Answering Stanford MBA Positive IMPACT Optional Essay Question

Although Stanford has clearly articulated that the optional essay questions are truly ‘optional,’ the open-ended nature of ‘What matters to you and why’ could lead to narratives that lack specificity about your contributions in one of the settings – professional, academic, or extra-curricular.

Optional Question: Think about times you’ve created a positive impact, whether in professional, extracurricular, academic, or other settings. What was your impact? What made it significant to you or to others? (600 Words) (200 words – each example)

Scenario #1: Entrepreneurial Applicant in Corporate Job

For entrepreneurial applicants with an exit or failure, the 2nd phase of their career might be in a corporate job. Most likely, the narratives from the first phase would cover the ‘What matters’ essay. With the optional question, you will get the chance to highlight non-entrepreneurial values and impact.

Scenario #2: Meaningful Extracurricular

Several of the narratives that stood out for our clients included recent engagements A timely and relevant narrative for an extra-curricular that connect with the admission team could be strategically used for this optional question.

• Black lives matter protests opened-up several opportunities to address systemic racism in the workplace and our culture.
• The COVID-19 crisis although challenging brought rapid innovation to address our limiting movement and behavior.
• The all too frequent flooding, drought, and forest fires from climate change motivated many clients to develop solutions that assisted low-income families.
• The vital food supply chain becomes the focus during the war, pandemic, and natural disasters. Working closely with farmers and aligning their incentives is an important problem that many have addressed
• The less than $2/day income is the horror of the past. However, a bigger problem exists in digital connectivity, education, and bringing equitable markets to the far corners of the world.

Scenario #3: Academic Contribution

If you have a Master’s degree where you addressed path-breaking research or developed an interesting concept that became the foundation for a commercial solution, mention the impact.

Example: A patent or a novel process/technology/material/drug

Scenario #4: Cultural Change

Applicants who can cleverly articulate the steps they have taken that transformed how an organization operates, decide, or create, should highlight their leadership that led to a cultural change in the organization.

Examples

• Created a flexible work environment for women managers to address the additional responsibility of childcare.
• Facilitated the creation of a cultural platform that led to cross-functional collaboration in the organization.
• Planned quarterly, and weekly events that helped the team bond through trekking, sports, and cultural activities.
• Built loyalty by introducing analytics that monitored performance at the individual, team, and strategic levels.

Sample: Stanford MBA Positive IMPACT Optional Essay (Working Mothers)(199 Words)

Sample: Stanford MBA Positive IMPACT Optional Essay (Toxic Culture) (190 Words)

Sample: Stanford MBA Positive IMPACT Optional Essay (Monitoring Performance) (199 Words)

Browse Stanford MBA Sample Essays