UPDATE: This article was originally posted on June 6, 2019. It has been updated with new information and tips below. 

When writing your MBA admissions essay, you want to shine. World-class programs are looking for leaders, visionaries, and reliable sources of future impact, and it is imperative that you show the admissions board that you are one of these candidates. 

You may think this means that you need to show them a straightforward history of success, a spotless professional record, and a flawless transcript. After all, top MBA programs are looking for perfect candidates, right?

Of course not. 

If your record is devoid of weaknesses, failures, or misadventures, it probably lacks authenticity. Nobody is perfect.

In fact, if your past reads as completely flawless, they may feel like you have not thoroughly reflected on your profile or their application questions. 

For MBA candidates, this has a twofold advantage: not only that you should not avoid talking about failures and weaknesses in your MBA essay, but that these stories can actually play to your advantage.

 

The disadvantage of perfection

If you try to make a case to the admissions committee that claims you have a flawless record, this is unlikely to be successful. In other words, to allege perfection is likely to get your application set aside.

This is because the adcom is looking for a pattern of success based on abilities of self-reflection, open-mindedness, and capacity for improvement. If you do not show that you recognize the fact that there is always more to learn, why should they let you into their school? 

After all, a school – including top programs like Harvard, MIT, or Yale – are institutions of learning. All schools implicitly value growth, improving on one’s weaknesses, and intellectual appetite in their candidates. 

Berkeley Haas, for example, emphasizes four defining leadership principles. Among other qualities, they define being a “student always” as a fundamental element of leadership:

“We are a community designed for curiosity and lifelong pursuit of personal and intellectual growth. This is not a place for those who feel they have learned all they need to learn.”

The Berkeley admissions committee explicitly states that they are not looking for candidates who already have all the knowledge in the textbook but rather for students who can recognize the need to learn from their weaknesses. 

If you claim that you are perfect, you indicate that there is nothing left to learn. This is definitely not the impression you want to give the adcom. 

 

Demonstrating a growth mindset

Top MBA programs are looking for students with what is called a growth mindset. This term was coined by Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. 

Dweck explains the “growth mindset” in comparison to its counterpart, a “fixed mindset”: 

“In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.”

According to this article by the New York Times, a growth mindset helps promote innovation. That being said, it is no surprise that elite MBA programs explicitly look for evidence of this in their applicants. 

MIT, for example, specifically looks for candidates who desire “growth in both professional and personal endeavors.” One of Kellogg’s essay questions even begins with “An MBA is a catalyst for personal and professional growth,” as they directly draw upon the growth-minded principle when selecting candidates.

Some schools are even explicitly looking for a growth mindset by asking you to reflect on your weaknesses or discuss a failure. Take INSEAD, for example, whose motivational essay questions request you do both:

 “Give a candid description of yourself (who you are as a person), stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors that have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary.” (approximately 500 words)

“Describe the achievement of which you are most proud and explain why. In addition, describe a situation where you failed. How did these experiences impact your relationships with others? Comment on what you learned. (approximately 400 words)”

INSEAD knows that you must reflect on failure to continue growing, and outright demands this skill from their candidates. 

Remember, you are not trying to tell the adcom that you are perfect. Instead, you are trying to tell them how you use imperfection to your advantage to lead you to success.

Of course, talking about weaknesses and failures in an effective way can be tricky. If you are looking for help to determine if your essays are structured in a way that stands out to the adcom, don’t hesitate to check out our MBA Resource Center! 

There, you can find dozens of past successful essays and detailed brainstorming worksheets to help you plan out a winning essay. Our library also includes guides for all top global MBA programs, interview tips and mocks, CV templates, and recommendation letter guides. Click to join!

Using failure to your advantage

The admissions committee for your top MBA program is looking for future leaders who have experience making difficult, real-life decisions. 

People with experience are people who have made mistakes. This doesn’t mean that the adcom is looking for people who are failures. Instead, it means that they seek candidates who have learned from their mistakes and failures. 

This is great for MBA admissions essays. This means you can talk about a negative event in a positive light when you show the adcom what you learned from the experience. 

For example, in her INSEAD essay, our client Vanessa described a story about a professional failure like this: 

“My performance in this project would be the main factor in determining a full-time offer as an associate, so I decided to impress the project leader and do every task by myself. In doing so, I encountered difficulties that I could not solve alone – yet, I refused to ask for help, missing a deadline. By the time I did ask the project leader for help, I had not finished the task. This mistake was crucial. I learned that I have to ask for help when I encounter difficulties I cannot solve, especially when timing is vital. Luckily, learning from my initial mistake did not damage my relationship with the Project Leader; I had enough time to change this bad impression and received a full-time offer. However, this failure could have cost me a huge career opportunity.”

Vanessa uses this mistake to clearly show how she grew out of this situation. She thus successfully demonstrated a growth mindset by explaining how she learned firsthand about the importance of asking for help.

By demonstrating that you learn from your mistakes, see the need to improve on your weaknesses, and know that you still have a lot to learn, you can show the admissions board that you are the type of reflected leader that belongs at their school. 

 

What kinds of failures and weaknesses can be used in MBA essays?

Everyone has failed at one time or another. The range of experiences you could talk about in this regard is wide and varied. 

Failures may be reflected by a failed business venture, a missed target for a client, or a class you failed in college. All of these are professional experiences from which one can learn straightforward lessons that contribute to your growth as a professional. 

Take a look at this example from our client Guilherme. In his answer to Yale’s question “Describe the biggest commitment you’ve ever made” (500 words), Guilherme describes his experience of starting his own business, only to realize that the best decision was to shut down the company: 

“Making the decision was not easy. I could have taken everything we had developed and pursued my entrepreneurial dream. However, that was not the kind of leader I wanted to be – someone who puts his selfish ambitions before the needs of his team. Doing what felt fair to all involved was more important, whatever the cost.

Today, I am happy about my decision. I lost the business, but I gained the trust and confidence of my team. I saw entrepreneurship from another perspective and truly considered the difficult decisions business leaders face.”

Guilherme’s “biggest commitment” was not the venture itself but the decision as a leader to shut it down for the well-being of his team. Although he describes a professional failure, he also describes the success he won from it: how he grew as a leader.

However, these are not the only kind of failures that you could write about in your MBA essay. Some misadventures may be more subtle. You may have experienced letting down a colleague by not dedicating time to giving them the extra help they asked for. You may want to explain a failed presentation at work that made you look bad in front of your boss or team.

However, the repertoire of failures and weaknesses is even broader. Personal failures are just as valid as professional ones – especially because our experts at Ellin Lolis Consulting find that it is important to have a good mix of personal and professional stories in your MBA essays.

Personal weaknesses may range from disappointing a good friend to a tendency for tardiness. They could include not fulfilling someone else’s expectations, deciding not to take over the family business, or the fact that you have trouble negotiating compromise. 

Last year, our client Conrad wrote about a personal failure while leading his sailing team in a regional competition. 

In his answer, Conrad explains that his team consisted of him and his five teammates, all expert sailors. However, an inability to work together, despite careful planning, led them to lose their first race of the regatta:

“I learned that to have a successful team, it is not sufficient to focus only on high-performing individuals. Instead, it is necessary to create a unified mentality that moved us toward the same goal. If given a second chance, I would begin our planning by emphasizing how we were all skilled sailors but that we needed to form a united team. Some of us might disagree with aspects of the strategy, but we must derive a single plan and stick to it, knowing that focusing our efforts is the best overall option.”

Here, Conrad learned an important lesson about leadership, an important quality in MBA candidates, and a good choice of topic for your MBA admissions essay. As you can see, strong professional lessons can also be derived from personal stories.

In fact, failures and weaknesses can also include much larger personal challenges. You may even find that themes like discussing dealing with addiction, coming to terms with your identity, or overcoming loss are powerful – and authentic – solutions for answering an essay question. This may be another way to creatively elaborate a change in industry or direction in your professional past. 

Which failures and weaknesses you want to discuss in your MBA essay are completely up to you. They will depend on your personal history and your ability to reflect on the not-always-so-shiny moments of your past. However, when you begin to investigate, you may find there is more to mention here than you originally imagined.

 

Using stories to effectively discuss failures and weaknesses in your MBA essay

The best way to talk about failures and weaknesses – and, more importantly, the lessons you learned from these experiences – in your MBA admissions essay is by utilizing stories. 

Our editors at Ellin Lolis Consulting believe that using stories in your MBA admissions essay is an effective tactic for persuading the adcom that you deserve a spot in their program. By using storytelling, incorporating psychological storytelling concepts, and choosing your stories wisely, you can make your essays stand out and increase your chances of being admitted to your number one MBA program.

 

How to use stories to discuss failures and weaknesses

When using storytelling to discuss failures and weaknesses in your MBA essay, there are a few essentials to include. 

To effectively discuss a failure, the following elements must be clear: 

1) The problem: Why did the failure happen in the first place? Why did you act as you did in that situation from your perspective?

2) How you recognized the problem: How did you notice it was a problem? What further consequences did this problem have? 

3) How you overcame the problem: What did you do to solve this problem? What do you wish you would have done differently?

4) The lesson you learned from the experience: What was your takeaway from this story? How would you apply this lesson in the future?

It is important to include all of these elements to tell an effective story about failure or weakness. For example, take a look at how our client Andrey concisely discussed a weakness in his Ross essay last year. 

“I was humbled when I failed to implement a product’s preparation process at a retail store during a consulting project, leading to sales loss risks – besides client dissatisfaction. Later, the store’s manager eliminated parts of the process, completely redesigning it. His idea initially seemed like unfounded nonsense, as necessary data wasn’t being collected. However, the manager insisted on its success, so I tested his idea in two other stores: it was indeed agiler while maintaining effectiveness. I learned that listening to others is essential, even when our opinions diverge. The manager’s idea was subsequently shared with 300+ stores.”

Andrey does an excellent job of including all of these elements:

1) The problem: Andrey designed an ineffective process and, more importantly, did not listen to an alternative suggestion from his subordinate.

2) How he recognized the problem: The subordinate presented evidence of the effectiveness of the new solution. 

3) How he overcame the problem: Andrey decided to test the idea in other stores, which led to success.

4) The lesson he learned from the experience: Andrey learned firsthand that listening to others is important, even if he has a different opinion on the matter.

As you can see, all of these elements must be present to tell an effective and compelling story about failure. If one or more of these is unclear or missing altogether, you will not be able to make an effective case.

 

We Make Your Story Shine

One of the most common mistakes we see in MBA essays is that candidates fail to tell compelling stories. This is important because if your stories are not compelling, they will not be persuasive. At the same time, they must be backed by strong examples that establish a track record of success and prove to the admissions committees why you belong at their school. 

Striking this balance between content and creativity can be tough, however, as succeeding means not only choosing the right stories but ensuring they are told in an optimal manner. 

This is why our iterative developmental feedback process here at Ellin Lolis Consulting helps you mold your message through the application of our storytelling expertise until it reflects exactly what makes your profile stand out and show fit with your target program. 

 Not only can you take advantage of our iterative feedback process through multiple edits – you can also benefit from it after a single review! If your budget is tight, our editors will be happy to help polish your text as much as possible and leave “bonus comments” so you can keep working on it on your own!

No matter how long we work with you, we will always ensure your essays shine. Sign up to work with our team of storytelling experts and get accepted.