MBA Essay Tips

For anyone in Finance, Technology or Consulting, this exercise might seem counterintuitive but the best way to improve you chance of writing memorable essays is not to write less but write at least 2000 words even if the word count of your school essays is 250 to 500 words.

For applicants, consider these 3 factors:

• Leadership-Focused Essay: What experiences have shaped how you invest in others and how you lead? (up to 250 words)

To answer the Harvard MBA Leadership-Focused Essay, I explore:

•    Experiences that Shaped who you are
•    Invest In Others
•    What leader do you want to become

Yale MBA Essay: Describe the biggest commitment you have ever made. Why is this commitment meaningful to you and what actions have you taken to support it? (500 words)

Broadly, personal commitment essay can be written with three themes: Commitment to values, Commitment to Goals, and Commitment to Community.

1. Commitment to Values

   a. Inclusion

LBS MBA Essay 2: What Makes you Unique (200 Words)

Adaptability and Resilience are now the most bastardised traits that applicants highlight as their uniqueness. 

In psychological contexts, there are nuanced differences between coping with stress vs adapting to stress, vs. remaining resilient throughout a stressful scenario. 

LBS MBA Essay 2: What Makes you Unique (200 Words)

All curiosity narratives are anchored around the applicant’s ability to think beyond the obvious, find insights that no one is looking for, and accentuate the solution’s impact.

a) Technical Curiosity

The least impactful curiosity narratives are around technical solutions, where the applicant fails to connect the solution to the business impact. Even if the technical solution had an impact on the client, solo solutions have the lowest influence on the admissions team. 

LBS MBA Essay 2: What Makes you Unique (200 Words)

Every competent professional targeting top schools, including LBS, has committed to excellence in their profession. That doesn’t make an applicant unique. The top 1-5% performance will help them gain attention, but to highlight uniqueness, an applicant should lean into their belief and the passion that emanates from the belief.

LBS MBA Essay 2: What Makes you Unique (200 Words)

An applicant is unique when their multiple lived experiences through professional and personal roles create a unique profile that is unlike any of their peers. 

Most applicants choose to cite professional roles from their full-time or volunteering roles and articulate the influence of their diverse experiences on their thinking and decision-making. 

The 1st lived role that differentiates an applicant are narratives that capture two roles.

LBS MBA Essay 2: What Makes you Unique (200 Words)

With the incentive to cut costs by building a global supply chain, trade flourished around the world. Each country brought its unique strength to the products and services served in the marketplace. 

The collaboration was not limited to skills. The cultures of the interacting countries are also transmitted while collaborating. 

Under such global influences, a skilled professional can gauge the difference between innovation that works in any culture and that which needs careful tweaking. 

LBS MBA Essay 2: What Makes you Unique (200 Words)

In an LBS MBA class where more than 90% are international, bringing one’s unique identity to the ‘What Makes you Unique’ essay would be the only chance when competing with similar profiles from Finance, Consulting, and Technology. 

Broadly, identity-based narratives fall into four themes:

LBS MBA Essay 2: What Makes you Unique (200 Words)

Inclusive leadership is not democratic leadership, which, according to studies, is the worst kind of leadership in a crisis. 

Asking for votes for every small decision is counterproductive. That is why in democratic societies, we have representatives to take care of the interests of the constituents. 

Inclusive Leadership is much more nuanced. 

LBS MBA Essay 2: What Makes you Unique (200 Words)

Interestingly, what makes an applicant resourceful could also be a curse when the person doesn’t know when to quit and seek help. 

Quitting a path of problem-solving is considered a weakness in our culture, where every tale of persistence and resilience is praised, while ‘seeking a mentor’ or ‘seeking help’ is seen as a weakness in all quant-heavy cultures (Finance and Technology).  

LBS MBA Essay 2: What Makes you Unique (200 Words)

Even during the worst job market, employers look for candidates who are entrepreneurial. The popular culture, unfortunately, has painted entrepreneurs as these superhuman beings who persist and stare at failure with a Zen attitude. 

They are not. 

What makes entrepreneurial applicants unique is their resourcefulness in turning limitations into their strengths. 

Essay 2: Describe a highly stressful situation you faced and how you managed it. What did this experience teach you about yourself and your interactions with others? (400 words)

It is a myth that financial insecurity will solve the ills of all our lives. It certainly solves one problem – ‘insecurity’, but the feeling never fully disappears even when one reaches the top of the socio-economic ladder.

Essay 2: Describe a highly stressful situation you faced and how you managed it. What did this experience teach you about yourself and your interactions with others? (400 words)

Any stress emanating from an entrepreneurial experience can be expressed through financial constraints, technological restrictions, or market dynamics. 

The market dynamics is a broad bucket that can also include user behaviour. 

Essay 2: Describe a highly stressful situation you faced and how you managed it. What did this experience teach you about yourself and your interactions with others? (400 words)

The stress in an applicant's professional career might arise from the conflict between their beliefs and the conflicting evidence a new finding presents. 

Most applicants shy away from sharing such professional examples where their initial belief was challenged. 

They don’t want to show that vulnerability. 

Essay 2: Describe a highly stressful situation you faced and how you managed it. What did this experience teach you about yourself and your interactions with others? (400 words)

Applicants hesitate to mention their missteps in the highly stressful situation essay. Although there is a separate strengths and weaknesses essay, INSEAD has removed the requirement to mention failures from the application essay questions. 

Failure – A Common Reason for Stressful Situations

The stressful situation is an excellent space to mention a failure. 

Essay 2: Describe a highly stressful situation you faced and how you managed it. What did this experience teach you about yourself and your interactions with others? (400 words)

The INSEAD MBA application highly stressful situation essay could be made personal with trauma and life events that offer the admissions team a perspective about you outside your professional career. 

IMPOSTOR Syndrome – A Rarely Used Essay Theme

But a theme that is not often used but has been consistently cited by high achievers is the ‘IMPOSTOR Syndrome’.