Essay 1 (Required): a) What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (50 words)
b) What are your career goals for the first three to five years after completing your MBA, and how will those build towards your long-term professional goals? (150 words)
Profile: Miss. C
Profile (Background): Miss C’s strength has been in deal origination and portfolio company management in PE. With earlier roles in M&A and an academic background in Accounting, Business Administration, and French, Miss C has been specializing in deals originating from Europe, even though she works with a boutique US-based PE firm.
Essay Approach: “Why Wharton MBA?”
With a Wharton MBA, Miss C wants to expand her influence on global markets, including the Asia market, where the next decade of deals would originate. Although she aims to refine her financial acumen, the value of a Wharton MBA in addition to its strong technical foundation is its global and multi-functional perspective.
By focusing on the infrastructure and the energy industry, she wants to be involved in large deals.
A Wharton MBA would offer the brand visibility to expand her expertise beyond thematic origination efforts.
Essay Planning
Problem: The applicant has worked only in boutique IB and PE firms, where the leadership followed thematic deal sourcing.
Problem (Explained): For this MBA Essay, I had to prioritize the exposure in the US as her experience in thematic deal sourcing has pigeonholed her into a specialist capable of only finding deals in healthcare and IT, in Europe.
Feasible Goals: Private Equity with a global PE giant
Short-term Goal: Gain exposure to PE stalwarts and peers with long-term thinking to find winners in diverse markets and not just themes set by PE firms.
Long-Term Goal: To build a generalist and a strategic perspective to find partners, entrepreneurs, and deals in emerging and niche markets.
Wharton’s Strength: Private Equity and Venture Capital stand out as one of the strongest professional tracks at Wharton.
Around 15% of the MBA class enters with prior experience in the sector, and about 12.5% continue into PE/VC roles after graduation. By collaborating with peers from PE and VC, Miss C would expand her perspective from multiple functional and industry perspectives.
Opener: I wanted to capture the applicant’s involvement in the latest funding cycle in two growth industries.
Strategy: The strategy is to show her current interest in sustainability and highlight a gap in a solution she offered to a PE partner. This gap is cited to demonstrate the skill Wharton MBA majors would offer.
Sample Wharton MBA Goals Essay: Short-Term and Long-Term Career Aspiration (Boutique PE to Large PE Deals) (193 Words)
a) I have worked in M&A deals, in vaccines and LLMs, but the biggest challenge in boutique firms is access to deal flow. With a Wharton MBA, I want to transition to a large PE fund, where I can go beyond thematic deals in Healthcare and IT.
b) In the long term, I want to provide strategic sustainability solutions to portfolio companies.
With the Organizational Effectiveness major, I want to align the portfolio company's milestones with the team's transformational goals. This summer, I guided ..
