Kellogg MBA Essay One: Intentionality is a key aspect of what makes our graduates successful Kellogg leaders. Help us understand your journey by articulating your motivations for pursuing an MBA, the specific goals you aim to achieve, and why you believe now is the right moment. Moreover, share why you feel Kellogg is best suited to serve as a catalyst for your career aspirations and what you will contribute to our community of lifelong learners during your time here. 

Describe the most significant challenge you have faced. How have you confronted this challenge and how has it shaped you as a person?

You can describe the significant challenge in three contexts – personal, professional, and community. Because there is a community essay, focus on personal or professional challenges.

Background Information: A consultant puzzled by the hesitation of stakeholders to embrace digitization reevaluates incentives to streamline the implementation of digital tools, processes, and frameworks for the hospital network.

Theme: Change

Theme (Explained): Change narratives are critical to building an engaging story. 

Either a change in the protagonist or their ability to take the team/organization through a period of rapid and drastic change – both read well in MBA essays.

Background Information: An LGBTQ minority entrepreneur after failing to raise funds for his apparel business addresses implicit biases in the VC community.

Theme: Leadership, Bias, Inclusion

Theme (Explained): Biases often involve narratives around a person or a culture in an organization, but a larger reason – economic incentives that propagate the biases is never addressed. 

Profile: Entrepreneur

Industry: Fashion

Background Information: A technologist, responsible for managing a proprietary pricing algorithm, stares at zero sales in the airline and hospitality industry – a once-in-a-lifetime event that motivates him to find a creative solution.

Theme: Leadership, Creativity

Essay: Kellogg leaders are primed to tackle challenges everywhere, from the boardroom to their neighborhoods. Describe a specific professional experience where you had to make a difficult decision. Reflecting on this experience, identify the values that guided your decision-making process and how it impacted your leadership style. 

Background Information: A young technology leader makes one of the toughest decisions in his professional career – to let go of two senior team members.

Theme: Leadership

Essay: Kellogg leaders are primed to tackle challenges everywhere, from the boardroom to their neighborhoods. Describe a specific professional experience where you had to make a difficult decision. Reflecting on this experience, identify the values that guided your decision-making process and how it impacted your leadership style. 

Background Information: A consultant in a non-profit balances short-term value creation with long-term impact by cultivating empathy for the beneficiaries.  

Theme: Leadership, Empathy

Essay: Kellogg leaders are primed to tackle challenges everywhere, from the boardroom to their neighborhoods. Describe a specific professional experience where you had to make a difficult decision. Reflecting on this experience, identify the values that guided your decision-making process and how it impacted your leadership style. 

Background Information: A campaign manager risks losing an account when a star copywriter takes emergency leave.

Theme: Leadership, Authentic Communication

Berkeley Haas MBA What Makes you feel Alive Essay Example: Innovation in Education with Satellite Technology

What makes you feel alive might be a vision that you have about a future – a future where education is affordable and accessible, renewable energy is mainstream, polluting industries operate outside the earth, or any sci-fi-themed narratives that benefits a large population.

Berkeley Haas MBA What Makes you Feel Alive Essay Example (Flying and Building Tech Products)

Extra-curricular feeding into the profession can be structured with two strategies. 

One – finding a common set of skills that are useful in both endeavors. 

Two – sharing that both have a unique purpose in your life. 

In this example, we have used the 2nd strategy - by highlighting an extra-curricular that makes the applicant feel alive. Then a professional endeavor which has provided a similar meaning to the applicant’s life.