In the fourth part of the LBS MBA Analysis, we cover LBS MBA's application essay tips. Read the first part - LBS MBA Total Cost and Funding Tips, the second part - LBS MBA Curriculum Analysis, the third part - LBS MBA Scholarship, Fellowships and Loans, and the fifth part – LBS MBA Salary Trends.
In this in-depth LBS MBA Application Essay Tips, we cover:
- Overview of the LBS MBA Program
- Vision, Mission, Values, and Strategy
- Ideal Candidate for the LBS MBA
- What to Include in the LBS MBA Essays
- Essay Tips
- Goals Essay Tips
- What Makes you Unique Essay Tips
Overview of the LBS MBA Program
The London Business School MBA is designed for those who view their career as a global journey.
Situated in one of the world’s most connected cities, the program allows students to build both a wide-angle and in-depth perspective on business through a flexible 15–21 month format. With over 80 nationalities in the cohort and immersive opportunities across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, the program actively encourages students to explore new geographies through exchange programs, global business experiences, and regionally focused electives.
Vision, Mission, Values, and Strategy
Mission: “to have a profound impact on the way the world does business and the way business impacts the world.”
London Business School has spent more than six decades striving to shape how business influences the world and vice versa. Its purpose centers on cultivating future leaders who can address global challenges with both insight and action. The school rests upon five foundational pillars:
1. Striving for Excellence: LBS constantly builds its intellectual and professional reputation through rigorous research, challenging curricula, and high achievement across disciplines.
2. Delivering Impact: Faculty and students work to turn ideas into solutions through field-based research, corporate partnerships, and real-world applications, so that thought leadership translates into tangible change.
3. Global Reach: Operating in major business hubs like London and Dubai, and forming partnerships in Asia and Latin America, LBS ensures diverse students and perspectives converge within its learning environment.
4. Leveraging Agility: The school adapts quickly, offering hybrid teaching, stackable degrees, and experiential modules, positioning learning as a lifelong process rather than a fixed event.
5. Enhancing Community: In-person collaboration is central: peer learning, clubs, mentorship, and alumni engagement foster a tight-knit ecosystem where relationships drive collective growth.
Together, these foundations define how LBS prepares leaders who are intellectually rigorous, globally connected, and purpose-driven, participants in business education who turn ideas into impact.
Ideal Candidate for the LBS MBA
The candidate that matches LBS’s model typically:
• Is intellectually curious, ambitious, and motivated to drive change in industry or society.
• Brings 5+ years of work experience, ideally with demonstrated professional success and increasing responsibility.
• Seeks to pivot into a new function, industry, or geographic region and wants a global platform to do so.
• Sees the MBA as both a career accelerator and a space to build leadership or entrepreneurial ventures.
• Possesses an international mindset, having worked or studied across cultures, and is eager to engage in diverse teamwork.
What to Include in LBS MBA Essays
When approaching the LBS MBA essay questions, you are not simply answering prompts; you’re building a complete, authentic narrative that conveys your readiness for a global leadership journey.
Each essay offers an opportunity to highlight a different dimension of your profile, and taken together, they should reflect a clear fit with LBS’s academic rigor, professional network, and diverse culture.
The following are key elements you should aim to include throughout your essays:
1. Clarity of Goals and Career Vision
LBS looks for candidates with well-articulated short-term and long-term career goals. You should demonstrate a thoughtful understanding of your target industry, function, and geography, along with a realistic plan for how the LBS MBA will serve as a catalyst.
Essays that lack specificity or rely on buzzwords weaken your candidacy; your vision should reflect both ambition and feasibility.
2. Evidence of Impact and Leadership
Whether you come from finance, tech, healthcare, or social impact, LBS wants to see how you’ve made a difference.
Use specific examples to showcase moments where you drove results, influenced people, or solved complex problems.
Show not just what you did, but how you thought, acted, and adapted, especially in cross-cultural or uncertain contexts.
3. Deep Engagement With the LBS Ecosystem
Go beyond surface-level references to LBS clubs or rankings.
Your essays should reflect familiarity with the program’s structure (core + electives + experiential options), global learning experiences, and community engagement.
Mention initiatives like the Global Business Experience, Entrepreneurship Lab, or sector-specific tracks if they connect with your goals.
4. Self-Awareness and Personal Motivation
LBS values introspective candidates who understand their motivations, strengths, and development needs.
Your essays should go beyond achievements and numbers, share what drives you, how you’ve grown, and how an MBA fits into your larger life story.
Vulnerability, when balanced with maturity, makes you relatable and authentic.
5. Contribution to the LBS Community
With a student body representing over 60 nationalities, LBS thrives on diversity of thought and experience.
Think about how you’ll engage outside the classroom: Will you lead a student club? Mentor peers from nontraditional backgrounds?
Launch a venture through the Institute of Entrepreneurship? LBS wants contributors, not just consumers.
6. Alignment With LBS Mission and Values
The program is anchored in five pillars: Excellence, Impact, Globality, Community, and Agility.
While not every essay needs to reference these directly, your values and actions should implicitly reflect them. Whether it’s intellectual ambition, global orientation, or adaptability, ensure your story echoes the broader culture of the school.
7. Global Mindset and Cultural Fluency
With campuses and exchange programs across continents and classmates from all corners of the world, globality is not a buzzword at LBS; it’s a lived experience. Showcase past international exposure, cross-border collaborations, or aspirations to work in global markets. LBS seeks individuals who can thrive in and contribute to this environment.
8. Academic Readiness and Curiosity
Especially in optional essays or areas where you're addressing academic gaps, emphasize your readiness to engage with LBS’s rigorous curriculum. If relevant, share how you’ve proactively built skills or knowledge (e.g., taking finance or coding courses, engaging in applied research, etc.).
9. Unique Perspective
Every candidate has something distinctive to offer. Whether it’s an unusual career path, a deep community commitment, or an entrepreneurial side project, make sure your essays reflect the parts of your identity that admissions won’t find on your resume or transcript.
Essay Tips
Goals Essay Tips
Essay 1: (500 words) What are your post-MBA goals, and how will your prior experience and the London Business School programme contribute towards these?
How to Approach the Essay
This essay is structured in three distinct but interrelated parts:
1. Post-MBA Goals: You need to define your immediate goals after graduation. This must include the role, industry, and location you’re targeting and, ideally, the type of organization you want to join.
You should articulate how this role fits into your long-term vision and values.
2. Prior Experience: You are expected to connect your professional journey so far to your aspirations. This is your chance to demonstrate career progression, highlight skills gained, and show how your background has prepared and motivated you for your next move.
3. Contributions at LBS: This part requires detailed research and strategic alignment. The school is looking for evidence that you have a clear plan to use LBS’s academic, professional, and cultural ecosystem to bridge your past and your future. You need to name specific courses, clubs, conferences, and opportunities that will help you accomplish your post-MBA goals.
Think of this essay as your narrative roadmap, with LBS as a key missing puzzle piece.
Clarity, cohesion, and authenticity are essential.
Articulate Your Post-MBA Goal Clearly and Specifically
The goals section of the essay requires more than a general ambition; it demands precision and personal relevance.
Admissions officers want to see that you’ve thoughtfully identified a specific post-MBA career path and that this choice is rooted in a clear understanding of your own values, the market landscape, and your long-term vision.
Instead of vague statements like “I want to lead social change” or “I aim to make a difference,” define the exact role you hope to take on, the sector and region you aim to work in, and the motivation behind this pursuit.
Ask yourself:
• What type of organization do you see yourself joining immediately after graduation?
• What specific function or title are you targeting?
• Why this goal, and why now?
• How does this role connect with your personal journey and the systemic change you wish to drive?
This clarity not only reflects maturity and focus, but it also gives LBS confidence that you understand the purpose of an MBA and how to leverage it effectively.
Case Study (Sabrina)
Sabrina should outline her post-MBA goal of joining a consulting firm in London that specializes in sustainability and inclusive innovation across emerging markets.
She could name the function she is interested in, perhaps strategy consulting or ESG advisory within a global firm, and connect the role directly to her prior work in grassroots entrepreneurship and policy consulting in East Africa.
Her rationale should extend beyond functional interest: Sabrina might articulate that consulting will offer her a broader lens into systems-level challenges, giving her exposure to best practices across geographies and industries. The global vantage point will equip her with the frameworks, scalability strategies, and client engagement skills needed to expand her non-profit from a regional startup into a pan-African initiative.
Choosing London as her post-MBA base can also be justified: it is a hub for international development, sustainability leadership, and impact investing. By locating herself in this ecosystem, she positions herself at the intersection of innovation, capital, and policy, all of which are critical to her long-term ambition of transforming food systems and health equity in the Global South.
Connect Past Experience to Future Goals through Thematic Continuity
Admissions committees are not just evaluating your ambitions—they are assessing how logically and credibly those ambitions emerge from your past. The strongest essays are built on a throughline: a consistent theme or set of values that underpins your journey so far and propels you into the future. Rather than presenting your post-MBA goal as a drastic shift or reinvention, frame it as a natural extension of your accumulated experiences.
To do this effectively, reflect on your professional journey through the lens of motivation and learning:
• What values have consistently guided your choices?
• What patterns or themes connect your previous roles and accomplishments?
• What gaps in your impact or effectiveness have you observed that the MBA will help you address?
Your essay should show that your next step is an evolution, not a leap disconnected from your prior work. This reassures the reader that your goal is grounded, intentional, and achievable.
Case Study (Sabrina)
Sabrina’s essay should emphasize how each stage of her career has built toward her current vision. She might start by highlighting her early experience in grassroots entrepreneurship, where she worked directly with farming communities in East Africa and learned the importance of sustainable, culturally grounded business models.
She could then explain how her subsequent roles in agribusiness and policy consulting exposed her to macroeconomic challenges like supply chain inefficiencies, lack of regulatory support, and market fragmentation, insights that sparked her desire to effect change on a broader scale.
Founding her non-profit represents the synthesis of this journey: an enterprise that reflects her commitment to food justice, cultural relevance, and health equity. However, Sabrina should also acknowledge the limits of operating at the grassroots level alone. Her ambition to enter consulting isn’t a departure from her values; it’s a strategic move to build the systemic insight and global perspective needed to scale her impact.
By demonstrating how consulting will allow her to advise governments, NGOs, and investors on sustainable food systems, she can convincingly argue that her path has always pointed in this direction; it’s just that now, she’s stepping onto a larger stage.
Essay Editing - Consult with Atul Jose (Essay Specialist, F1GMAT)
The skills that a writer/editor brings to the table are different from what a former admissions officer or a consultant who has limited writing skills brings
Review Skills # Writing Skills
Movie Critics # Movie Directors
For any questions about the service, email me, Atul Jose, at editor@f1gmat.com
As F1GMAT’s Lead Consultant and Essay Specialist, I will help you structure the essay by:
1) Incorporating your Personal Brand
I will help you find unique life experiences that would differentiate you from the highly competitive LBS MBA Application pool.
2) Including Storytelling elements
I have developed a keen sense of storytelling from over a decade and a half of editing essays and writing essay examples for F1GMAT’s Essay Guides.
The skills that a writer/editor brings to the table are different from what a former admissions officer or a consultant who has limited writing skills brings
Review Skills # Writing Skills
Movie Critics # Movie Directors
It is easy to comment, but it is tough to structure the essay from the perspective of the applicant and turn the essay into a winning application essay.
3) Aligning with the Culture of the School
A big part of editing and guiding applicants is in educating them about the culture of the school
Some schools have very ‘specific’ traits that they are looking for in an applicant.
If you don’t highlight them and lean towards general leadership or cultural narratives, the essay won’t work.
I will guide you through the writing process.
I will also iteratively edit the essays without losing your original voice.
Demonstrate Self-Awareness about Skill Gaps
An impactful MBA essay doesn't just project ambition; it reflects deep self-awareness. Admissions officers are looking for candidates who can realistically evaluate their strengths and identify what they need to grow.
Acknowledging your skill gaps is not a sign of weakness; it’s a signal of maturity, intellectual humility, and clarity of purpose. This kind of strategic introspection is especially valued in MBA applications, where the school’s role is to be a platform for transformation.
To identity skill gap:
• Identify specific technical or managerial skills you lack, not in general terms like “leadership” but in concrete ones like “navigating board-level decision-making” or “structuring multi-market growth strategies.”
• Explain why these skills matter to your post-MBA goals.
• Connect these gaps to precise learning opportunities at LBS (e.g., particular courses, labs, or experiential learning programs).
Avoid generic claims such as “I want to improve my business knowledge.” Instead, tailor the discussion around your trajectory and explain how these gaps are standing in the way of your next step.
Case Study (Sabrina)
Sabrina’s application would benefit from acknowledging that, although she has years of on-the-ground experience in launching and running her non-profit venture, she has operated largely in intuition-led, founder-driven environments. She could highlight that as she transitions into consulting and eventually into scaling her venture across multiple African markets, she needs formal frameworks to guide strategic decision-making.
Strategic Decision Making - Courses at LBS MBA
For instance, she might identify a lack of exposure to data-driven financial modeling, scenario planning, and stakeholder negotiation across public-private partnerships.
This self-assessment could be paired with a mention of LBS courses such as “Strategic Decision Making” or “Managing Organizational Change,” or learning opportunities like the Global Business Experiences and Impact Consulting Club.
By framing these skill gaps as barriers to her impact at scale, and showing how LBS will help overcome them, Sabrina presents herself as a reflective and future-focused candidate who is ready to evolve.
Download F1GMAT's 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?
Showcase Specific LBS Curriculum and Co-curricular Offerings
An exceptional MBA essay goes beyond stating that you’re excited about LBS; it proves that you understand how LBS will shape you. This requires specificity. Avoid generic name-dropping of clubs or electives. Instead, demonstrate that you've studied the curriculum and co-curricular structure in depth and that you can articulate why each offering aligns with your development needs.
Admissions wants to see evidence of intentionality: that you’re not treating the MBA as a vague stepping stone, but rather as a thoughtfully chosen toolkit. So, for every academic or extracurricular element you mention:
• Explain what it is (briefly).
• Clarify how it directly connects to a skill gap or goal.
• Show how you plan to actively participate, not just join, but contribute to and benefit from it.
Use this section to show that you are already envisioning your transformation at LBS, not passively attending, but engaging with purpose.
Case Study (Sabrina)
Sabrina should go beyond saying she’s “interested in impact clubs” or “excited about electives.” Instead, she can mention that the elective “Strategy and Innovation in Emerging Markets” will deepen her understanding of structural business barriers in underdeveloped economies, key knowledge for advising clients across sub-Saharan Africa. Similarly, “Sustainability Leadership and Corporate Responsibility” will provide tools for embedding ESG principles into core business functions, a critical competency in both consulting and scaling her non-profit responsibly.
IMPACT Consulting Club and MIINT Competition
On the co-curricular front, Sabrina could highlight her strong interest in the Impact Consulting Club, which offers hands-on consulting engagements with mission-led organizations, allowing her to sharpen her advisory skills in real-world, impact-driven scenarios. She might also discuss the MIINT Competition as a strategic platform to explore impact investing frameworks and decision-making processes, further expanding her exposure to social enterprise funding models.
Global Business Experience (GBE)
Finally, the Global Business Experience (GBE) could serve as a sandbox for testing her skills in a global setting. She might express interest in a GBE focused on Africa, Latin America, or Southeast Asia, regions where social innovation and emerging market dynamics intersect meaningfully with her career ambitions.
Embed Your Personal Mission into the Narrative
Your essay shouldn’t read like a résumé in paragraph form. LBS seeks individuals who are driven not just by ambition, but by purpose. A compelling application articulates why your goals matter to you, not just how you’ll achieve them. This emotional and ethical dimension demonstrates authenticity, passion, and long-term commitment.
To embed a personal mission:
• Identify a guiding value, belief, or mission that has consistently shaped your choices.
• Use it as a thematic thread, not an add-on, to connect your experiences, goals, and interests in LBS.
• Show that business, for you, is not just a career but a vehicle for change in a space you care deeply about.
Case Study (Sabrina)
Sabrina can center her narrative around Ujamaa, the Tanzanian principle of collective prosperity.
By invoking this philosophy early, she frames her entrepreneurial efforts, policy consulting work, and eventual consulting ambitions as acts of service, extensions of a lifelong belief in community upliftment. Rather than merely listing initiatives, she can highlight how each experience was a step toward empowering African communities through dignified, sustainable food systems. This would position her post-MBA goals not as a career pivot but as a mission-led scaling of her values. At LBS, she can express how she seeks not just to learn but to collaborate with a global, diverse cohort similarly committed to making business a force for good.
Ensure Cohesion Across the Essay
Admissions officers read hundreds of essays.
What makes a candidate stand out isn’t just a strong narrative; it’s clarity of thought and narrative cohesion.
A great essay flows naturally, with each paragraph reinforcing a central message. Avoid the trap of writing in disconnected chunks (past / future / why LBS) without tying them together.
To create cohesion:
• Use a unifying narrative, mission, or insight introduced early and returned to throughout.
• Let transitions between sections feel intentional, not formulaic.
• Ensure that the reader walks away with a vivid, consistent picture of who you are.
Case Study (Sabrina)
Sabrina could open with a powerful moment: perhaps witnessing the effects of childhood malnutrition in her rural Tanzanian community. This personal memory sets the emotional tone and introduces the problem she’s dedicated her life to solving. She can then trace her journey from local activism and founding her non-profit to recognizing the need for system-level change, which consulting and business education can unlock. This naturally leads to why LBS: not just an academic institution, but as a catalyst for amplifying her mission. She might close with a reflection on how Ujamaa and LBS’s collaborative, global ethos align, reinforcing that this is not just a career plan, it’s the next chapter in a purpose-driven journey.
What Makes you Unique Essay Tips
Essay 2: (200 words) What makes you unique?
Understanding the Essay: What “Unique” Actually Means
This essay isn’t asking for a gimmick or a quirky trait; it’s about demonstrating distinctiveness with depth. According to Kendra Cherry in Verywell Mind, a person’s uniqueness is shaped by “a blend of experiences, inherited traits, values, and how one interprets the world.” It’s less about being the only one to do something and more about how your lens, impact, and synthesis of experiences are distinct.
Further, the study - “Understanding What Makes a Person Unique: A Multipronged Approach” underscores that uniqueness is multidimensional, rooted in personal goals, life stories, traits, and identity narratives.
Your task in this essay is to connect those elements into a cohesive picture that illustrates why your presence at LBS would add something truly original.
What makes someone unique might be their resilience, a cultural perspective, a lifelong mission, or a combination of experiences.
Group Belonging vs. Individuality
Optimal distinctiveness theory suggests people stand out by balancing group belonging (alignment with LBS values) and individuality (qualities only they bring).
In this essay:
• Define your key differentiating quality, a trait or narrative that recurs throughout your journey.
• Support it with specific anecdotes, avoid generalities.
• Connect it to the LBS community. How will this unique element enrich peer learning and fulfill the program’s goals?
Anchor Your Uniqueness in Identity, Not Just Experience
Don’t just list unique experiences, show how your worldview, shaped by your background and values, defines how you think and lead.
In this essay, the admissions team wants to see reflective self-awareness: not just what you’ve done, but why you did it and how it reflects who you are.
How can one apply uniqueness in identity:
Start by identifying a formative part of your upbringing, whether cultural, geographic, familial, or philosophical, and explain how it shaped a core value or belief system. Then, show how this identity influences your decisions, actions, and career choices. This lens of self-awareness distinguishes you from applicants who rely solely on resume highlights.
Uniqueness isn’t just about being different; it’s about being intentional, values-driven, and aligned with LBS’s mission to build globally minded leaders.
Case Study (Sabrina)
Sabrina grew up in a collectivist farming community in Tanzania, where principles like Ubuntu (“I am because we are”) and Ujamaa (shared economic prosperity) were lived realities. These ideas continue to guide her today. Rather than framing her uniqueness around founding her non-profit, she should center her narrative on how her belief in food as a communal right, not a market commodity, shapes her business philosophy.
Whether advising the Ministry of Agriculture or sourcing from women-led farms, her decisions reflect a deeply rooted identity shaped by collective well-being. This gives her a distinct voice on issues like sustainability and equity, one grounded in non-Western values often missing from mainstream business conversations.
Leverage Multidimensionality: Connect Multiple Life Roles
Uncover your uniqueness by highlighting the intersections of your life, not just one title or role.
According to the study “Understanding What Makes a Person Unique: A Multipronged Approach,” individuals who blend diverse domains of their life, such as being both a caregiver and an entrepreneur, tend to demonstrate higher narrative uniqueness.
Your value isn’t just in excelling at something, it’s in how different parts of you come together to shape your leadership and outlook.
How can one apply multidimensionality:
Think of the various roles you’ve inhabited: professional, familial, social, and personal. The key is to draw connections between them, how they’ve influenced the way you solve problems, lead teams, or pursue impact. These intersections often reveal emotional range, complexity of thought, and flexibility, traits highly valued at LBS.
Avoid presenting your life as a set of disconnected achievements. Instead, emphasize the synthesis: how different roles feed into one another to build a distinctive, thoughtful individual.
Case Study (Sabrina)
Sabrina could frame her uniqueness not only as a non-profit founder or an advisor in agricultural policy, but in the combination of her identities.
As the daughter of Tanzanian subsistence farmers, she carries a deep emotional understanding of food insecurity and community needs. As a policy consultant, she has learned to navigate systems and design long-term solutions. As a mission-driven entrepreneur, she’s applying both personal and institutional insights to build a business rooted in equity and sustainability.
By connecting these roles, Sabrina reveals a powerful duality: she can relate to both the village farmer and the national policymaker. This enables her to design inclusive business models that are practical, empathetic, and scalable.
Most applicants will showcase accomplishments; few will demonstrate how the totality of their lived experience informs their professional identity. This layered perspective shows that you aren’t defined by a job title but by a broader, more integrated worldview, something admissions committees find compelling and memorable.
Highlight a Consistent Motivational Thread
True uniqueness isn’t always about having the most unconventional background; it’s often about clarity of purpose. According to Verywell Mind, “motivation and personal goals shape the way people act, choose, and grow, often more than skills do.”
When a clear motivational thread ties together your decisions, challenges, and achievements, it creates a compelling narrative of intentionality rather than coincidence.
How can one apply consistent motivation:
Identify a core personal or professional drive that has remained stable across different stages of your life. This could be a belief (e.g., economic justice), a passion (e.g., environmental advocacy), or a personal commitment (e.g., amplifying underrepresented voices). Then, reflect on how this drive has shaped your choices, what causes you’ve supported, what roles you’ve taken, and what goals you’re pursuing.
Admissions committees value this narrative consistency because it signals maturity, depth, and a long-term orientation.
This approach also differentiates you from applicants who list impressive but disconnected experiences. Coherence shows that you are not just ambitious, you are driven by something meaningful.
Case Study (Sabrina)
Rather than presenting her ventures in isolation, Sabrina could highlight a consistent motivational thread: promoting food sovereignty for marginalized communities.
As a teenager, she advocated for equitable land distribution in her village. In university, she wrote her thesis on indigenous food systems. Later, she founded her non-profit not simply as a business, but as a continuation of this mission, to reconnect African food production with local communities and values.
As a policy advisor, she has stayed focused on creating national frameworks that prioritize subsistence farming and sustainability.
Each of these actions stems from the same internal compass. Her uniqueness lies not just in what she has done, but in the underlying “why” that guides her across contexts.
MBA programs like LBS are not just selecting candidates who have achieved a lot; they are selecting those who can grow with purpose.
A motivational thread signals that you’ll bring intentionality to the classroom, to your team, and to your future career. It shows that you know where you’re headed, and why that journey matters.
Demonstrate Unusual Problem-Solving Approaches
One of the clearest markers of uniqueness is how you think.
As Leadership Flagship emphasizes, cognitive uniqueness, the way individuals frame challenges, synthesize insights, or apply empathy in decision-making, is often more defining than their technical credentials. You don’t have to be a contrarian or invent something revolutionary. Instead, highlight moments where your approach to solving a problem diverged meaningfully from the conventional route, especially in ways that aligned with your values or community-based logic.
How can one show Unusual Problem-Solving Skills?
Reflect on a time when you solved a problem differently, when your instincts led you to explore a solution that others overlooked. This could be rooted in your lived experiences, interdisciplinary background, or systems thinking. The goal is to not only describe what you did, but to explain why you approached it that way and what insight drove your method. Admissions committees value problem-solvers who combine creativity with a grounded sense of impact.
Even if your outcomes weren’t perfect, the emphasis should be on the thinking process: What lens did you bring? What trade-offs did you consider? What values shaped your choices?
Case Study (Sabrina)
Rather than scaling her non-profit through mainstream commercial channels like supermarket partnerships or venture capital, Sabrina opted for a community-first route. She built cooperative supply chains in collaboration with women-led microfarms across East Africa. Her thinking was informed not just by business efficiency but by an understanding of gendered labor patterns and local resilience.
This wasn’t just an operational decision; it was a values-based solution to a multi-layered problem. By decentralizing sourcing and embedding the supply chain within local economies, she addressed multiple challenges at once: empowering women, reducing food miles, and ensuring community buy-in. Her model reflected socially embedded logic, something often absent in purely market-driven solutions.
Top MBA programs like LBS want students who bring distinctive thinking styles into the classroom. Demonstrating an unusual problem-solving approach reveals more than ingenuity; it signals self-authorship, systemic awareness, and the capacity to contribute novel perspectives in team settings. Your story becomes not just about impact, but about how your mind works, and why that matters.
Frame Your Uniqueness as an Asset to LBS’s Ecosystem
Being unique isn’t enough; what matters is how your uniqueness adds value to others. As highlighted in Understanding What Makes a Person Unique, personal distinctiveness becomes meaningful when it contributes to community growth.
In the MBA context, distinctiveness means connecting your perspective and background to what you’ll offer your peers, clubs, and the broader LBS learning environment. Admissions committees aren’t just asking, “What makes you different?”, they’re also asking, “How will that difference benefit others?”
How can one frame uniqueness as an asset for LBS?
Think beyond self-reflection and shift toward contribution.
Ask yourself: How will my experiences challenge or expand the thinking of others at LBS?
What will I bring to classroom discussions, study groups, or student-led initiatives that might otherwise be missing?
Whether it's a cross-cultural insight, a grassroots operational perspective, or an unconventional career path, show how your presence creates collaborative richness.
Avoid generic statements like “I offer a global perspective.” Instead, pinpoint how your uniqueness aligns with specific LBS platforms, be it electives, clubs, or experiential programs.
Case Study (Sabrina)
Sabrina’s deep work in East Africa’s food ecosystem isn’t just a compelling story; it’s a classroom asset. In courses like Business Strategy in Emerging Markets or discussions on ESG, she brings firsthand experience with systemic inequality, local supply chain building, and gender-inclusive innovation. Her on-the-ground insights offer a lens that goes beyond frameworks and case studies; she embodies lived expertise.
Furthermore, she might contribute meaningfully to clubs like the Social Impact Club or Africa Club, not only as a participant but as someone who can mentor peers on inclusive entrepreneurship and the challenges of mission-aligned growth. Her background doesn’t simply fit into LBS; it helps stretch the conversation.
LBS values collaborative learning and cultural exchange. Framing your uniqueness in terms of what it brings to others signals humility, relevance, and emotional intelligence. It also reassures the admissions team that you understand MBA culture: it’s not about standing out alone, it’s about lifting the learning of those around you through what only you can offer.
Optional Essay
Essay 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?
How to Use the Optional Essay
This section is not mandatory, but for someone like Sabrina, it presents a strategic opportunity. It’s best used to:
• Explain unusual choices in the application (e.g., career gaps, low grades, nontraditional pathways)
• Share personal context that influenced life or academic trajectory
• Highlight a major insight, transformation, or unorthodox strength that didn't fit elsewhere
Avoid repeating accomplishments or offering a generic “thank you” message.
Use the Optional Essay to Fill Narrative Gaps, Not Repeat Strengths
Admissions officers already have your resume, transcripts, and main essays. This section should explain anything that might raise questions, such as employment gaps, a low GMAT, or an unusual career path. If there's no obvious gap, reflect on a meaningful insight or pivot that shaped your trajectory.
Case Study (Sabrina)
Sabrina can explain that her pivot from grassroots activism to policy consulting wasn’t a departure from her mission; it was an expansion. Her choice to temporarily step back from her non-profit to work on regional agricultural policy may appear like a shift in direction, but in reality, it was a systems-level intervention aligned with her core values. This clarity strengthens the coherence of her application.
Provide Personal or Contextual Backdrop for Key Decisions
If your path has been shaped by socioeconomic, cultural, or familial factors, this is the place to offer context. It shows resilience, decision-making maturity, and motivation, especially if these factors influenced your education or career pace.
Case Study (Sabrina)
Sabrina can briefly mention growing up as the daughter of subsistence farmers in rural Uganda, and how her early exposure to food insecurity instilled a deep-rooted purpose. This context helps the committee understand why she chose to build a mission-driven food venture instead of pursuing more conventional corporate paths.
Reframe Career Non-Linearity as Intentional Evolution
Tip: Many applicants fear that switching sectors or roles makes them appear indecisive. Use this essay to connect the dots between roles and show how each step was a progression in mission, not confusion in direction.
Case Study (Sabrina)
Sabrina can show that her transition from a founder to a regional food policy advisor wasn’t a detour; it was a strategic expansion of impact. Each role reflected a different lever of influence: community (Her non-profit), policy (advisory work), and systems (coalition building). This helps admissions see her multidimensionality as a strength.
Address Any Concerns, Candidly but Confidently
If there’s a GPA dip, low test score, or employment break, address it succinctly. Avoid excuses, focus instead on what you learned, how you grew, and how the situation improved your readiness for LBS.
Case Study (Sabrina)
If Sabrina had a semester of lower grades due to caregiving responsibilities or early venture-building stress, she can acknowledge it factually and share how that period honed her resilience and time management. She can also point to more recent successes (like leading cross-border policy projects) to demonstrate her current capabilities.
Use Vulnerability Strategically, Not as a Plea
If you choose to share personal challenges, frame them as a source of insight or growth. Vulnerability is powerful when it explains who you are, not when it appears as a justification or emotional appeal.
Case Study (Sabrina)
Sabrina might describe a period of self-doubt after receiving pushback for introducing veganism in regions with traditional meat-based diets. Instead of framing this as failure, she can show how it taught her the importance of cultural sensitivity and adapting models to local contexts, insights she now brings into policy and product design.
References