UPDATE: This article was originally posted on August 31, 2020. It has been updated with 2024/2025 information and tips below. 

Composing your MBA admissions essays can be tricky. This is your chance to really stand out and wow! the admissions committee. After all, you can assume that every candidate who applies to a top MBA program has a great GMAT score and a proven track record of success. For applicants, this means you need to think about your essays as the chance to tell the adcom why they should choose you over everyone else. 

We believe that one of the best ways to make your essays rise above the competition is by utilizing a tactic we like to call theme. Winning applicants utilize a theme to help strengthen their message, make their argument clearer and more cohesive, and emphasize what makes them one-of-a-kind.

But, first things first: what is a theme and how does it apply to MBA essays?

 

What is a theme?

A theme is the central idea that ties your MBA essay together. It ensures coherence and makes your essay memorable. Think of it as the main message you want the admissions committee to remember about you.

Why is a Theme Important?

A good theme helps you weave multiple stories into a cohesive narrative, rather than presenting disjointed anecdotes. It can reflect your values, passions, or personal characteristics, making your essay more compelling.

Examples of Effective Themes

Themes can be diverse and unique. For example:

• Problem-Solving: One applicant used solving a Rubik’s cube to showcase their analytical skills.
• Determination: Another highlighted their dedication through the theme of ballet.
• Cultural Heritage: Some applicants focus on their cultural background, learning from failures, or overcoming family hardships.

Choosing the Right Theme

Your theme should directly answer the essay question. Open-ended essays allow more freedom in choosing a theme, while more specific prompts may require straightforward responses. For example:

• Goals essays might use themes like career aspirations (e.g., becoming an eco-minded professional).
• Values-based essays could explore themes like community involvement.

When to Avoid a Theme

Not all essays require a theme. If the prompt asks for factual information or has a strict word limit, such as INSEAD’s job essays or LBS’ short-answer questions, focus on providing clear and direct answers.

That all sounds great in theory, but how can you actually create an effective theme yourself? Don’t worry – we’ve got you covered! Here are just a few ways your MBA consultant can help you navigate those twists and turns to establish your theme.

 

Way #1: MBA consultants can help you examine your values and those of your target school

There are multiple strategies for determining the ideal theme for your MBA admissions essay. One winning tactic is to examine your values alongside those of your target school. 

Examining your values

Business schools like to assess candidates’ values. They use these to determine if you are a good fit for their school, to understand your personal motivations, and to see who can truly and genuinely justify their career path and goals.

Values in MBA essays can be clearly established through your stories and, most importantly, your theme. 

But what are values in the MBA context? 

Values represent the core pillars of your personality, life philosophy, and/or career objectives. They dictate your behavior, establishing certain principles and standards of conduct, attitude, and performance. They also show what you believe in, and how this dictates your future.

When choosing the value(s) you will write about, it is essential that you choose a value you truly believe in – faking it to sound good will be immediately obvious to any admissions board.

But good news — there is no cap to the kinds of values successful MBA candidates choose. These can range from internal values like hard work or bravery to external values, such as an inclusive workplace or caring for the planet. The possibilities here are nearly endless: for example, one candidate we worked with last year established promoting technology as his central value within his fintech career, while another determined that her key value – and her theme – was perseverance after describing the effects of her mother’s death on her life philosophy.

We know that identifying your values – let alone your theme – can be difficult. However, our expert MBA consultants at Ellin Lolis Consulting have extensive experience helping clients identify a theme based on their values – and are ready to help you narrow down your values, too!

Here are just a few of the ways your consultant can help you identify what values fit best with your profile:

1. Helping you brainstorm core aspects of your personality based on your past experiences.
2. Taking a look at your strengths and weaknesses – remember, even stories about failures and weaknesses can make great MBA essay topics!
3. Discussing major accomplishments, challenges, and choices in life to see what drove those decisions.
4. Examining both your personal and professional stories to understand your motivations for action.
5. Helping you define your passions in a way that connects actions you’ve taken in your personal, academic, and professional life.
6. Brainstorming the moments when you felt most fulfilled or engaged.

By taking an in-depth look at your past experiences, your consultant can help you dig into some of the really fundamental issues that make you you. In what moments in your life did you feel most engaged? Have you overcome any challenges that marked your identity? What events have really touched you or made you think differently about your life or career? 

Questions like these can help you get to the heart of the ideas that resonate with you most and will help you discuss the motivations and influences that are behind your own desired future impact.

If you want to prepare a few ideas before meeting with your MBA consultant, family members and close friends can be an excellent resource to help you zero in on the best topics. Ask them what are the most defining aspects of your personality and to provide some examples of when they have observed this.

By diving deep into your values, you or your consultant may be able to suggest a theme that clearly connects the experiences you discuss in your essay. This is a great way of communicating authentically and making your entire application stand out!

However, it is often not enough to examine your own values to determine your theme. You must also ponder if the values you have determined fit to you also fit your target school, too.

Examining the values of your target school

A good theme also relates back to the school you’re applying to and its values. The school’s values will give you an idea of who the school is looking for, and you should always take these into account when choosing your theme. Each school will have different, individual values that its adcom wants to see reflected in applicants’ essays. 

Now, depending on the schools you are applying to, you will have to decide which of your top values and characteristics relate best to the school’s ideals and opportunities. Therefore, you will first have to do some research for each school to determine what they are looking for. 

For example, if you are applying to Kellogg, where community service is a core value, it would be advised for you to focus on themes like “giving back.” If you are also applying to INSEAD, where diversity and globalism are key, it might make more sense to switch your focus a bit to focus on “inclusivity.” 

The school’s values may be implicit or explicit – you may need to take a long look at their website, visit their campus, ponder their motto, or study their application materials to figure out what they are. 

Take Stanford Graduate School of Business, for instance. Their values include the following:

Global awareness, community-oriented, integrity, collaborative team leadership, passion, intellectual vitality, etc.

The theme of your Stanford essay should not, therefore, simply be “integrity” or “global awareness”. Instead, give the value a personal touch that says something about you: for example, you could go with “honesty above everything” or “the importance of an international team”. If you’ve chosen your theme well, it may even overlap with multiple values of your target school. 

Additionally, some schools feature questions that specifically ask the candidate to discuss one or multiple values. 

Take the following prompts, for example:

• Stanford’s Essay A: What matters most to you, and why?
• Kellogg’s Essay 2: What values are important to you and how have they influenced you?
• INSEAD’s Essay 1: Give a candid description of yourself.

Unlike other prompts, where choosing a value as your theme is optional, these kinds of questions require candidates to discuss their values. You must put your values at the forefront of discussion when answering these questions.

Our MBA consultants are extremely familiar with each school and their values, as well as which tactics work best with which school. We are more than happy to discuss which of your core values align best with your favorite MBA program.

Looking for example essays to help you start writing? 

Our MBA Resource Center has dozens of successful sample essays, in addition to all types of essays from countless schools, brainstorm guides, resume templates, interview mocks and answer models, and much more. Find out more about your one-stop shop for MBA application success here.

Way #2: MBA consultants can help you see what unites your stories

As discussed above, all the stories in your essay function as arguments to support your theme. You can use your experiences to back up what you say and prove your theme to your reader using evidence from your past. 

This can be one winning tactic to establish your theme: take a look at your stories to determine what unites them. 

For example, you may have already decided that you would like to discuss the following stories in your essay:

• How you took the initiative in high school to begin your school newspaper 
• How you led your disadvantaged university rugby team to a regional championship 
• A project at BCG where you had to resolve multiple disputes between team members to accomplish your goal. 

When brainstorming your MBA application essay, it’s crucial to identify a theme that ties together your stories and experiences. Together with your MBA consultant, you can review your stories to find common threads or bigger ideas that resonate with you. For example, a theme like communicative leadership might stand out based on your experiences.

It’s helpful to brainstorm a few potential themes and see which one feels the most natural and fits well with your overall narrative and personal brand. Furthermore, consider what impression you want to leave on your dream school. Once you identify a theme, ensure all your stories align with it. For instance, if your theme is community, avoid using a story that doesn’t relate to this concept, even if it’s impressive.

A common issue we see with clients is that when a chosen theme doesn’t align with the stories in the essay. Your theme and stories must fit together to create a compelling argument. If they don’t match, you won’t be able to present a cohesive narrative. Remember, your theme should be supported by real experiences from your past; you cannot fabricate stories to fit your theme.

The key to a successful essay is ensuring that your theme is reflected in your stories, creating a cohesive and compelling argument for your application.

 

Way #3: MBA consultants can help you find a theme that is unique to you 

Even if you have now made a list of possible themes, how do you know they really fit you? After all, we have already established that your MBA essays serve to show the adcom why you stand out among all the other qualified candidates.

So, how do you ensure that your theme is unique and will help you stand out? With so many candidates applying each year, hasn’t the adcom seen it all already?

Well, yes and no. There is no way you will be able to come up with a theme that they have absolutely never heard of before. In fact, trying too hard to find something no one has ever seen before can backfire and become confusing or too niche. However, you can tailor common themes to your individual profile.

For example, it might well be true that What Matters Most to You might be making an impact. However, this is one of those themes that tends to get overused – if you don’t want to make an impact of some kind, you probably don’t belong in an elite MBA program in the first place. 

This is a good start, but we usually work with our clients to hone into more general ideas that are a bit more specific to them, their experiences, and their goals. Here are some of the ways we suggest to do so:

Put a specific spin on it

Instead of choosing a monotonous theme like making an impact, put a unique spin on it that really makes that value individual to you and fits your personal brand. You can do this by adding details that are specific to the type of impact you want to make. 

For example, you could talk about making an impact in the agriculture sector by advocating for more automation via robotics. Alternatively, you could land on the theme impacting your community through diversity.

Since no one else will have the same motivations and vision for making that kind of specific impact, you can thus make your theme much more unique to you.

Similarly, this tactic works well with essays that seem to have a ‘required’ theme, giving candidates the general direction for discussion upfront. Take Kellogg’s first essay question, for example:

Kellogg’s purpose is to educate, equip and inspire brave leaders who create lasting value. Provide a recent example where you have demonstrated leadership and created value. What challenges did you face and what did you learn? (450 words)

In this example, Kellogg clearly requires candidates to talk about a leadership experience. So, does that mean your theme has to be leadership? Well, sort of.

Indeed, to answer Kellogg’s question, you must talk about leadership. However, to make your essay more compelling, you can take it one step further. Instead of simply talking about leadership, you can discuss a specific kind of leadership or a characteristic of leadership based on the story you choose to tell in your response. 

For example, a recent candidate demonstrated that she valued speaking up in the face of dissent as a valuable aspect of quality leadership. Another client decided to discuss why aligning expectations was a necessary leadership characteristic.

With a unique spin on traditional themes, you can make your profile stand out and show the adcom what really makes you tick. 

Add some emotion

One way to make your theme unique is by adding authentic emotion to your experiences. This approach not only livens up your writing but also helps your story resonate with the admissions board. It’s crucial to show your motivations and passions beyond just recounting events. Think of a good story; it doesn’t just list what happened. It shows why things happened and the emotions behind them. Admissions committees already have your CV, so your essay should go deeper, explaining why you made certain decisions and the value behind them.

MBA admissions essays offer a chance to showcase the motivations behind your difficult decisions and challenges. Without this emotional context, your essay will struggle to make an impact. A compelling story sparks empathy in the reader using relatable emotions. Even if your essay is clear and follows the STAR format, it won’t connect without expressing genuine emotion.

By adding emotion and underlying motivations, you can clearly articulate how your theme makes you unique. This way, even if you choose a common theme, it will stand out as uniquely yours.

 

Struggling to Make Your MBA Application Stand Out?

The MBA application process can be overwhelming. Between deciding your profile strategy, writing multiple essays, tailoring your resume, and preparing for interviews, it’s easy to feel like your application isn’t capturing the true strength of your profile. The reality is that many applications fail to stand out, and the competition is fiercer than ever. Without the right guidance, you could miss out on your dream school.

But you don’t have to do this alone. With a 98.9% success rate, our expert MBA consultants know exactly how to make your application shine. From crafting compelling stories that showcase your unique experiences to helping you fine-tune every detail, we provide personalized, 1:1 support at every step of the process that ensures you get into your top choice schools.