Rather than framing its required application essay as a traditional “essay,” the MIT Sloan School of Management requests that applicants submit a “cover letter,” including even the standard formal correspondence elements of an address and opening salutation. Writing cover letters will undoubtedly be a large part of students’ career development efforts at Sloan, after all, so why not start now? Candidates must also submit two brief video “essays.” The first is a one-minute self-introduction video in which they are expected to convey their personality. For the second, applicants will be given an open-ended question and must respond extemporaneously within 60 seconds. MBA programs generally use these kinds of videos to evaluate candidates’ communication skills, grace under pressure, and potential to contribute to classroom discussions, as well as to gain insight into who the applicants are as living, breathing people, rather than one-dimensional aggregates of words and numbers in a folder. And finally, Sloan asks candidates to submit a short essay on how their past has influenced the person they are today. While somewhat unorthodox, the school’s “essays” allow applicants to deliver a balanced view of their professional and personal profiles, with a good amount of leeway for creativity. Read on for our full analysis of MIT Sloan’s application prompts for 2026–2027.
The admissions committee at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business provides its applicants with the opportunity to paint a well-rounded picture of themselves, but they must do so with significant brevity. For each of the program’s four prompts, candidates are limited to just 300 characters—not words. And this includes spaces! Because this equates to slightly more than three lines of text, Booth clearly wants you to be concise while packing as much pertinent information as possible into each response. You will need to make every single word count. Thus, we will follow that lead and get right to the point: Read on for our analysis of the four short-answer prompts and of Booth’s optional essay question.
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business is one of the top MBA programs in the world, holding a spot among the elite M7 and boasting several Nobel laureates among its faculty. Yet despite Booth’s strong reputation, many applicants are surprised when they learn about all its MBA program has to offer.
Even the most polished business school application can send the MBA admissions committee unintended messages through certain details that applicants tend to overlook.
In this episode of The mbaMission Podcast, mbaMission Founder and host Jeremy Shinewald talks with Jessica Shklar and Rachel Beck—two of the firm’s most experienced admissions consultants—about the subtle things admissions readers pick up on in applications that candidates likely did not intend to convey. The conversation takes a tour through almost every part of the MBA application, focusing first on some of the most basic mistakes candidates make and then diving deeper into more complex errors.
With its straightforward approach to the traditional goals statement and one other required essay (allowing applicants to choose between two prompts), the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University seems interested in getting to know its applicants both professionally and personally. The admissions committee wants to first understand your professional aspirations in the short and long term, along with how you envision benefitting from the Johnson MBA program and what related strengths you already possess. For the second essay, you have two very different options: You can elect to discuss how you see yourself being a contributing member of the Johnson community, or you can create the “table of contents” for a book about your life. An optional essay is available, if needed, to address the usual topics of problematic candidacy issues or any outstanding qualifications that might not be represented elsewhere in your application. Read on for our full analysis of Cornell Johnson’s essay questions for 2026–2027.
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