{"id":1294,"date":"2010-03-24T02:22:49","date_gmt":"2010-03-24T08:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/?p=1294"},"modified":"2010-10-07T08:08:36","modified_gmt":"2010-10-07T14:08:36","slug":"mbamission-releases-new-optional-statement-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mbamission-releases-new-optional-statement-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"mbaMission Releases New Optional Statement Guide!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is your GPA lower than your target school\u2019s average? Is your GMAT score uneven? Do you have a gap in your work experience? Most business school candidates have at least one irregularity in their profile and must consider whether to write the optional essay to explain it. And, of course, if you decide you do need to write one, you need to know how to do so effectively. In our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/guides.php\">mbaMission Optional Statement Guide<\/a>, we present a variety of scenarios in which one should\u2014as well as should not\u2014write an optional essay, and advise you on how best to mitigate your weaknesses and accentuate your strengths in such essays.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/guides.php\">mbaMission Optional Statement Guide<\/a> provides crucial guidance on how to properly use the optional essay to address \u201cissues\u201d within one\u2019s candidacy (and when not to), and includes 15 sample essays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is your GPA lower than your target school\u2019s average? Is your GMAT score uneven? Do you have a gap in your work experience? Most business school candidates have at least one irregularity in their profile and must consider whether to write the optional essay to explain it. And, of course, if you decide you do &hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mbamission-releases-new-optional-statement-guide\/\">Read&nbsp;More&nbsp;&nbsp;<i class=\"fal fa-sm fa-angle-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>mbaMission Releases New Optional Statement Guide! | mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mbamission-releases-new-optional-statement-guide\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"mbaMission Releases New Optional Statement Guide! | mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Is your GPA lower than your target school\u2019s average? Is your GMAT score uneven? Do you have a gap in your work experience? Most business school candidates have at least one irregularity in their profile and must consider whether to write the optional essay to explain it. And, of course, if you decide you do &hellip; Read&nbsp;More&nbsp;&nbsp;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mbamission-releases-new-optional-statement-guide\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-03-24T08:22:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2010-10-07T14:08:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/mbam-yoast-fallback-image.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeremy Shinewald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jeremy Shinewald\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"mbaMission Releases New Optional Statement Guide! | mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/mbamission-releases-new-optional-statement-guide\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"mbaMission Releases New Optional Statement Guide! | mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting","og_description":"Is your GPA lower than your target school\u2019s average? 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With more than 20 years of experience and a background as a professional speechwriter, he combines deep industry insight and exceptional storytelling skills to help applicants create powerful, distinctive MBA applications.","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/who-we-are\/team\/jeremy-shinewald\/","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/jeremyshinewald\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/author\/jeremy\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}