Skip to main content

Critical Thinking: LBS MBA What Makes you Unique Essay Sample

LBS MBA Essay: What makes you unique? (200 words)

Background Information: Testing the authenticity of the insights from Generative AI was a challenge for the applicant when it suggested a stereotype. 

Theme: AI, Safety

Theme (Explained): AI safety is an emerging function. The threat is real when the fallout is visible. But there are subtle reaffirmations of stereotypes that can negate decades of progress if the person testing AI is not vigilant. The faulty condition under which insurance premiums for African Americans were evaluated is the subject of AI bias.

Profile: Consultant

Industry: Technology

MBA Essay Strategy: Capturing doubt in an essay is the best way to hook the reader. And doubt expressed from the applicant’s point of view or experience is even better than an evaluation of a scenario through reason.

The biases from the 19th and 20th centuries continue to keep black communities with low coverage. When approval of insurance and calculation of premiums depend on AI, the originator of biases and prejudices would be an algorithm capable of spreading biases at scale.

Offering historical context on the origin of the bias was crucial for the essay to connect with the reader. I have strategically placed the ‘facts’ in the middle while building up the applicant’s story and her experience growing up without a father in the first half of the essay. 

Opener: By starting with the role of the applicant, I want to set up the challenges of finding biases in AI-generated conclusions. 

LBS MBA Essay: What makes you unique (Critical Thinking)(196 Words)

For our first AI-driven text generative tool, my role as a Product Manager was to spot biases in all our machine-learning algorithms. 

The algorithm concluded a negative observation about the credit score of African Americans.

I had observed the struggles of my mother, who had to work two jobs to raise my sister and I after my father, an African American, abandoned our family. Every instinct pointed to validating the observation, but with research, I found that in 1881, one of America's largest insurance companies began putting a clause ..

...

 

Download F1GMAT's LBS MBA Essay Guide to read the Complete Essay (Critical Thinking)

LBS MBA Essay Guide

 

Question 1 (500 words): What are your post-MBA goals and how will your prior experience and the London Business School program contribute towards these?

Question 2. (200 words): What makes you unique?

Question 3 (500 words): (This question is optional) Is there any other information you believe the Admissions Committee should know about you and your application to London Business School?

Download F1GMAT's LBS MBA Essay Guide

Atul Jose F1GMAT's FounderAbout the Author 

I am Atul Jose, Founding Consultant of F1GMAT, an MBA admissions consultancy that has worked with applicants since 2009.

For the past 15 years I have edited the application files of admits to the M7 programs: Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Wharton School, MIT Sloan, Chicago Booth, Kellogg School of Management, and Columbia Business School, together with admits to Berkeley Haas, Yale School of Management, NYU Stern, Michigan Ross, Duke Fuqua, Darden, Tuck, IMD, London Business School, INSEAD, SDA Bocconi, IESE Business School, HEC Paris, McCombs, and Tepper, plus other programs inside the global top 30.

 

My work covers the full MBA application deliverable: career planning and profile evaluation, application essay editing, recommendation letter editing, mock interviews and interview preparation, scholarship and fellowship essay editing, and cover letter editing for funding applications. Full bio with credentials and admit history is here.

 

I am the author of the Winning MBA Essay Guide, the best-selling essay guide covering M7 MBA programs. I have written and updated the guide annually since 2013, which makes the 2026 edition the thirteenth.

 

The reason I still write and edit essays every cycle: a good MBA essay carries a real applicant's voice. Writing essays for F1GMAT's Books and Editing essays weekly is how I stay calibrated to what current admissions committees respond to.

 

Contact me for school selection, career planning, essay strategy, narrative development, essay editing, interview preparation, scholarship essay editing, or guidance documents for recommendation letters.