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For the 2020–2021 MBA application season, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business has introduced a new prompt that shines a spotlight on candidates’ lives outside the workplace and serves as a nice complement to its strictly professionally focused first essay. In addition, the admissions committee has made an interesting tweak to its note about the word count for both required essays. The stipulated minimums are still 250, but “no maximum” has now been added to this directive. Last year, the admissions committee said its prompts had produced essays that “disclosed amazing insights into our applicants’ professional aspirations as well as personal interests.” Our assumption, then, is that more than a few recent candidates might have misinterpreted the guidance on word limits—or did not trust that the admissions committee was truly open to longer submissions—and kept their essays on the briefer side, thereby potentially withholding some of these “amazing insights” the school had been so excited about learning. The new, if subtle, reassurance that longer essays are indeed acceptable indicates that Chicago Booth wants to hear as much of your story (that fits the question, of course) as you feel compelled to share. Our more in-depth essay advice follows.

Essay 1: How will the Booth MBA help you achieve your immediate and long-term post-MBA career goals? (Minimum 250 words, no maximum)

If this essay prompt seems rather simplistic and straightforward, that is because it is. Chicago Booth is requesting very fundamental—yet incredibly important—information and really just wants you to provide it so the school can understand your motivation for pursuing an MBA from its program and where you expect to go in your career afterward. Be as specific as possible in your description of where you see yourself after graduation and several years down the line, from the industry and role to any additional details about which you currently feel confident (perhaps specific companies or responsibilities that appeal to you in particular). Explain what has brought you to this point in your professional life, not only your career progression to date but also what has inspired you to earn an advanced degree as a vital tool in moving forward. And ideally, take the extra step of noting which of the program’s resources you believe will be most helpful to you in your pursuits. To be effective, this needs to be more than a passing mention, so do your research on the school and draw a clear picture for your admissions reader as to how and why the particular offerings you have identified relate directly to your needs and how you intend to apply them.

This essay includes many of the most elemental components of a traditional personal statement essay. We therefore encourage you to download your free copy of the mbaMission Personal Statement Guide, in which we provide much more in-depth guidance on how to consider and respond to these sorts of questions, along with numerous illustrative examples. Please feel free to download your complimentary copy today.

Essay 2: An MBA is as much about personal growth as it is about professional development. In addition to sharing your experience and goals in terms of career, we’d like to learn more about you outside of the office. Use this opportunity to tell us something about who you are… (Minimum 250 words, no maximum.)

As we have seen, Chicago Booth’s first essay question focuses specifically on candidates’ professional paths and aspirations, and the school’s previous second essay question left the door open for applicants to again discuss some aspect of their career. With this new prompt, however, the admissions committee is very explicitly directing candidates to discuss their personas and lives, separate from the workplace. Booth is essentially asking for whatever information or insight you believe it needs to understand you more fully as an individual and to be able to evaluate you thoroughly and fairly.

The admissions committee will already have a lot of information about you that it can and will use to get to know you better, including your resume, extracurricular activities, recommendations, short-answer question responses, academic transcripts, and GMAT/GRE score. You should therefore approach this essay by first thinking about what these portions of your application convey about who you are. Whatever you discuss should complement that information and help provide the school with a more well-rounded impression of you. Do not use this essay to pander to the school or make a general pitch for your candidacy or why you need an MBA. The focus needs to be on you and on giving the admissions committee a new window into your profile. Consider elements of your personality that you feel are particularly revelatory of who you are as an individual (e.g., values, hobbies, skills) as well as significant instances from your past that illustrate something about you or influenced the person you are today (e.g., accomplishments, excursions, milestones). The ideas about which you feel most enthusiastic are likely your best options and should also be the easiest to write about.

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Once again, the New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business has made no changes to its application essay prompts. The program’s first required essay covers applicants’ professional aspirations and Stern’s role in their attainment. For the second required essay, candidates must tackle the school’s challenging but very revelatory “Pick Six” submission, which might be less intimidating for today’s applicants than it was when it was first introduced in 2017, given the ubiquitousness of social media today. Together, Stern’s essay questions should allow you to present a good balance of your professional and personal sides for the admissions committee, though the optional essay is also on the table if you feel strongly that a vital part of your candidacy has not been covered by one or the other. Our full essay analysis follows…

Essay 1: Professional Aspirations
(500 word maximum, double-spaced, 12-point font)

• What are your short and long-term career goals?
• How will the MBA help you achieve them?

With this rather no-nonsense query about your motivation to earn an MBA and expectations as to where you will go with it after graduation, NYU Stern simply wants you to spell out what you have in mind as you approach this phase of your life and career. The school does not ask specifically about past experiences or what about its program in particular makes it the best one for you, though brief mentions of either would be acceptable if they are central to your main points. The three core components of this essay prompt are typical elements of a traditional personal statement, so we encourage you to download your free copy of the mbaMission Personal Statement Guide. This complimentary publication explains ways of approaching these topics effectively and offers several annotated sample essays as examples.

And for a thorough exploration of NYU Stern’s academic program, unique offerings, social life, and other key characteristics, download a copy of the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business, which is also available for free.

Essay 2: Personal Expression (a.k.a. “Pick Six”)

Describe yourself to the Admissions Committee and to your future classmates using six images and corresponding captions. Your uploaded PDF should contain all of the following elements:

• A brief introduction or overview of your “Pick Six” (no more than 3 sentences).
• Six images that help illustrate who you are.
• A one-sentence caption for each of the six images that helps explain why they were selected and are significant to you.

Note: Your visuals may include photos, infographics, drawings, or any other images that best describe you. Your document must be uploaded as a single PDF. The essay cannot be sent in physical form or be linked to a website.

We imagine that the initial reaction most candidates have to pretty much any prompt that does not request a traditional essay is momentary panic (though, to be fair, that is likely many applicants’ reaction to traditional essays as well), but let us reassure you a bit before we delve more deeply into how best to approach this one. One could argue that in many ways, this essay prompt is merely asking you to do something we assume you are already doing every day and have possibly been doing for years—curate an impression of yourself for others by sharing certain images and other media that resonate with you. Is that not what people regularly do via Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and any number of other social media venues by posting photos, memes, infographics, cartoons, and the like, typically along with a related comment? When you think of the task NYU Stern has presented you with this framework in mind, do you feel a little more confident about mastering it? We hope so.

In this case, rather than passing along just anything you think is funny or interesting or documenting your latest adventure or meal, you are communicating directly with a very singular audience, within a certain context, and with a very specific goal in mind. So start by carefully considering what you want the admissions committee to know about you—with the goal of sharing as many different aspects of your life and personality as possible—and what it will already be able to learn through your other essays and the rest of your application (resume, recommendations/EQ endorsement, transcript, etc.). You want the admissions “reader” to take away something new from each image they see.

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Like many top MBA programs this year, London Business School (LBS) has elected to make no changes to its application essay prompts. Except for some slight variations in phrasing and allowed word count, the school has been posing these same questions since 2015, so we presume they have proved effective in providing the additional information about the school’s candidates that the admissions committee seeks. Although LBS strictly requires only one essay—one that largely constitutes a traditional personal statement—you may want to seriously consider submitting the optional essay as well if you feel that doing so will facilitate a fairer or more thorough evaluation of your candidacy. In our analysis, we offer our advice on crafting your approach, whether you ultimately decide to craft just one submission for LBS or two.

Question  1: What are your post-MBA goals and how will your prior experience and the London Business School programme contribute towards these? (500 words)

As we have noted, LBS’s required essay covers several basic elements of a traditional personal statement. You will need to show that you have a long-term vision for yourself and your career and that you have a clear plan for how to get there via the LBS MBA program. The basic assumptions, of course, are that business school is the next logical and necessary step in your progress and that you need to pursue your degree at LBS in particular, because the school provides specific experiences, knowledge, skills, exposure, and/or other elements that are necessary for you to attain your aspirations and thrive in your chosen career. Ideally, you have already researched the program thoroughly to discover these important resources and areas of fit, but if not, do not skip this important step and/or refer only to basic offerings most business schools have. Your essay must be LBS specific. Demonstrating your authentic interest in the program by giving concrete examples and drawing clear connections between what the school offers, what you need, and who you are is key to crafting a compelling essay response here.

Because 500 words is not a lot, avoid going into excessive detail about your past, though you will need to offer enough information to provide context and support for your stated goals. Given this essay’s significant overlap with a standard personal statement, we encourage you to download your free copy of the mbaMission Personal Statement Guide. In this complimentary guide, we present a much more detailed discussion of how to approach and craft this kind of essay, along with multiple illustrative examples.

Question 2 (Optional): Is there any other information you believe the Admissions Committee should know about you and your application to London Business School? (500 words)

Applicants typically use the optional essay to explain confusing or problematic elements of their candidacy—a poor grade or GPA, a low GMAT or GRE score, a gap in work experience, etc.—and LBS’s can certainly be used this way. If you feel you need to clarify an aspect of your profile, first check the other parts of the school’s application, which already includes several opportunities to address certain issues (such as academic performance and disciplinary instances). If you can discuss your concern elsewhere instead, do so, and avoid using this essay to simply repeat any information provided via that avenue. If you have a problem to address that is not mentioned in the LBS application, we suggest downloading a copy of the mbaMission Optional Essays Guide, which is also available for free, and in which we offer detailed advice on deciding whether to take advantage of the optional essay and, if so, how to do so to effectively mitigate any concerning elements of your application.

If you do not feel that your candidacy includes any elements that need further clarification, however, you might use this essay to instead offer a more rounded, positive representation of yourself—but be thoughtful about this opportunity. Do not just copy and paste an existing essay you wrote for a different school here and hope for the best. Take a step back and carefully consider what the admissions committee already knows about you from the other parts of your application, including, of course, your required essay. Then, do your utmost to develop and convey a narrative that is truly crucial to understanding your character. Because this question is so open-ended, your options are somewhat limitless. You will need to honestly check your instincts and ask yourself whether you are simply tacking something extra onto your application with this essay or whether you are offering something that is truly additive and would be helpful for the school to know to fully and fairly evaluate you. Be mindful and respectful of the admissions committee’s time, and remember that each additional file you submit requires more resources on behalf of the admissions office, so whatever you write must be truly worthwhile and clearly reveal that you made good use of this opportunity to provide further insight into your candidacy.

Business schools outside the United States are increasingly popular among MBA hopefuls, and we at mbaMission are proud to offer our latest publications: International Program Guides. In these snapshots we discuss core curriculums, elective courses, locations, school facilities, rankings, and more. Click here to download your free copy of the London Business School Program Guide.

The Next Step—Mastering Your LBS Interview: Many MBA candidates find admissions interviews stressful and intimidating, but mastering this important element of the application process is definitely possible—the key is informed preparation. And, on your way to this high level of preparation, we offer our free Interview Guides to spur you along! Download your free copy of the London Business School Interview Guide today.

Although Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business initially announced the modifications it had made to its application essays in a June 17 blog post, the school has continued to tweak its prompts, so we are updating our analysis to reflect the latest iterations. At the time of this posting, some slight discrepancies still exist in the presentation of the essay questions on Fuqua’s website and in its actual application, so for our analysis, we have elected to use the questions as they appear in the application. In the aforementioned blog post, Assistant Dean of Admissions Allison Jamison comments on how the COVID-19 pandemic has complicated the admissions process, then states, “During this time, we learned the importance of keeping things simple.” As a result, we believe, the admissions committee has truncated its essays and short-answer demands for this season, likely to the relief of the school’s 2020–2021 candidates. Rather than two short-answer essay questions, applicants must respond to only one, and the maximum length for the program’s community engagement essay has been cut from two pages to just 300 words. Fortunately (in our opinion), the school has elected to maintain its distinctive “25 random things” prompt, which we love for the freedom it gives applicants to get creative and paint a well-rounded picture of themselves. Plus, Jamison notes that the admissions committee enjoys reading these essays the most. Our full essay analysis follows. 

Short Answer Question: Short answer questions will allow for 500 characters only – the equivalent of about 100 words.

What are your post-MBA career goals? Share with us your first-choice career plan and your alternate plan. 

With this question, Fuqua is essentially asking for a standard element of a traditional personal statement—one’s short-term career aspirations—with the addition of one rather nonstandard component—the suggestion of an alternative path. Candidates often feel they must be totally unequivocal in their career goals to impress the admissions committee, but in this case, Fuqua is directly instructing applicants to speculate on and articulate multiple options. The school knows that sometimes the best-laid plans do not play out as expected or may even yield unintended results, and it wants to know that you are prepared to switch gears and recommit to a different path, if necessary—and that you are fully capable of doing so. The key in answering this question is showing that your backup goal is just as connected to your skills, interests, and ambitions as your original plan and does not come “out of left field,” so to speak. For example, you would probably have a difficult time convincing the admissions committee that your short-term goal is to work in technology consulting while your alternate goal would be to work in human resources, because these industries, for the most part, require entirely different skills and personalities. Just be mindful that both goals you present must be plausible and achievable.

As we have noted, this question concerns one of the core topics covered in a typical personal statement, so we encourage you to download your free copy of the mbaMission Personal Statement Guide, which helps applicants write this style of essay for any school. This complimentary guide offers detailed advice on approaching and framing these subjects, along with multiple illustrative examples. Be sure to download your complimentary copy today.

Essay 1: The ‘Team Fuqua’ spirit and community is one of the things that sets the MBA experience apart, and it is a concept that extends beyond the student body to include faculty, staff, and administration. Please share with us “25 Random Things” about you. The Admissions Committee wants to get to know YOU – beyond the professional and academic achievements listed in your resume and transcript. Share with us important life experiences, your hobbies, achievements, fun facts, or anything that helps us understand what makes you who you are.

Please do not copy the essay question in the document you upload with your application, and limit your response to 2 pages (750 words maximum). Present your response in list form, numbered 1 to 25. Some points may be brief, while others may be longer.

Be prepared to have fun creating this list for your Fuqua application! Before you start scribbling down random things, though, stop and take some time to thoroughly brainstorm. You cannot simply draft a list of “typical” accomplishments—remember, the school is asking for a random list, and keep in mind that your reader should learn more about you as an individual with each item presented. Make sure that every new story or tidbit of information you share gives the admissions committee a different window into your personality, into what really makes you tick and makes you you. Most important is that you own all the points on your list—that your final list could apply to no one but you. For example, a statement such as “I love the movie Goodfellas and have watched it multiple times” could easily be made by many applicants—therefore, it could not be considered truly yours. However, if you were to instead write, “At least once a year, my friends and I get together to watch our favorite movie, Goodfellas, all wearing dark suits, eating fresh pasta with homemade sauce, and reciting the dialogue line-for-line,” you would present an experience that is unquestionably yours, because few—if any—other candidates would be likely to say this exact same thing.

Although Fuqua does not want you to rehash your professional and academic accomplishments in this list, and you should certainly avoid repeating facts that already appear elsewhere in your application, you can of course still touch on significant moments that occurred in these spheres. Use detail and a narrative style (keeping things brief!) to give these elements life and ensure that they are personal. For example, rather than saying that you “won a creative thinking award for implementing an innovative training solution,” you might write that you “once won an award for instructing trainees to flip their desks upside down and face what was previously the back of the room—thereby creating an exercise to introduce new hires to the concept and value of new perspectives.”

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Like many of the top MBA programs appear to be doing this season, the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) has opted to make no changes to the wording of its application essay prompts—or to its short-answer questions—though it has minimized the space in which its candidates can respond to them. Applicants are now given a 1,050-word total allowance for its required essays (down from 1,150). Although how candidates wish to divide this total between the two is left to them to decide, the school does offer a recommendation of 650 words for the first and 400 for the second. The length allowance for the GSB’s first optional question has been cropped from 1,500 characters to 1,200, but applicants are still invited to share up to three of their most significant accomplishments and experiences. The admissions committee states on the GSB site, “We often find effective essays that are written in fewer words,” so we suspect these word-count cuts might be to ensure that candidates’ submissions are even more streamlined this year than in previous seasons. Our full analysis follows of the school’s two required MBA essay questions as well as its optional prompts. 

Essay A: What matters most to you, and why?  

For this essay, we would like you to reflect deeply and write from the heart. Once you’ve identified what matters most to you, help us understand why. You might consider, for example, what makes this so important to you? What people, insights, or experiences have shaped your perspectives?

When candidates ask us, “What should I write for what matters most to me?,” we offer some pretty simple guidance: start brainstorming for this essay by asking yourself that very question. What does matter most to you? This might seem like obvious advice, of course, but many applicants get flustered by the question, believing that an actual “right” answer exists that they must provide to satisfy the admissions committee. As a result, they never pause to actually consider their sincere responses, which are typically the most compelling. The GSB itself notes on its essay page, “There is no ‘right answer’ to these questions—the best answer is the one that is truest for you.”

We therefore encourage you to contemplate this question in depth and push yourself to explore the psychological and philosophical motivations behind your goals and achievements—behind who you are today. We cannot emphasize this enough: do not make a snap decision about the content of this essay. Once you have identified what you believe is an appropriate theme, discuss your idea(s) with those with whom you are closest and whose input you respect. Doing so can help validate deeply personal and authentic themes, leading to an essay that truly stands out.

Once you have fully examined your options and identified your main themes, do not simply provide a handful of supporting anecdotes—or worse, recycle the stories you used in a similar essay for another school. A strong essay response to this question will involve a true exploration of the themes you have chosen and reveal a thorough analysis of decisions, motives, and successes/failures, with a constant emphasis on how you conduct yourself. If you are merely telling stories and trying to tie in your preconceived conclusions, you are probably forcing a theme on your reader rather than genuinely analyzing your experiences, and any experienced admissions reader will see right through this. In short, be sure to fully consider and identify your most authentic answer(s), outline your essay accordingly, and then infuse your writing with your personality, thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Stanford encourages you to give special attention to why the subject you have chosen to write about is the most important to you. This “why” element should be clear in your essay—it should be implied by what you are discussing and sharing. If you need to explicitly declare, “And what matters most to me is…,” your essay is not making a strong enough point on its own. A well-constructed essay that is infused with your values and motivation and that clearly conveys why you made certain decisions should effectively and implicitly reveal the “why” behind your chosen topic—and will almost always make a stronger point. 

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