The first question all those who are shortlisting M7 or Top 20 MBA programs should ask is which themes cover my personal and professional experiences.
1) Goals
2) Inclusion
3) Values
4) Community
5) Career Choices
6) Curiosity
7) Leadership
8) Uniqueness
9) IMPACT
Let us say you are applying to the INSEAD MBA. Applicants who don’t have enough international experience should not apply to INSEAD, which closely evaluates your cultural intelligence and negotiation skills across international teams.
There are applicants who might not be a good fit for Wharton, but could be an excellent fit for Chicago Booth.
The choice of the schools should be determined by the incoming class profile, post-MBA placement trends, and the curriculum, but if you are shortlisting a few stretch schools, evaluate the essay themes and ask yourself – can you map your life story into one of the themes.
That is why I use an IMPACT table to help applicants summarize their life stories in one document.
So, let’s go one by one through each theme:
1) Goals
This is the most common essay question that you should expect in all your school applications. Even schools that use reflective or open-ended essays, will ask about your goals in short-answer questions.
Learn the concept of ‘Agency in MBA Application essays’ that I have explained in my previous video.
Schools use goal essays to evaluate your ambition and also to measure your potential to reach a goal. This cannot be just stated without evidence of achieving similar goals in the recent past.
If your post-MBA goal is ambitious, you should show evidence of tackling a similar problem even if the scale is smaller.
For example, an applicant was passionate about transforming the job market for low-income workers in Africa. Typically, low-income workers move from one job to another without any trace. He talked about using digitization to create a work history record that could be shared with any contractors in the region. Because the applicant has experience in a large consulting company, working on a similar data project, his goals looked feasible.
This is an important concept you have to keep in mind before shortlisting a school.
Read through their essays and see if you have relevant experience to cite ambitious post-MBA goals in your essays.
If you don’t have any entrepreneurial experience either in startups or a non-profit, citing entrepreneurial goals would not work out.
The same goes for industry switching from, let's say, technology to finance.
If you don’t have experience in Finance, either through managing a family business or running the accounts of a non-profit, or even working as a subject matter expert in a bank, mentioning a goal to transition into Finance would not be feasible.
Earlier, when applicants didn’t have the stories to transition into Product Management or Finance, they used to choose consulting as their default industry and function.
Right now, even Consulting is not a recession-proof industry with Ai and automation affecting the demand across the clientele.
Now, to switch into Consulting and into a niche capability, you should have some hands-on experience.
It is the middle-management and entry-level jobs that have been deeply disrupted by AI.
Apart from a few selective schools that still build skills for General Managers, most want some functional experience with the technology or some experience in the industry.
To know more about the right schools where your general management or leadership narratives could be used, contact me using F1GMAT’s contact form
2) Inclusion
The inclusion theme has evolved over the past 4 years, from an academic version of interpreting concepts in equity and diversity to a moderate interpretation of how you have incorporated inclusion in your work or personal life.
This change is a reflection of American politics and to a larger extend a backlash from centrist and right-leaning ideologues, who found students prioritising identity over economic outcomes extremely Unamerican. The stricter control over federal funding where universities were asked to tow the line to such an extreme that now you won’t find any essays with DEI mentioned it. Even pages with DEI were scrubbed with the new administration.
Columbia has rephrased the PPIL essay, which was a great essay question that connected the school’s legacy of incorporating diverse perspectives, to right now with a prompt that might misguide applicants.
Even if there is political pressure to change certain uses of phrases around Diversity and Equity, cultures don’t just vanish. Applicants must be aware of it and not get carried away by the pressure the universities are facing to comply. Refer to F1GMAT’s PPIL Essay tips to understand the evolution of the inclusion question at Columbia.
Read the older version of the PPIL Essay Tips.
This year, Columbia has rephrased the PPIL essay to an inclusion essay that asks, “Please share a specific example of how you made a team more collaborative, more inclusive or fostered a greater sense of community within an organization.”
Now you have 3 contexts – Collaboration, inclusion, or fostering a greater sense of community, instead of just citing inclusivity.
Darden asks a similar question, “Please describe a tangible example that illuminates your experience promoting an inclusive environment and what you would bring to creating a welcoming, global community at Darden. (300 words)”
Here Darden wants to understand whether you have a framework or a strategy to create an inclusive environment.
The more specific details you can share with the admissions team with the right constraints, setbacks and eventual win, the more believable your essays will be.
If you need any help with editing essays with the inclusion theme, contact me using F1GMAT’s contact form
3) Values
Perhaps the most popular reflective essay theme is the Values essay.
This is not very obvious.
For example, Stanford’s What Matters Most to You and Why is an indirect reference to your values.
The same with Yale’s Commitment Essay that asks - Describe the biggest commitment you have ever made. Why is this commitment meaningful to you and what actions have you taken to support it?
All values essays are validated by your actions.
If you just state a value without any action to support it, the values that you cite become aspirational.
That is why an important part of selling your value is to nudge your supervisor to cite examples highlighting the values in their recommendation letter.
If you truly believe in authentic communication as a value, your supervisor must cite at least one example where you have redesigned a traditional meeting. Maybe you introduced an authentic communication framework and improved the productivity, or camaraderie in the team.
All top schools truly believe that your past actions are an indicator of your future behaviour. That is the intent behind reflective essays.
Even leadership essay questions could also ask about values, like Kellogg's leadership essay, which is “Kellogg leaders are primed to tackle challenges everywhere, from the boardroom to their neighborhoods. Describe a specific professional experience where you had to make a difficult decision. Reflecting on this experience, identify the values that guided your decision-making process and how it impacted your leadership style.”
Here the school wants to know the values that are guiding you as a leader.
Tuck School of Business asks
“Tell us who you are. How have your values and experiences shaped your identity and character? How will your unique background contribute to Tuck and/or enhance the experience of your classmates? (300 words).”
Here, the school is combining experiences and values as evidence of your potential in contributing to Tuck.
4) Community
This was a popular theme and still continues to be a popular theme in 50% of the top schools.
The school wants to know how you will apply your experiences, skills, and motivations to help the community.
For the Why Stanford MBA where a large part of the narrative should be on how you will leverage the experience, but the school also expects some lines on how you will serve the community at Stanford. This is an unsaid requirement for even many of the goals essay if the school doesn’t have a separate question on serving the community.
All schools would like to know how specifically you will take advantage of the experience and also how you will serve the community.
Same with Kellogg’s first essay question where the 2nd half is “share why you feel Kellogg is best suited to serve as a catalyst for your career aspirations and what you will contribute to our community of lifelong learners during your time here. (450 words)”
Again, understanding what the community stands for – their values, challenges and ambitions can really elevate your answer.
Yale goes a step deeper with the question, “Describe the community that has been most meaningful to you. What is the most valuable thing you have gained from being a part of this community and what is the most important thing you have contributed to this community?”
Here the school is offering a much deeper meaning to the word community. It could be any community, from professional, volunteering, extracurricular, or in our highly connected digital world – communities around ideas.
Cornell MBA Application also expects you to mention how you will contribute to the community in the ‘the Unique Trait that Defines Me’ essay.
The question is, “What is something unique about you that others will remember you by, and how will this trait help you contribute and engage with the Cornell MBA community? (350 words maximum)”
When Yale wants to know what you consider to be a community and how you have contributed, the Cornell admissions team is looking to evaluate traits that could offer the most value for the Cornell MBA community.
Again, different schools value different traits.
For help in brainstorming and mapping traits, values, and life experiences to each MBA program, contact me using F1GMAT’s contact form
The second essay question for the Ross MBA – “How will you make an impact at Michigan Ross?” has four prompt choices. The fourth prompt is about Community that says, “Describe a time when you made a difference in your community or with an individual. “
10 years back I could easily find an applicant who was much more engaged with their community. The proliferation of social media and addiction to digital engagement have limited the real-world reach of a lot of talented professionals. When you have a choice between mentorship and community example, prioritise community narratives.
Darden has combined inclusion with building a global community with the question, “Please describe a tangible example that illuminates your experience promoting an inclusive environment and what you would bring to creating a welcoming, global community at Darden. (300 words)”
Right now with the right-leaning US govt. in power the sentiments against immigrants have reached an all-time high. It is the lack of real-term salary growth, inequality, and the unaffordability of real-estate that has translated into scapegoating immigrants.
The optics of one party should not distract you from the culture of most top schools. They value the global cohort that has brought so much diversity to the campuses.
Lean into your global perspectives and identity while retaining the American ethos of liberty, meritocracy, and work ethic in the essay.
The Fuqua community and your essay question don’t mention community in the prompt, but highlight what it means to be engaged in the community. They include this particular line, “ Our students enjoy a wide range of student-led organizations that provide opportunities for leadership development and personal fulfillment”.
For Duke Fuqua, you must convey this sense of purpose & personal satisfaction when you narrate plans of contributing to the communities in the school and the neighbourhood.
Even MIT, which prefers applicants with strong quant skills, has a short-answer question that asks, “How has the world you come from shaped who you are today? For example, your family, culture, community, all help to shape aspects of your identity”
Here MIT wants to know the biggest influences. They want to understand the unique experiences you have acquired from your community and the identity it has helped shape in you.
Kellogg MBA goes further. They in Essay question one asks, “Share why you feel Kellogg is best suited to serve as a catalyst for your career aspirations and what you will contribute to our community of lifelong learners during your time here.”
Here the community has a particular trait – a community of lifelong learners. The school is measuring one particular trait in you by using the word community.
Even Columbia’s inclusion essay has an option to include narratives that highlight a sense of community with the question, “Please share a specific example of how you made a team more collaborative, more inclusive or fostered a greater sense of community within an organization.”
You should understand the difference between a sense of community vs. Actually contributing to a community, which is often the school’s neighbourhoods and campuses. Many times they are measuring your intent to contribute to specific non-profit partners.
If the essay is hinting at a sense of community, the school wants to understand how you identify with others in a community? Is it based on ethnicity, language, religion, nationality, or a similar life journey, interests, values, goals, or a belief that one’s growth is tied to the community’s growth?
When you erase all your identities – how do you relate to the community?
Is it a sense of justice?
Do you feel that your community should receive the right mentorship and support?
Schools prefer candidates who think holistically about their community. This is because most of you will grow into careers in Private Equity, Consulting and Technology where there will be several moments when your decisions will affect communities across the world.
Are you aware of the IMPACT you would have on communities?
Do you have the long-term thinking to not just focus on short-term profits but sustainable & holistic growth.
The school also wants to understand how you interpret the interdependence between you as an individual and your community.
And the best examples are the ones where you show this awareness.
Many times, I have seen applicants hesitate to mention smaller community engagements, doubting the impact of their effort.
Not all essays need this kind of dollar-term thinking. There are great essays where the client built a narrative around the beneficiary and the impact their smaller regular contributions had on the beneficiary’s life. Here scale is not important.
The personal stories and how you narrate them matter even more.
One client talked about teaching calculus to underprivileged children and how it built the foundation for learning complex concepts in Math that became extremely useful in competitive entrance exams.
The impact need not be direct. It could be a change in thinking that really set the beneficiary on a path of growth.
All sense of community essays should not be coming from membership, either based on neighbourhood or any factors related to your identity from ethnicity, nationality, language or religion.
It could also come from a universally recognized sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
These are examples of war crimes, bullying, or the manipulations of markets & regulations that are creating an extremely fragile global economy.
So, your sense of community could relate to the entire world without mentioning your identities.
Understanding such nuances is important before creating your essay draft. For any help, contact me using F1GMAT’s contact form
5) Career Choices
Applicants might confuse the goal with the Career Choice essay. Some schools have both - Goals essay in short-answer and a career choice as the main essay.
If there are two questions, the career choice essay is all about mapping early childhood events to your current job function.
It could be about connecting your experience running the accounts for your family business to your current role in finance.
It could be about connecting your first stage performance to your current role as a marketer.
It could be your first experience overcoming a personal setback to your current role in overcoming a team setback.
Experiences that influenced your career and continue to inform you about managing uncertainty and leading teams with diverse perspectives should be the core of the narrative.
6) Curiosity
Curiosity is an implicit trait that the school is trying to measure with your essays. You may express it through leadership, values, and uniqueness essays.
Only Harvard has continued with an explicit growth-oriented essay where they ask “Curiosity can be seen in many ways. Please share an example of how you have demonstrated curiosity and how that has influenced your growth. (up to 250 words)”
As I have shared in the Harvard MBA Growth Oriented Essay Tips video, choose one of the six contexts;
a. Exploration of Solution
b. Curiosity and Cultural Change
c. Communication and Curiosity
d. Curiosity, Courage, and Growth
e. Learning Goals and Curiosity
f. Diversity and Curiosity
From these six contexts, the most common examples are around solutions – how you explored and found a solution that addressed technical, organisational, and business goals. These are the best examples because you are showing a holistic understanding of the technical, organisational, and business challenges.
The second overused and popular curiosity narrative is around cultural change.
Applicants who want to highlight their leadership use bringing cultural change in college, a non-profit, or even in their organisation. The toughest and most impactful examples are around bringing culture change in your organization.
Schools know the limited power a 27 to 32-year-old could have on an organization.
Any cultural change examples that could be validated through the recommendation letter will immediately set you apart from your competition.
Your ability to build consensus and bring multiple stakeholders through change management is an example that will improve believability around your goals of growing in Consulting or a General Management role in the future.
7) Leadership – Cultural Intelligence, Overcoming Challenging Circumstances & Adaptability
Leadership essays have several themes. But citing just any examples of courage without proper context would not move the admissions team.
You have to prioritise experiences with certain qualities:
a) Cultural Intelligence (First Quality)
Even if there is a huge backlash against globalisation and immigration, multinational companies are not changing their behaviour or recruitment process. They are focused on maximising shareholder value. This means bringing in affordable talent from any part of the world as long as they can contribute towards increasing the stock price.
If your goal is to work with the biggest technology, consulting, PE, or VC firms, you must demonstrate cultural intelligence while leading a diverse team.
If you are from, let us say, Shanghai, and after an MBA, you plan to return to the city, a Consulting company expanding in the region would find great value in bringing you on board. Your skills in accumulating cultural intelligence that an international MBA offers, your experience in the region, and your pre-MBA experience dealing with or managing an international team would provide the company with the confidence to recruit you as a specialist for the region.
All top Business Schools are efficient recruiter machines for top multinational companies.
You must understand the purpose behind MBA programs and choose essay themes that clearly highlight your international exposure and cultural intelligence.
Not all schools are explicitly asking for your cultural intelligence.
London Business School, which has one of the largest international cohorts, asks in essay 2, “What makes you unique?”
This uniqueness could be uniqueness in your professional experience, or it could be your unique experience managing an international team, or growing up in multiple international cities.
One client shared how managing a team spread across 4 time zones was the most challenging and rewarding aspect of leading a team. These were teams in London, Brazil, India, and China.
You have to choose examples based on the theme of the essay question, the class profile of the MBA program, and also based on the post-MBA placement trends.
For INSEAD, a school that prioritzes applicants with international experience, you might not even recognize this factor when you read their latest essay questions, but one of the questions, “Give a candid description of yourself as a person and a leader, emphasising the strengths and weaknesses you recognise in yourself” is an opportunity to indirectly mention your cultural intelligence as a leadership trait. This way you can highlight both your uniqueness and international experience in one essay question.
There are many ways in which you can strategically position yourself based on the essay theme. If you need my help, contact me using F1GMAT’s contact form
b) Overcoming Personal or a Professional Challenge
The second theme of leadership that you should explore is overcoming personal or professional challenges.
Schools prefer candidates who have shown resilience. This is an overused trait, not because applicants were truly resilient. They tend to cite even the smallest discomfort as resilience.
So, what is resilience?
Fundamentally, resilience is a mental trick where the setback is reframed as a ‘growth’ opportunity.
Is it really a growth opportunity?
Not really, if you don’t believe it. But if you truly are finding life lessons from every major event, both good and bad, you are already a good fit for a top MBA.
Look at any essay prompt?
What do you see?
Harvard asks, “Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices.”
Stanford’s guideline for the What Matters essay is, “For this essay, we would like you to reflect deeply and write from the heart.”
Kellogg’s leadership essay prompt:
Kellogg leaders are primed to tackle challenges everywhere, from the boardroom to their neighborhoods. Describe a specific professional experience where you had to make a difficult decision.
Every school prefers that you reflect and find life lessons from both your positive and negative experiences.
Schools would like to learn about the wins, but these wins are interesting when there are setbacks.
Your ability to overcome these setbacks is your sign of resilience.
The school should recognise the setbacks as true setbacks.
I have a video on setbacks for application essays, but broadly there are five setbacks that applicants use:
1) Personal Setbacks (health-related, death – death of a parent or a caregiver or a close friend, or family)
2) Financial Setbacks (your family business goes down, your parents face financial stressors from divorce, or health setbacks)
3) Professional Setbacks (the company you served goes down. This is common now when a lot of applicants are working in startups)
4) Academic Setbacks (Failing a course or missing a year. Don’t use your main essay for the setback. Use the optional essay for any academic setbacks)
5) Societal Disadvantages (these are inter-generational inequities like poverty, or coming from a culture where there is discrimination based on ethnicity, color, or religion)
6) Geopolitical Setbacks (these are applicants forced to migrate from war or survive in war zones)
From these six setbacks, personal, financial, and geopolitical setbacks are the most persuasive ones.
Be careful how you use societal disadvantages or narratives around ethnicity. The school should be convinced that such challenges exist in your neighbourhood, or did exist when you were growing up.
Once you have demonstrated how you overcame these setbacks with resilience and the support of the right mentors, schools will be convinced that you have the ability to grow to the next stage in your career.
Here narrative around mentorship is extremely important.
Schools don’t like candidates who write all about how they single-handedly overcame setbacks. Citing mentors and the support network is crucial.
c) Adaptability
The third leadership theme is around adaptability.
Your ability to adapt as an individual and as a leader is the #1 skillset that schools will measure now, especially since AI has disrupted industries, job functions, and businesses.
Schools that are measuring adaptability are:
INSEAD with their motivational essay, “Describe a highly stressful situation you faced and how you managed it. What did this experience teach you about yourself and your interactions with others? (400 words)”
Stressful situations, by definition, should involve some discomforting events. Include examples where you had to change your team’s strategy, or your skills in leading the team in adapting to a changing client requirement.
Yale has the challenge question where they ask, “Describe the most significant challenge you have faced. How have you confronted this challenge, and how has it shaped you as a person?”
Haas also has the distance traveled essay, where they ask about “the challenges that have shaped your personal and professional journey.”
Any challenge narrative should be phrased in such a way that your adaptability is clearly visible.
For help with brainstorming ideas for your M7 and Top 20 MBA application essays, contact me using F1GMAT’s contact form
8) Uniqueness – What traits, values, and experiences make you unique
The 8th essay theme that top schools have adopted this year is around uniqueness.
MIT’s video essay question, “Introduce yourself to your future classmates. Here’s your chance to put a face with a name, let your personality shine through, be conversational, and be yourself. We can’t wait to meet you!
This question is expecting you to share something unique about yourself.
Let your personality shine through is a code word for what makes you unique.
Duke Fuqua has designed a completely unique question – The 25 Random Things about yourself, where the admissions team is expecting you to list life experiences, your hobbies, achievements, fun facts, or anything that helps them understand what makes you who you are.
LBS has a ‘uniqueness’ essay that asks, “What makes you unique?”
Tuck has a question that mentions, “How will your unique background contribute to Tuck and/or enhance the experience of your classmates? (300 words).”
Darden asks, “What would you want your classmates to know about you that is not on your resume? (100 words)”
Ross community essay asks, “What makes you unique?”
NYU Stern has a pictorial six-image expression essay, where the school is trying to understand who you are with the images.
Cornell has an essay question: “What is something unique about you that others will remember you by, and how will this trait help you contribute and engage with the Cornell MBA community? (350 words maximum)”
You should take the cue from Duke Fuqua in answering any essay question about uniqueness.
It should cover your ‘unique’ hobbies, achievements, experiences, and unique life events that made you who you are.
You should also be aware of stereotypes.
Chinese applicants mentioned the violin as their favorite instrument.
Indian applicants mentioning Cricket.
American applicants mentioning marathons.
European applicants mentioning Sailing are some of the common examples that have now turned into a cliche.
So share your unique hobbies and life experiences. Connect those hobbies to your values and worldview.
Avoid stereotypes and examples that your peers or applicants from a similar demographic mention.
9) IMPACT
The 9th and the final theme for this year’s MBA application essay is IMPACT.
What is an impactful contribution?
There are two traits of an impactful contribution.
It should be measurable.
If it is not measurable to the last dollar term, it should have contributed to the strategic direction of the community, project, team, or company.
To set up the right narrative for the IMPACT essay, the before and after scenarios for the beneficiary should be clearly highlighted.
If your IMPACT is in a consulting service, highlight what could have happened if the client chose not to go with your solution, and now, when the client has accepted your solution.
This contrasting style of narrative is required when you are talking about complex socio-economic or market challenges.
An applicant highlighted the value of his consulting service in three dimensions, one in how the non-profit was prioritising certain demographic, two in how the non-profit invested in educating the local children that built goodwill for the non-profit and three – the support in healthcare, digitisation and education the non-profit offered to the community at a discounted price.
Instead of just guiding the non-profit on improving the effectiveness of their outreach, the solutions were designed to engage with the stakeholders on a short-term, mid-term, and long-term basis that eventually will create goodwill and market leadership for the non-profit.
And last year, when the applicant was applying, 3 years after the consulting solution, the non-profit was one of the most recognisable brands in the country. And the supervisor, who was the board member of the non-profit, validated the contribution with a recommendation letter.
Such long-term thinking is the foundation for an IMPACTFUL experience.
Other impactful experiences are contributions in college. It could be how you have run a student club and the unique systemic changes you brought about.
The context of the impactful experience essay is offered in the MBA application.
Tuck Essay Question 3 is “Describe a time when you meaningfully invested in someone else’s success without immediate benefit to yourself. What motivated you, and what was the impact? (300 words).
This essay, as I have explained, wants to measure how you think long-term.
Fundamentally, essays with the IMPACT theme are measuring long-term thinking.
Cornell Impact Essay: At Cornell, our students and alumni share a desire to positively impact the organisations and communities they serve. How do you intend to make a meaningful impact on the Johnson community? (350 words maximum)
Again, the school is measuring how you think long-term and bring change, or sustainable growth, or engagement in organizations and communities you serve?
McCombs: Essay 3 (250 words): The University of Texas at Austin's motto, "What starts here changes the world," embodies a spirit of impact and transformation. What fuels your drive to lead change and make your mark in the world?
Leading change or making a mark in the world are all IMPACT-themed essays.
Here, your ability to see the complexity of the problem and bring all stakeholders together is what the school is measuring.
Cambridge MBA adds a different dimension to the IMPACT-themed essay. They want to know how someone had a positive impact on your life. What did you learn from that experience?
Here you are focusing on someone else, but since the word limit is 200, you can also share how that person inspired you to bring a positive impact on others’ lives.
The sub-text of reciprocity is important in such questions.
I hope you understood the themes that schools use to break down who you are as a person. If you need my help with brainstorming ideas for your essays and editing your essays, contact me using F1GMAT’s contact form
