Blog: Archive for the “Essays” Category

Applicants to Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business must provide three 2,000-character essays and have the option to submit a fourth, if anything more about their candidacy needs to be offered or explained. The school’s first prompt broadly covers applicants’ need for an MBA, and specifically a Tuck MBA. The second deals with candidates’ individuality … Read More  

Rather than framing its required application essay as a traditional “essay,” the MIT Sloan School of Management requests that applicants submit a “cover letter,” including even the standard formal correspondence elements of an address and opening salutation. Writing cover letters will undoubtedly be a large part of students’ career development efforts at Sloan, after all, … Read More  

The admissions committee at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business provides its applicants with the opportunity to paint a well-rounded picture of themselves, but they must do so with significant brevity. For each of the program’s four prompts, candidates are limited to just 300 characters—not words. And this includes spaces! Because this equates … Read More  

With its straightforward approach to the traditional goals statement and one other required essay (allowing applicants to choose between two prompts), the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University seems interested in getting to know its applicants both professionally and personally. The admissions committee wants to first understand your professional aspirations in the short … Read More  

The New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business requires only two essays this year, but the contrast between the prompts for those essays enables candidates to cover a significant amount of ground. First, the school poses a straightforward and traditional question about applicants’ short-term professional aspirations and why Stern specifically is needed to achieve … Read More