Sample Columbia MBA Essay – Spend One Free Day

b. If you were given a free day and could spend it anywhere, in any way you choose, what would you do?

This is another way of asking what you are passionate about or how you would spend your valuable time. Mentioning a leisure activity is not what is expected here. Impact is hinted with the phrase “if you were given a free day.”

The admission team knows that if you have the caliber of being a Columbia MBA, your calendar will be filled with meetings, presentations and consulting engagements. What would you do if you can get away from work?

For this question, you don’t have to conclude with impact, but incorporate a secondary skill, a hobby, and deconstruct how it has helped you develop a perspective or a world view or defined you as a person.

Hobby --> How it defined you as a person

We had an Entrepreneurial applicant who had a small exit ($3 mn) from his first start-up, but wanted to scale his ambition with an MBA from Columbia. The applicant was obsessed with Chess.

He might sound like a Gamer with no social life, but he applies a lot of the strategies from Chess while dominating the market with his start-up.

 “If I get a free day, I would combine two of my favorite hobbies – hiking and playing chess. Every month, a close group of friends and I choose one of the trails from our top 10 list – a secret ranking of some of the best peaks in the US. The rules require that at the end our trekking, we play a game of speed chess. Nothing tests a character more than using strategic play and outsmarting the opponent’s moves when each of us are exhausted, and depleted our willpower to continue. The experience was similar to my first start-up. When the competitor had expected us to burn our cash on marketing, we ...
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