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Note: The following essay questions pertain to the previous academic year. This section will be updated when the new question are released in early to mid-July of 2008. 

Essay 1: Professional Aspirations

Think about the decisions you have made in your life. Describe the following: (750 word maximum, double-spaced, 12-point font)

(a) What choices have you made that led you to your current position?

(b) Why pursue an MBA at this point in your life?

(c) What is your career goal upon graduation from NYU Stern? What is your long-term career goal?

Essay 2: Fit with Stern

The NYU Stern community is one of our strongest assets. Please answer the following questions about community: (500 word maximum, double-spaced, 12-point font)

(a) What is your personal experience with the Stern community? What actions have you taken to learn more about us?

(b) How would you contribute to our community as a student?

(c) How will you benefit personally and professionally from the Stern community?

Because of significant overlap from one MBA application to the next, we have produced the “MBA Mission Personal Statement Guide.” We offer our guide to candidates free of charge, via our online store.  Please feel free to download your copy today.

NYU’s only minor deviation is its question “What is your personal experience with the Stern community?” Stern wants to ensure that you have done your homework and truly understand why it is the right school for you. In order to impress the committee, you will need to discuss a priori experience with the school via alumni, students and/or admissions officers, and especially via campus visits. For those who are abroad, it is still possible to learn a great deal by reaching out to the school to arrange to speak with current students, for example, by phone. Discussing repeated visits to the school’s websites will only mean that you have achieved a minimum; it is vital that you show specific effort in your research and thus purpose in your application.

Essay 3: Personal Expression

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

All submissions become part of NYU Stern’s permanent records and cannot be returned for any reason. Do not submit anything that must be played or viewed electronically, that is perishable (e.g., food) or that has been worn (e.g., used clothing). If you submit a written essay, it should be 500 words maximum, double-spaced, 12-point font.

In NYU’s famed essay three, you are offered a phenomenal opportunity to differentiate yourself in two distinct ways. First, you can differentiate yourself via the vehicle that you choose to develop your persona. By choosing a creative and captivating avenue, you can grab the attention of the Admissions Committee and compel them to read your content closely. While a baseball card may be captivating, it may not be a good choice because it limits you to a picture, your height, weight, birth date and a very brief bio; meanwhile, a eulogy theoretically written by your best friend (don’t use this idea; it is now public) is sufficiently broad that it allows you to probe all that is unique about you. Indeed, once you have set yourself apart via your “vehicle,” you can continue to differentiate yourself via your content. Ideally, you will exploit the opportunity to showcase a diversity of professional, personal, academic and community accomplishments, few of which will be advertised in essays one or two.

Today, we start a new weekly series on our Blog entitled “Mission Admission.” Each Friday, we will provide a broad-based MBA admissions tip, an ideal complement to our series on writing effective essays entitled, “Monday Morning Essay Tips.”

MBA Mission Blog readers should feel free to submit any questions that they would like to have answered to our general mailbox: [email protected].

Note: The following essay questions pertain to the previous academic year. This section will be updated when the new question are released in early to mid-July of 2008. 

 Short Essays – Answer both short essay questions.

Two short essay answer questions and two long essays must be completed before submitting your application. Prepare your essays carefully. The Admissions Committee considers your responses to the following questions important in the selection process. Please respond fully and concisely using 1.5 line spacing.

For the short answer questions, please restrict your response to a single page each.  For the long essay questions, please select only one question to answer from the three choices given for the first question, and then you must answer the second question. There is no restriction on the length of your response for the two long essay questions. Applicants typically use between 500 and 750 words for long essays one and two.

Why are you interested in The Duke MBA and how will it help you achieve your goals?  Please also discuss your career path, including your short- and long-term professional goals. If you are interested in the Health Sector Management concentration or a joint degree program, please address in this essay.

Because of significant overlap from one MBA application to the next, we have produced the “MBA Mission Personal Statement Guide.” We offer our guide to candidates free of charge, via our online store.  Please feel free to download your copy today.

How will your background, values, and non-work activities enhance the experience of other Duke MBA students and add value to Fuqua’s diverse culture?

This essay is broad and sweeping in nature, so it allows you to strategically showcase a mix of your greatest community and personal strengths. You should attempt to select a diversity of experiences and present them in such a way that you will be able to relate them back to your ability to contribute in a variety of areas – for example, the classroom, study teams and the community at large. A successful essay will be one that not only details your personality/experiences, but also clearly illustrates how you will “enhance” Fuqua — meaning that you show your intimate understanding of and connection to the Fuqua culture/experience.

Please respond fully and concisely to one of the following three essay topics.  Clearly identify which question you have selected.

1) Describe an example of where you were challenged to lead in a team-oriented context. What was the challenge you faced, how did you address it, and what takeaways or lessons learned have you successfully applied in other leadership situations?

By offering details of the situation and enabling the reader to vicariously experience the tensions (not necessarily emotional tension, but almost literally the influences that were “stretching” you), you will effectively draw the reader in. You need to offer a situation in which the reader understands that there were clear challenges and very specific obstacles facing you and then show that through decisive and purposeful action, you prevailed. We need to understand a clear cause and effect – a situation in which your choices lead to solutions that have human elements, while still facilitating a broader goal.

Fuqua explicitly asks you to discuss “takeaways,” key learnings from the experience that have an enduring impact. As always, the reflective element of the question should not be taken lightly and should definitely not be summed up with brief clichés. Your thoughts are entirely your own and true introspection will enable you differentiate yourself philosophically and show that you have the potential to be a more thoughtful manager than others.

2) Describe a situation in which your ability to perform ethically was challenged. What was the issue, how did you handle it, and what did you learn from it?

Essays about ethics are inherently challenging, because ethics vary so dramatically from individual to individual. Thus, it is tempting to choose to write about an issue that is “black or white,” yet that generally does not make for an interesting essay, because there is no tension – you don’t need to take the time to explain your rationale when choices are clear. Generally, when writing about an ethical challenge, there needs to be some “grey area” for you to explore and for you to reason through, in order to prove that you have the capacity to make and abide by difficult decisions. However, discussing the situation itself is not enough – you need to prove that your learning endures and that the dilemma had an impact on you and your thinking going forward.

3) Describe a significant leadership failure in your life. What did you learn from this failure? How has it impacted who you are today and the kind of leader you would like to be?

The best failure essays are often those that show reasoned optimism and tremendous momentum toward a goal – a goal that is ultimately derailed. In most cases, you will need to show that you were emotionally invested in your project/experience, which will enable the reader to connect with your story and vicariously experience your disappointment. If you were not invested at all, it is hardly credible to discuss the experience as a failure or learning experience.

Of course, the reflective element is vitally important. It is very easy to offer trite, clichéd statements about your response and what you learned about yourself (Note: everyone learns resiliency – consider another key learning!). It will take time to truly create a unique statement about your road forward and lessons learned, but the payoff will come in an essay that is much more personal and self-aware than thousands of others. For this essay to be effective, the experience will need to be so powerful that the reader has a clear understanding of the enduring impact that it must have had and indeed does have on your life and behavior.

How has your personal history and family background influenced your intellectual and personal development? What unique personal qualities or life experiences distinguish you from other applicants?  Note: The goal of this essay is to get a sense of who you are, rather than what you have achieved professionally.

While this question has many parts, candidates should not be overwhelmed by it. In this essay, you need to explain the factors that have influenced your intellectual development and then discuss how this development has subsequently led you to a unique path in life or a unique world view. These factors may be found in close family relationships, geographic/national/religious influences, economic realities or brief but influential life experiences and encounters. (Note: You should not just write a biography!) We cannot stress enough that you need to clearly connect these influences and show a cause and effect relationship between them and who you are today. While you do not need to engage in thorough psychoanalysis, you should show self-awareness and an understanding of your own defining factors and motivations.

This morning, the New York Sun observes (“Market Volatility May Result in Fewer Jobs for MBAs”) that the recent turmoil in the sub-prime mortgage sector and thus the financial world in general, may cause financial firms to scale back their hiring practices.

In this article, which includes historical compensation and hiring statistics, NYU and CBS also take the time to rebut the Sun’s speculation. Both schools essentially state that their students are insulated, due to the schools’ deep connections across industries and the students’ abilities to adapt to an evolving job market. Of course, this is not entirely true, as students were not insulated from the tech fallout, but what else can an MBA Admissions office really say?

Well, we recently passed along news of Manhattan GMAT’s new location in Washington, D.C. We are pleased to share the news that Manhattan GMAT is opening yet another location in Philadelphia. (Philly, You Just Got Smarter: ManhattanGMAT Announces Opening of an Office in the City of Brotherly Love). If the GMAT is on your horizon and you live in the Philadelphia area, we encourage you to attend the grand opening on Tuesday, August 21st. There, you can take advantage of a free GMAT workshop taught by Manhattan GMAT CEO, Andrew Yang.

We congratulate our friends at Manhattan GMAT on their seventh location.