical Thinking Skills

Much of the work of an MBA program (and any future career in the business world) will require constant analytical and critical thinking. As new problems and obstacles arise, you must demonstrate that you can think quickly on your feet and confidently come up with new ideas that will forge the path forward.

Teamwork and Collaboration Experience

The future generation of business leaders will need to be able to collaborate with people, too, motivating them to work as a team toward a common goal. Ideally, you’ll be able to bring these skills to the table as you enter your MBA program.

The Significance of Letters of Recommendation

Many business schools will also require you to submit at least one, if not several, letters of recommendation as part of your application.

Choosing the Right Recommenders

Keep in mind that not everybody makes a great “recommender” when it comes time to have these letters written. In general, you should not choose family members or friends to write your letters of recommendation. Instead, you’re better off choosing a professional contact (such as a current or previous boss) or a past academic contact (such as a professor).

What Your Recommenders Should Highlight

While you can’t exactly  tell  a recommender what they should write in your letter, you can (and should) provide them with some basic guidelines and insights into what your MBA program is looking for. You might consider providing them with a copy of the admission requirements to your desired MBA program, as well as a copy of your own resume or other accomplishments to which the writer can refer while drafting your letter.

Ideally, your letter of recommendation should highlight the skills, experiences, characteristics, and formal designations that make you a qualified candidate for the MBA program.

Crafting a Compelling Personal Statement

It is also common for a graduate degree program to require something known as a personal statement of all applicants. Typically, a personal statement is a one-page document where you discuss your background, why you’re interested in completing the program, and your professional and career goals for the future.

Tips for Telling Your Unique Story

Writing a personal statement can be challenging, especially for those who don’t always enjoy talking about themselves. This is where it can be helpful to create an outline narrowing down the precise points you wish to make (along with examples). If you have a unique story or anecdote that applies, this can be a great way to make your personal statement stand out as well.

Do’s and Don’ts of Personal Statements

Keep the following in mind as you craft your personal statement:

• DO focus on your strengths.
• DO ask for feedback from people you trust.
• DO connect your ideas with your own experiences.
• DON’T submit more than one page unless explicitly asked to do so.
• DON’T downplay your achievements; this is your one chance to make yourself and your application stand out from the rest.
• DON’T wait until the last minute to write one; give yourself plenty of time to draft, rewrite, and revise as needed.

Additional Requirements for International Applicants

If you’re an international student applying for admission to an MBA program in the United States, there may be additional requirements you need to complete.

TOEFL/IELTS Scores for Non-Native English Speakers

Most business schools will require international applicants to complete a standardized test that assesses their proficiency in English. Common examples of these include the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)  and the  International English Language Testing System (IELTS) . Find out exactly which test your program requires and the minimum score you must obtain to be considered for admission.

Understanding Visa Requirements

In addition to English proficiency tests, international students may also need to provide proof of a visa in order to complete an MBA program in the U.S. Specifically, an F-1 visa is the most common type of visa required for international students. The process of obtaining one can take some time, so it’s important to be proactive about applying for the appropriate visa.

Advance Your Education in Business at Marymount University

As you can see, the specific prerequisites and admission requirements for an MBA will vary depending on the exact school and program you’re considering. Still, most MBA programs will require you to demonstrate some basic competencies, as well as formal work experience requirements and standardized test scores.

Seeking an MBA program that’s built to help students succeed? Marymount University is proud to offer a  Master of Business Administration  that empowers you to meet real-world challenges while exploring specialized skills that can help advance your career.  Get in touch  with an admissions advisor today to learn more about our MBA program, or begin your application for enrollment online.

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In Poll, Most MBA Candidates Want To Use AI To Craft Essays, But They’re Wary Of The Tech

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In a new Kaplan survey, a majority of MBA candidates said they would like to be able to use generative AI like ChatGPT to craft their admissions essays. iStockphoto

Warren Buffett is not a fan of AI — yet. The 93-year-old founder and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway told the company’s shareholders at their annual meeting May 4 that “we let a genie out of the bottle when we developed nuclear weapons” and “AI is somewhat similar — it’s partway out of the bottle.”

Though he acknowledged that the technology could change the world for the better, Buffett, the legendary investor known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” said he isn’t sold yet . “It has enormous potential for good and enormous potential for harm,” he said. “And I just don’t know how that plays out.”

Across industries, it’s playing out rapidly: According to the International Monetary Fund, nearly 40% of global employment could be disrupted by AI, from medicine to finance to music. Count graduate business education among the impacted sectors: AI is transforming how teachers teach and how students learn so quickly, business schools can hardly keep up.

MBA CANDIDATES WANT GUARDRAILS IN THE USE OF AI IN ADMISSIONS

Rochester Simon Dean Sevin Yeltekin: “Much like getting support from an admissions counselor, generative AI can be an effective resource for applicants”

Admissions has not evaded the transformative power of AI. The debate over whether to use ChatGPT or other generative AI programs to craft key parts of a candidate’s MBA application — particularly the essay — has raged since day one, when the tech’s viability first entered the public consciousness.

Prospective students, for their part, have been split on how to employ the technology, and that split continues, as evidenced by a new poll released today (May 8) by Kaplan, the global educational services company, and its sister company Manhattan Prep, a leading test prep provider. The survey of more than 300 aspiring MBA students finds mixed attitudes toward GenAI and its use in the admissions process, with 56% saying they should be allowed to use AI tools to help them write their admissions essays, but only with certain guidelines and restrictions; 20% saying they don’t think they should be allowed under any circumstances; 18% saying use should be unrestricted; and the remaining 7% unsure.

“Aspiring MBA students are going to have to take the GMAT exam without the use of GenAI,” says Stacey Koprince, director of content and curriculum for Manhattan Prep. “And they also built up their GPAs without using it either, considering how new the technology is, so it’s not surprising that many think it’s necessary for business schools to put guardrails around its use in the admissions process. At the same time, our results show that many are eager to use GenAI to their advantage if allowed.”

IF ALLOWED, 60% SAY THEY WILL USE AI IN THEIR ESSAYS

The Manhattan Prep/Kaplan survey was conducted online in March-April 2024 and included responses from 306 aspiring business school students across the United States. It complements a separate survey of business school admissions officers that found that only a handful of B-schools have policies in place directing students how they can use AI in their admissions essays, signaling the issue is still unsettled. The latter was conducted by phone and email with 75 business schools across the United States — among them are 8 of the top 50 schools, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report — between August 2023 and February 2024.

Prospective MBA students in the more recent survey are concerned not only with the broader question of AI use — they also don’t want their competitors to get an unfair advantage. Exactly half in the more recent survey of aspiring MBA students say AI unfairly levels the playing field for applicants who don’t possess strong writing skills; 32% don’t believe that to be the case; the remaining 18% are unsure.

But if it’s allowed, more say they will go for it: Of those surveyed, 60% said they would likely use AI in their admissions essays if the schools they were applying to allowed it; 24% said they were unlikely to use it; 16% said they were unsure.

‘MANY B-SCHOOLS WILL BE DEVELOPING GenAI POLICIES IN THE COMING YEAR’

The acceptability of AI increases the further one gets in the admissions process. Once applicants have proven their mettle and achieved admission, two-thirds (67%) say B-schools should allow them to use GenAI as part of their classwork/academic experience, with certain guidelines and restrictions. Another 20% believe enrolled students should be allowed to use GenAI with no restrictions at all. That’s nearly 90% who see AI use inside MBA programs as acceptable under certain conditions.

Another 8% said it shouldn’t be allowed under any circumstances; and the remaining 6% were unsure.

Asked how often they use AI in the workplace or in their personal lives, 8% said “always”; 25% said “frequently”; 38% said “occasionally”; 19% said “rarely”; and 10% said “never.”

Koprince says the days of uncertainty about schools’ policies are likely coming to a close.

“While results from Manhattan Prep and Kaplan’s most recent business school admissions officers survey show that most MBA programs have no policy at all when it comes to allowing applicants to use GenAI in admissions essays, we don’t believe that’s a tenable long-term position, as they will increasingly get questions from prospective students who want to know the boundaries of acceptable use,” Koprince says. “Our prediction: Many business schools will be developing GenAI policies in the coming year.”

REGARDLESS OF TOOLS, ‘SUBMISSIONS MUST BE AUTHENTIC’

B-schools continue to adapt to the AI gold rush. At the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School , Dean Sevin Yeltekin says the school is “leaning into generative AI by incorporating it into our course content and by launching a degree program in business analytics and applied AI and utilizing it in our school’s operations. We believe that combined with domain knowledge and used responsibly, generative AI can be a very effective productivity and learning tool.”

Simon’s approach to generative AI in the admissions process is similar, Yeltekin tells P&Q : “Much like getting support from an admissions counselor, generative AI can be an effective resource for applicants. Regardless of the tools or resources that an applicant uses, their submissions must be authentic in both tone and content. Simon admissions committee members are experienced readers and interviewers, trained to look for authenticity and screen for consistency in a candidate’s communication style and message.

“Our high-touch process that includes admission essays, interview feedback, and interactions with alumni and current students allows us to triangulate on the authentic applicant and holistically evaluate their background, behavioral skills and fit for the program.”

‘IT’S NOT ABOUT FILLING PAGES WITH WORDS’

Petia Whitmore , the founder of admissions consulting firm  My MBA Path and a former dean of MBA admissions at Babson College, writes in a commentary published May 7 by Poets&Quants that “No one should be surprised that if you simply ask ChatGPT to write a Harvard MBA essay, you will end up with a cliché overload.” She points to a sample AI essay published last spring in Poets&Quants :

“I am thrilled to submit my application for the Harvard Business School MBA program, and I appreciate the opportunity to elaborate on what I believe makes me a strong candidate for the program.

Throughout my academic and professional career, I have developed a passion for business and a desire to make a meaningful impact in the world through my work. My experiences have shaped my perspectives, and I believe they will allow me to bring a unique and valuable perspective to the classroom and beyond.”

The former managing director of The MBA Tour adds that as the technology evolves, more applicants will find ways to employ it successfully. But in the last application cycle, none of the candidates she worked with had any interest in using it.

“All but one of my MBA candidates this cycle were admitted to at least one of their top MBA choices (yes, even the ones who only applied to H/S/W….),” Whitmore writes. “Not a single one had to use ChatGPT to write their essays — or had any interest in even trying.

“Knowing what to write about can only come from two sources — knowing yourself well (self-reflection and self-awareness) and knowing your schools well.

“And when it comes to the actual writing: Remember, it’s not about filling pages with words.”

DON’T MISS HOW AMERICA’S BIGGEST COMPANIES HAVE CHANGED IN 30 YEARS and B-SCHOOLS & MBA CANDIDATES AGREE: RANKINGS STINK

The post In Poll, Most MBA Candidates Want To Use AI To Craft Essays, But They’re Wary Of The Tech appeared first on Poets&Quants .

In Poll, Most MBA Candidates Say They Want To Use AI To Craft Essays, But They’re Wary Of The Tech

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In a new Kaplan/Manhattan Prep survey, a majority of MBA candidates said they would like to be able to use generative AI like ChatGPT to craft their admissions essays. iStockphoto

Warren Buffett is not a fan of AI — yet. The 93-year-old founder and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway told the company’s shareholders at their annual meeting May 4 that “we let a genie out of the bottle when we developed nuclear weapons” and “AI is somewhat similar — it’s partway out of the bottle.”

Though he acknowledged that the technology could change the world for the better, Buffett, the legendary investor known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” said he isn’t sold yet . “It has enormous potential for good and enormous potential for harm,” he said. “And I just don’t know how that plays out.”

Across industries, it’s playing out rapidly: According to the International Monetary Fund, nearly 40% of global employment could be disrupted by AI, from medicine to finance to music. Count graduate business education among the impacted sectors: AI is transforming how teachers teach and how students learn so quickly, business schools can hardly keep up.

MBA CANDIDATES WANT GUARDRAILS IN THE USE OF AI IN ADMISSIONS

Rochester Simon Dean Sevin Yeltekin: “Much like getting support from an admissions counselor, generative AI can be an effective resource for applicants”

Nor has MBA admissions evaded the transformative power of AI. The debate over whether to use ChatGPT or other generative AI programs to craft key parts of a candidate’s MBA application — particularly the essay — has raged since day one, when the tech’s viability first entered the public consciousness.

Prospective students, for their part, have been split on how to employ the technology — and that split continues, as evidenced by a new poll released today (May 8) by Kaplan , the global educational services company, and its sister company Manhattan Prep, a leading test prep provider. The survey of more than 300 aspiring MBA students finds mixed attitudes toward GenAI and its use in the admissions process, with 56% saying they should be allowed to use AI tools to help them write their admissions essays, but only with certain guidelines and restrictions; 20% saying they don’t think they should be allowed under any circumstances; 18% saying use should be unrestricted; and the remaining 7% unsure.

“Aspiring MBA students are going to have to take the GMAT exam without the use of GenAI,” says Stacey Koprince, director of content and curriculum for Manhattan Prep. “And they also built up their GPAs without using it either, considering how new the technology is, so it’s not surprising that many think it’s necessary for business schools to put guardrails around its use in the admissions process. At the same time, our results show that many are eager to use GenAI to their advantage if allowed.”

IF ALLOWED, 60% SAY THEY WILL USE AI IN THEIR ESSAYS

The Manhattan Prep/Kaplan survey was conducted online in March-April 2024 and included responses from 306 aspiring business school students across the United States. It complements a separate survey of business school admissions officers that found that only a handful of B-schools have policies in place directing students how they can use AI in their admissions essays, signaling the issue is still unsettled. The latter was conducted by phone and email with 75 business schools across the United States — among them are 8 of the top 50 schools, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report — between August 2023 and February 2024.

Prospective MBA students in the more recent survey are concerned not only with the broader question of AI use — they also don’t want their competitors to get an unfair advantage. Exactly half in the more recent survey of aspiring MBA students say AI unfairly levels the playing field for applicants who don’t possess strong writing skills; 32% don’t believe that to be the case; the remaining 18% are unsure.

But if it’s allowed, more say they will go for it: Of those surveyed, 60% said they would likely use AI in their admissions essays if the schools they were applying to allowed it; 24% said they were unlikely to use it; 16% said they were unsure.

‘MANY B-SCHOOLS WILL BE DEVELOPING GenAI POLICIES IN THE COMING YEAR’

The acceptability of AI increases the further one gets in the admissions process. Once applicants have proven their mettle and achieved admission, two-thirds (67%) say B-schools should allow them to use GenAI as part of their classwork/academic experience, with certain guidelines and restrictions. Another 20% believe enrolled students should be allowed to use GenAI with no restrictions at all. That’s nearly 90% who see AI use inside MBA programs as acceptable under certain conditions.

Another 8% said it shouldn’t be allowed under any circumstances; and the remaining 6% were unsure.

Asked how often they use AI in the workplace or in their personal lives, 8% said “always”; 25% said “frequently”; 38% said “occasionally”; 19% said “rarely”; and 10% said “never.”

Koprince says the days of uncertainty about schools’ policies are likely coming to a close.

“While results from Manhattan Prep and Kaplan’s most recent business school admissions officers survey show that most MBA programs have no policy at all when it comes to allowing applicants to use GenAI in admissions essays, we don’t believe that’s a tenable long-term position, as they will increasingly get questions from prospective students who want to know the boundaries of acceptable use,” Koprince says. “Our prediction: Many business schools will be developing GenAI policies in the coming year.”

REGARDLESS OF TOOLS, ‘SUBMISSIONS MUST BE AUTHENTIC’

B-schools continue to adapt to the AI gold rush. At the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School , Dean Sevin Yeltekin says the school is “leaning into generative AI by incorporating it into our course content and by launching a degree program in business analytics and applied AI and utilizing it in our school’s operations. We believe that combined with domain knowledge and used responsibly, generative AI can be a very effective productivity and learning tool.”

Simon’s approach to generative AI in the admissions process is similar, Yeltekin tells P&Q : “Much like getting support from an admissions counselor, generative AI can be an effective resource for applicants. Regardless of the tools or resources that an applicant uses, their submissions must be authentic in both tone and content. Simon admissions committee members are experienced readers and interviewers, trained to look for authenticity and screen for consistency in a candidate’s communication style and message.

“Our high-touch process that includes admission essays, interview feedback, and interactions with alumni and current students allows us to triangulate on the authentic applicant and holistically evaluate their background, behavioral skills and fit for the program.”

‘IT’S NOT ABOUT FILLING PAGES WITH WORDS’

Petia Whitmore , the founder of admissions consulting firm  My MBA Path and a former dean of MBA admissions at Babson College, writes in a commentary published May 7 by Poets&Quants that “No one should be surprised that if you simply ask ChatGPT to write a Harvard MBA essay, you will end up with a cliché overload.” She points to a sample AI essay published last spring in Poets&Quants :

“I am thrilled to submit my application for the Harvard Business School MBA program, and I appreciate the opportunity to elaborate on what I believe makes me a strong candidate for the program.

Throughout my academic and professional career, I have developed a passion for business and a desire to make a meaningful impact in the world through my work. My experiences have shaped my perspectives, and I believe they will allow me to bring a unique and valuable perspective to the classroom and beyond.”

The former managing director of The MBA Tour adds that as the technology evolves, more applicants will find ways to employ it successfully. But in the last application cycle, none of the candidates she worked with had any interest in using it.

“All but one of my MBA candidates this cycle were admitted to at least one of their top MBA choices (yes, even the ones who only applied to H/S/W….),” Whitmore writes. “Not a single one had to use ChatGPT to write their essays — or had any interest in even trying.

“Knowing what to write about can only come from two sources — knowing yourself well (self-reflection and self-awareness) and knowing your schools well.

“And when it comes to the actual writing: Remember, it’s not about filling pages with words.”

DON’T MISS HOW AMERICA’S BIGGEST COMPANIES HAVE CHANGED IN 30 YEARS and B-SCHOOLS & MBA CANDIDATES AGREE: RANKINGS STINK

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Sydney alumna receives Anstice MBA Scholarship for Community Leadership

Kate Woods began her career in the NSW public health system after graduating from the University of Sydney’s Master of Pharmacy in 2015 – now she has been awarded an opportunity to refine her leadership skills and take her career to the next level.

From working in Rwanda on a cardiac surgery program to her current role as Dispensary Lead Pharmacist at Calvery Mater Hospital in Newcastle NSW, Kate’s career in the healthcare industry has presented many great opportunities. 

“Since graduating from the University of Sydney Master of Pharmacy program, I have enjoyed a rewarding career working for NSW Health,” she said.

After completing her postgraduate studies, Kate landed a highly sought-after hospital internship at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. She continued to forge her career in the NSW public health system, securing roles at hospitals within the Newcastle area. 

More recently, Kate became a part of a not-for-profit organisation committed to developing a sustainable cardiac surgery program. Kate has travelled to Rwanda twice to provide her expertise, as well as supporting the local pharmacy and nursing department from afar.  

Kate said she hopes to continue sharing her knowledge and experience with third-world governments and organisations to initiate change in the public health industry. 

“This opportunity has given me great insight into global healthcare and inspired me to take my career to new heights and one day share my knowledge and experience with third-world governments and organisations,” Kate said.  

Advocating for parental rights in the workplace

Beyond her role as a hospital pharmacist, Kate is a proud mother of two children – Both roles she loves in equal measure. Kate has experienced firsthand the setbacks many working parents continue to face including the gender pay gap, unconscious bias in recruitment decisions and resistance to workplace flexibility. 

“Motherhood has been a barrier to my career progression. Frustrated by this, I sought to raise awareness in my workplace, and with the support of the director of pharmacy, calculated our department's gender pay gap,” Kate said. 

“ This work was presented as an oral presentation at the National Hospital Pharmacists conference last year and was published as a feature article to celebrate International Women’s Day in the organisation's flagship journal GRIT.”

How an MBA can take your career to the next level

Securing a senior leadership role in the NSW public health system is a career step that Kate is eager to pursue. When looking at study options to take her career to the next level, she came across the University of Sydney’s Part-time MBA .  

“I aspire to hold a leadership position in pharmacy, business manager of pharmaceutical services, or perhaps a change lead for a new hospital service. I believe the MBA and the Anstice MBA Scholarship for Community Leadership will give me the knowledge and tools to be a future leader in healthcare and reach that dream.”

The Anstice MBA Scholarship for Community Leadership supports emerging leaders in community organisations and is valued at more than $60,000 for up to three years for a student enrolled part-time.

Discover the part-time MBA

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