leadership essays for mba

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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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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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

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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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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.

Practice for the GMAT

Take a GMAT practice test with us under the same conditions as the real thing. You'll get a personalized score report highlighting your strengths and areas of improvement.

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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.

Early Birds Toolkit

Learn 3 Steps You Should Take NOW to Improve Your Profile for R1 2024

In MBA admissions, starting early can significantly boost your chances. 

But there are no shortcuts, and while R1 2024 deadlines might seem far off, building your profile takes time.

Our Early Birds Toolkit has everything you need to get started right now —leave your name and email, and we’ll send you three actionable steps to elevate your profile, plus time-saving tools for faster progress.

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

How to Write an MBA Application Essay That Stands Out

Personal MBA Coach publishes detailed tips on how to approach most of the top MBA application questions (download our e-book on how to approach the M7 essays ). Of course, Personal MBA Coach clients received details and customized advice through our  comprehensive packages , but some key essay writing and editing basics hold true regardless of the essay question or school. To share these with you, Personal MBA Coach’s team, including former M7 admissions directors and Ivy-League-educated editors compiled this guide to successful MBA essay writing .

Effective MBA admissions essays can be different from any other type of prose. Knowing how to approach them can significantly boost your chances of MBA application success. Before going into specific essay writing tips, let’s look at the most common types of MBA essays. Understanding the type of MBA essay (and their ultimate purpose) will help you determine which personal and professional examples are most relevant, what tone you should choose, and how you can use the question to demonstrate your candidacy in the best light (and ultimately get into your dream school).

Types of MBA Essays

Goals essay.

The purpose of this type of MBA application essay is to discuss your post-MBA career goals and prove that you need an MBA to achieve them. In a goals essay, depending on the word limit, you may share some career highlights as well as your specific short-term and long-term goals. For instance, one of the Wharton MBA admissions essays invites MBA candidates to lay out their professional aspirations. When drafting this type of essay, make sure to be specific and focused. While no one expects you to commit to these goals post-MBA, you should demonstrate to the admissions committee that you have thought about your career goals and determined that an MBA is the ideal steppingstone on your path to achieve them.

Personal Story Essay

Varying in word count, this type of MBA application essay tends to be more personal. The main goal of a self-reflection essay is to get to know the real you. These essays can range from the 900-word, open-ended Harvard Business School MBA application essay to the 100-word questions Michigan Ross asks. Personal MBA Coach’s expert tip here is to stay true to yourself and consider your Personal Story. Do not write what you think the admissions committee wants to read. Write about your passions, values, failures—nothing is off limits. At the same time, you want to keep a positive mindset. If you are discussing your failure or something tragic that happened to you, make sure to present it as a story of growth. This is not a creative-writing contest—remember that you are writing your MBA application essay, and the main goal of this essay should be to convince the admissions committee that you will add a unique perspective in the classroom and on campus.

Contribution Essay

Leadership Essay

While evidence of leadership should be included in many different essay types, some MBA essays directly ask candidates about their leadership experience. Kellogg ’s first MBA essay is a classic example of this: “ 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? ” While it is great to show how you have led your peers, do not forget about humility. It is expected that your leadership style is still a work in progress. In fact, in some leadership essays, you will want to tell the reader how you wish to fine-tune your leadership style during your MBA.

Video Essay

Video essays are becoming increasingly popular among business schools’ admissions committees. For instance, Berkeley Haas introduced a video essay this year. Other schools, including MIT Sloan , have required a video essay for many years. Some schools, such as Chicago Booth , require a video essay for applicants offered an interview. The video essay is a completely different format, and unlike all the essay types above, this is the one where you should not overedit. A few bullet points in preparation are great; however, writing out the whole script will make you appear less natural. Video essays are rather more personal, so you want to come across as approachable and show that you would be great to have in the classroom. Appearing too rigid and rehearsed will hinder your chances.

MBA Essay Writing Process

Now, let’s talk about the basics of the essay writing process. We advise our candidates to follow a 5-step process as they develop their application essays, leaving adequate time for each stage.

1. Brainstorm

Brainstorm each essay question one at a time. Now that early decision deadlines have passed, you are free to begin with the essay that seems easiest or comes most naturally to you, as your writing will improve throughout the process. In developing potential topics, consider your relevant strengths, experiences, and accomplishments: Choose those that bring the most to the table.

Before you begin to develop prose, outline the key points you hope to cover in a sequence that flows logically. Pay special attention to the length you will allot to each section of the essay.

Once you have a solid outline, begin to put together your first draft. At this stage, it is ok if your writing is not perfect. Most first drafts will be a bit longer than the final product, but make sure you have the substantive points in place and that they flow together well.

4. Edit and Edit Again

Editing is the most time-consuming part of the essay writing process, particularly if you have written too much in the initial draft. Be critical of what needs to be there and what does not, and make sure you remove extraneous or superfluous material. Fine-tune your writing to make sure that the structure, verbs, and vocabulary all serve to make your thinking clear. Avoid repetition and be concise.

And finally, proofread. If you are not great at spelling or grammar or even generally at writing, ask someone who is good at those things to read your essay. A fresh set of eyes is priceless for catching mistakes. Personal MBA Coach uses proofreaders for each MBA application for this reason.

5 Tips for Writing a Successful MBA Essay

1) answer the essay question.

This seems like a no-brainer, but many candidates write beautiful essays that do not answer the essay question. Instead of writing what you want to show off, answer the question (or make sure that what you want to show off answers the question!). While we do advise thinking a bit outside of the box and considering the why behind an essay prompt ( what are they really trying to get at? ) first and foremost you must answer the question.

That is one reason recycling essay copy from one school to the other is often not a great idea: While it works sometimes for schools whose essay questions are nearly identical, most often it obscures the whole objective of answering the question. Good MBA essay editing should address this, refocusing the material. So, go through your copy and make sure the answer is in there. If you are using the essay you wrote for another school, make sure you tailor it to fit and answer the pertinent essay prompt.

2) Write Authentically

Do not write what you think admissions committee members want to read. There is no one perfect candidate profile. Instead, your uniqueness will be one of your greatest selling points. Your essays should paint a clear picture of who you are, what motivates you, and what you are passionate about—genuinely. Do not feel compelled to show how you fit the mold that seemingly makes up the “ideal” candidate. If you have no desire to run a non-profit, that is ok. If you are not motivated by improving the environment, do not pretend you are. Readers will see right through this, and you could end up doing more harm than good.

3) Look at the Application Comprehensively

Essays are just one part of the overall MBA application. In addition to submitting a resume (unsure how to write an MBA resume? Check out these tips ), you fill out a detailed application whose value you should use in every detail. Many schools require short essays and short answer questions and video essays as well. In addition, you have letters of recommendation . Those also should be used to your advantage to include material you may not have other opportunity or space to talk about. This means there are other places to list and highlight items such as extracurricular activities.

There is no need—or space—to try to fit this all into your essays: Focus on a few chosen facets of your passions or accomplishments to answer the essay questions and use other material in other places.

4) Keep Your Language Approachable

You should assume that terms you regularly discuss at the office—what is commonly referred to as industry jargon—are foreign to others, including admissions committee members, and they do not want to have to wade through it, trying to understand, as if it were a foreign language.

Harvard Business School has gone so far as to specifically ask candidates to not use jargon, both in the MBA application essay and the short answer questions. The best MBA essay editing will eliminate jargony language entirely and translate to readily understandable English, which helps convey what you are talking about and who you are. Particularly when it comes to showing off an accomplishment or how you added value in a business scenario, you want to make sure that technical language does not get in the way and impede your ability to clearly communicate what you did. On some occasions, it may be beneficial to ask a loved one to read your essay, though it is not always the best choice—check out this blog for a comprehensive breakdown of when it is a good idea to involve your friends and family in your MBA journey.

5)  Limit Flowery Prose

Similarly, we often read complex flowery prose. By flowery we mean prose that is overly ornate, rambling, and verbose. While showing off your writing style may be the point when applying to a writer’s program, when applying to business school you should write well but in a practical and straightforward manner. Most schools want direct, substantial, detailed answers to the questions—not rambling prose. Everyone, from your grandmother to a professor of microfinance, should be able to understand your essays.

In sum, your essays should convey why you are someone others would want to study with, learn from, and eventually be inspired by. That type of person is human and down to earth. Your essays should show this.

Finally, be concise. Write to the word count. If you are having difficulty making a choice between two options, you can vet that choice, but once you have chosen your topic, during the outline process eliminate material that is not needed. It is very hard to cut 200 words from a 500-word essay and not change the overall intended impact and meaning. Trimming 30 words is one thing—though it is very time-consuming, it can be done artfully without losing much—but you cannot cut an essay in half and not lose substance that should be included.

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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 .

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MBA Application Essays Part 3 – Leadership, Past Decisions, And Setback Essays

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In the first two articles in our MBA Essay Writing Boot Camp series, MBA Prep School discussed four of the most common types of MBA application essay questions. In this third article, we will round out the list of essay question types that you may come across when applying for an MBA. The final three essay categories include:

Leadership Essays

Past decisions essays, setback essays.

The top business schools are designed in part to serve as training programs for future organizational leaders. For this reason, identifying candidates who possess the motivation and baseline ability to lead is considered “job one” for an MBA admissions committee.

That’s why Leadership essay questions commonly appear on MBA applications. Admissions committees are unlikely, however, to simply ask: “Are you a leader?”  Instead, they will expect you to tell a story about one or more of your leadership experiences, or to discuss your leadership style.

Here are two examples of Leadership essay questions from the current application season:

Kellogg Essay 1: 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?

Darden Question 3: Darden strives to identify and cultivate leaders who follow their purpose. At this stage, how would you describe your evolving leadership style and please provide an example.

Other essay questions in this category include:

• Discuss a defining experience in your leadership development.
• Tell us about a time when you made a lasting impact on your organization.
• What impact do you hope to have as a leader of consequence in the future?

To score top marks with your answer to these Leadership essay questions, you’ll be expected to show the admissions committee evidence that you have an ability to rally other people, motivate them to work together, and harness the energy and talents of a group to achieve an important shared vision/goal. Keep in mind that admissions officers are interested in your leadership achievements both inside and outside of work.

Your success following business school will have a lot to do with your values and the quality of your judgment. For this reason, admissions officers are interested in learning about your decision-making abilities. The next category of MBA essay questions relates to your ability to discuss your past decisions and to explain why you made them.

Here is an example of a Past Decisions essay question from the current application season:

Booth Essay 2: Chicago Booth immerses you in a choice-rich environment. How have your interests, leadership experiences, and other passions influenced the choices in your life?

Here are a few additional examples of this type of question:

• Reflect on a time when you turned down an opportunity.
• Tell us about a difficult decision you had to make.
• What decisions have you made that led to your current role?

Questions of this type essentially ask you to explain your thought process when you were making an important decision. In an ideal sense, the decision should have posed high personal or professional stakes.

You’ll score top marks if you clearly discuss the choices with which you were presented, concisely describe the pros and cons of each, and share the reasons for your ultimate choice. Remember that what the decision was about is less important to the admissions committee than how you approached it. They are trying to determine whether you think analytically and attack complex decisions systematically and efficiently, because that is what business leaders must do every day.

Another strength that MBA programs are interested in identifying is the ability of a candidate to recover when things don’t go his or her way.  A variation of the Setback essay—also referred to as a “Failure” or “Mistake” essay—appears this year on Columbia Business School’s MBA application:

Columbia Essay 3: Please provide an example of a team failure of which you have been a part. If given a second chance, what would you do differently?

Over the years, we have also seen this type of essay appear on applications in other forms, including:

• What have you learned from a mistake?
• Discuss a time when you navigated a challenging experience in either a personal or professional relationship.
• Describe a failure that you have experienced.

You will earn top marks if you provide evidence that you handled a negative experience with emotional intelligence and treated adversaries and naysayers with empathy and understanding. If the negative experience is related to a relationship you had with another person, then showing you have an ability to compromise and diffuse conflict is important.

When reading your Setback essay, admissions officers will be interested to see if you can accept responsibility for missteps, rather than making excuses or pointing a finger at another party. The best Failure essays will convince your reader that not only were you able to recognize that you fell short, but also that you did something about it and grew in the process of overcoming the setback.

Next Up in the MBA Essay Writing Boot Camp Series

No matter which type of essay question you’re asked to answer in your MBA applications, your primary objective is to provide sufficient evidence that you possess the qualities that admissions committees value most. By doing so, you’ll move one step closer to an acceptance letter. In the next article in MBA Prep School’s MBA Essay Writing Boot Camp series, we will discuss the qualities admissions officers care about most – qualities that you will need to find a way to showcase in your MBA application essays.

Learn from Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, and the other top MBAs how they wrote essays that got them in!

Tyler Cormney   is the co-founder of  MBA Prep School , a full-service, boutique MBA admissions consulting firm that specializes in helping aspiring MBA candidates realize their dream of attending an elite business school. As a graduate of both Harvard Business School and USC’s Professional Writing Program, Tyler draws upon his unique blend of creative writing, strategic thinking, and coaching skills to help applicants stand out from the competition for a place in the most selective MBA programs, including Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton.

MORE FROM MBA PREP SCHOOL’S SERIES: Part 1: Career Progress And Goals Essays ,   Part 2: Why Our School And What Will You Contribute Essays

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August 8, 2022

Writing a Powerful Leadership/Achievement Essay [Sample Essay]

Essays that ask you to write about significant achievements fall under the category of

what are known as behavioral or experiential questions . The basic assumption behind these questions is that past behavior is a great predictor of future behavior . They are all varieties on the theme of “Tell us about a time when you…” These questions are meant to take the measure of your managerial potential.

Let’s look at how one candidate effectively addressed this essay question from  Stanford GSB  (*this question is not from the current application):

Tell us about a time when you made a lasting impact on your organization.

This writer avoids writing about leadership in any generic way and zeroes in on the specific aspects of his contributions and their impact:

Leadership essay example: The Change Agent

When I was invited to become the Vice President and General Manager at Third Way Associates (TWA)* two years ago, the company was in financial and administrative disorder. Employee retention was poor, and TWA took too long to pay vendors because of poor communication and accounting processes. Cash flow was managed based on immediate needs rather than by the logic of budgets planned by project and city. Sloppy expense reports that were turned in with no receipts were reimbursed to employees.

TWA founders Scott W ____ and Glenn L ____ had good intentions, but spent most of their time selling sponsorships and getting new clients rather than directing and managing the company. As we begin 20XX, TWA is much healthier in every way. Under my direction, vendors are paid in an average of 20 days from date of invoice, instead of 60 days or more. Our cash flow is better administered since I introduced very specific detailed area budgets with over 125 budget lines per city. Because I can give the company founders much better stability and macromanagement vision, the three of us are able to look more to the future rather than simply put out fires.

Despite the difficult economy in 20XX, we not only retained our same clients but also signed several new client agreements for three years or more, including a two-year contract with Big Shoe Company worth $1.3 million. I’ve brought fresh accounts and industries into TWA, including ____ Airlines and Drink Y, among others. Combined, these accounts generated more than $500,000 in 20XX, and we estimate close to $1 million dollars in the following year.

Since my arrival, we have a much wider and broader sales menu which has been crucial to generate more revenue. I’ve expanded our most popular sports events to 25 cities, giving our clients new investment opportunities. These events range from recreational soccer clinic tours to professional soccer games broadcast on TV.

I also expanded our field staff, and at present we have 25 strong and reliable managers who report directly to me from each city. Despite the economy, 20XX was not a bad year for TWA, and this year promises to be even better if we continue our current strategy and continue to work as a team.

Leadership essay analysis

In every paragraph, this writer mentions concrete measures he took to introduce order to a chaotic company that was trying to grow. From instituting budgets with line items, an improved accounts payable system, and recruiting additional big-name accounts, the writer proves how his efforts strengthened the organization.

How can you maximize on your thought leadership experiences?

As you choose among your own experiences as essay material, think about these questions to help you frame answers of substance:

• What was the obstacle, challenge, or problem that you solved in this accomplishment? A tight client deadline? A complex merger transaction? A new product launch amidst fierce competition?
• What did you do to rise to the challenge you are writing about? Motivate your team to work overtime? Sell senior management on the deal’s long-term upside? Identify a marketing profile for your product that no competitor can match?
• What facts demonstrate that your intervention created a happy ending? Did your team submit the project deliverables three days early despite being 20% understaffed? Your client approved the $500 million merger, the largest ever in its industry? Your new product has 20% market share after only one year? What was the impact of your leadership?

Don’t forget about your people leadership skills

What we’ve spoken about until this point revolves mostly on skilled problem-solving, or “thought leadership.” But respected businesspeople need to be equally or even more talented at something we didn’t have a formal name for: people leadership. By effectively leading the thinking of client firms’ problems as well as motivating them to work long hours to develop solutions to these problems and collaborate with clients on implementing them, these businesspeople prove to have what it takes to be exemplary leaders.

So don’t forget to include strong elements of people leadership in your essays. Here are several to keep in mind:

• Rallying others around a vision. Did you convince your team or group to follow a specific path/solution? How did you do it? Successful clients have talked about handling dissenting opinions diplomatically or presenting their teams’ detailed quantitative evidence for a recommendation. The more you can show that you understood your audience and tailored the content and form of your message to them, the better.
• Harnessing others’ strengths – and expanding them. Did you provide team members tasks they could handle comfortably based on their capabilities, as well as opportunities to broaden their skills? For example, you may have handed your quant jock teammate the most complicated operations analysis as well as responsibility for leading a key client meeting. In this way, you leverage teammates’ strengths while helping them develop new ones.
• Getting through tough times. Did you model for your team enviable cool in pressure-cooker situations, maybe helping them keep the big-picture goal in mind or lightening the mood with humor? Did you reward teammates with praise, pizza, or both for working long into the night? Did you pitch in on others’ responsibilities as deadlines loomed? Helping your team handle stress while managing your own is a cornerstone of strong leadership.

Use your words

Another tip: Look for opportunities to incorporate strong verbs that illustrate your strengths in these areas. Good examples of leadership might incorporate several of the following:

• Establishing a goal or vision
• Obtaining buy-in
• Taking responsibility

The old adage, “Show, don’t tell,” remains a classic bit of wisdom in the writing process. Make that a guiding principle not only in your leadership/achievement essays, but throughout your application.

For personalized advice tailored just for you, check out our MBA Admissions Consulting & Editing services and work one-on-one with a pro who will help you discover your competitive advantage and use it to get accepted.

Related Resources:

• School-Specific MBA Application Essay Tips • Tone Up Your Writing: Confidence vs Arrogance • “I’m Smart, Really I Am!” Proving Character Traits in Your Essays

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• 5 expert tips to write an impressive MBA essay
• MBA Application

Dee Leopold, former director of admissions at Harvard Business School, once said, “Applying to Harvard is not an essay writing contest.” What she wanted to advise was that candidates should start working on getting those rich experiences at work and beyond that could be used for writing impactful essays. Once they have a few stories to share they can begin introspecting to bring out suitable experiences to answer specific questions in the essay.

So, an “impressive essay” is one that is based on your unique experiences and manifests your true self in front of the MBA admissions committee.

If you’re looking to apply to a top business school, you should never forget this advice. To help you implement this advice in your essay, in this article, we’ll explain what MBA admissions committees look for in your essays and how to write an MBA essay that impresses the adcom.

Types of MBA essays

Importance of mba essays, what do mba admissions committees want to see in your essays, five tips to write an impressive mba essay, 10 mistakes to avoid in your mba essays, final thoughts.

First, let’s understand the types of MBA essays:

Following are eight common types of MBA essays, which likely cover about 80-90% of the essay archetypes:

• Goals essay
• Self-Reflection essay
• Contribution & Impact essay
• Leadership & Teamwork essay
• Video essay
• Optional essay
• Application form essay
• Creative essay

This is one essay you can expect to see on MBA applications to most schools. The goal of this essay is to find out why you want to go to business school and what you plan to do afterward. More often than not, schools also ask applicants to share their motivations for wanting to pursue an MBA at their school. There are many different ways to answer the question and different word limits.

For example, Wharton has a 500-word question about this, while Darden has a 200-word specific question about this. On the other hand, MIT Sloan does not ask you at all about your goals. 

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

Darden essay prompt – At this time how would you describe your short-term, post-MBA goal in terms of industry, function, geography, company size, and/or mission and how does it align with the long-term vision you have for your career? (200 words)

Self-Reflection

In a self-reflection essay, you can talk about the values and traits that make up who you are as a person. These essays also give you an opportunity to talk about how you dealt with a failure or how you would handle an ethical dilemma.

Stanford GSB ’s essay prompt is a perfect example. GSB requires applicants to talk about what matters most to them and why. Such questions require deep introspection in order for you to get to the core of your personality and influences.

Contribution & Impact Essay

The contribution essay in MBA applications is a great way for schools to assess what applicants might bring to the table. Some examples of such essays include:

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

Cornell Johnson – At Cornell, our students and alumni share a desire to positively impact the organizations and communities they serve. Taking into consideration your background, how do you intend to make a meaningful impact on an elite MBA community?

Leadership Essay

This MBA essay format allows you to tell an admissions committee about a time when you showed leadership or initiative, or some other favorable trait that they may use to judge your potential.

Here are a few samples of MBA essays:

Berkeley Haas – What kind of leader do you aspire to be and why?

Kellogg – Kellogg’s purpose is to educate, equip and inspire 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?

Video Essay

Video essays can help give the admissions committee a chance to learn more about an applicant’s personality and how they may perform in job interviews. It also gives the admissions committee a chance to judge the candidate’s nonverbal and verbal communication skills, which can also help them select / eliminate candidates without investing limited resources in offering full-fledged interviews. And they can also be used to test a candidate’s ability to thrive in stressful situations. In case you are wondering how, allow us to explain. In many cases, you have as little as 30-60 seconds to formulate your answer before you have to deliver your response on-the-spot or extempore. Yikes! And then, there could also be an unusual situation like the one we heard at a conference with school representatives where a cat basically jumped into the frame when this person was completing a video essay and the person gracefully lifted the cat up and got her out of the way, all while smiling and completing delivery of her response. Talk about a superstar, right?

Examples – Kellogg Video essays

• Video essay 1: Please introduce yourself to the admissions committee.
• Video essay 2: What path are you interested in pursuing, how will you get there, and why is this program right for you?
• Video essay 3: This question will be based on a challenge you’ve faced and what you’ve learned from it.

Optional Essay

Optional essays are meant to explain extenuating circumstances related to academic performance, gaps in work experience, etc. (most schools have this) or provide additional information which makes this type of essay totally open-ended.

Duke Fuqua – If you feel there are circumstances of which the admissions committee should be aware, please explain them here (e.g. unexplained gaps in work, choice of recommenders, inconsistent or questionable academic performance). Note that you should NOT upload additional essays or additional recommendations in this area. The Optional Information section is intended to provide the admissions committee with insight into your circumstances only.

London Business School – Is there any other information you believe the Admissions Committee should know about you and your application to London Business School?

Application Form Essay

These essays typically ask for supplemental information about you. 

For example, London Business School asks these details

• Tell us about your responsibilities. Describe your day-to-day role, details of any clients you work with/for, the level/title of the person you report to, the size of the budget for which you are directly responsible, and the number of people in your team. (400 words max)
• Tell us about your main interests and activities in your free time. (300 words max)

Having a solid GMAT or GRE score is the first step toward creating a competitive MBA application. However, the process is not over yet. As the number of people applying to business schools continues to rise, standing out based only on your GMAT score becomes increasingly difficult. You won’t be the only person who applies with strong test scores. So, what can you do to improve your chances of getting into your target business school? Write an impeccable essay.

MBA essays are a great way to demonstrate your strengths, vulnerabilities, motivations and explain any parts of your application that could raise eyebrows. A low GMAT score or GPA can be explained by a well-written essay, but a strong test score alone will never make up for a bad essay. That’s how important an essay is.

And what makes a great essay great? The one that shows the ‘true’ you because that is what MBA admissions committees expect.

Jennifer Hayes, Senior Associate Director at Kellogg says , “We are looking for the story YOU wish to tell. The best essays I’ve read have heart, are not over-edited, and let the applicant’s personality emerge.”

MBA admissions committees want to ‘know you better’ through your essays. They want to see a true reflection of yourself in your essay and this is exactly what the Stanford MBA admissions committee advises its applicants – “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.”

Chad Losee, HBS’s Managing Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid, said that the main purpose of the essay is for them to learn more about you. The choices you’ve made, what drives you, and any experiences that have shaped you. But you shouldn’t be afraid to show who you are in the process.

He specifies 5 things to keep in mind while writing an essay for Harvard Business School admissions:

• The essay should add new information. It shouldn’t be another version of your resume.
• It should be of the right length. HBS MBA essay has a word limit of 900 words, so you should conclude within the word limit.
• The essay should be about ‘you’ – Ask yourself could this essay also describe someone else.
• The adcom should know you better after reading your essay
• While rewriting/editing to polish your resume, don’t shine away your personality.

Now that you know what MBA admissions committees wish to see in your essays let’s take a look at how to write an essay that impresses them.

Be Authentic

Don’t write what you think the people on the admissions committee want to read. Your best selling points are the things and experiences that make you unique. Each essay should give a clear picture of who you are, what drives you, and what you’re passionate about.

In a similar way, don’t feel like you have to fit the “ideal” candidate’s profile. The admissions committee will see right through this, and you could end up hurting your chances of getting in more than helping. Instead, put all your energy into just being yourself.

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.

Carefully structure your essay

Blair Mannix, the admissions director at Wharton , shared in this video that all successful essays had the same structure: the setup, the pivot point, and the future.

The setup tells the admissions committee who you are, what you do, and what you’ve learned.

The pivot moment is when you switch from talking about what you know and do to what you want to learn and how it will help you achieve. Mannix calls this a “lightbulb moment,” when you realize you’d be better in your work with additional knowledge.

In the last portion of your essay, explain how obtaining knowledge and abilities/skills will improve your career and why that MBA program will make this achievable.

Answer the specific question asked

So many applicants submit well-written essays that fail to address the prompt. I strongly support thinking outside of the box and considering the “why” behind an essay topic. First and foremost, you must answer the question.

Business school applicants are generally extremely successful and over-achievers in their domains, and it might be tempting to try and cram your accomplishments into your essays. Don’t give in to this temptation; instead, zero in on the question at-hand.

Be Succinct

In our experience, several of the best full-time MBA programs are imposing tighter word limits on essays. In recent application cycles, many schools have lowered their required essay word counts, including Michigan Ross, Stanford GSB, UCLA Anderson, and Duke Fuqua. In fact, Harvard Business School, which previously did not have a word limit, has introduced a 900-word-limit on its single prompt in the year 2022-23. Moreover, schools are also mandating checks in their applicant portals where candidates are no longer able to exceed word limits either. Keeping these patterns in mind, it’s important to remember one important piece of guidance: keep it short and sweet.

Focus on giving a few essential highlights, peppering in some intriguing details, and letting your true voice come through in your writing rather than trying to inundate the reader with information. Explain your decisions, highlight your achievements, and talk about what you’re passionate about. It will be easier to accomplish this goal if you narrow the scope of your essays.

Write Business School specific essays

It might seem self-evident that the topic of your business school application essay should be the business school itself. However, this is an excellent chance to demonstrate your preparation and interest in the school in question.

Do you know what courses you would want to pursue? If you are accepted, have you decided which extracurricular activities you wish to participate in? How would you contribute to the school’s community?

Have answers to these questions ready. These will certainly show why you consider this particular business school an important place that will transform you personally and  professionally

You now know what to do to make your essay an impressive one. Next, you should know the things to avoid while writing your essays.

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

At Crack The MBA, we have helped hundreds of students get into top MBA programs around the world. We would be happy to help you too. Schedule a consultation with us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you get into your dream school.

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Top MBA programs look for candidates from all over the world who share their school’s values, want to grow personally and professionally, and can organize their thoughts and talk in a clear way. With so much competition from around the world, it’s even more important that your MBA admissions essays stand out.

Your admissions essays can’t have any mistakes if you want to get into a top business school. There are many different things you can tell the adcom, but there are also a few things you should never do.

Here are 10 mistakes you should avoid in MBA essays:

• Starting too late. Our rule of thumb is to expect to spend 11-12 weeks on applications to 4-5 business schools
• Not researching adequately. Not making an effort to understand the school and how it fits into your plans
• Recycling essays from one school to another
• Not answering the essay question and/or not addressing each part of the question. 
• Trying to copy sample essays
• Providing too many instances, at the risk of confusing the reader
• Not providing something new. Repetitive content 
• Lack of introspection
• Not proofreading.
• Lack of flow

Getting into a good business school can be hard if you don’t know how to write a great MBA admissions essay.

But the process is much easier to handle if you know where to start, make an outline for each essay, and get help from an expert. If you follow these steps, you’ll be able to write a great MBA essay!

Get in touch with us for expert help on your essays. As a result of our interactions with MBA admissions committee members at all top schools, we understand what the MBA admissions committee looks for in a candidate and can advise you appropriately.

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MBA Essay – How to Write, Expert Tips & Mistakes to Avoid

Admit expert.

• MBA Application Tips , MBA Essay Tips
• October 28, 2023

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, 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 an impeccable b-school 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?

At Admit Expert, we have helped hundreds of students get into top MBA programs around the world. We would be happy to help you too. Schedule a free call with us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you achieve your goals.

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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?

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. 

Book your free one on one consultaion today! 

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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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

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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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A Guide to the Columbia Business School Essays (2023-2024)

Coach Melanie E. walks you through each Columbia Business School essay prompt for the 2023-2024 cycle, breaking down what adcoms are looking for and offering expert advice on how to nail your responses.

By  Melanie E.

Posted January 9, 2024

Featuring John K. , Matt K. , and Alice S.

How to Get into a Top 10 MBA Program

Wednesday, april 10.

11:00 PM UTC · 60 minutes

As a CBS alumnus, Alumni Admissions Ambassador, and professional Coach, I am excited to share my insights into Columbia’s current essays for their MBA application.

Columbia Business School's MBA essays provide applicants with an ample opportunity to showcase their goals, experiences, and fit with the program. Here's a step-by-step guide to approaching each essay.

Short Answer Question

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

It is critical to be straightforward with this question, and be consistent with your essays. It is acceptable to write in phrases versus full sentences given the limited word count. In fact, the word count is limited as a way of forcing applicants to be extremely clear about their goals.

Examples of possible responses (provided by Columbia):

• Work in business development for a media company. (49 characters)
• Join a strategy consulting firm. (32 characters)
• Launch a data-management start-up. (34 characters)

A great example is specific and most likely includes both the function/title and industry or type of company you’re pursuing. For example:

• Poor execution: Work in CPG. (13 characters)
• Good execution: Work in marketing for a CPG company. (36 characters)
• Great execution: Marketing for a healthy-foods focused CPG firm. (47 characters)

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)

• Understand the Question: Begin by carefully reading the prompt and understanding what it asks for. This is a common mistake where applicants do not directly answer the question(s) being asked in the essay prompt.
• Be Specific: Clearly outline your short-term career goals, focusing on what you aim to achieve within the next three to five years. Discuss the industry, function, and potential companies or roles you aspire to work in.  It is helpful to provide specific role titles and an example company (such as “a media company like Disney”). If you are sponsored and planning to return to your current employer (such as a Consultant at McKinsey), share this information as well as the mid-term goal, which would be your first role after leaving your current employer.
• Explain Your Long-term Dream Job: Describe your ultimate long-term dream job. Discuss the impact you hope to make in that role and your mission. Showcasing impact while balancing your vision with realistic possibility is key. For example, sharing that you want to solve world hunger may be a bit outrageous, but saying that you want to build a new business model for achieving large impacts within world hunger is more reasonable.
• Link to Your Background: Connect your career goals with your past experiences (personal and professional), skills, networks, and/or achievements. Demonstrate how your path to date aligns with your future aspirations. If applicable, share your “light bulb” moment where you realized your long-term career vision.
• Share Your “Why”: An extension of the previous bullet, share your “why” or your motivations for your career aspirations. Bring this level of authenticity and personality to the essay in order to make it more engaging, believable, and unique from the crowd. This is a critical element that is often missed by applicants.
• Stay Within the Word Limit: With only 500 words, be concise and focus on the most critical points. I suggest not worrying about the word count for your first few drafts, and then edit down once you have all the relevant content ready to go.

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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 or more of these five skills, and tell us the actions you took and the outcome. (250 words)

• Consider PPIL: First, take some time to review the PPIL curriculum on the Columbia website.
• Choose a Relevant Situation: Select a specific situation from your professional or personal life that aligns with one or more of the inclusive leadership skills mentioned (Mitigating Bias and Prejudice, Managing Intercultural Dialogue, Addressing Systemic Inequity, Understanding Identity and Perspective Taking, and Creating an Inclusive Environment). The situation should be somewhat recent, and if possible, within the last ~2 years.
• Set the Scene: Provide context for the situation. Describe the environment, the people involved, and the challenges you faced. Based upon the limited word count, you may need to leave out some details of the story.
• Describe Your Actions: Detailing the steps you took to address the situation should take up the majority of your essay. Clearly identify which inclusive leadership skills were utilized via each action. I recommend choosing only one or two skills to focus upon due to the limited word count. It is better to go into more specifics and detail on fewer skills. Lastly, highlight any innovative or creative approaches you used, and share both soft and/or hard skills as is relevant to your story.
• Share the Outcome: Explain the results of your actions. Emphasize any positive impact on individuals, teams, or the overall situation. Small impact is acceptable as long as it is clear, and the applicant was the one who created it.
• Reflect on Your Experience: Discuss briefly what you learned from this experience, and perhaps how it has shaped your perspective on inclusivity or leadership.

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, an extremely active co-curricular and student life environment, 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? Please be specific. (250 words)

• Overall: This is an excellent opportunity to focus on explaining why CBS is a great fit for you. If they are your #1 choice, don’t hesitate to share that in this essay.
• Conduct Detailed Research: Before writing, thoroughly research Columbia Business School's MBA program. Understand the curriculum, professors, clubs, conferences, events, and unique aspects of the school. You may also utilize virtual and in-person events specifically catering to applicants to gain knowledge. Lastly, you may decide to contact current students for further information, and are welcome to mention them (with their permission) in your essays. You can locate the names of current students through your network, LinkedIn, and/or school club websites.
• Structure: The simplest and most effective way to structure your essay is by separate paragraphs for academic fit, cultural fit, and professional fit. This directly and clearly addresses each part of the essay question.
• Unique Aspects: Focus upon aspects of CBS that certainly relate to your profile and career aspirations, but that also are unique to CBS. For example, Columbia is highly aware that they are the only M7 MBA program to be located in fabulous New York City, and thus this is a unique point that can be addressed and utilized in this essay.
• Academic Fit: Explain how the specific courses, concentrations, programs, and/or professors will support your academic interests and career trajectory. Look for special classes that may not exist at all top MBA programs and that align to the skills gaps you are seeking to fill to reach your long-term career goals.
• Cultural Fit: Discuss the aspects of CBS's community and culture that resonate with you. Additionally, consider the personal aspects of the school and/or location. Do you have family or friends in the NYC area that would be a supportive community? Do you enjoy the cultural aspects of New York, such as visiting museums in order to relax after a busy school day? Lastly, consider including thoughts on your potential contributions to the school's collaborative environment, such as a leadership position you would like to hold or a club you would like to found. If you’re stumped on this part, consider talking to current students and mention learnings from these conversations (with their permission) in your essay.
• Professional Fit: Showcase how CBS's strong network, career services, employment data, and/or Executives-in-Residence program will aid in achieving your career goals. An often overlooked option is the fact that CBS’ location enables easy networking across almost any industry in NYC, with a robust local alumni population. The location also allows for in-semester internships, which may be relevant for some candidates.
• Be Genuine: Be authentic in your response and avoid generic statements. Don’t be afraid to show your personality, interests, and excitement.

Optional Essay

If you wish to provide further information or additional context around your application to the Admissions Committee, please upload a brief explanation of any areas of concern in your academic record or personal history. This does not need to be a formal essay. You may submit bullet points. (Maximum 500 Words)

• Don’t Write It: Consider if you need to write anything for this essay. In general, admissions committees do not want to receive superfluous materials that are not directly addressing new information that is of significance to the application. Therefore, this essay should only be used to explain any specific situations that are not otherwise addressed in the application. For example, this could be utilized to explain a poor GPA in your undergraduate career due to acute illness.
• Keep It Short: As the guidance from CBS notes, you are welcome to write in bullet form. This means that the essay or bullets should be as short and direct as possible.

General Tips for All Essays

• Showcase Your Unique Story: Use the essays to showcase what makes you unique and differentiates you from other applicants. This is your one opportunity to stand out in your application. Admissions committees value genuine stories.
• Edit and Revise: Plan on having multiple rounds of essay drafts, and take your time to iterate over many weeks. Proofread your essays multiple times to avoid grammatical errors and ensure clarity.
• Seek Feedback: Share your essays with trusted friends, family, or mentors for feedback and suggestions who understand the MBA process. It is best to utilize someone who has attended business school or who is a professional coach.
• Stay on Topic: Focus on answering all the specific questions asked in each essay without straying off-topic.
• Adhere to Word Limits: Respect the word limits for each essay, as exceeding them may reflect a lack of attention to detail.

Final Words

By following this guide and putting effort into crafting engaging, personal, and well-structured essays, you increase your chances of impressing the admissions committee at Columbia Business School and standing out from the crowd.

Good luck with your application!

About the Author

Melanie is an Executive Coach & Admissions Coach with 16 years of experience across strategy, operations, and coaching. A former McKinsey consultant, she is a member of the Forbes Council and has been featured on NBC, ABC, CBS, Business Insider, TEDx, and more. Melanie has worked with prominent corporate clients including Google, KKR, IBM, and Morgan Stanley; as well as individuals such as business leaders, influencers, and Olympic athletes.

Melanie holds an MBA from Columbia University and a BS from Cornell University. She currently lives in Los Angeles (while remaining a New Yorker at heart), and enjoys creative pursuits in her free time.

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How to Write the Leadership Essay in MBA Applications

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Leadership is one of the most respected virtues in the world of business. Hence, when asked, the leadership essay becomes crucial. Watch this short video carefully to gain a perspective for writing an impactful leadership essay for the purpose of MBA Applications. The guidelines put forth in this video will enable you to consolidate your thoughts in a structured manner and produce a well-written MBA Applications essay.

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