The question has remained the same for the past seven years – an indication that the admission team has been able to gauge the mind of the applicant through the short but necessary question for your MBA Application. The idea is to create a mission statement for your career.
Short Answer Question: What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (50 characters maximum)
Examples of possible responses:
“Work in business development for a media company.”
“Join a strategy consulting firm.”
“Launch a data-management start-up.”
The question has remained the same for the past four years – an indication that the admission team has been able to gauge the mind of the applicant through the short but necessary question for your MBA Application. The idea is to create a mission statement for your career.
To give you an idea of what 50 characters entails, let us look at Facebook’s mission statement:
Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected
That is 1 character short of 75; 24 characters too long.
You can’t use two objectives in your post-MBA professional goal.
With an MBA, you might plan to move industry, job function, increase salary by 125%, and relocate to France. But what is that one goal that would allow you to do that?
“Work in Business Development for a New York Media Company” (48 Characters)
Where: New York Job Function: Business Development Job Industry: Media
You can make it more specific by cutting out the location and including the Employer
“Work for Amazon as a Product Development Manager in the US” (46 Characters)
For: Amazon Job Function: Business Development Manager
Location: United States
To demonstrate the specificity of your goal, focus on all three – Employer, Job Function, and Location.
Use short forms to condense country name or designation, like the US for the United States, NYU for New York City.
Don’t change the designation.
Your post-MBA job function determines whether you will achieve most of your goals – increase in salary, climb the corporate ladder and the return on your investment.
The goal that you mention should be something that has been achieved by Columbia MBA graduates. It should not be too ambitious and sound unreachable after a Columbia MBA or too easy that a Columbia MBA might seem unnecessary. The best bet to figure out whether you goal is in-sync with past MBA graduates is by analyzing the latest Employment report.
The rule of thumb is that your post-MBA job function or industry should break the single digit representation.
According to the latest Columbia MBA Employment Report, if you are working in a Management Consulting role (33.2%), even the smallest representation by Industry - Real Estate (3.6%) will be feasible.
But if both the representation are in single-digit percentage (Leadership Development - 7.8% by Function) and Real Estate (5%), the goal will look infeasible.
Use the representation rule with the Top Employers as well to pick the right combination.
For Comprehensive Strategies for Columbia MBA Essays + Tips on creating interesting narratives + Editing & Review Tips, Download F1GMAT's Columbia MBA Essay Guide (Includes Sample Essays)
