The application essay requirements for the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame are fairly straightforward—or at least the written one is. To start, you must provide a statement that presents your career goals and discusses how the school can help you achieve them. You also need to craft a slide presentation that offers more information about yourself as an individual, separate from your professional and academic background. In addition, you are required to respond to a series of recorded video questions after submitting your application. Finally, an option to submit an additional essay exists, but the school wants candidates to be prudent in doing so. Read on for our full analysis of all Mendoza’s prompts for this season.
Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business features a global emphasis in its full-time MBA curriculum. During the fall semester, first-year students are required to take “Structure of Global Industries,” an immersive core course that provides a foundation in international business. The global emphasis continues in the second year, when students take part in the school’s signature Global Business Experience. In this program, students take on consulting roles working for actual international organizations or Fortune 500 companies. In the spring, student teams travel to their respective client’s country—in 2025, these included Kenya, Spain, and Singapore—to gain firsthand experience working in a global consulting and management setting. After the participating students return to campus, they present the stories and takeaways from their experiences to their classmates at the school’s Global Business Conference. Since the Global Business Experience’s inception, more than 9,300 students have taken part in more than 1,700 projects.
“I was the first in my class to be promoted at McKinsey. I have a 665 GMAT Focus score and completed Level 1 of the CFA exam, but I had a B- in calculus during my freshman year. Will that grade ruin my chances for admission?”
“My company has been under a hiring and promotion freeze for the past three years, but during that time, I have earned pay increases and survived successive rounds of layoffs. Will the admissions committee accept someone who has not been promoted?”
Attending admissions events, revising your resume, writing essays, responding to short-answer questions, securing strong recommendations, interviewing, and then, of course, waiting to see whether you got accepted—given everything that is involved in the MBA application process, you will understandably feel stressed, or even overwhelmed, sometimes. However, by keeping things in perspective and giving yourself sufficient time away from your application work, you can ensure that you stay as grounded as possible while applying to business school.
The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management asks you to provide several short essays, one of which is a very standard explanation of your professional aspirations and motivation for pursuing an MBA. The three brief Membership Application essays are meant to reveal evidence of your active dedication to The Consortium’s goals of inclusion and progressive diversity in higher education and the business world—in the future, as an MBA student, and in the past. If needed, you can use the optional essay to offer clarification on any ambiguous or potential trouble areas in your profile. Key to all these submissions will be honesty, clarity, and enthusiasm. Read on for our full analysis of The Consortium’s essay questions for this season.
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