Tips for writing MBA essays
Whether or not you choose to work with us, these tips may help you write compelling MBA application essays.
You’ll note that I use the verb “reckon” here several times. It’s because this word gets to the heart of what MBA essay writing requires of us: To reckon is to consider something deeply but also strategically. To be honest without strategy is foolish; to be strategic without honesty is shameful. Reckoning offers the fine path through the middle, producing honest, compelling essays that showcase you to your best ability.
1. The quality of your prose is important, but not more important than your angle — the way you position your response.
Don’t rush over your topic selection. Don’t choose the slickest way to answer the question. They expect dishonest efforts that showcase your successes while glossing over your failures. Answers that honestly reckon with the questions posed are notable in their rarity.
There’s an angle to every question that allows you to answer it fully while strategically managing its impact. Be sure of your angle before writing — otherwise you’re writing on a poor foundation. Those foundations crack.
2. The quality of your prose is important, but not that important.
The adcom isn’t expecting poetry. It doesn’t need poetry. But neither does it want marketing. The sturdiest sentence is a clear, honest one. If you’re worried about your flair for language, focus on short, clear, declarative sentences, and say true things. It worked for Hemingway.
3. If you don’t know how to answer a question about why you want to go to business school, maybe you shouldn’t go to business school.
Your MBA essay should reckon honestly with the questions posed. If you can’t answer why you want to go to business school, there are a handful of possibilities: You view your reasons as shameful, your reasons are vague, or your reason is a lie.
If your reasons are shameful, reconsider: Do you want to earn an MBA only to enrich yourself? Can you connect this to childhood poverty? A need for security? Do you believe that strong businesses make a strong economy — and a strong economy a strong society?
If your reasons are vague, your job will be to pull back, choose the best one, and strategically build your essay around it.
If your reason is a lie: You don’t need to apply to business school. If you want to travel the world, work for an NGO, write a novel, or go to art school, you should do those things instead.
4. If you’re choosing between multiple focuses, give extra weight to the one that feels most investable.
One way of looking at an adcom is as a collection of astute investors choosing between investments. They want to invest in candidates who will do things that contribute meaningfully to their school’s public profile. “Contribute meaningfully” permits a wide range of ambitions.
They have incredible power to turbocharge a finite number of careers. How can you position your ideas as worthy investments?
5. Never tell them what you think they want to hear.
Imagine a pool of 1000 candidates. They have similar professional and educational backgrounds. Most have friends with MBAs. They read the same advice on Reddit and elsewhere. Chances are, their best guesses as to what the adcom wants to hear are remarkably similar. Which is to say: boring. Anodyne. And almost always less compelling than the truer story.
No one in that group has your unique family, childhood, influences, ambitions, fears, admirations, and quirks. The most important bar for your essay is the easiest to clear, once you know that it’s there: Write your own story. Don’t give people what you think they want.
6. Honesty is paramount. But mindset matters.
Some of the most compelling personal statements discuss traumatic events: death, bankruptcy, failures in school and at work. If reckoned with honestly, these experiences can provide heft and gravity to your essays. Nevertheless we must not transpose unresolved unhappiness into the essay itself. The essay cannot be defensive, aggrieved, or angry. It can, however, show how you’ve confronted these events — and ideally how they have catalyzed your actions, so that you now act with greater ambition, drive, and seriousness of purpose than before.
These are the principles that guide our practice. Book a free 30-minute consult here.