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*Please note: You are viewing an essay analysis from the 2015-2016 admissions cycle. Click here to view our collection of essay analyses for the current admissions season. 

New York University’s (NYU’s) Stern School of Business has streamlined its essay questions this application season after having made no changes to them at all last year. Gone is the option to write an essay about two different but possible career paths. Our guess is that so few applicants responded to this prompt that Stern simply got rid of it. After all, the other option candidates could choose was about “personal expression” (the school has maintained this long-time essay question, which is now required of all applicants), which tends to result in significantly more revealing essays. This year, you have just one essay in which to discuss your career goals, plus the “personal expression” essay, which offers a very broad opportunity to discuss your life, albeit in a microcosm. The NYU Stern essay prompts seem to give applicants what they want—a shot at addressing the “Why an MBA?” question as well as the “Who am I as a person?” issue. Dare we say that in an era of shrinking application requirements, these two questions are almost applicant friendly?

Essay 1: Professional Aspirations (750 words maximum)

• Why pursue an MBA (or dual degree) at this point in your life?
• What actions have you taken to determine that Stern is the best fit for your MBA experience?
• What do you see yourself doing professionally upon graduation?

The three points that make up Stern’s Essay 1 question basically constitute a personal statement, and because personal statements are similar from one application to the next, we have produced the mbaMission Personal Statement Guide, which helps applicants write this style of essay for any school. We offer this guide to candidates free of charge. Please feel free to download your copy today.

And for a thorough exploration of NYU Stern’s academic program/merits, defining characteristics, important statistics, social life, academic environment, and more, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

Essay 2: Personal Expression (500 words maximum if submitted as a written essay)

• Please describe yourself to your MBA classmates. You may use almost any method to convey your message (e.g., words, illustrations). Feel free to be creative.

(If you submit a non-written piece for this essay [i.e., artwork or multimedia] or if you submit this essay via mail, please upload a brief description of your submission with your online application.)

In NYU Stern’s famed “personal expression” essay, you have a phenomenal opportunity to differentiate yourself from the rest of the applicant pool in two distinct ways. The first is the vehicle through which you choose to reveal your persona. By using a creative and captivating format, you can grab the admissions committee’s interest and compel your “reader” to pay close attention to your content. However, be sure to consider the possible limitations of certain clever options, not just their uniqueness. For example, although a baseball card may be aesthetically pleasing, this format severely limits the amount of information you can convey because of its size and anticipated style. Instead, if you were to submit a eulogy theoretically written by your best friend—note that you can submit a written piece—the format would be sufficiently broad to allow you to touch on all that is unique about you. (Do not use this idea, however; it is now public.)

The second way this essay prompt allows you to differentiate yourself is through your content. Ideally, you will use this opportunity to showcase a diversity of professional, personal, academic, and community accomplishments that you were not able to share in Essay 1. The personal expression piece allows you to reveal your true personality and “likeability” beyond your professional/academic competencies.

One important note: Although NYU Stern is open to accepting multimedia presentations, do not feel compelled to use this option if this is not something with which you are comfortable. Similarly, if you do choose this method, do not worry about the level of your Web design or video production skills relative to others’. For this essay, content trumps style. In fact, at an mbaMission event, we interviewed various admissions officers, students, and alumni from NYU Stern who spoke of some incredibly simple “personal expression” submissions that had captivated the admissions committee—and many of these were straightforward essays!

The Next Step—Mastering Your NYU Stern Interview: Many MBA candidates find admissions interviews stressful and intimidating, but mastering this important element of the application process is definitely possible—the key is informed preparation. And, on your way to this high level of preparation, we offer our free Interview Primers to spur you along! Download your free copy of the NYU Stern School of Business Interview Primer today.

*Please note: You are viewing an essay analysis from the 2015-2016 admissions cycle. Click here to view our collection of essay analyses for the current admissions season. 

The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, continues to offer an “old school” set of essay questions. The school’s admissions committee therefore seems to be a real maverick, resisting the move to requiring just one long essay—as many MBA programs have done in recent years—and instead posing three essay questions, one of which involves three options. The whole thing is so 2009. With this surfeit of questions comes opportunity, however. The UC Berkeley Haas essay allows you to present a fuller picture of who you are and the experiences that have shaped you. As always, think carefully about what you want to reveal to the admissions committee. With each question/essay, you want to be sure the admissions committee is learning something new about you! This does not mean, for example, that you can share only one story from your work environment, but it does mean that you can relate only one project management story from any environment. Consider your essays as a collective whole to ensure that you are presenting a broad representation of yourself/your experiences that draws from multiple areas. Read on for our full analysis of Haas’s application essay prompts for this season.

Essay 1: If you could choose one song that expresses who you are, what is it and why? (250 words maximum)

Let us begin by making one thing very clear—the admissions committee is not interested in evaluating your taste in music! If you like ’80s glam rock, and your admissions reader enjoys jazz standards, the difference in your musical preferences will be completely irrelevant. We should also note that the admissions committee definitely does not need to readily recognize the song or artist you choose. What is important here is that the song you select is truly meaningful to and representative of you.

By posing a creative question of this kind, all the Haas admissions committee is doing is giving you a wide open opportunity to offer an appealing, and perhaps even fun, metaphor—not to try to impress them with your musical tastes or knowledge. So, do not dedicate too many words to discussing the song itself. Simply introduce the song, explain in a concise and straightforward manner why it is important to you, and then reveal several key experiences that relate to and support your musical choice.

In the 250 words the school allots for this essay, you have plenty of room to name a song and offer a few clear examples from your life that reinforce or substantiate the thesis that you embody the spirit of the song. That said, do not merely present a list of accomplishments, but instead strive to engage your reader in a brief narrative that validates the link between your experiences and values and the song you have selected.

Essay 2: Please respond to one of the following prompts (250 words maximum):

a. Describe an experience that has fundamentally changed the way you see the world and how it transformed you.

Interestingly, this was a standalone essay question for the school last year, whereas this season, it has been relegated to merely a choice and the maximum allowable word count slashed from 500 to just 250. If you select this option, your essay needs to be about change. And to show how you have changed, you will need to offer not just the “after” but a clear “before and after” scenario. Do not just assume that the admissions committee will understand that you had a powerful experience. You will need to figuratively hold the admissions reader’s hand, lead him/her through the situation—being sure to explain how you originally perceived the world before the incident—and then describe the “transformative” moment when everything changed, leading to new and different behaviors and perceptions on your part.

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*Please note: You are viewing an essay analysis from the 2015-2016 admissions cycle. Click here to view our collection of essay analyses for the current admissions season. 

In a blog post announcing this year’s admissions essay question, Yale School of Management (SOM) Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions Bruce DelMonico remarked that the school was pleased with the question it used last year and would therefore be posing it to this season’s applicants as well.

Our essay analysis will likewise have few changes, for obvious reasons. As we noted last year, the Yale SOM’s single essay approach is rather restrictive. So if you are thinking about applying, you had better make sure your resume is clear and compelling, your recommendations are replete with examples and exhibit your distinctiveness, you offer your best and most comprehensive self via your interview, and you carefully consider each of the school’s short-answer questions. These are all important tasks with any application, of course, but they merit extra attention with respect to Yale, because 500 words is simply not enough room to reveal your diverse achievements. In writing your one essay, you have a very important choice to make, because those few words will shape much of your initial qualitative impression. Our analysis follows…

Yale School of Management Essay 1: The Yale School of Management educates individuals who will have deep and lasting impact on the organizations they lead. Describe how you have positively influenced an organization as an employee, a member, or an outside constituent. (500 words maximum)

As we have noted, you are quite limited with the Yale SOM application essay, so you will have to think very carefully about which experience to showcase. As the question makes clear, you must provide evidence of positive influence and enduring impact. This does not mean, however, that you must have reshaped an entire organization. If you helped revamp your firm’s hiring function, thereby influencing future hiring, or shifted a key thinker’s strategy, thereby triggering a ripple effect that yielded positive results, or added an important feature to a product, thereby making it a revenue driver, then you have doubtlessly had an impact. In other words, Yale is not expecting CEO-level influence from you, but it is expecting that you have made a mark of some kind within your sphere. Of course, if you actually have led the overhaul of an entire organization, that is great—but, again, it is not a requirement.

To create a strong essay, put your reader in the middle of the action quickly. With just 500 words, you will not have enough room to expound on your organization’s background and its failures or needs. Instead, launch immediately into your narrative, presenting the problem you worked to solve or the opportunity you tried to seize. Then focus on how you conducted yourself on your way to positively influencing affairs and making an enduring impact—how you ultimately solved that problem or seized that opportunity. And, as regular readers of our essay analyses know, you must show that the path to your victory was a bumpy one, because if the whole thing was a slam dunk from the beginning, your story will lack dramatic tension—your reader will finish with a “big deal” shrug.

You must very clearly show “lasting impact,” which means you should not be afraid to carry your story through to its end. For example, revamping a firm’s hiring can have many ripple effects in terms of attracting employees who are better fits and leading to improved performance for both a team and the firm overall. Do not brag, but do not be too modest, either. Be fair to yourself and present the full story of your accomplishment, all the way to its logical conclusion. If your essay is humble (because of its narrative approach, it has to be!), your reader will gladly follow you there.

For a thorough exploration of the Yale SOM’s academic program, merits, defining characteristics, crucial statistics, social life, and other valuable resources, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Yale School of Management.

The Next Step—Mastering Your Yale Interview: Many MBA candidates find admissions interviews stressful and intimidating, but mastering this important element of the application process is definitely possible—the key is informed preparation. And, on your way to this high level of preparation, we offer our free Interview Primers to spur you along! Download your free copy of the Yale School of Management Interview Primer today.

The elation of “getting in” has now given way to a crucial question: “How am I going to finance my studies?” To help answer this question, our sister firm M7 Financial has created a brand-new, free webinar, Financing Your MBA: Student Loan Reduction Strategies, to help prospective and admitted MBAs understand the myriad of ways they can reduce their dependency on student loans.

During this session on Thursday, May 28 at 7:30 p.m. EDT, M7 Financial Co-Founders Cory Pollock and Jeremy Shinewald will show students where the holes in an MBA program’s recommend budget lies and then discuss the ways to minimize expenses including the following:

• Scholarship and fellowship opportunities
• Corporate sponsorships
• Tax credits and deductions
• Short-term consulting projects

Additionally, Cory and Jeremy will address the important differences in student loans so that you can make informed choices that serve your needs including

• Avoiding costly origination fees
• Variable vs. fixed interest rates
• Consequences of different repayment terms
• Loan forgiveness programs

Please join M7 for this informative session and Q&A to follow on Thursday, May 28 from 7:30-9:00 p.m. EDT. Click here to register for free!

*Please note: You are viewing an essay analysis from the 2015-2016 admissions cycle. Click here to view our collection of essay analyses for the current admissions season. 

So, the truth is out: Harvard Business School (HBS) applicants like to write essays. How do we know this? HBS Director of Admissions Dee Leopold noted in a recent admissions blog post, wherein she released this year’s sole essay question, that every single applicant last year submitted an application essay, even though doing so was technically optional. HBS typically gets more than 9,000 applicants each year, and not one even accidentally neglected to submit an essay! We have to wonder, then, if everyone feels compelled to complete a task, is it truly optional? Not really. Leopold admitted that by unanimously submitting an essay when they were not required to, the school’s candidates essentially told her that the essay is in fact mandatory, and she is listening. This makes sense to us, because who would want to limit their narrative by not taking advantage of an opportunity to communicate with the admissions committee? We can assure you that we advised every HBS client of ours to write an essay last year to help develop their stories. The school may be changing its approach this application season, but its essay prompt is basically the same. It offers an open-ended opportunity for you to tell the admissions committee whatever you want about yourself—to give the school a sense of your experiences, personality, and ultimately, your likeability. Our analysis follows…

Harvard Business School Essay 1: It’s the first day of class at HBS. You are in Aldrich Hall meeting your “section.” This is the group of 90 classmates who will become your close companions in the first-year MBA classroom. Our signature case method participant-based learning model ensures that you will get to know each other very well. The bonds you collectively create throughout this shared experience will be lasting.

Introduce yourself.

Let us start our analysis with another snippet from Leopold’s recent blog post: “We have no pre-conceived ideas of what ‘good’ looks like. We look forward to lots of variance.”

Read this statement a few times. Internalize it. Inevitably, you will have questions about how you “should” proceed. We can certainly guide you, and that is of course the purpose of this essay analysis, but there is no single right way to approach this essay. Here are some questions that many applicants will agonize over, assuming that they must find the “right” way to respond and that they risk making a major misstep if they do not:

“HBS will want to know that I have goals, right? Do I have to discuss my goals?”

Nope. You actually do not need to discuss your goals. As Leopold herself asserted, HBS has “no pre-conceived ideas of what ‘good’ looks like.” If the admissions committee wanted to know about your goals, this would have been part of the essay question (and such a question probably exists somewhere else in the application). This is not to say, however, that HBS actively does not want to hear about your goals. If sharing your aspirations will help you craft a compelling introduction to your classmates, then do so. Keep in mind that you must own your goals for your essay to be effective. They need to truly define you and your expected contribution to the school. If that is indeed the case, and you can imagine your classmates being really captivated by your ambitions, then discussing them just might be the right choice for you.

“HBS will want me to discuss why I am applying to HBS, right?”

Nope. Again, if you feel confident that your reason for choosing HBS for your MBA would definitely be interesting to an outsider to whom you are introducing yourself, then you should certainly address this topic in your essay. But do not do so just because you think HBS is expecting you to. If the admissions committee had wanted an extensive explanation of “Why HBS?” then the essay prompt would have explicitly asked. Anyone who has ever spoken to Leopold knows that she is a real straight shooter—she has no interest in obfuscating anything, especially admissions issues. Let us repeat, she has “no pre-conceived ideas,” so if explaining “Why HBS?” is an important part of introducing yourself to your future classmates, then proceed.

“HBS has a video about the case method that it suggests applicants watch. Should I relate my essay back to this video?”

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