Skip to main content

Sample Ross MBA Essay: Want People to Know (Life Philosophy)

The circumstances of your childhood, the influences of your role models, the setbacks, and the successes help you develop a life philosophy that is shareable with the admission team. Instead of sharing an outlook that has been written or shared to death – “Persistence,” “Hard work,” or “Global outlook,” choose an event that reaffirmed a unique value in you.

In this Entrepreneurial example, the applicant cites how his start-up quickly scaled to a $20-million enterprise. The highs were met with setbacks when the co-founder cheated him out of his share, and the politics of the board made the applicant a pariah in his own company. Since we have only 100 words – a sentence capturing the setback is enough to establish the backdrop for the life philosophy.

Sample Ross MBA Essay: Life Philosophy through the prism of an Entrepreneurial failure (94 Words)

I want people to know that I started a neighborhood e-waste collection platform and scaled it to a $20-million business in just two years. Unfortunately, the cliched story of co-founders making side-deals and the politics ...

.....
...


Download 19 Sample Essays with F1GMAT's Ross MBA Essay Guide

About the Author 

Atul Jose

I am Atul Jose, Founding Consultant of F1GMAT, an MBA admissions consultancy that has worked with applicants since 2009.

 

For the past 15 years I have edited the application files of admits to the M7 programs: Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Wharton School, MIT Sloan, Chicago Booth, Kellogg School of Management, and Columbia Business School, together with admits to Berkeley Haas, Yale School of Management, NYU Stern, Michigan Ross, Duke Fuqua, Darden, Tuck, IMD, London Business School, INSEAD, SDA Bocconi, IESE Business School, HEC Paris, McCombs, and Tepper, plus other programs inside the global top 30.

 

My work covers the full MBA application deliverable: career planning and profile evaluation, application essay editing, recommendation letter editing, mock interviews and interview preparation, scholarship and fellowship essay editing, and cover letter editing for funding applications. Full bio with credentials and admit history is here.

 

I am the author of the Winning MBA Essay Guide, the best-selling essay guide covering M7 MBA programs. I have written and updated the guide annually since 2013, which makes the 2026 edition the thirteenth.

 

The reason I still write and edit essays every cycle: a good MBA essay carries a real applicant's voice. Writing essays for F1GMAT's Books and Editing essays weekly is how I stay calibrated to what current admissions committees respond to.

 

Contact me for school selection, career planning, essay strategy, narrative development, essay editing, interview preparation, scholarship essay editing, or guidance documents for recommendation letters.