Sample MBA Essays and School Specific Tips

Essay: Why Stanford?

Profile: Miss. K

Profile (Background): Miss K began her career in CPG marketing, helping reshape product narratives and consumer strategies at a multinational brand. She later took on a general management role within a commercial team, leading cross-functional initiatives to grow revenue while managing brand identity. Prior to Stanford, Miss. K also worked on community engagement projects focused on food access and health awareness, showing her interest in customer insights beyond profit metrics.

Essay: Why Stanford?

Profile: Miss. A 

Essay: Why Stanford?

Profile: Mr. KP

Profile (Background): Mr. KP has experience at NASA as part of the crew that designed a mission to find life on other planets. However, as a coastline resident, his real passion is erosion science and finding technological innovations that could create sustainable barriers for global flooding events.

Essay: Why Stanford?

Profile: Miss. J 

Profile (Background): Miss J came from a background in investment banking and corporate roles before venturing into entrepreneurship. She founded a consumer food brand that bridges cultural flavors with modern health trends, motivated by her heritage and a desire to introduce authentic Asian tastes to mainstream markets. 

Essay: Why Stanford?

Profile: Miss SK

Profile (Background): Miss. SK has strong leadership experience managing workers from 85 nationalities in the rig. As the only engineer to earn a triple promotion in 2 years, she also integrated a sustainable water infrastructure in a complex rig layout. 

Additionally, her status as one of four women engineers in the team makes her story even more impressive.

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

Background Information: An entrepreneurial applicant narrates the circumstances that led to his education without any structure. 

The confidence to learn anything and tackle problems became a behavior that led him to entrepreneurship. 

Theme: Entrepreneurship, Resilience

Theme (Explained): Self-learning and Resilience as a prerequisite to entrepreneurship is not a theme that many applicants cover. 

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

Background Information: Partisan media or editorial has been an accepted norm in publishing for the past 150 years in the US. The only difference now is that we are aware of the biases. Under such open ideological positioning, democracy is at risk of making fatal decisions that negatively impact the federal structure and welfare of US citizens.

Theme: Bipartisanship

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

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

Background Information: Coming from an illustrious business family, the applicant found her true calling, serving the displaced at UNHCR – the UN’s agency assisting refugees to return to their home country or integrate/resettle in another country. 

Theme: Privilege 

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

Background Information: The applicant, a Uruguay native who overcame poverty, reflects on the struggle of a single-parent household, violence in the neighborhood, and the IMPACT, mentorship had in orienting himself towards Math and soccer. 

The experience of mentorship as an intervention for low-income communities motivated him to start a non-profit for STEM Education. 

Theme: Education, STEM, Mentorship, Inequality