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Luckily for business school candidates, MBA admissions teams recognize that behind every application is an actual human and that one’s story does not always fit neatly into designated boxes. This is where the optional essay (or “additional information” section) comes into play, allowing applicants to explain or clarify any potentially negative elements of their profile and provide additional perspective that should be considered in the admissions committee’s assessment of them.

Importantly, the optional essay is truly that—optional! If you do not have a good reason to submit one, do not feel that you need to; no points will be deducted for not taking advantage of the opportunity.

Here are some situations in which you might want to consider using the optional essay:

• Unexplained gaps in your work history
• Choice of recommenders, particularly if not following any explicit direction from the school
• Unfavorable or questionable academic performance
• Nonrepresentative GMAT/GRE scores
• Academic disciplinary issue
• Layoff/firing or significant professional or academic time off
• Arrest, charges, and/or conviction

Given that the optional essay is typically used to provide further context around a blemish in one’s profile, you must take ownership of the situation you describe in your essay and show self-awareness. Openly acknowledge the element of your candidacy that warrants additional explanation. You might worry that doing so will draw attention to it, but we can assure you that the admissions committee will notice any such issues anyway! So rather than leaving the committee to make assumptions about the situation, proactively control the narrative and mitigate the issue by leveraging the optional essay in a constructive manner.

After providing brief, yet transparent, context for the situation, move on to how you addressed it, and share any positive change that resulted from it or highlight a “hidden” element of the situation that can be positioned in a positive light. For example, perhaps your undergraduate GPA is lower than your target school’s average, but you can show a trend of improvement over time and explain that you recognize the importance of taking academics seriously and regret that you did not focus more on your studies when you first arrived on campus. Ideally, you would also be able to highlight a strong test score to offset a weaker GPA. Or perhaps your quantitative test score is not as strong as you would like, so you took and excelled in supplemental coursework in such key business school topics as accounting, economics, and business analytics. You might also have successfully navigated a recent work project that called for significant quantitative prowess, driving positive results for your company. Leverage the optional essay to speak to these kinds of experiences, giving the admissions committee reason to feel confident in your ability to successfully manage the quantitative rigor the MBA curriculum demands.

Importantly, consider writing your optional essay as a final step in preparing your application submission. You want to ensure that it complements your essays and other sections of the application and is not duplicative. This is also an opportunity to assess your application in totality and confirm that all relevant elements of your candidacy are represented. If not, you can also use the optional essay/additional information field to share pertinent information that enhances your overall profile and that the admissions committee should take into consideration. Of course, any additional information you offer, even positive in nature, must be truly meaningful and not frivolous. Again, this opportunity is optional and misusing it could be a disservice to your efforts to submit the best possible application.  

The examples shared in this article represent only a few potential situations one might want to discuss in the optional essay and just some of the ways one could address them. Make sure to download your free copy of mbaMission’s Optional Essays Guide for additional guidance and specific examples of optimal wordings and level of detail to include. In addition, consider signing up for a free 30-minute consultation with an mbaMission Consultant to get an expert assessment of your specific situation and learn steps you can take to improve your applicant profile.

Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school. However, the educational experience you will have is what is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Today, we focus on Vijay Govindarajan from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

Vijay Govindarajan, affectionately known by students as simply “VG,” is the Coxe Distinguished Professor at Tuck and has been cited by Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, and The Times as a top-ten strategy professor. His research focus includes global strategy, strategic innovation, strategy execution, and strategic controls. Govindarajan has been a consultant to several well-known companies, including Walmart, FedEx, and Microsoft, and in 2008, he served as chief innovation consultant to General Electric. In addition to his residency at Tuck, Govindarajan was named a Marvin Bower Faculty Fellow at Harvard Business School in 2015 for a two-year period. He was also the 2015 recipient of the Association of Management Consulting Firms Award of Excellence.

One alumnus told mbaMission, “VG’s class is great, and the cases have been interesting. Most of the cases are about manufacturing companies; however, they are not boring at all. He’s a great speaker and great lecturer.” Another graduate described Govindarajan’s classroom style to mbaMission by saying, “VG maintains a balance between lecture and class participation. He never cold-calls because he believes that students will be prepared. He doesn’t want students to comment for the sake of commenting and wants people to say something meaningful, which might be different from the approach at other schools.” Another alumnus shared that Govindarajan often brings great speakers to class.

For more information about Dartmouth Tuck and 16 other top-ranked MBA schools, check out our free mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

What did the Supreme Court decide on affirmative action?

This past Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court barred using race as a factor in college admissions, ending a decades-long struggle wherein successive courts have endeavored to square affirmative action with the Constitution’s guarantee that all races be treated equally.

The first test came in 1978, when racial quotas and minority set-asides led to court challenges to affirmative action as a form of “reverse discrimination.” In the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case,  brought by a white man denied admission to the UC Davis School of Medicine, the Supreme Court banned colleges from setting racial quotas but allowed schools to consider race as a “factor” in the admissions process. In 2003, a divided court in the Grutter v. Bollinger case reluctantly allowed colleges to consider race, deeming attracting underrepresented minority groups a “compelling governmental interest,” but one that was subject to strict scrutiny. At the time, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor noted that affirmative action was a temporary corrective measure, however, stating the expectation that “25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.”

This week, the Supreme Court found that Harvard and the University of North Carolina had simply gone too far. The two schools’ race-conscious admissions programs failed to abide by the narrow restrictions the court had laid out in previous cases and “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.” Chief Justice John Roberts concluded, “Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.” In short, “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

At the same time, Justice Roberts commented that “nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. But . . . universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.” He added, “What cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly.”

How will this decision affect MBA applications?  

Probably not in any significant way.

Nine states already ban using race in admissions, including California, Washington, and Florida. Moreover, affirmative action is primarily a burning issue at the most selective colleges, where grades and scores are the dominant assessment criteria, so not all schools will see much change.

Unlike undergraduate or other more-academic graduate programs, top MBA programs are looking for leaders. In addition to evaluating more-mature candidates, typically with four to six years of experience, they assess a holistic set of factors, looking at the applicants’ professional background, career goals, and outside leadership experience, as well as their grades and test scores. Moreover, the schools are consciously trying to assemble a broadly distributed class of students who represent different jobs and industries, career goals, and socioeconomic and personal backgrounds. So, MBA applicants have ample opportunity to highlight their individuality and differentiate themselves in their essays, recommendations, and outside activities. 

Although schools can no longer use race as a factor in admissions, MBA applicants can still describe in their essays how race has affected their life. This means that even though underrepresented minorities no longer receive an automatic “plus,” they can nevertheless discuss their differentiating background in their essays. At the same time, students from overrepresented populations (e.g., Caucasian, Asian, South Asian American) can do the same and will now be on an equal footing.

How about a quick game of word association? We will start.

“Kellogg.”

Okay, go ahead. “Entrepreneurship,” right? No? Aspiring MBAs may be surprised to learn that Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management offers a number of courses in this discipline and that its Entrepreneurship and Innovation major is among its most popular areas of study—defying the stereotype that Kellogg produces only marketing MBAs.

Overseen by the Larry and Carol Levy Institute for Entrepreneurial Practice, the Kellogg Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative (KIEI) offers numerous opportunities for students to develop their entrepreneurial acumen and currently features a total of 50 professors in its faculty. In addition to business plan competitions, the Levy Institute manages the Kellogg Early-stage Entrepreneurial Internship Program Stipends and the Entrepreneur in Residence Program, an experiential learning option through which, for a day, an experienced entrepreneur hosts half-hour one-on-one sessions with students who aspire to careers in this field or are seeking advice on their already active projects.

The school’s Heizer Center for Private Equity and Venture Capital offers the Private Equity Lab, wherein rising second-year students intern with small businesses or private equity firms to facilitate career transitions that would otherwise be challenging for those without experience. MBA student entrepreneurs coming from or planning to enter a family business will likely be interested to learn that the Kellogg John L. Ward Center for Family Enterprises not only publishes research and cases on such businesses but also confidentially consults with family-run companies. Indeed, this is all just the tip of the iceberg.

Let us continue the guessing game: Chicago Booth is just a finance school, right? Not at all. We feel that not enough applicants are aware of Chicago Booth’s robust “hands-on” entrepreneurial offerings, which are available through its Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Where to begin?

Chicago Booth’s practical academic programs extend into the field of entrepreneurship with the school’s “New Venture and Small Enterprise Lab.” Herein, students work within a host firm or take on a dedicated project in a class designed to train those who intend to ultimately join start-ups or provide consulting services to them. Other courses offered by the Polsky Center include “Lab to Launch,” “Building the New Venture,” and “Entrepreneurial Selling.” In addition, the Polsky Center sponsors the annual Edward L. Kaplan New Venture Challenge, a business plan competition that awarded more than $1.4M in funding to its 2023 winners.

Further, entrepreneurially minded Chicago Booth students can apply for funding from the Hyde Park Angels (HPA), a group of former Chicago Booth Executive MBA students who make investments in start-ups—in 2020, for example, the group invested nearly $14M. Although the HPA is an arms-length organization and does not source investments exclusively from Chicago Booth, it maintains a connection to the Polsky Center, which supports the HPA’s mission. So, students hoping to get in front of the HPA’s investment committee will have a built-in networking advantage. Also, the HPA offers students the opportunity to apply for the Hyde Park Angels Venture Capital Award, which is only available to Chicago Booth students.

Believe it or not, we are just scratching the surface here. Again, Chicago Booth is most definitely not “just a finance school.”

For more information on Northwestern Kellogg, Chicago Booth, and other leading MBA programs, check out our free mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Please note: Harvard Business School revised their application essay prompts for the 2024-2025 admissions season. An analysis of the latest essay prompts can be found on this page. 

How do you write a standout Harvard Business School (HBS) admissions essay? The answer might surprise you. Your goal is not to “wow” the admissions committee with fancy adjectives or to share spectacular achievements that admissions officers have never read or heard about before. Instead, your HBS admissions essay is your opportunity to share your values—to stand out on the basis of who you are and what you stand for.

Let us start with the basics. HBS actually has just one essay question, with no word limit: “As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program?”

The first thing to note about this question is that it is totally open-ended. Because it is so open-ended, many applicants have no idea where to start. And without a word limit, many also have no idea where to stop! Let us address the end first. We recommend that applicants target 1,000 to 1,250 words, but some candidates’ essays might be as short as 800 words or as long as 1,500. However, anything longer than 1,500 words can start to seem like an imposition on the admissions reader, while anything shorter than 800 could mean that you are short-changing yourself and not giving the admissions committee as full a picture of who you are.

As for the open-ended nature of the question, the whole essay really hinges on the word more—“what more would you like us to know?” The admissions committee should already be able to learn a lot about the path you have taken via your resume and short answers, and they should also learn about your professional performance and character via your recommendations. But through your essay, they should truly learn more about you. As I noted earlier, the goal of your essay is to share more about your values—possibly even about your soul.

To help illustrate my point, I would like to review here a successful application essay from my book “What Matters?” and “What More?”: 50 Successful Essays for the Stanford GSB and HBS (and Why They Worked), titled “Shhh! Can You Hear Me Listening?” If you do not have a copy of the book, you can download the essay here. I want to start by highlighting a few key takeaways. First, this is not an essay about the kind of vocal leadership many people expect from an HBS MBA. In fact, it is the exact opposite; it is an essay about the often undervalued skill of listening and how it is reflective of the applicant Paul’s empathy. Those are the values Paul highlights throughout the essay: listening, empathy, better listening, more empathy. Rather than trying to hew to some perceived notion of who he thinks he “should” be for HBS, Paul discusses who he actually is! By doing so, he gets to a truly authentic place—he shares his soul. Second, this essay, like almost all essays should be, is a story of growth and change. We get a sense of both who Paul was and who he is now, and although he is not a radically different person, his growth and his ability to effectively wield his sense of empathy reveal themselves as very powerful, making his story compelling for the reader.

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