5 Different MBA Admissions Essay Questions and How to Answer Them
MBA essay type 1: Career history and future; why an MBA?
Example: An MBA helps you grow on a personal and professional basis. How have you grown in the past? How are you planning on growing at Kellogg? Words to remember: Past, present, future, career, goal, progress, plan, hope, choices, ambition, decision, position, aim, purpose, life, short term, long term. Response: This response should be based on whether the question is phrased in terms of past: "What made you want an MBA?" or future: "What do you plan on doing in the future after graduating? How will an MBA help you?" Please remember that there may be five elements of the question and three time frames: About the past – What has happened to you to make you come to this and this goal? The present – So why do you require an MBA now and at this point in your career? The future – What do you want to achieve with your degree in the short and long term? Why do you need an MBA at all? (Why not take another type of master's, or even a PhD?) Why do you need an MBA from this school, and not others?
MBA essay type 2: Weaknesses and failure
Example: What did you learn from your greatest failure? (Judge-Cambridge)
Key words: Failure, weakness, learning, unsuccessful, fall short, fault, limitation, criticism, shortcoming, adversity, feedback, go wrong, mistake, weak spot.
To succeed with this question, realize that this type of MBA essay is not actually about demonstrating that you have weaknesses or failed. Everyone has weaknesses and failed. What is important is how you responded, what you learned about yourself, and how you grew as a result. What it is that they are most interested in is whether or not you have the ability to admit and accept responsibility for your mistakes, and whether you can discuss them in a mature fashion.
The MBA admissions committee would like to know whether you attempt to understand your own faults, can discuss them openly, and attempt to improve yourself, or whether you will deny them and/or blame others – evidence of immaturity and lack of preparation for management. The committee (and your future bosses, partners, and employees) will typically forgive your mistakes if you will accept responsibility for them and if you are quick to learn from them.
MBA essay type 3: Leadership
Example: Describe your most significant leadership experience and what was your role. How will the experience contribute to learning at Tuck? (Tuck-Dartmouth)
Key words: Lead, motivate, take charge, affect, guide, direct, responsibility, decision, inspire, encourage, power, influence, run, organize, mentor, motivate.
Leadership (and teamwork) is going to be a significant theme in every application you submit. MBA admissions committees pose this question so that they can assess whether you have what it takes for leadership and, more crucially, how you perceive and approach working with others. Part of possessing what it takes is to know what that is. Having merely held a leadership role does not necessarily mean that you did a great job at it. You must demonstrate to them that you have some sense of good leadership.
You must also demonstrate to them that you have some sense of your own personal leadership style – how you influence, motivate, discipline, and inspire others to perform, etc. - and what drives your style. In any leadership conversation, you should have a sense of respect for the challenges that come with it. If you believe that leadership is a cakewalk, you have never actually led.
MBA essay type 4: Uniqueness and diversity
Example: With your work experience and background, what unique values can you contribute to enrich the learning experience at HKUST MBA? (HKUST)
Key words: Contribute, diversity, experience, knowledge, range, skill, improve, talent, expertise, affect, ability, background, unique qualities, variety, enhance, develop, special.
Here, the admissions committee is looking for what in your background, ability, experience or training distinguishes you and will be of special value to your class and the program as a whole. While other essays are intended to determine if you are the appropriate fit for the MBA mold, the test here is if you can stand out from the pack.
Put another way; in other essays and sections of the application, applicants give reasons for an MBA admissions committee not to say no – playing it safe, fitting into boxes that need to be filled. But by doing so, they are not giving the committee a good, positive reason to say yes. In this kind of MBA essay, they are seeking a reason to say 'yes'.
MBA essay type 5: Ethics and values
Example: Describe the situation involving the highest ethical complexity that you have encountered in your professional or academic career, and how your contribution contributed to its resolution. (IE)
Recognition keywords: Ethics, values, principles, standards, ideals, code of conduct, beliefs, philosophy, personal guidelines, integrity, dilemma, decision, challenge.
Values are in. In the aftermath of Enron, the credit crunch, the Panama Papers and the never-ending litany of serious public trust breaches by business leaders, business ethics are in the spotlight. Business schools have been universally condemned for creating morally questionable, self-enriching managers. MBA admissions teams are under pressure to bring on board a better kind of person.
The game with the ethics-focused MBA essay is that we all know what good values are and we all profess to possess them. And yet there are still instances of scheming scoundrels. So, crafting a good essay in which you shake your head and tut-tut over business and personal depravity, bid-rigging, claims-cheating, document falsifications, payoffs, etc., and reassure the reader of your unstinting dedication to fair play, good governance, and honest dealing is, please understand, utterly useless to your admissions prospects. Cheap talk.
But, you will impress if you can show some regard for your own, personal set of values and offer hard evidence of your commitment to values in the face of temptation and self-interest.