This time of year, MBA hopefuls chomping at the bit to try their hand at admission to selective MBA programs are always asking about how to craft strong essays for their dream school. They know it’s critical to stand out in the MBA admissions race and they want to make sure they are crafting the right answers to what MBA adcoms are asking in the MBA essays and MBA application questions. It’s understandable to want to make sure you are staying on point. One of the most common criticisms of reviewers of MBA essays is “you missed answering the question”. 

But I am here to suggest there is a part of the MBA application strategy that comes before you start writing your essays that will position you to much better craft every component of your MBA application, not just the MBA essay answers.

This article provides MBA application advice and a framework that will help guide your introspection and building your candidacy.

I’ve already talked about the importance of soul-searching, using the seven essential questions. The answers to these questions will flow into the four essential stories every candidate applying to business school will need to create. These four stories are narratives about leadership, accomplishment, challenge, and growth.

Every top tier MBA program looks for these qualities and asks for them in various parts of the business school application. They may be “disguised” under different names but they invariably fall into one of these categories. If you do the work to build a bank of examples that collectively amount to a track record in each one of your categories, you will have a source to tap when you tackle any MBA admissions stage – answering the MBA application questions, writing your MBA admissions essays, refining your career goals, acing the MBA admissions interview, and even choosing the best fit MBA program for you when admissions offers arrive in your inbox. 

Let’s take a look at how this framework fits into the admissions criteria of top MBA programs. Then further down, you will find some ideas about what personal and professional examples could go into each of the four essential stories. 

Many programs will tell you plainly and clearly who they are looking for. Two such examples are the Stanford GSB and Harvard Business School. 

One of the most insightful descriptions of what kind of students Stanford’s admissions looks for comes directly from them:

“We seek the most promising students in terms of intellectual vitality, demonstrated leadership potential, and personal qualities and contributions.”

They also tell you where they will be looking for evidence of these qualities – “your background, experiences, perspectives, aspirations, values, and accomplishments”.

So how do you demonstrate intellectual vitality? If you think it equates a 780 GMAT score, I’m afraid you will be wrong. While a very strong GMAT test score is certainly an asset and even necessity for most MBA hopefuls applying to the GSB, intellectual vitality is a much more complex notion. The Stanford admissions officers helpfully tell you what it encompasses: “seeking new knowledge or expertise; your willingness to test and challenge assumptions; and your ability to develop new ideas or perspectives”. 

But how does this work in practice? Let me show you several examples from work I have done recently with candidates, pursuing an MBA. 

A software engineer who worked for a $1 billion fashion start up can use her work on conceptualizing, developing, and launching a multi-warehouse sourcing system that completely overhauled the company’s business model as an example. In this case, she would need to talk about how she approached this challenging task as an intellectual puzzle. She could include details about what her philosophy in approaching a new business challenge is. She can describe how she treated the learnings that are needed at the onset of such projects and how she used them to generate new ideas. The key will be to go far beyond presenting this accomplishment as a technical task and adding the nuances that will help others see it as an intellectual endeavor that resulted in a technological advancement.   

Next, let’s take a look at what the HBS admissions committee is looking for. Once again, they are very clear and precise regarding what kind of students they are seeking for the Harvard MBA class – ones with “Habit of Leadership, Analytical Appetite and Aptitude, and Engaged Community Citizenship”.

Leadership is frequently one of the hardest parts for MBA candidates to demonstrate. They fear they have not been in positions of formal leadership or that their examples are not impressive enough. But Harvard tells you very directly there is no one size fits all. They “appreciate leadership on any scale, from organizing a classroom to directing a combat squad, from running an independent business to spearheading initiatives at work. In essence, we are looking for evidence of your potential”.

A successful HBS admit I worked with used an example of how she leveraged the intersection of knowing just enough about technology, human behavior, and business process to catch the attention of the head of Identity and Access Management at the financial institution she was working for. Without having deep expertise in any of these areas, her ability to translate and serve as a bridge between technology and people earned her an assignment as the lead of an overhaul of the new associates’ onboarding process. It was a perfect example of leadership (and would have served as a fine example of intellectual vitality too for that matter), made even more valuable because she didn’t have the title and managerial power and had to influence rather than manage. 

Hopefully, this framework and examples will serve as your primer to start curating the building blocks of your four MBA stories. As you do this, in addition to the essential questions, here are some places where you should be looking for inspiration and MBA application content – work, academic experiences (college is an obvious one but also any courses you ever took, even if not for credit), sports, hobbies, travel, books you read and were deeply influenced by, role models, community involvement, family business, family history and heritage, volunteer work. You may not have experience in all of these but everyone has some experience in some of them. Dig for the nuggets that have felt genuinely meaningful to you, in good ways or bad. 

To help you even further, here are some experiences that can earn a place in each of your four essential stories.

Leadership 

Simply managing people, projects, or budgets is not an example of leadership in and of itself. You need to look for examples of having inspired and helped others move forward and collectively accomplish a goal or overcome an obstacle. 

Accomplishment 

You will need a varied scorecard of accomplishments that relate to your academic track record, career progress, measurable impact at work and in your community, athletic achievement. A story of personal growth can fit here as well. I once had the privilege to hire someone who, after graduating from college, had backpacked across South America while also writing a book on how to pay off your college debt and successfully subsidizing his travels this way while also helping others become college debt free. It’s the kind of story that will stay in the mind of an MBA application reader and make them want to meet you (remember that it’s much better to aim to excite, not to impress). 

Challenge 

Think of the types of experiences that are associated with developing humility, resilience, and grit and the learnings that come from failure. 

Growth 

Career progression is important for MBA hopefuls to demonstrate. But growth goes well beyond moving up the corporate ladder. Overcoming failure and personal loss are also often the types of experiences that influence your personal and professional path and fuel your ability to grow both personally and professionally. Even learning how do graciously accept constructive criticism can be an example of growth. 

I know I used only two schools as examples to demonstrate how these four core MBA stories feed all parts of the MBA admissions process. If you want to know how you can develop these four themes for yourself for another school, let’s have a conversation. 

Onwards and upwards,

 Petia

Did you know that in MBA Application Boost Camp, you can work with me in a group setting at a fraction of the cost? Come join the driven community I am building to confidently walk the road to submitting your application.

Onwards and upwards,

Petia