Required Haas MBA Essay #2: How will an MBA help you achieve your short-term and long-term career goals? (300 words max)
Although Haas School of Business has not asked how Haas MBA will help you achieve the post-MBA goals, spend 50% of the 300-word on connecting the experience at Haas with the goals.
To make it easier for you to frame the goals, here is a 3-Step framework:
1) Find the Feasibility
Based on the latest employment report, check if the transition to an industry or function is possible for a person with your years of experience and background (industry & function).
If both the industry and functional representation are in single-digit percentages, your goals are not feasible. For example, if you want to get into the Marketing function (7.8%) in the Entertainment industry (0.8%) without any background in the industry, a Haas MBA in itself will not help you achieve that goal.
2) Researching the Career Paths
Every top school has a student blog or voices section - a testimonial on how they leveraged the MBA program and achieved the post-MBA goals. Haas School of Business has taken it further with the Career Paths page, where the school has captured specifics of how students can customize the curriculum for the following functions and industries:
• Consulting/Strategy
• Energy & Clean Technology
• Entrepreneurship
• Finance
• Healthcare
• Marketing
• Real Estate
• Social Impact
• Technology
From the career paths page, choose electives, experiential learning, and clubs that will have immediate value for your career goals.
3) Experiential Learning in Another Industry/Function
The biggest challenge for a consultant like me is in understanding the gap in the applicant’s career path and exposure. Even the most impactful Type A candidate with impressive career progression is not a jack of all trades. Companies incentive the candidate to super specialize in a function.
If you are an IB or PE candidate, it is unlikely that you are going to analyze the marketing strategy of the company or go to the field, talk to customers, and decode the brand’s unique staying power in the market. You will be incentivized to look at the quantitative aspect of the company, make projections, build models founded on companies with similar growth trajectory and customer base. Sometimes, an MBA might help you explore subjects and functions that will expand your perspective on an industry. Many times candidates have quoted experiential learning giving them a perspective that they are unlikely to get had they continued in their company. Unanimously, anyone who leveraged a top MBA program quoted the network with peers and alumni as the single biggest advantage of an MBA program.
4) Long-Term Goals
Most Haas MBA applicants mention Entrepreneurship as a long-term goal. So any choices in electives can be customized based on the industry or the functional skill that you will eventually use for your long-term goal. Maybe you don’t need exposure to clean tech now, but eventually, you might be serving in the clean tech industry as a consultant or as an investor. Some of the foundational principles in new venture creation, product development, and opportunity recognition might not be valuable if you are joining a traditional Fortune 500 company but might be useful in 5 to 10 years. So the value of elective or experiential learning could be long-term as well. But make sure that the focus of the essay is on short-term goals.
