MBA hopefuls who are filling out business school applications often feel intimidated by short-answer essay prompts with tight word limits. However, B-school admissions officers say that essay prompts with length restrictions help applicants hone in on the ways they can contribute to an MBA class.
Fitting a sales pitch into a tight space can help applicants discover their most attractive selling points, admissions officers say.
“You really do have to think about what are the must-communicates versus the nice-to-communicates,” says Isser Gallogly, associate dean of MBA admissions and program innovation at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
[See: 10 Mistakes to Avoid in MBA Applications.]
Gallogly says that Stern’s “Pick Six” essay, which asks MBA applicants to select six images that represent their identity and briefly describe what each image symbolizes, allows applicants to highlight the reasons why they would be a valuable addition to an MBA cohort.
Here is an image and caption from a “Pick Six” essay that impressed Gallogly. The essay’s author, Sebastian Hooker, is a student in Stern’s Andre Koo Technology and Entrepreneurship MBA program.
Hooker, who enjoys skiing and mountain biking, says the reason he included this photograph and caption in his MBA application is because he wanted the admissions committee to know about his appreciation of nature. The photograph shows Hooker exploring an ice cave in Oregon.
Hooker, who grew up in Utah, says he wanted to make clear that if he attended business school in New York City, he would continue pursuing his outdoor hobbies. “I’m not going to move to the concrete jungle and become a 100 percent city-driven person,” he says.
Hooker says that outdoor adventures typically require careful planning, and that he’s had to work hard professionally in order to earn the money necessary to fund these expeditions. “It’s something that’s really important to me, and it’s something you have to make time for,” Hooker says.
Individuality is a key component of a compelling short-answer MBA essay, experts say, because it ought to tell admissions officers something that they cannot learn from a candidate’s transcript or resume.
[See: 10 Ways to Ace the MBA Admissions Interview.]
Ben Strickhouser, an incoming second-year MBA student at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh, says the key to answering a short-answer essay question effectively is staying true to your identity.
“You want to be authentic in the way that you answer the question, so most likely the first thing that comes to mind whenever you read this question is what you want to put, and then you just need to spend a little bit of time to make sure that it’s put in an eloquent way,” Strickhouser says.
Here is how Strickhouser responded to an essay prompt asking how he would introduce himself to an MBA admissions officer if he was sitting next that officer at an airport during a layover. The prompt indicated that the maximum word count for this essay was between 300 and 350.
I’ve spent the last five years working in operations. I’m ready to make a pivot in my career so that I will be in a position to affect organizational decisions and implement improvements.
Due to my obligation to the United States Merchant Marine Academy, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to numerous places during my short five year career. I’ve worked in nine countries on three continents and sailed the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Working in these different places has been an incredible experience. Even more incredible are the people with whom I’ve been able to work.
While seeing a foreign land and learning the culture are invaluable experiences, nothing compares to what you learn when you work with someone from another culture. This is a time when you learn how people truly act and feel. From the Philippines to Poland and the Ivory Coast to name just a few, I have had the pleasure to work with a truly diverse group of people. The most important thing that I’ve learned from them, something I could never have learned on my own, is perspective.
Pins on your travel map mean nothing if you don’t take the time to talk to the people who live there. Working and of course living onboard a ship in such close proximity to diverse individuals allowed me the opportunity have in depth conversations with them and understand why they feel the way they do.
The Navy has taught me many great lessons about leadership and allowed me to practice them on a daily basis, but it is my time in the private sector around the world that’s truly shaped how I am as a leader. I know that these experiences have given me the empathy to be able to step back and consider all of the factors when confronted with a problem, not just the quick and easy solution. I believe this is my greatest strength to bring to Tepper.
Kelly R. Wilson, executive director of masters admissions at the Tepper School of Business, says this essay is excellent because it demonstrated that Strickhouser would have an interesting perspective to share and the capacity to learn from his classmates.
Wilson says that MBA applicants shouldn’t worry about responding to a short-answer essay prompt correctly. “What I think is important for the candidate to remember is that there is no single right answer to these short-answer questions,” she says. “Too often, the candidate thinks that there is the perfect answer and that there is a single ideal candidate. Neither of those is true.”
Soojin Kwon, the managing director of full-time MBA admissions and program at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business, says that B-school hopefuls can use short-answer essays to demonstrate their ability to write concisely.
Kwon says MBA admissions officers like to see evidence that MBA applicants can communicate succinctly and clearly, because MBA courses usually require brief, straightforward essays as opposed to lengthy, abstract treatises.
[Read: Learn From an Accepted MBA Applicant’s Resume.]
“It’s business writing,” Kwon emphasizes. “It’s getting to the point quickly, doing it clearly and having a good structure.”
But Kwon warns that, even in very short MBA essays like the 100-word essays her school requires, it’s important for MBA applicants to not only describe events in their lives, but also explain the lessons they have learned.
Some applicants make the mistake of simply recounting a life event without reflecting on why the event matters, Kwon says. “It will almost be like a grade-school essay,” she warns.
Applicants should go beyond mere description and explain the significance of their experience, Kwon says. She suggests that MBA applicants write something along these lines: “This happened and here is what I learned from it, or here is how it has shaped me today.'”
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2 Clever Responses to MBA Short-Answer Essay Prompts originally appeared on usnews.com
