Sample MBA Application Essays

Another common mba essay question is - What does an “ethic” mean to you and how important is it? Give a specific example (e.g. decisions you had to make in the past) to illustrate this.

For me, Ethics means a well-defined standard of fairness. The standards ensure that I conduct myself with honesty and compassion. It is also my responsibility to assess the standards regularly for social and cultural influences, and take corrective steps if necessary.

For specific examples from your professional life, mention:

1)  How you negotiated your way around a suggestion by your manager/supervisor to perform certain tasks that was against your ethics.

2) This example should emphasis how you were able to  negotiate on the new course of action that was ethical .

3) Emphasis the win-win strategy that you suggested and how it was a workaround for the initial unethical action suggested by your supervisor(provide examples of resistance on your new course of action)

4) Provide...

When you write about weakness in an essay, focus on real weakness, the consequences of the weakness and how you were able to realize and work towards turning your weakness into strength.

Dos and Don’ts for MBA Weakness Essay

Dos

1.Identify your real weakness

Understanding weakness from an MBA Application point of view is critical in identifying your real weakness. Stating trivial personal weakness will not help you. You have to dig deep in your career and list instances where your weakness negatively impacted your work.

2. Focus on weakness that you have worked on

The main idea behind the weakness essay is to find out what you have done to address your weakness. There is no point in stating weakness for which you have hardly taken any concrete steps.

This is what Stacy Blackman has to say about answering Weakness question:

"When describing weaknesses you will want to focus on those weaknesses that you have taken concrete steps to address, or that have been a route to learning more about yourself. Often strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin, in which case you can even tie your key weaknesses to your key strengths. Because it is often...

This sample MBA essay will answer the following questions - How do you define teamwork? How have you demonstrated team work in your career?

Tell us about a time when you built or developed a team whose performance exceeded expectations.

Describe a time you had to inspire a reluctant individual or group.

Teamwork for me is the actions that members in a group take in order to achieve a common goal, which is much greater than the personal aspirations of each team member. Communicating openly, working towards conflict resolution and supporting each team members in achieving a common objective are the three key aspects of teamwork.

When you give an example about teamwork, cite instances where:

1) You have worked with a diverse team (team with diverse experience, skill type, nationality and cultures)
 
...

You are unique and sample essays should only be used as a guideline. After you have read sample essays, school specific mba application essays and understood the dynamics behind writing essays, create a first draft. Don’t worry about making grammatical errors or creating poor sentence structures. Let your thoughts flow. Put to paper a detailed description of your personality, your unique story and the journey till now.

Initially, don’t worry about relevance. Just start writing. You have to edit the essay in the next version. During that time, you can remove irrelevant parts of your story from the essay. We have quite a few Sample Essays that are generally asked in MBA Application:

• Sample MBA Essay - How do you define teamwork
• Sample MBA Essay - What does ethics mean to you
• Sample MBA Essay - What is your greatest weakness
• ...

This sample MBA essay will give you pointers to answer - What is the most important thing in your life?

Maintaining good self-esteem is the most important thing for me. A balance of personal, vocational and spiritual aspect of one's life is necessary to achieve this goal.

I would say that as a personal goal, maintaining a healthy lifestyle would top the priority list. This is not an easy goal as this involves exercising regularly, avoiding addictions of any kind and investing time in relationships (that I value). On a spiritual level, my goal would be to master practices that would help me in making decisions that are in accord with the values that I believe in - Honesty, Excellence and Collaboration.

However, I realized that we spend 12-14 hours per day on our vocation. That is a considerable amount of time in one day. Therefore, it would be satisfying if I am in a field of work, which I believe can change the society. I got the opportunity to be part of a seminar - perspective, a...

This sample mba essay answers the question - Describe when you were part of a team where the group process and/or intended outcome failed. What did you learn?

I am sure you might have faced failures in your work/college life. As you know, various factors influence the outcome of a group process. In some occasions, you might have played a major role in the negative outcome of a team. You have to be honest with it. The admission committee is not expecting you to blame your team members or lack of synergy (the most overused word in essays and in b-schools) for the failure.

Failures can be due to

1) Lack of skills/Early stages of skill development

For example: