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Two years ago, the admissions committee at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business completely reworked its MBA application essay questions, but for this season and the last, the school has done only a little fine-tuning. Ostensibly, this indicates that the variety and presentation of the prompts are generating the kind of input the admissions department wants in evaluating its candidates. Applicants must respond to five prompts and do so within a 700-word limit (or 705, if you want to get specific). As a whole, the essays cover candidates’ personal, educational, and career objectives while touching on aspects of Darden’s particular character and ethos—notably, its learning teams, vast international reach, and diversity. Applicants who feel they have still more they need to impart to the admissions committee can take advantage of the school’s 250-word optional essay as well. In this analysis, we offer our best essay advice for the school’s 2020–2021 questions.

Leadership: Darden strives to identify and cultivate responsible leaders who follow their purpose. Please provide an example of a situation in which you have made a meaningful impact. (200 words) 

Darden’s first essay prompt is an interesting hybrid of two questions it posed two seasons ago, one about leadership style and the other about impact. This current presentation cleverly touches on both, the assumption likely being that when you brought about the meaningful result in question, you did so while in an official leadership position or at least when acting in a leadership capacity. Therefore, by describing what you achieved and how you did so, you will naturally also reveal information about your leadership style.

At mbaMission, we love when admissions committees request examples, because they invite essays that use a narrative structure, and we believe such essays tend to be not only more revelatory but also more interesting to read (always good when trying to make an impression on someone who reads literally thousands of essays each year!). To illustrate, you might start by launching directly into your story: “Although I had never led a committee that spanned three departments before, I found myself….” In a Discover Darden blog post, an admissions representative advises, “Our basic advice is to show, don’t tell. Examples are always best,” then cautions, “but do not be so broad as to preclude self-reflection and meaningful insight.” 

Because Darden wants to know about your “impact,” you will have to clearly show the results of your actions, but the admissions committee also wants to understand that the decisions you made and steps you took clearly paid off and that a project, company, organization, individual, or product experienced some kind of change as a result. In other words, in addition to explaining what was achieved and why it was significant, you must illustrate the values, thought process, and initiatives that made it possible. Also, make note of the words “responsible” and “purpose” in this prompt and keep them in mind as you brainstorm ideas for this mini essay. Qualities related to these concepts would be good ones to highlight if they are truly part of your authentic story. 

Diversity: Diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission and they work best when they are an integral and celebrated part of our community. Read the University of Virginia’s Commitment to Diversity. Share a time in which you engaged with a perspective, identity, community, or experience that was different from your own and how it impacted your worldview. (200 words) 

In business school—as in life in general—you will encounter people who think differently from you, operate according to different values, and react differently to the same stimuli. And success in an endeavor often involves considering and incorporating others’ input and standpoints. Via this essay, Darden hopes to learn how you view, approach, and react to such differences. Once enrolled in the school’s MBA program, you will be surrounded every day by people who are unlike you in a multitude of ways, and you will need to work in tandem with and alongside these individuals when analyzing case studies, completing group projects, and participating in other activities both inside and outside the classroom. The school is clearly seeking evidence that you are capable of listening, reflecting, learning, and growing and that you are open and receptive to things beyond your usual frame of reference. And by asking you to share a time when a novel “perspective, identity, community, or experience” changed you in some fundamental way, Darden is requesting actual evidence of this open-mindedness in action. 

To craft an effective essay response, consider using a narrative approach to describe a kind of “before and after” situation or “lightbulb moment” in which your takeaways from the experience influenced your subsequent thoughts, values, and/or actions. Perhaps you were exposed to something completely new that resonated with you and thereafter became a fundamental part of your mores or a routine practice in your life. Or maybe an experience challenged one of your existing beliefs and altered your opinion or stance in a significant way. Keep in mind, however, that the admissions committee is much more interested in your willingness and capacity to learn and grow than in the specific kind of change you experienced.

Learning Team: Tell us what you would want your learning team to know about you – personal, professional, or both? (100 words) 

Before you start writing, do some background work on what a learning team is, its purpose, and how it functions. At Darden, learning teams are carefully selected groups of five to six students, assembled with the intent of creating an eclectic mix of personalities and backgrounds. This group meets in the evenings, Sunday through Thursday, to tackle the next day’s case work together (and if you are not familiar with the case method, now is the time to do your homework on it as well!). Learning teams are a core element of the Darden experience, in part because some cases are so voluminous that students must take a divide-and-conquer approach and teach one another the material. In short, learning teams are intense and complex, requiring strong teamwork skills and contributions but capable of providing support and camaraderie as students work their way through Darden’s notoriously challenging first year. 

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Last month, in a joint mbaMission–Manhattan Prep webinar featuring admissions directors from five top business schools, we were informed that the Yale School of Management (SOM) does not expect to make any changes to its application essay prompts this year. So in hopes of helping any candidates who wish to get started on their essays sooner rather than later (and we always encourage starting as early as your schedule will permit), we are posting our advice on how to approach the school’s questions now. If by chance the admissions committee elects to change the questions after all, we will revisit and update this post accordingly.

The Yale School of Management (SOM), like Harvard Business School, takes a bit of a “go big or go home” approach with its sole application essay prompt in that it gives applicants just one shot to make their desired impression on the admissions committee. The Yale SOM query is less open-ended, however, and requires candidates to focus on a significant past commitment and its underlying reasons and value. The  essay is limited to just 500 words, so you will need to be clear, direct, and rather succinct in your response, without much preamble or extraneous text. Read on for our full analysis.

Describe the biggest commitment you have ever made. (500 words maximum)

In a Yale SOM blog post about the school’s essay prompt when it was originally introduced (in 2016), Assistant Dean for Admissions Bruce DelMonico noted that the “seemingly simple and straightforward question” was composed with assistance from one of the program’s organizational behavior professors. Yale’s admissions committee clearly takes the application essay seriously and is thoughtful about the types of behaviors it wants to see in the school’s students. In an online Q&A session with several leading admissions officers we hosted in 2018, Bruce declared himself “agnostic” about whether applicants should discuss a personal commitment or a professional one, noting that he wants to gauge the level to which candidates commit themselves, rather than the context of the engagement: “We don’t have a preference for professional or personal accomplishments. . . . We are not making value judgments about what that commitment is, but it is more about how you approach that commitment, how you have demonstrated that commitment, and what sorts of behaviors underlie that commitment.”

You may initially think this prompt is rather narrow in scope, allowing you space to relate the story of just a single professional or community project and nothing more. Although you can certainly discuss your dedication to a particular project or cause, you are definitely not restricted to this approach. Consider this: you can also be committed to an idea (e.g., personal liberty) or a value (e.g., creating opportunity for others), and approaching your essay from this angle instead could enable you to share much more of and about yourself with the admissions committee. For example, you might present a few anecdotes that on the surface seem unrelated—drawing from different parts of your life—but that all support and illustrate how you are guided by a particular value. Or, to use the example of personal liberty as a theme, you could show how you take control of your academic and professional paths, adhering steadfastly to your values and vision. Whatever you choose to feature as the focus of your commitment, your actions and decisions, manifest via a variety of experiences, must allow you to own it as a genuine part of who you are as an individual. Identifying a theme that you think no one else will ever use is not your goal here; presenting authentic anecdotes that powerfully support your selected theme is what is important.

If you elect to focus on a single anecdote, the commitment you claim must be truly inordinate. Being particularly proud of an accomplishment is not enough to make it an effective topic for this essay. You need to demonstrate your constancy and dedication in the face of challenges or resistance, revealing that your connection to the experience was hard won. Strive to show that you have been resolute in following a sometimes difficult path and have doggedly stayed on course, citing clear examples to illustrate your steadfastness. Nothing commonplace will work here—you must make your reader truly understand your journey and leave them more impressed by your effort than the outcome.

Within its application, the Yale SOM also poses the following question:

How did you arrive at these career interests? How have you or how will you position yourself to pursue them? (250 words maximum)

Although this is not presented by the school as an official essay question, its length (at 250 words) and topic lead us to feel a little guidance might be helpful with this submission. Here, the admissions committee is essentially asking for context for your professional aspirations, which typically involves some level of information about your work history, and wants to learn how you expect to use the Yale SOM experience and degree to move your forward on your path to achieving your goals.

Keep in mind that the admissions committee will already have your resume on hand to review, and this should provide the basic information as far as your previous positions/titles, responsibilities, and accomplishments. What the school is looking for here is the more personal side of the story—what has motivated you along the way and is motivating you still, prodding you to pursue an MBA as part of your efforts to continue on your chosen professional path. In an application tips blog post, Kate Botelho, associate director of admissions at the Yale SOM, offers this advice when considering your response: “You may want to think about the answers to questions such as ‘How did these interests develop?’ ‘What kind of exposure have you had to them?’ ‘What steps have you already taken to explore these interests?’ ‘What enables you to pursue them successfully?’”

Given that this prompt essentially covers some of the elements found in a typical traditional personal statement essay, we encourage you to download a free copy of the mbaMission Personal Statement Guide, which offers in-depth advice on how to address these sorts of topics and provides examples.

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For this application season, Northwestern Kellogg has elected to keep its same essay questions. The first deals with a leadership experience that resulted in some form of ongoing merit, while the second focuses on applicants’ guiding principles. Interestingly, both of Kellogg’s essays center on “value(s)” but in very different ways, according to two separate definitions of the term. As such, Kellogg’s questions seem to address two key aspects of business today, and candidates will need to demonstrate their awareness of both and potential to fulfill them. For more guidance on how to interpret and approach the school’s essay and video prompts for 2020–2021, read on.

Required Essay 1: Kellogg’s purpose is to educate, equip, and inspire brave leaders who create lasting value. Provide a recent example where you have demonstrated leadership and created value. What challenges did you face, and what did you learn? (450 words) 

This is a fairly straightforward essay prompt, and we recommend responding in an equally straightforward manner. Launch directly into the story of your leadership experience, and detail the specific actions you took in directing others to achieve some kind of enduring result. The key here is to show that you shared a valuable experience with colleagues, extracted the most from your team members, and attained a desired outcome. Although we often note that not all great leadership stories necessarily have to end in success, Kellogg’s request for evidence of “lasting value” certainly implies that the school wants to hear about a situation that had a positive resolution. You will need to convey not only your role in spearheading a group to achieve what you did but also how that achievement has persisted.

Note that Kellogg does not specify that the experience you share must be related to your workplace or career. Leadership does not need to have an official title attached to it, and it can be expressed in a community service or even family life setting just as much as in a workplace, so explore all the different areas of your life for possible stories. We recommend using a narrative approach to present your story, but be sure to also share the thought process and motivation(s) behind your actions. This way, the admissions committee will take away a clear picture not only of what you accomplished but also of the aspects of your character that inspired you and helped enable your success.

That said, the school acknowledges within the prompt that even endeavors that have a positive result are rarely smooth sailing from beginning to end—hence the question about challenges faced. A mistake applicants often make in writing this kind of essay is presenting a strong narrative in which they are incredible leaders, and then near the end, making a brief (and typically disjointed) reference to a hardship or conflict encountered along the way, meant to fulfill the “challenges” element of the essay query. To be effective and believable, your ups and downs must be woven intrinsically into your narrative, rather than simply acknowledged at the end. Clearly explaining how you approached and prevailed over the challenge at hand is crucial, so go beyond simply describing the roadblock itself and ensure that you detail your response and the inner workings of your decision making at that point.

Lastly, do not forget or neglect to explain what you learned from the experience—Kellogg specifically asks you to do so! And keep in mind that for your takeaways to be “meaningful,” they have to be profoundly connected to your narrative. The admissions reader should be able to easily understand the connection between the situation you describe and your subsequent learnings.

Required Essay 2: Values are what guide you in your life and work. What values are important to you and how have they influenced you? (450 words)

Kellogg offers another very straightforward essay question here, so not a lot of interpretation is needed. On its FAQ page, the admissions committee states that it is “interested in learning about your values,” so a frank query on the topic only makes sense. Kellogg wants to know how your values influence your decisions and actions, and in particular, which ones tend to guide you most often or intensely. Simply stating that you embrace certain values is easy, so the admissions committee is understandably asking for illustrations of this phenomenon to better gauge this for itself. Having an idea of how you tend to incorporate your core beliefs into your life will help the school better envision how you might fit into its classrooms and the business world after you graduate.

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Once again, Columbia Business School (CBS) is offering applicants a combination of old and new essay questions. Its short-answer goal statement remains unchanged, as has its first essay prompt—which is also about candidates’ career aspirations. Likewise, the school’s second essay question still asks applicants to discuss why they want an MBA from CBS in particular. For the third essay, though, candidates no longer have to frame their values within the context of an admired leader but are instead tasked with revealing key elements of their personalities and lives through the selection of a cherished book, movie, or song. Our more detailed analysis of the program’s 2020–2021 questions follows.

Short Answer Question: What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (Maximum 50 Characters)

CBS applicants accustomed to Twitter’s 280-character allowance may find CBS’s 50-character limit here more than a little challenging—especially considering that it includes spaces! To get a sense of how brief your opportunity really is, note that the school’s prompt is itself exactly 50 characters. With such a limit, this can hardly be considered a true essay, but you will of course need to approach it with the same level of thought and focus you give all your other written responses for CBS. During a Q&A mbaMission conducted with several top admissions officers, Assistant Dean of Admissions Amanda Carlson commented,

That 50 characters really helps people to just break it down very simply for themselves and simply for us . . . . Pursuing business education, it’s a huge investment in time, in money, in effort, in energy, and I think this 50-character exercise is as much for the candidate as it is for our team, and we want to know that people are serious, they’re focused, and they’re ready for this kind of adventure.

So, this prompt is a no-nonsense request for information that is all about getting to the point and telling the admissions committee what it needs to know—that you have a clear and achievable goal. In the past, the school has provided a few sample responses, including “Work in business development for a media company” and “Join a strategy consulting firm,” illustrating that conveying the requested information in such a tight space is definitely doable and that you do not need to worry too much about grammatical issues (in other words, you do not need to start your statement with “I want to” or something similar). We like to offer the statement “Reveal true goals, not what you think CBS wants” as both our own example of keeping things concise and our advice on how to approach and fulfill this request. 

Think about what you really want to do with your career in the short term and state this aspiration directly. Keep in mind that the rest of your application will need to provide evidence that your stated goal aligns with your existing skills and profound interests, especially once they have been augmented by an MBA education. This will show that your professed goal is achievable and lend credibility to your statement. If you can do this in 50 characters (not words!), you will have done what you need to answer the school’s question quite well.

Essay #1: Through your resume and recommendations, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals over the next 3-5 years and what, in your imagination, would be your long-term dream job? (500 words)

CBS starts this essay question by more or less telling you not to recap your career to date, so we strongly recommend that you do so (and briefly, at that) only if context is absolutely needed for your stated goals to be understood and/or believable—perhaps if you are making a fairly remarkable career change. Pay particular attention to the phrases “dream job” and “in your imagination” with respect to the long-term portion of the question. The school is prompting you to be creative and perhaps even to challenge or push yourself to think big. CBS wants individuals who do not just follow prescribed paths according to someone else’s blueprint but who are aspirational and more inclined to forge their own way. This is not to suggest that if you have a more traditional plan in mind that you are in trouble or at risk of losing the admissions committee’s attention, but you may need to take a little extra time to consider your ambitions from the perspective of “what if?” and delve more deeply into what you hope to achieve to find the more personal and inspiring elements of your goals. Showing creativity and individualism here can only be helpful.

Although this is not a request for a textbook personal statement essay, your response will certainly involve some elements of the topics covered in such a submission, such as short- and long-term goals. The mbaMission Personal Statement Guide offers advice on brainstorming and crafting such essays along with multiple illustrative examples and so may be helpful in preparing your CBS response to this prompt. You can download your free copy here.

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The admissions committee at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan has made some adjustments to its essay prompts for this season, though the changes primarily affect how much space candidates have to respond rather than the nature of the information they are asked to provide. Ross seems to be taking a very no-nonsense, just-the-facts approach to their application essays (even the scope of the optional essay has been narrowed). For the school’s short answers, the individual prompts are actually the same, but they have been sorted into two groups, rather than three, and applicants now need to submit only two short essays of 100 words each. Ross’s 200-word (down from 300) career essay again asks applicants to share and explain their short-term professional aspirations, thereby showing that they have a plan in mind and have given serious thought to why they need a Ross MBA to achieve their goal. Our full analysis of the program’s 2020–2021 essay prompts follows.

Part 1: Short Answers (choose one from each group; 100 words each)

Group 1

I want people to know that I:
I made a difference when I:
I was aware that I was different when:

Group 2

I was/am out of my comfort zone when:*
I was humbled when:
I was challenged when:

*Both wordings of this prompt appear on the Michigan Ross website (“I was out of my comfort zone when” and “I am out of my comfort zone when”). We were able to confirm with the admissions office that candidates may respond to either version, as they wish.

When Ross’s short-answer prompts were first introduced, Soojin Kwon, the managing director of full-time MBA admissions, explained in a blog post, “[We want to] get to know more about you than we would in a traditional essay where you’d talk at length about one topic.” She stressed this idea again last year, and in a recent post, elaborated further by stating, “The most interesting and insightful responses to these prompts remain when applicants share personal examples that allow us to learn more about who you are as a person, and what unique experiences and insights you would bring to the MBA class.” Clearly, the admissions committee hopes these mini essays will reveal distinctive facets of applicants’ personalities in a straightforward manner, unencumbered by extraneous text. Given the mere 100-word maximum for each, you might be tempted to just jump in and start writing, but thinking strategically about who you are as an applicant is critical here. 

We encourage you to first consider very carefully which option of each group feels most authentic to and revelatory of who you are as an individual. Then, thoroughly and thoughtfully brainstorm to identify your strongest possible responses. You want to be able to “own” your answer—as we like to say—meaning that no other applicant could write the same thing as you do. Using the second prompt of the first group as an example (“I made a difference when I…”), writing something like “gave back to my community by volunteering with the local homeless shelter” would be far too general a response and could likely be stated by multiple applicants. Instead, something much more specific like “dedicated every Saturday morning for three years to helping cook and serve breakfast at the local homeless shelter, where I also instituted a bulk-shopping plan that saved hundreds of dollars each year on supplies” would stand out for its originality and paint a clearer picture of the candidate who wrote it with respect to their values, dedication, and fiscal creativity. In addition, using a narrative approach is a good way to paint a dynamic picture of how you conduct yourself and to engage your reader with a compelling story that has a clear beginning, middle, and end. If you choose to simply discuss a trait without a narrative, you could risk sounding as though you are bragging, and this would be a wasted opportunity for the admissions reader to get to know you in more depth.

When you are done writing, take a look at your responses and see if they are complementary of one another. If they seem repetitive or focus on the same general idea, story, or area of your life, you will likely want to rewrite one. Your goal is to have each response reveal something new and interesting about you. Another factor to consider is everything the admissions committee will already know about you from the other portions of your application; you do not want to miss this chance to paint a well-rounded picture of yourself by repeating information available elsewhere in your profile. 

So, to recap, strive to make sure your responses (1) genuinely reflect who you are as a candidate and are as specific to you alone as possible; (2) present a narrative that allows the reader to walk in your shoes, so to speak; (3) are complementary of each other, with each one revealing something different about you; and (4) do not discuss a part of your profile that is already well explained or represented in a different part of your application.

​Part 2: Career Goal Essay (200 words)

Michigan Ross is a place where people from all backgrounds with different career goals can thrive. What is your short-term career goal and why?

With just 200 words, you do not have any space to waste here, so focus on presenting your answer as directly and thoroughly as possible—and give the admissions committee what it wants! For further clarification, in the aforementioned blog post, Kwon wrote, “We found that the best responses to this essay were clear and succinct. The ones that were less successful tended to be less focused or focused too much on the ‘what’ and not enough on the ‘why.’ For the AdCom, the ‘why’ is the most impactful and differentiating aspect of each essay to me.”

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