Many applicants avoid the personal like the plague. Instead of talking about how putting themselves through school lowered their GPA, they talk about the rising cost of tuition in America. Admissions officers want to know about YOU.
why i want my mba essay
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As an MBA applicant, you likely have a healthy drive and desire to work independently, but you will find that getting extra eyes on your MBA essay will be to your benefit. Others will likely catch at least a few details that you have missed from your hours of staring relentlessly at the same bit of writing. And if you ask the right person, he or she might have advice that will give you a leg up when applying.
Are you having trouble starting or does your essay need some TLC? Professional essay tutors are available that can help you transform your essay. (Full disclosure, I work for one, EssayEdge.) If your budget allows for it, professional essay tutors can work wonders. These are very qualified people who have connections with admissions officers and have seen thousands of essays over the years (good and bad), and have real insight. There are essay tutor packages available for any budget.
Ultimately, you are the master of your own fate, but by getting the right eyes on your piece (and avoiding hearing too many conflicting opinions) you will have the recipe for an essay with all the right ingredients.
Ryan Hickey is the managing editor of Peterson's & EssayEdge and is an expert in many aspects of college, graduate, and professional admissions. A graduate of Yale University, Ryan has worked in various admissions capacities for nearly a decade, including writing test-prep material for the SAT, AP exams, and TOEFL, editing essays and personal statements, and consulting directly with applicants.
You want to get into a top business school, but you need to stand out from the tens of thousands of other impressive applicants. According to US News, the average top 20 b-school acceptance rate is 12.37%, but our MBA clients enjoy an 84% ACCEPTANCE RATE. How can you separate yourself from the competition successfully? By crafting an excellent application essay.
With an increasingly competitive MBA admissions process, it's important to understand what makes an applicant stand out. Admissions consultants share their clients' accepted MBA application essays and analyze what makes them work. Sponsored by
At around 1100 words, this is a long essay. However, breaking the essay down into meaningful moments that shaped the applicant made the content much easier to read. The subtitles provided a quick way to transition from one story to another while still holding a central theme.
The average GMAT score of admitted students at HBS is around 730, while the average undergraduate GPA is around 3.7. With stats lower than average, Stivaly needed to show through other data points that she is committed to academic excellence and continues to be a competitive high performer in the workplace and an attractive candidate for MBA recruiters. With seven years of pre-MBA work experience (higher than the average 4.7 years), Stivaly was able to showcase, though her resume and other parts of her application, a rich professional background including three promotions and a number of other academic and professional recognitions. She let the other parts of her application speak to her professional achievements, so that she could make space for the essay to talk about her motivations behind her achievements.
Disclaimer: With exception of the removal of identifying details, essays are reproduced as originally submitted in applications; any errors in submissions are maintained to preserve the integrity of the piece.
My most rewarding personal leadership experience has been serving as a mentor to Chason Pan, a first-generation college student at Baruch College who moved from China when he was 18. Chason wants to become an investment banker; however, when we first met he was culturally and experientially unprepared to compete for this position. At the beginning I was frustrated and unsure of the value I could add, as the hurdles to achieving this goal felt insurmountable. One day Chason mentioned a painting that had inspired him. As a fellow art lover, on a whim I suggested we go to the Met. While there his depth of knowledge surprised me. This day, leaving the confines of an office building and getting to see a different side of Chason, was the beginning of our common understanding and working relationship. After knowing Chason holistically, his challenges to achieving a finance internship did not seem as large. His intellect and disciplined work ethic would be an asset to any firm. We incorporated these attributes into his resume and cover letters. Finally, to address his obstacles, I pulled on my own experience recruiting, as well as my network of friends and colleagues, to provide him greater knowledge of the finance industry and the path to get there. After two years of working together, Chason successfully achieved an investment banking internship at JP Morgan last summer.
Even after having read hundreds of HBS essays, I still found it worthwhile to read The Essay Guide. For applicants who have preconceived notions of what an admissible essay should be, The Essay Guide will open your eyes to 22 successful and different responses. For applicants who are wondering how on earth they should approach their essay, the guide will give them 22 different answers.
4 Before you actually write the essays, take the final step of mapping out the general topics you will cover in each essay. As you map a topic to a question, check it off on a master list of stories you want to cover. This way, you can make sure that a given school is receiving all of your key stories, and that you are spreading out different stories across an application and not being repetitive.
10 Get some help. Even the most meticulous writers benefit from a second or third set of eyes. Ask someone to review your essays, look for typos and tell you if you are hitting all of the points in the right way. Is your attempt at humour coming off correctly? Do you seem too humble, too cocky, too serious, not serious enough? After you have been buried with your essays for weeks, a fresh perspective can often help you see the application as an admissions-committee member does: for the first time. Enlist someone who knows about the application process and make sure they are not just reassuring you that all is well, but are actually giving you some quality feedback.
Eileen: Hi everyone, I'm Eileen Jacob, the Associate Director of Admissions for our MBA Programs for Working Professionals. Today we're talking about writing your essays for your application to either the Berkeley Haas MBA for Executives or the Evening & Weekend Berkeley Haas MBA Program.
Brad: I think of the essays as an opportunity to differentiate yourself. I really appreciated the fact that I could write something and have someone understand more about me than just the stats on my resume or the check-boxes, etc.
Eileen: That's exactly the purpose of the essays, and there really isn't a "right" answer. We want people to show their personality and share their story and what they're passionate about. And this year, to get more detail about people's personal stories, we've changed the main essay question to ask for a six-word story.
Eileen: We hope that the other parts of your application cover your academics and your work experience and that the six-word story and your essays in general round out who you are. We don't have any expectations of what the topic should be.
Brad: I wanted to express who I am at a deeper level. So, I thought about my family. I thought about my education. I thought about my career. But what stuck out to me the most, was my childhood and some of the difficulties I had to overcome in my life. For me it was volunteering in my community and becoming a board member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, because mental illness runs in my family.
I tried to be as vulnerable, as much as I could in the essay and share those things that were really personal to me. It was even difficult for me to have people review my essay and proofread it, because I didn't want everyone to learn that much about me. But it was, I think, even more compelling.
Eileen: I'm so glad that you shared that, Brad. Thank you, because that's the goal. We would hope every applicant can put that depth of thought and reflection into the process and ensuring that their genuine voice comes through. How long would you advise candidates to prepare when they're putting their essays together?
Brad: I actually spent several months on my essay. Basically once a week or so, I would spend maybe 10 or 20 minutes just adding items that I had thought of to that essay, and it slowly built out to however many words were required. Then I started editing and slowly iterating on it until it was a final product.
Eileen: That's what we generally advise candidates to do, because someone who knows you well can really make sure that your personality is coming through. It's also always good to have an extra set of eyes proofread before you submit the final essay.
Your MBA application essays are an important part of sharing your unique story with the Admissions Committee. The most successful essays will thoughtfully address the prompts, clearly communicate why you want to attend Texas McCombs, and authentically share who you are. 2ff7e9595c
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