MIT MBA Essays for 2013-14 has been released. Unlike other schools, MIT Sloan School of Management has made no changes in the number of essays, and the word limit for each one of them. The number of essays is two and the word limit is 500 words or less for each essay. In this MIT Sloan MBA Essay Tip article, we will cover leadership traits that Sloan values and offer specific tips for answering the two essays.
MIT Sloan MBA Admission Essays 2013
Essay 1: The mission of the MIT Sloan School of Management is to develop principled, innovative leaders who improve the world and generate ideas that advance management practice. Discuss how you will contribute toward advancing the mission based on examples of past work and activities. (500 words or fewer, limited to one page)
Essay 2: Describe a time when you pushed yourself beyond your comfort zone. (500 words or fewer, limited to one page)
Optional Question
The Admissions Committee invites you to share anything else you would like us to know about you, in any format.
MIT Sloan MBA Essay Guideline
1) We are interested in learning more about how you work, think, and act. For each essay, please provide a brief overview of the situation followed by a detailed description of your response. Please limit the experiences you discuss to those which have occurred in the past three years.
2) In each of the essays, please describe in detail what you thought, felt, said, and did.
MIT Sloan Leadership Qualities
Essay 1 starts with the mission of the school – develop principled, innovative leaders who improve the world and generate ideas that advance management practice.
MIT Sloan School of Management has adopted a four Capabilities Leadership framework:
1) Sensemaking: involves understanding the world by letting go of old assumptions and creating models that will allow leaders to understand the new rules of the world and how they are changing.
2) Relating: is a principle that requires leaders to develop relationship with key stakeholders both within and outside the organization. For leaders, this means being visible, and reassuring the team during the time of crisis.
3) Visioning: is one of the important attributes that a leader should possess. She should be able to articulate future possibilities in a coherent manner such that the team is motivated to act immediately. This can only happen when the vision is based on core values that resonate with the team and company culture.
4) Inventing: Vision can only be fulfilled when the focus is on finding new ways of working together as a team, and achieving future possibilities.
6 Tips to Ace MIT Sloan MBA Essay 2013-14
1) Include MIT Leadership Traits
Shortlist stories from your life and extracurricular that has elements of MIT Sloan Leadership traits. The AdCom is evaluating how you respond to a situation. Make sure that the majority of the words in the essay are spent on writing how you responded to a situation and the situation is explained in a clear and concise manner.
2) Clarify your Motivations and Values
When you explain how you respond to a situation in essay 1 or write about coming out of your comfort zone in essay 2, the motivations for your action should be clear with the description. More importantly, the values that define you should match the core values of MIT Sloan’s principled leadership.
3) Teamwork, Communication and Leadership
School appreciates applicants who understand that students in the class completes the puzzle, and are the foundation for creating solutions that make the world a better place. Teamwork, Communication and Leadership should be highlighted in the essays. Before you explain about your contribution, read about the various clubs in MIT Sloan, and pick the ones where you can make a difference either through your ideas or leadership. Explain how your hands-on contribution would help student led clubs, and what you would like to learn from your peers.
4) Efficiency Under Constraint
A character trait that MIT Sloan appreciates in an applicant is efficiency under constraint. MIT is known for its bright Engineers and Tech contributors, and Sloan has the largest percentage of Engineers - 29% in its MBA Class. What makes MIT Engineers different is their ability to create innovative solutions with limited resources. Therefore, when you pick stories for Essay 2, explain how you came out of the comfort zone with limited resources. Innovation and inventive solutions often happen under resource constraint.
5) Motivation and Energy
When the choice is between two equally good applicants, the motivation and energy favor the selection of one over the other. Make sure that you convey your motivation for joining the MBA program through Essay 1, where your potential contribution in the class is evaluated.
6) Keep the Word Limit – 500 Words (1 Page)
Review the essay several times, and remove words that don’t contribute towards the completion of a coherent essay. Keep the essay within the 1-Page or 500-word limit. Pick the right story to make this happen.
Next Step
To help you with essay writing and picking the right story, we have written a 174 page Essay Guide that teaches you how to incorporate storytelling, contexts, leadership examples & persuasion techniques for your essays Try them out:
F1GMAT Essay Guide (174 Page PDF E-Book)
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