Blog

The Yale School of Management (SOM) joins the brigade of MBA programs that are reducing the word count for their application essays this year— likely making things more difficult for candidates who strive to differentiate themselves. Last year, Yale gave candidates 1,600 words with which to impart qualitative information—that number is now just 1,350. This is not a huge difference, but every word counts. To ensure that you make the most of the school’s essay prompts, our analysis follows…

This year’s application contains four essay questions. The first question has a maximum response length of 150 words; the other three have maximum response lengths of 300 words. Applicants must respond to all four questions. The questions are:

1. What prompted your decision to get an MBA? When did you realize that this was a step you wanted – or needed – to take? (150 words maximum)

Yale makes a fair request here: explain why you want/need this degree. Do not let the 150-word limit intimidate you, though—you can successfully describe the development of that need in a brief essay. But take care not to write something like “I have reached a ceiling, and an MBA is the next step. I need more training in marketing/finance/etc.” This kind of answer is too generic. To be effective, you will need to own your response. Consider launching into a narrative instead—make your essay personal. The school needs to “see” you in action to fully understand you as an individual and for you to stand out.

Although you might want to connect some of Yale’s resources to specific elements of your need for an MBA, this is not mandatory—otherwise, the school would have asked, “Why Yale?” Still, you can tactfully identify some relevant offerings in your response.

(By the way, note that our write-up for Essay 1 is exactly 150 words.)

 2. Describe a difficult professional decision you had to make. What were the consequences, and what, if anything, did you learn? Would you make the same decision again? (300 words maximum)

We usually tell candidates not to second-guess the admissions committee, but you can definitely disregard the “if anything” portion of this essay question, because you must show that you did indeed learn something from this difficult decision. In only 300 words, you will need to establish a very clear narrative that leads up to that tough decision—and make sure that the decision you describe was in fact a tough one to make. The reader must understand that you had an indisputable problem on your hands and had to weigh your options carefully. In your essay, take the reader through the decision-making process, discuss the possible outcomes and explicitly analyze the decision you ultimately made. Do not omit your analysis of the results and make sure to address whether you would choose today to pursue a different path. The admissions committee makes a point of asking this question specifically, so be sure to take it on and answer it directly.

3. The Yale School of Management provides a leadership education characterized by broad-minded and intellectually curious students with diverse backgrounds, a distinctive integrated curriculum, connections to one of the great research universities in the world, and the broad reach of an innovative and expanding global network of top business schools. What will you contribute to the Yale SOM community, and how will being part of it help you extend your professional vision? (300 words maximum)

The extended lead-up to this question is mostly irrelevant. You do not need to connect your intended contribution to the Yale community to intellectual curiosity, diversity, the integrated curriculum or any other facet of the MBA program mentioned in the question. Think of the first sentence here as a kind of mini commercial for the school and focus your energy instead on identifying what you have to offer in return—though, if you can make it work, you can certainly connect your contribution to any or all of these aspects.

The core question here is “What will you contribute?” The school is not expecting anything specific from you, so do not try to figure out what it “wants” to hear. There is no “right” answer to this question. Think carefully about your distinctiveness, and keep in mind that what makes you distinct does not need to be personified by a singular standout achievement. In other words, do not worry that what you have to offer will not be “good enough” if you have not founded Facebook or won an Olympic medal.

Ask yourself, “In what instances and in what ways have I contributed in the past?” This surprisingly simple question should unlock a few possible answers. Also, think about how you contribute through specific character traits, such as your sense of humor, your honesty, your dependability and so on. The key is showing not only that you understand your own abilities and strengths, but also that you know how you would apply them in the Yale SOM environment. You therefore need to be very clear and reveal knowledge of the Yale experience. Writing that you will apply your skills in the classroom or socially is not enough. You must explain that you can make unique contributions in specific classes, clubs, etc. Avoid just listing the names of several classes (or clubs, etc.) and instead demonstrate that you truly understand what each one offers and what you could bring to it to make it better. Doing so successfully requires research of—and hopefully some a priori experience with—the school and its students, so this will be an important first step in writing this essay.

4. What do you consider to be your most significant accomplishment? Why? (300 words maximum)

In addition to creating a compelling narrative for this essay, you will need to choose the central story very carefully. Start by asking yourself what exactly you have already shared with the admissions committee through your other essays and the rest of your application materials. Make sure that you are offering the school something new about yourself in each essay—not a new physical location or event, but a new skill, talent, personality trait, etc. A well-diversified package of essays will keep your admissions reader engaged by keeping him/her learning about you throughout your application.

As you start writing this essay in particular, be careful not to brag. The school is less interested in the accomplishment itself and more interested in how you accomplished it and why you consider it your most significant one. Successfully conveying this information requires that you write a narrative about your experience, revealing any and all bumps and bruises you sustained along the way—after all, no great accomplishment is truly easy to reach. As you tell your story, emphasize your actions and let the story do the work for you. Finally, make sure to reflect on the experience. Yale asks you specifically “why” this accomplishment is so important to you, so dedicate a portion of your essay to the reasons behind your choice.

If you are a reapplicant, you must answer three essay questions: Question 1., Question 4., and then a response to the question “What steps have you taken to improve your candidacy since your last application? (300 words maximum).”

Whether you have improved your academic record, received a promotion, begun a new and exciting project, increased your community involvement or taken on a personal challenge of sorts, the key to success with this additional essay is conveying a very deliberate path of achievement. Yale wants to know that you have been actively striving to improve and that you have seized opportunities during the previous year to do so, because a Yale MBA is vital to you. The responses to this essay question will vary greatly from one candidate to the next, because each person’s needs and experiences differ. We are more than happy to provide one-on-one assistance with this highly personal essay to ensure that your efforts over the past year are presented in the best light possible.

Last week, we talked about how important thoroughly exploring and accessing your personal stories is when writing your application essays. Of course, having “too much of a good thing” is always a risk as well—admissions committees can be put off by candidates who go too far and become too personal.

Some stories are particularly challenging for admissions committees. For example, we have strongly discouraged candidates from writing about divorce as a moment of failure. If an individual were to take responsibility in an essay for a failed marriage, he/she would likely end up revealing intensely personal problems and issues, rather than portraying him-/herself as having learned from a constructive professional or personal challenge.

Always keep in mind that in many ways, the admissions committee is meeting you for the first time via your application. So, a simple way to judge whether you are being too personal in your materials is to ask yourself, “Would I be uncomfortable if, immediately upon meeting someone, he/she were to share this sort of information with me?” If your answer is “yes,” you should most likely consider changing your topic.

Harvard Business School (HBS) made a splash this application season by introducing a reduced essay count, and then Wharton… keeps its essay count exactly the same but reduces the total word count across all of its essays by 100 words (even though they add 100 words for essay 1). Is that some kind of reaction to HBS’s adjustment? We doubt it, given that this is really just a minor change in the grand scheme of things. This year, applicants to Wharton must write a standard career essay and then choose two other essay topics from among three options thereafter. Our analysis follows…

Required Question:

How will a Wharton MBA help you achieve your professional objectives? (400 words)

Wharton previously asked a very similar question but gave candidates only 300 words with which to respond and did not explicitly ask candidates to discuss the school specifically. This season, Wharton is asking applicants to identify broad career goals and reveal how the school will be a crucial part of achieving those goals. You do not need to fawn and sing Wharton’s praises for your essay to be effective, however. Instead, you should show that you understand the specific resources that Wharton provides that relate directly to your stated career aspirations and that you have a plan in mind for using these resources to transform yourself into the professional you need to become. Simple as that.

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 Wharton’s academic program/merits, defining characteristics, important statistics, social life, academic environment and more, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Respond to two of the following three questions:

1. Select a Wharton MBA course, co-curricular opportunity or extra-curricular engagement that you are interested in. Tell us why you chose this activity and how it connects to your interests. (500 words)

Although this essay provides another opportunity for you to reveal just how much you know about Wharton (and thus reveal your “fit” with its MBA program), this essay is still fundamentally about you and your interests/passions. For some reason, though, many applicants tend to feel obligated to respond to an essay prompt like this by discussing a professional talent or skill and relating it to a course at the school—and such essays run the risk of being painfully dull! Wharton definitely does not want to know that you have a skill that is a prerequisite of your position – maybe if a unique professional experience lurks behind your title (you are a currency trader for a hedge fund and have done a priori research in a country off the beaten path and can relate that experience to your interest in and contribution to a political economy course) you can discuss it, but the burden for this type of experience is clearly high.

With this question, Wharton is indicating that it wants to get to know you as a person, so do not be afraid to reveal your human interests. You can use this essay to reveal your distinctiveness and show not only that you can make a valuable contribution at the school but also that you fully understand how you will make that contribution. In 500 words, you should be able to provide appropriate context for the passion you choose to discuss and to then relate it to the school’s resources, thereby revealing your intimate knowledge of those resources. We recommend that you avoid overtly starting your essay with a statement like “I am interested in the Wharton Follies because…” Instead, consider telling a story about how that interest developed and then relate it specifically (in this case) to the Follies. In this way, you will better give the admissions committee a sense of who you will be on campus.

2. Imagine your work obligations for the afternoon were cancelled and you found yourself “work free” for three hours, what would you do? (500 words)

In some ways, this essay prompt is similar to the previous one, only it eliminates the need to discuss Wharton’s resources and allows you to focus exclusively on yourself. Let us revisit the example we introduced in our analysis of the first essay option in this section: a candidate who is an amateur stand-up comedian might write about his/her interest in being involved with the Follies for the previous essay, but for this essay, he/she might discuss using this unexpected free time to practice his/her material and find a local open-mic opportunity for that afternoon. In truth, the kind of activity you discuss is basically irrelevant, so long as it is not contrary to the school’s values. Instead, what is important is that you show that you have an extraordinary passion for a particular activity and that that activity can manifest itself in a compelling way.

3. “Knowledge for Action draws upon the great qualities that have always been evident at Wharton: rigorous research, dynamic thinking, and thoughtful leadership.” – Thomas S. Robertson, Dean, The Wharton School. Tell us about a time when you put knowledge into action. (500 words)

Quoting the dean is always a curious ploy by the admissions committee—perhaps it is trying to give him/her some level of star power or show the committee’s respect for him? Regardless, the quote here is really just a “red herring,” as they say. The key to an effective essay response to this prompt is showing how you put knowledge into action in your life—and you do not need to make an explicit connection to education to do so, like, “I took a class on marketing and then I implemented a marketing campaign.” Instead, you will need to show how you have acquired knowledge (through observation, listening, trial and error, etc.) and then used that knowledge to bring about a desired result. A successful essay will demonstrate a clear cause-and-effect relationship between how you applied your learnings and the results achieved. Do not be tempted to recycle a “leadership” essay you wrote for another school—you must show a direct connection between your thoughts, your actions and the ultimate reaction.

In our “What I Learned at…” series, MBAs discuss the tools and skills their business schools provided as they launched their careers.

Paul Watson is the co-founder and COO of Ledbury, a producer of high-quality menswear created in response to a simple problem: the difficulty of finding a great-fitting shirt. In Part 2 of this four-part series, Paul talks about how team building and business creation projects at Saïd helped him understand how to use his personal strengths and weaknesses to turn an idea into a successful business.

The Said Business School at Oxford University is an entrepreneurially focused program. Not only was there the traditional business school focus on the case study method, utilizing small groups for collaboration and problem solving, but there were also two key projects over the course of the year that focused on team building and business creation. These projects gave us important insight into the process of taking an idea and building it into a functioning business.

The first was the Entrepreneurship Project. In the third term, all students were required to take part in this project, in which students teamed up in groups of four to five to develop, write and present a business plan. All aspects of the project were assessed and graded—including the final presentation, which was given to an outside panel of venture capitalists and industry experts. The result was a deeper understanding of the keys to success in business plan writing and techniques for raising capital from outside investors.

The second was the Strategic Consulting Project (SCP). The SCP was an external consulting project done by a small group of students for a private company or non-governmental organization. The group of students would spend two to three months tackling a specific issue or problem for the company/organization and present their findings at the end of the term. The project provided us with a chance to work in new industries, continue our group-oriented learning and work in a setting outside campus.

Both projects offered valuable insight into new industries and the importance of teamwork in the start-up environment. My experience with the Entrepreneurship Project offered me an invaluable opportunity to explore the retail sector—in which I now work. Additionally, it was an early proving ground for my relationship with my now business partner. It offered us a chance to see our compatible and complimentary working styles and was key in our decision to start Ledbury, as we had a solid understanding of one another’s strengths and weaknesses.

The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth has roughly 9,000 living alumni, and although that figure may sound small compared with a larger school’s alumni base, numerous students and graduates we interviewed reported that Tuck has an active and close-knit alumni community. Through their continued involvement with the school as mentors, visiting executives, recruiting contacts and internship providers, Tuck alumni keep an open channel between the school and the business world. Tuck students we interviewed could not say enough about the strength of student-alumni interactions, emphasizing that the vitality of Tuck’s close-knit community endures long after graduation.

One second-year student we interviewed shared that he had pretty high expectations with regard to the school’s alumni network, “but still underestimated how strong the network can be.” He explained, “The connections were instant. I received same-day responses, all the time. There is a strong pay-it-forward mentality and a genuine interest in seeing people from Tuck do well. Alums go out of their way to help with networking, job preparation, anything.”

Tuck alumni also stay connected to the school through its annual campaign. According to Tuck’s Web site, the school boasts the highest giving rate—67%—of all U.S. MBA programs. In fact, Tuck’s giving rate tops that of other business schools by more than 30 percentage points, according to a July 2009 press release, and the school’s current online annual giving page boasts, “Tuck’s giving rate continues to set the standard among business schools: the alumni participation for TAG [Tuck Annual Giving] ’11 reached 70.5%. This is a new record for Tuck, and it sets the standard for all MBA programs by a wide margin.”

For more information on other defining characteristics of the MBA program at Tuck or one of 15 other top business schools, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.