LBS MBA Essay Tips 2018

London Business School has published the MBA Application Essays for the Class of 2020. This year, there are two essay questions with 500 and 300-word limits. The essays cover post-MBA plans; specific area of LBS MBA program that interest the candidates; the value that applicants will add to the school, and other information that candidates would like to share with the admissions team. For Sample Essays, Curriculum Analysis and 200+ pages of Essay Writing and Review Tips, read LBS MBA Essay Guide.

LBS MBA Essays for Class of 2020 (Entering 2018)

Q1. What are your post-MBA goals and how will your prior experience and the London Business School programme contribute towards these? (500 words)

Most applicants have three career goals – change in career, advancement in career, or explore career options through the MBA program. Before applying to LBS, applicants should have one of the two career paths – change in career or advancement in career. The reality is that most candidates experience multiple facets of management education during the first year. With the experience, students make up their mind whether to pursue the plan that they had developed before MBA or change direction with the experience in the first year. Schools, however, expect candidates to have at least one career path ready while writing this essay.

Past Experience

Consulting

Many might not have experienced consulting in the strictest sense, not at least in Management consulting where you have to give opinions about Business bottlenecks and ways to improve process efficiency. The process of offering solutions during your pre-MBA job consists of steps that are similar to consulting.

1) Discovery Phase

This phase has the biggest impact on the solutions you offer. You have to develop a problem statement by considering the multiple moving parts of the company. Gathering requirements without understanding “why” the problem has occurred will lead to recommending partial solutions. Based on the context of the problem – marketing, technology, or finance, you might have had to bring in your team of experts. The only difference from the domain-specific solutions that you have worked pre-MBA from consulting solutions that you would eventually offer is that for the former, the discovery phase is much shorter (2 weeks). The key stakeholders for the project have already been assigned, but in consulting, you have to interview all the stakeholders related to the problem. Then, strategically create an environment for open conversations so that you get to the root of the problem instead of getting a one-dimensional view of the problem from someone higher in the hierarchy.

2) Analysis Phase

As with the analysis phase of any project, where you might have separated the relevant from the surplus set of irrelevant data points and conclusions, analysis phase in consulting can be time-consuming. The one difference while doing analysis for consulting solutions is that the data in itself might be corrupted or skewed based on the stakeholder, who has offered the information. As a consultant, you might have to go back to the key decision maker and verify each data. This is rare in projects you have worked during your pre-MBA days.

3) Recommendation Phase

For a consultant, the recommendation phase is the most important part of the process. They develop charts, slides, and reports to analyze the problem, and recommend a solution. Consultants cannot charge $500 per hour if the employers have any doubts about the feasibility of the solution. Not all the solutions are readily accepted. There will be debate over each recommended point. For the inexperienced consultant, redoing the recommendations till the Employer accepts them is a common occurrence. Even experienced consultants have to redo some recommendations. The balance of confidence and a willingness to ..
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So let us imagine that you would like to join McKinsey as a Strategy Consultant. If that is the case, the admission team wants to hear how your pre-MBA experience in Discovery, Analysis, and Recommendation phases will help the consulting project in the future. What strategic solution did you create?


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The above post is an excerpt from LBS MBA Essay Guide.

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