End of the day the admission committee wants to select people who are action oriented and who get along with other students. Write about the situations that you have to face. Once you have written your situation as a story, answer the following questions as objectively as possible.
1. What were the steps or strategies that you followed in facing the situation?
2. What were the skills that you used or developed in facing the situation?
Remember that the skills should be relevant to the admission committee. The skills to highlight are:
1. Leadership (Initiative) - Don't worry if you haven’t taken up any direct leadership role. Initiative counts as leadership.
2. Problem Solving - Were you able to articulate the problem and come
up with an effective solution?
3. Communication - How effectively were you able to communicate your plans to your team members?
4. Team player - Did you shout at your team members who were behind the schedule or did you help them catch up with the schedule?
5. Emotional maturity - Were you unruffled with your client's constant change in requirements and demanding deadlines?
6. Persistence - Do you give up too easy or do you keep working on your goals until you achieve it?
7. Planning - Do you plan your work or your work plans your life?
About 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.