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The University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business has long highlighted the strength of its community, the way students collaborate both inside and outside the classroom to learn and grow, and the value of bringing people from diverse backgrounds and with differing mindsets together, and the school’s application essay prompts focus on all these ideas. … Read More  

Yale School of Management (SOM) is one of the few top MBA programs that give candidates just one required application essay with which to make an impression on the admissions committee. The school offers applicants a choice of three topics to, as the admissions committee states, “ensure that you’re able to write about something important … Read More  

London Business School (LBS) has been posing the same core application essay question since 2015—one that largely constitutes a traditional personal statement—so the admissions committee must feel that the prompt elicits what it wants to know when evaluating candidates for the next class. More recently, the school added a second, albeit short, required essay, for … Read More  

We at mbaMission often tell candidates, “You cannot turn a bad idea into a good essay.” We insist on taking our clients through a lengthy brainstorming process—starting with a thorough questionnaire—to discover the stories that make them distinct. As you uncover your stories, consider each one from as many different angles as possible. Doing so … Read More  

Any good journalist will tell you that the key to writing a good news story or opinion piece is to grab the reader’s attention with the very first line. Many book authors employ this same tactic. Although only a small percentage of people have actually read Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, most know that the novel … Read More