With many MBAs actively engaged in job searching right now, we are fielding a lot of questions about how to be more effective in that search. One key element is knowing how to talk about yourself, including responding effectively to the prompt “Tell me about yourself” in both casual networking and formal interview settings.
The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) remains at the top of the Bloomberg Businessweek ranking of best business schools within the United States for the seventh year in a row. While the 2025–2026 ranking was perhaps unsurprising in that regard, the rest of the top ten saw some changes. The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania was ranked second this year, up five spots from the 2024–2025 ranking. The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, had one of the most notable leaps of the year, from 14th in 2024–2025 to third this year. The top five is rounded out by Harvard Business School and the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, which were sixth and third last year, respectively.
Bloomberg Businessweek uses five criteria for its rankings, three of which—Learning, Entrepreneurship, and Networking—are based on survey responses from students. The other two criteria—Compensation and Inclusion—are based on such school-specific data as median salaries, bonus compensation, race and ethnicity, and gender.
Stanford GSB was ranked first for Networking and Entrepreneurship, second for Compensation, and 32nd for Inclusion. Wharton, which stands at second overall, was ranked first in Compensation. Interestingly, the school that was ranked first in Inclusion, the George Washington University School of Business, received a relatively low overall ranking at 56th. Similarly, the top three schools for Learning, where Stanford GSB was ranked seventh, stand outside the top 20 overall: the Mason School of Business at William and Mary, the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, and the Marriott School of Business at Brigham Young University were ranked 36th, 23rd, and 35th, respectively, overall.
Longer and more complex sentences often require parallel construction. Simply put, parallel construction ensures that any given longer sentence has a balanced rhythm or structure. With parallel construction, each pronoun corresponds with another pronoun, each verb corresponds with another verb, each adjective corresponds with another adjective, and so on. Parallel construction can certainly be found in shorter sentences as well, and to great effect.
Sincerity. Honesty. Candor. We encourage MBA candidates to incorporate these attributes into their applications, and when they do, the result tends to be successful essays. But can an applicant go too far? The answer is “yes,” especially when candor turns to negativity. Sometimes, when MBA candidates believe they are just being candid, they are actually revealing themselves as predisposed to pessimism—which can make connecting with their profile challenging for the admissions reader. Such situations are unfortunate, but luckily, they are also avoidable; an ostensibly “negative” idea can almost always be expressed in a positive and optimistic manner.
You have poured your heart and soul into your business school applications and taken the time to craft the perfect essays. Now you are eagerly looking forward to finishing up a few more applications to your target schools. You have heard that you can expect to spend as much time on your second, third, and fourth applications combined (!) as you did on your very first one. Encouraged, you might scan your third application and think, “Oh, look—here’s a ‘failure’ question. I can just adapt the ‘mistake’ essay I wrote for my first application to answer that one!” or “There’s a question about leadership. I’ve already written an essay on that, so I can just reuse it here!”
A first-of-its-kind, on-demand MBA application experience that delivers a personalized curriculum for you and leverages interactive tools to guide you through the entire MBA application process.
Click here for the 2025–2026 MBA Essay Tips
