MBA Applicants dread October 1st Week and January 1st week. For Round 2 applicants, say goodbye to the winter break. You will obsessively rewrite the essays, and triple check the required documents, but it is worth the sacrifice. Even if you have all the soft copies of your certificates, transcript, and other awards, DO NOT UPLOAD YOUR ESSAYS, RESUME & RECOMMENDATION LETTER ON THE DEADLINE DATES. Despite the warning, many MBA applicants will upload the documents on the D-Day – a last-minute activity that has frozen even the most reliable online MBA application systems.
Consider these 10 items before submitting your MBA application:
1) Essays
You might have spent 1-3 months writing, and rewriting the essay. With expert advice picked from our essay guide or mentorship from experts, you might have captured the essence of your candidacy in 500 words, but re-read the essay again. You will be tempted to change the phrase to a more believable narrative. STOP. Do not do any last minute changes unless you spot a grammatical error. If you can’t get sleep over a line that sounded perceptive but looks amateurish now, consult the essay reviewer, and rewrite it but avoid the temptation to make several edits on the upload date. Once you found peace with the words that you have captured, upload the essay. Almost all online application systems have the option to upload the essay, and save the application in draft. Do it at least 1-week before the deadline.
2) Recommendation Letter
Request your recommender to upload recommendation letter two weeks before the deadline. MBA application systems offer a different username/password for the recommender. It is not ethical for you to rewrite your recommendation letter, but it is acceptable to plan the recommendation letter according to the strengths and weaknesses that you have covered in the essay. The recommendation letter should confirm the narrative in your essay with either the same experience or preferably a new experience that your recommender had observed. Visit the recommender, and re-read the recommendation letter. Be polite when you spot grammatical errors, and if you feel awkward reviewing the recommendation letter, purchase a recommendation letter review service, and let the professional review your recommendation letter. While purchasing the service, brief the reviewer about the examples you have used in the essays, and the strengths & weaknesses captured in it. Reveal your strategy so that the reviewer will have clear guidelines on what to review, after the basic proof reading.
3) GPA
Schools want the original transcript as hard copy. With a small fee, most universities will provide the transcript – a 1-2 page summary of all your grades/marks. Take at least three scanned copies of the transcript, and back it up in your hard drive. Enter the GPA on a scale of 0-4 and upload the scanned copy of your transcript. For international students, GPA might not be available on a 4-point scale. It is too risky to convert grades or percentage marks to a GPA scale based on a third-party service. Most conversion does not capture the competition, and a faulty conversion table can undermine your grades or marks. Enter 0 for the GPA and the scale like 0/0, and the admission team (AdCom) will convert the grades/marks for you. With data about your university and the performance for your undergraduate year, the AdCom will have a better context on your performance.
4) Family Information
You have to enter Education Qualification & Employer details of your parents. Contact your parents, or preferably ask them to mail you this information to avoid any spelling errors.
5) Personal Information
If your actual date of birth is different from the official one, stick to the official date in the transcript and use the correct correspondence address. If you are in the middle of a job transition or you are planning to take a break before the MBA program, use your parent’s or partner’s address for correspondence. Most communication happens through email, but welcome kit and other information about funding will be sent to your mailing address.
6) Resume
If you are still using the 5-10 page resume, it is time to change it to a concise one, or learn how to convert your standard employment resume to an MBA resume. Business Schools expect a 1-2 page resume. Download the resume guide for 1-2 page MBA resume templates
7) Employment
You have to enter your title, dates of employment, job function, roles & responsibilities and compensation in US dollars (for US Schools). About the employer – you have to add employer’s annual revenue, size of the company, and the official address of the employer with contact details. Some schools will require you to add separate entry for each title, even if it was with the same Employer while others will ask for just the title. Do not include part-time jobs or your volunteer experience in this section. If you had gap in employment, you can address them with the optional essay included in the MBA Application.
8) Extra-Curricular Activities
Schools expect you to submit extra-curricular activity experiences in three broad categories: college-level, community service and Entrepreneurial. Use the latest experience first and conclude with college-level experience. Most schools allow you to include three extra-curricular activities. Add experiences where you have a proof of participation, either in the form of a certificate or an appreciation letter. You will be asked to enter the dates of participation. So don’t include extra-curricular activities where you funded the initiative, but had no active participation or the ones where you supported the initiative with sporadic annual participation (1-2 week). You should only list experiences with the organization where you had worked for at least 3 months.
9) Awards and Recognition
Once you have added the extra-curricular activities, include awards and recognitions, not covered in the extra-curricular. Add activities where your abilities in Music, Writing, Drama, Math Olympiad, Military, Academic (top 1%), Acting, Stand-up comedy, Rock-climbing, Triathlon, or Hiking were recognized. Do not worry if you just had a participatory certificate. Add them anyways. If your achievements & awards are in community service, include them here. You might repeat yourself, but it is better to include all your awards in this section. Most extra-curricular activities section will not have the space to include certificates. Again, the most important award first, followed by other awards in reverse chronological order.
10) GMAT or GRE
You will be asked to submit one of the scores from GMAT or GRE. Do not average your best GMAT scores, or add the best individual section scores (Verbal, Quant, AWA, or IR) and convert them into a total score. The school will ask you to submit the test date and check the score based on the official GMAT score report sent directly to the Business School. So any inconsistencies in the score can be detrimental for your MBA Admissions. There is no GMAT waiver for top MBA programs, and the scores play a key role in Admissions but do not do anything foolish out of desperation. For international students, the same rule applies for the test of English language (TOEFL) scores. Include your best overall test score.
Also, you have to take the GMAT or GRE before submitting the MBA application. Technically, you can get around this by submitting ‘0’ for the scores, but MBA Admissions team might not respond too kindly when they know that you have gamed the system.
About the Author
I am Atul Jose - the Founding Consultant at F1GMAT.
Over the past 15 years, I have helped MBA applicants gain admissions to Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, Chicago Booth, Kellogg, Columbia, Haas, Yale, NYU Stern, Ross, Duke Fuqua, Darden, Tuck, IMD, London Business School, INSEAD, IE, IESE, HEC Paris, McCombs, Tepper, and schools in the top 30 global MBA ranking.
I offer end-to-end Admissions Consulting and editing services – Career Planning, Application Essay Editing & Review, Recommendation Letter Editing, Interview Prep, assistance in finding funds and Scholarship Essay & Cover letter editing. See my Full Bio.
I am also the Author of the Winning MBA Essay Guide, covering 16+ top MBA programs with 240+ Sample Essays that I have updated every year since 2013 (11+ years. Phew!!)
I am an Admissions consultant who writes and edits Essays every year. And it is not easy to write good essays.
Contact me for any questions about MBA or Master's application. I would be happy to answer them all
Winning MBA Essay Guide - A Complete Guide for M7 and Top 15 MBA Application Essays
F1GMAT's Winning MBA Essay guide will teach you how to transform your essay into a life journey with trials and tribulations that will move the admission team.
+ Over 245 Sample Essays (Read Previews of F1GMAT's Winning MBA Essay Guide Sample Essays here)
+ Top 15 MBA Programs (Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Columbia, Booth, MIT, Kellogg, Yale, Haas, Darden, INSEAD, LBS, NYU Stern, Tuck, Duke Fuqua, Ross)
+ The Art of Storytelling
+ Leadership Narratives
+ Review Tips
+ Persuasion Strategies
+ The Secret to "unleashing" your unique voice
+ How to prepare and present for the Video Essay
+ How to write about your Strengths
+ How to write about your Weaknesses
+ Leadership Narratives
+ Review Tips
+ Persuasion Strategies
+ The Secret to "unleashing" your unique voice
+ How to prepare and present for the Video Essay
+ How to write about your Strengths
+ How to write about your Weaknesses
Want to try the individual school Essay Guides before upgrading to the Winning MBA Essay Guide? Try below.
F1GMAT's Essay Guides
Harvard MBA Essay Guide (20 Sample Essays)
Growth-Oriented Essay: Curiosity can be seen in many ways. Please share an example of how you have demonstrated curiosity and how that has influenced your growth. (up to 250 words)Example #1: Persistence Narrative
Background Information: The applicant – a design and music talent, shares her journey through several setbacks. She attributes curiosity to her growth.
Curiosity: Philosophy
Curiosity (Explained): Curiosity as a philosophy is tough to translate into a narrative unless you are from the creative industry or your contributions had an influence on a solution or an initiative.
MBA Essay Strategy: I wanted to capture the humanity of the applicant and her influence in music instead of just highlighting how she overcame multiple roadblocks to gain attention as a designer.
Theme: Persistence
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Life Starts at NO (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #2: International Community Building
Background Information: The applicant, a Machine Learning (ML) entrepreneur specializing in healthcare diagnostics, shares how his curiosity to learn other ML algorithms’ evolution in diagnosing Alzheimer’s, cancer, and heart disease transformed his platform into a global community.
MBA Essay Strategy: I wanted to show the applicant’s contributions in diagnostic from 2020 to 2024 by citing two events. Such examples build credibility instead of engagements that were recent. The evolution of the platform from an AI development community to a community for discussing the application of AI in diagnostics is captured through a ‘curiosity’ angle.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Growth through Collaboration (AI in Healthcare) (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #3: Culture
Background Information: The applicant, an Entrepreneur from India narrates his first entrepreneurial experience – facilitating exchange of stamps in the late 1990s.
Theme: Culture
MBA Essay Strategy: Instead of addressing the biases in the investor community that could turn preachy, I wanted to focus on the applicant and his entrepreneurial journey by citing two entrepreneurial experiences – a platform(club) for stamp collection and his Grocery delivery App.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – The American Dream (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #4: Addiction
Background Information: The applicant – a beneficiary of the foster home system, captures the sacrifice his adopted grandparents made to save him from a path of addiction. Paying it back through early intervention among teenagers and community engagement is the curiosity narrative.
Theme: Addiction
MBA Essay Strategy: My strategy is to capture a gratitude narrative in the first one-third of the essay to demonstrate motivation for starting the venture and dedicate the latter part of the essay to the unique solution
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Drug Addiction and Gaming (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #5: Scarcity
Background Information: The applicant, an education major, recognizes that 70% of all students in Kenya don’t have a computer. The curiosity that drives him to pivot from one solution to another is the growth narrative.
Theme: Innovation
MBA Essay Strategy: Often, innovation is captured with a ‘hero’ narrative where the applicant is the sole originator of an idea. I wanted to break that cliché and include a person from whom the applicant learned to use a concept called ‘scaffolding.’
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Scarcity (Growth-Oriented HBS Essay Example)Example #6: FinTech
Background Information: The applicant captures a vulnerable moment of a beneficiary to compare his journey of side hustle before a technology giant noticed his talent. Although cryptocurrency is not a flavor for the year, capture niches where innovation is still happening.
Theme: Education, Child Welfare
MBA Essay Strategy: Empathizing with a techno solution is tough without a strong backstory around the beneficiary. For the essay, I wanted to clearly establish the beneficiary – Rami, before the applicant narrates the similarities to his journey and finally shares the solution that emerged from his curiosity.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – FinTech as a Tool for Good (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #7: Learning from the best
Background Information: The applicant – a Remote Engineer in the Oil and Gas industry, reflects on a value that has helped her learn from the best regardless of her geographical limitations.
Theme: Learning
MBA Essay Strategy: The effectiveness of the case-study method depends on the assumption that peers in a Harvard MBA class will help elevate your learning experience. For the essay, I have highlighted the applicant’s recognition of this value proposition with three examples.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Learning from the Best (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #8: Military & Search for IMPACT
Background Information: The most common narrative for US military applicants is to quote 9/11 and the reaction your immediate family had while watching the events unfold. The horrifying moment is captured as a motivation to join the Military. On digging deeper, most applicants would share that their motivations were diverse.
Theme: Career Choice
MBA Essay Strategy: I wanted to quickly highlight that the applicant had the choice of entering any industry. One achievement to demonstrate his curiosity that I shared in the first half is the invention of a game. Since the game is mentioned in the resume and verifiable through search, I didn’t quote the name. By clearly highlighting the person’s curiosity and career options, the family legacy is used as a factor in joining the military.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Career Choice after a Military Career (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)
Leadership-Focused Essay: What experiences have shaped who you are, how you invest in others, and what kind of leader you want to become? (up to 250 words)Example #9: Small Business Values
Background Information: The applicant - a second-generation Asian American, is familiar with the values of fiscal conservatism, building relationships, and understanding the daily struggles of the community through his family’s department store.
Theme: Customer-Centric
MBA Essay Strategy: The applicant’s role in developing an App for the store is highlighted in the essay at a crucial part of the narrative so that the essay is not all about his father. I have also humanized the journey – by sharing how upset the father was when the revenues fell by 40%. The essay is about the transformation in the applicant’s value from a person chasing productivity and optimization technique to someone who is truly thinking about the customers.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Small Business Values (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #10: Breaking Away from Family Business
Background Information: A unique challenge that applicants whose parents are public figures or CXOs of businesses or entrepreneurs are the pressure to live up to the parent’s standards or milestones. For the leadership narrative, the burden of legacy is established before the narrative addresses his leadership principles.
Theme: Authenticity
MBA Essay Strategy: For the essay, I want to capture an entrepreneur’s journey to rise above his entrepreneur father’s image. But I didn’t want to make the entire essay about this complex dynamics. The narrative is around the applicant’s focus on customers and surrounding with teams who keeps him grounded.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Breaking Away from Family Business(Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #11: Creativity and Communication
Background Information: When the overall percentage of users with internet access is 62% in South Africa and the inequality accentuated by the rural and urban divide, the applicant endured the lack of digital infrastructure, and spending close to 22% of the family income on gaining relevant information on schools, global exams, and financial assistance.
Theme: Creativity, Communication
MBA Essay Strategy: The strategy is to share why the applicant values no distraction in a child’s home for optimum education experience. Then I highlight the many roadblocks the applicant’s non-profit faced in receiving fee waiver for their cooperative run ISP.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Non-Profit (Telecom) (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #12: Mental Health
Background Information: The applicant like most didn’t pay much attention to the mental health epidemic until tragedy hit home.
Theme: Communication, Innovation
MBA Essay Strategy: A question we frequently get from applicants is whether they should cite tragedy in the family as a motivation for a venture or a non-profit initiative. As long as you don’t linger too much on the tragedy and offer a balanced narrative, there are no restrictions on leveraging unique stories from your life.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Mental Health (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #13: Trauma, Healing & Finding Authentic Self
Background Information: The applicant narrates the absurdity of war in the narrative about the duties in Kabul, and the trauma. Instead of wallowing in on the horror, the applicant takes what makes military applicants strong and guides unprivileged children build life and leadership skills.
Theme: Resilience
MBA Essay Strategy: Capturing PTSD in an essay, the healing process, and the cues that helped the applicant are too sacred to be shared in a Harvard MBA application essay. However, with the right motivation and narrative arcs, you can capture the essence of your journey without sharing the darkest secrets. That is what I did by merging two stories – the horrors of the war with a non-profit engagement.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Military & PTSD (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #14: Addiction, Setback and Leadership Mantra
Background Information: In this narrative, the applicant captures Peru’s Silver mining boom of 2006. The growth experienced in her father’s business shifted the family’s economic status to a new stratosphere. Through the changing economic and family dynamics, the applicant finds her voice in a unique way, initially to record her unheard voice but later as one of the youngest subject matter experts in mining and commodities.
Theme: Failure
MBA Essay Strategy: For the essay, the strategy is to show how life’s unpredictability is a blessing. By narrating two setback events, the essay demonstrates the applicant’s resilience and her acknowledgment of people who made a comeback possible.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Addiction, Setback and Leadership Mantra (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #15: War, Immigration and Starting Over Again
Background Information: Despite a raging war in Syria, the family of the applicant was unblemished by the chaos. The strategic government assets near the applicant’s house would have made the region an easy target, but it was not. The calmness of her journey is shattered in one event. From the privileges of a cocooned life, the applicant is forced to think about survival, her sister’s future, and her future in the US. The second half of the narrative captures the change that was forced on her.
Theme: Gratitude, Resilience
MBA Essay Strategy: I consciously chose not to start the essay with a dialogue or trauma. Two lines are allocated to set up the narrative before the trauma event.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – War, Immigration and Starting Over Again (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Harvard MBA Business-Minded Essay: Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices and aspirations and the impact you will have on the businesses, organizations, and communities you plan to serve. (up to 300 words)
Example #16: Creative or Finance
Background Information: The applicant starts the narrative with the origin of her talents. The unbridled enthusiasm receives a reality check when in high school, the applicant’s father has a conversation with her about academics. While the applicant picked up her quant skills, she was reaching over 50,000 loyal fans, and her videos captured 1 million views.
Theme: Passion, Talent
MBA Essay Strategy: Capturing vulnerability is the toughest part for Harvard MBA applicants. For this essay example, I have captured the applicant’s uncertainty about career choice throughout the essay. Here the goal is to show vulnerability in the career choice essay while for leadership and growth essay, I could capture one example each from creative and PE industry respectively to balance the narrative. So don’t follow this example without a strategy.
Read: Harvard MBA Business-Minded Essay – Creative or Finance (Business-Minded HBS MBA Essay Example)- Stanford MBA Essay Guide (24 Sample Essays)
- Columbia MBA Essay Guide (21 Sample Essays)
- Wharton MBA Essay Guide (15 Sample Essays)
- INSEAD MBA Essay Guide (19 Sample Essays)
- Darden MBA Essay Guide (21 Sample Essays)
- Yale SOM MBA Essay Guide (15 Sample Essays)
- Tuck MBA Essay Guide (15 Sample Essays)
- Haas MBA Essay Guide (18 Sample Essays)
- NYU Stern MBA Essay Guide (15 Sample Essays + 6 Examples - Visual Essay)
- LBS MBA Essay Guide (6 Sample Essays)
- MIT Sloan MBA Essay Guide (6 Sample Cover Letters + 3 Sample Video Statement Scripts + 3 Sample Optional Essays)
- Kellogg MBA Essay Guide (11 Sample Essays)
- Chicago Booth MBA Essay Guide (12 Sample Essays)
- Ross MBA Essay Guide (31 Sample Essays)
- Duke Fuqua MBA Essay Guide (10 Sample Essays + Two 25 Random Things Samples)
- Cambridge MBA Essay Guide (12 Sample Essays)
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