UPDATE: This article was originally posted on August 23, 2021. It has been updated with new information and tips below.
If you’re just starting to think about applying for an MBA, you may be feeling overwhelmed by just how complex the process is. There are so many things that go into a successful MBA application, which is why we have created this series to walk you through all of the crucial steps of your MBA journey.
Today, we’re zooming in on how to craft outstanding MBA admissions essays, as essays that are memorable and highlight the excellence of your profile make all the difference when it comes to getting accepted into your top-choice MBA program. Here are our top 6 tips!
If you missed our previous posts in this series, no worries! You can catch up by clicking the links below:
MBA Application Fundamentals – Part 1: Creating your Test Strategy
MBA Application Fundamentals – Part 2: Choosing your Schools
MBA Application Fundamentals – Part 3: Defining your Profile
MBA Application Fundamentals – Part 4: Securing Letters of Recommendation
Use your personal brand
One of the most important things to take advantage of as you write each of your essays is a personal brand that connects all of your ideas and examples. In essence, your personal brand is the set of characteristics, strengths, weaknesses, approaches, values, and goals that align with your experience and motivations.
Your personal brand is what sets you apart from the rest, which is essential to do when you are going to be one of the thousands of applicants that the admissions committee assesses each year.
Building your brand – and knowing what you want to include about yourself and what you don’t – will help you define an overall story that will stick in readers’ minds.
While everyone’s personal brands differ, some of the key questions you can answer to build your own include: what are your purpose and vision? What motivates you in your life and career? What are some of the most important lessons you’ve learned, and how have you used them in different situations? How do you stand out, both personally and professionally? What are your strengths, and how have you demonstrated them? What about your weaknesses, and how have you tried to overcome them?
Once you have your ideas down, you can start thinking about how they translate into the responses to the questions in your application.
Use STAR-formatted stories
Depending on the question (whether it’s about leadership, impact, or even your hobbies), you will have to choose which examples of your strengths (and weaknesses!) are most appropriate. No matter what you choose, however, it’s almost always a good idea to use STAR to structure your stories.
To have a full explanation of this approach, we suggest checking out our post dedicated fully to STAR, but here’s the nutshell version. STAR stands for:
The Situation (context/problem/background information), Task (your responsibilities and objectives, including what any main challenges were), Actions (what approaches and solutions you employed to solve the problem or reach the objective), and Results (what the results of your actions were, how this had an impact, and what you personally learned).
Using this framework will help you understand what information is most important to include – especially considering that you are trying to paint a clear picture of yourself to a group of strangers – and how to structure it logically and effectively.
At Ellin Lolis Consulting, we also work with our clients to combine this approach with storytelling to make those examples really pop. If you can provide structure, that’s one thing, but if you can also make it engaging and memorable through vivid, authentic descriptions and meaning, then you are on track to getting admitted to your dream school.
Take this example from one of our client’s essays:
“The achievement I’m most proud of happened recently. At my company, it had been three years since we had raised investments for a new fund, so finding a new opportunity was critical. In mid-December, that great opportunity arose, however, we’d be battling against an unbelievably short deadline to get the project approved.
Normally, at this time of year, we’re still fully staffed, but given the stagnant market, only one manager and myself remained. In addition, the fund’s investment policy relied on a strategy that we’d never used. Finally, I’d never worked on the public offering of a fund before.
Nonetheless, I knew that if the manager and I worked diligently to support each other, we could land this deal. Our first move was to organize a meeting to align all parties involved. Then, we divided tasks, and I took over coordinating stakeholders, assigning tasks, and managing deliverables. In the end, we successfully delivered everything on time.
This experience made me more comfortable in a leadership position, as managing diverse stakeholders under pressure helped me better analyze what each brought to the table and execute accordingly. Recently, I’ve even been able to help other teams coordinate new offers. Finally, the project was a great opportunity to learn new management skills from my superior. This reinforced for me how important it will be to learn additional management frameworks at INSEAD and prepare myself to be a leader in the private equity market.”
Notice how the author has structured this story in STAR format while also showing color via a detailed description and revealing how the event impacted their career.
We know that crafting effective stories can be challenging. If you are looking for more inspiration, check out our MBA Resource Center featuring real essays that helped our clients access their top MBA programs!
Have a clear plan for your goals
Another absolutely essential aspect of brainstorming and writing any MBA application is having a clear, actionable goals statement. Without it, you will not be able to connect your past achievements and lessons learned to your future, which includes the MBA program and how you plan to engage with and use it!
Remember, part of what admissions committees are looking for is people who are going to uphold their school’s reputation in the real world, and your goals statement will help you prove that you intend to do so.
Your goals statement should include both your short- and long-term goals. In both of these time frames, you will want to state the company or industry that you want to work in (and justify your reasoning if you are making a transition) as well as your specific future role, if possible. You will also benefit from explaining the responsibilities you plan to have and what you want to achieve. Including these details will help you ensure your goals are clearly planned out!
For example, see one of our former clients’ long-term goals:
“In the long-term, I hope to become a principal at BCG who focuses on emphasizing sustainable solutions by promoting renewable energy in consumer goods companies across Brazil. In this position, I can not only help companies become more sustainable but reinforce this mindset among BCG teams in order to increase widespread environmental awareness in business.”
Notice how they have stated the details while also giving a clear picture of exactly what they intend to do and change. These goals are specific, which proves that the candidate has thought through their goals clearly but also remains visionary in what they want to achieve, which shows passion and motivation. This is the kind of approach you want to take when formulating your own goals.
Be strategically specific
Two of the biggest mistakes some of our clients make in their essays: being too vague about their stories and being too specific about irrelevant details. Specifically, it is important to hit the sweet spot when it comes to details.
It is important that you provide details of your examples so you are painting a clear picture of the situation to the readers – remember that the people on admissions committees have no idea who you are or what your context is, and sometimes might not even have business backgrounds, so be sure you are explaining the basics!
At the same time, it is possible to provide too many details! This is why building your personal brand and limiting the number of stories you choose to tell is so essential, as you want the room to give full context and explanation of your actions and impact. Usually, you’ll have to do this in 500 words or less, so you must choose wisely!
Make sure that the information you decide to include is directly relevant to the point that you want to make in your overall argument. Sometimes, our clients want to explain every angle of a story so they can highlight all the possible strengths they exhibited in each experience. However, there is simply no room to do this, even in longer essays such as Harvard’s; one of our most repeated lines to clients is “quality over quantity!”
A great way of knowing when to provide details and how to focus is by establishing a theme in each of your essays. By establishing the main idea behind what you want to communicate in your responses, you can more easily identify what can be prioritized and what must be elaborated on.
Tailor your responses to each school
Last, but definitely not least: make sure you are appealing to the specific admissions committee that you are writing to! This means that you have done your research on each school, including the school’s values, what courses will be most beneficial to you, what clubs you can join and learn from, and how the school’s community, location, and network will boost your career. Of course, understanding how you can make meaningful contributions to your future MBA community will also go a long way.
Knowing all of this beforehand will allow you to write your stories in a way that aligns with those aspects of the school; this will help your essays resonate with the readers and, ultimately, prove to them that you will use your MBA strategically and are a good fit for the school. Remember, the MBA application is very similar to a job application, so you must be fully prepared to show how you will enrich the school both while you are there and after you graduate.
Therefore, we suggest that you make note of the school’s values and use that to define the examples and themes you choose to focus on in your responses. You will also want to detail the specific activities and courses that you will be involved in and how you plan to apply them in your future. If the application does not include a question focused on your time at the school, we still suggest that you find a way to integrate this into at least one of your responses.
Our expert storytellers ensure your essays 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 tasks 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!
Real MBA Essays That Got People In
School-specific sample essays that got our clients accepted
