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MBA Admissions Consultant
Joined: 20 Apr 2003
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MBA Admissions Consultant
Joined: 20 Apr 2003
Posts: 6466
Own Kudos [?]: 848 [0]
Given Kudos: 92
Location: Los Angeles CA
Send PM
MBA Admissions Consultant
Joined: 20 Apr 2003
Posts: 6466
Own Kudos [?]: 848 [0]
Given Kudos: 92
Location: Los Angeles CA
Send PM
MBA Admissions Consultant
Joined: 20 Apr 2003
Posts: 6466
Own Kudos [?]: 848 [0]
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Location: Los Angeles CA
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Applying to Stanford GSB This Year? Bookmark This Video! [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: Applying to Stanford GSB This Year? Bookmark This Video!



Our recent webinar, Get Accepted to Stanford GSB, covered all the particulars of how to approach this elite program’s MBA application strategically. 

If Stanford is at the top of your wish list and you didn’t join us for this session, it’s now available for free, on-demand viewing. So refill that coffee, find a comfy seat, and watch it now!

Watch the webinar:


For 25 years, Accepted has helped business school applicants gain acceptance to top programs. Our outstanding team of MBA admissions consultants features former business school admissions directors and professional writers who have guided our clients to admission at top MBA, EMBA, and other graduate business programs worldwide including Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Booth, INSEAD, London Business School, and many more. Want an MBA admissions expert to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!

Tags: MBA Admissions

The post Applying to Stanford GSB This Year? Bookmark This Video! appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.
This Blog post was imported into the forum automatically. We hope you found it helpful. Please use the Kudos button if you did, or please PM/DM me if you found it disruptive and I will take care of it. -BB
MBA Admissions Consultant
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Chicago Booth MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021] [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: Chicago Booth MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021]
[img]https://blog.accepted.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/chicago-booth-2020-2021-mba-essay-tips.png[/img]
[img]https://blog.accepted.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/chicago-booth-2020-2021-mba-essay-tips.png[/img]

The two required questions have 250-word minimums. While specifying MBA essay length minimums is very unusual, it fits with Booth’s history of breaking the mold. At the same time, don’t infer that the absence of a maximum is a license for verbosity. As Booth says, “We trust that you will use your best judgment in determining how long your submission should be.” Do use your best judgement, otherwise you will be showing a different kind of judgement, and you really don’t want to do that.

Chicago Booth MBA application question #1

How will the Booth MBA help you achieve your immediate and long-term post-MBA career goals? (Minimum 250 words, no maximum.)

[url=https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/58291/9bb31be0-3cf6-45f0-be3d-3791cc1bd9bd][img]https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/58291/9bb31be0-3cf6-45f0-be3d-3791cc1bd9bd.png[/img][/url]

In order to answer this question you need to know three things:

[list][*]Your immediate post-MBA goal, which you should be able to define in terms of function (what you want to do after you earn your MBA — not study during the MBA) and industry or type of company. Sometimes location can play a role, and if so, provide that information, too.

[/*][*][url=https://blog.accepted.com/how-to-clarify-your-goals-for-your-mba-and-beyond/]Your longer-term professional aspirations[/url]. These don’t have to be as specific as your short-term goal, but the two should be related.

[/*][*]The Chicago Booth program. Specifically how do you intend to use distinctive Booth strengths to build on your past and prepare yourself for your chosen career? If it’s not obvious how your previous education and experience when combined with the Booth MBA will help you achieve both goals, clarify.[/*][/list]

To answer the question, you can start with a seminal experience, preferably an achievement that shaped your goals and aspirations. Tell a story about this experience and describe what you learned from it and how it has influenced you and [url=https://reports.accepted.com/mba/guide/why-mba]your short- and long-term goals[/url].

Then talk about Booth. Look at the curriculum, strengths, career placement, and extracurricular activities that support your ambitions.

Alternatively, start with the achievement of your goal — you can try using a day-in-the-life approach — then flash back and tell the story of that seminal experience and how it and Booth prepared you for the future day that started your essay.

A couple of years ago I attended the AIGAC conference, hosted for one morning by Chicago Booth. During the informative sessions at Booth, the admissions committee members made clear that they are looking for students who demonstrate self-awareness and direction. They want to read your application and see, based on what you’ve done, that you’re going to make a mark on the world.

Write this essay so that it shows both self-awareness and your ability to make that mark.

Chicago Booth MBA application question #2

An MBA is as much about personal growth as it is about professional development. In addition to sharing your experience and goals in terms of career, we’d like to learn more about you outside of the office. Use this opportunity to tell us something about who you are… (Minimum 250 words, no maximum.)

This question is new this year and is a real getting to know you kind of question. What do you like to do in your spare time? Why does it appeal to you? Introduce yourself outside the office. And if you can show yourself in a growth mode, do so.

You could approach this essay with a goal that you’re trying to achieve and the steps you’re taking to achieve it. The possibilities are endless: running a marathon, painting a certain painting, learning a musical instrument, acquiring fluency in a foreign language prior to international travel, contributing to a cause you believe in, etc.

You could approach this essay by starting with your motivation for assuming this challenge or simply you doing what you enjoy doing. [url=https://blog.accepted.com/5-elements-telling-attention-grabbing-story/]Tell a story[/url] about the experience and then explore why it’s significant to you. What does it say about you?

Chicago Booth MBA optional essay question

Is there any unclear information in your application that needs further explanation? (Maximum 300 words.)

This is a restrictive [url=https://blog.accepted.com/mba-optional-essay-not-really-optional/]optional question[/url]. Booth is really asking only for information that will clarify something that is unclear, like a drop in grades one semester or a period of unemployment, or why your current supervisor is not writing your letter of recommendation.

This question, unlike the required questions, does have a word limit. Respect it.

Chicago Booth MBA reapplicant question

Upon reflection, how has your perspective regarding your future, Chicago Booth, and/or getting an MBA changed since the time of your last application? (Maximum 300 words.)

The answer to this question is critical for MBA reapplicants, and it’s different from most reapplication essays in that it’s more about your perspective than what you’ve done. Chicago wants to see growth and development. Same old, same old got you a ding last time and probably will again this time.

Let this brief essay show a maturation and evolution of your goals and reasons for wanting to attend Chicago Booth. Let it also reveal that [url=https://www.chicagobooth.edu/programs/full-time/admissions/apply/criteria]you meet Chicago’s criteria[/url] better this year than last.

[b]Response Guidelines:[/b] We trust that you will use your best judgment in determining how long your submission should be, but we recommend that you think strategically about how to best allocate the space.

[b]Format: [/b]Submissions must be entered into the text box provided in the application.

[b]For expert guidance with your Chicago Booth MBA application, check out Accepted’s [url=https://www.accepted.com/mba/services/application-packages?utm_campaign=Blog&utm_medium=mba_essay_tips&utm_source=blog]MBA Application Packages[/url], which include comprehensive guidance from an experienced admissions consultant. We’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to Chicago Booth’s MBA program and look forward to helping you too![/b]

[url=https://www.accepted.com/cs/c/?cta_guid=bdb6f5c5-2735-4d45-bcfb-986ad229e00b&placement_guid=402433f5-ee76-45ff-9790-b64230f88c68&portal_id=58291&canon=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.accepted.com%2Fchicago-booth-mba-essay-tips-deadlines%2F&redirect_url=APefjpGtPlzRfF-7UqfJFIzVeIvtMg4fDezlwWfx8Jbxgy0U12X3z8tAV8blFc3KmO8YJ6NgUfZpkpud-_snrjXrIfA6pPTkStKGUmRME0L9oUGSELS2htreHvqkGqYdM8bKH39hZEwG0fPDK3cTN3FMoe5CNd3kyGzd2MdG0GVEmZvBEopUxjFdIDanxno7i6lveqHEacxyalaTVYfORl69QO-fkAAFNggfGW6F1jHsiRD2MwBhfn6WEiWdvCdCgVwKCiEdPks_mXhYd0CDwvjzJ_30txZjmutpZ3f9cpDqnigQsbkBuMU&click=8788bf1e-8ead-4dfa-8c18-6370533266f9&hsutk=563e47b25a2a4d68b9e8132f8e1b91e3&signature=AAH58kGtBebO-bgjrglvwvGG8O1NDP3VWA&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.accepted.com%2F%3Fs%3Dbooth+mba+&__hstc=76425034.563e47b25a2a4d68b9e8132f8e1b91e3.1565627464200.1594723155080.1594727543816.762&__hssc=76425034.17.1594727543816&__hsfp=462608264&contentType=blog-post]CREATE A SUCCESSFUL BOOTH APPLICATION! >>[/url]

Chicago Booth 2020-21 MBA application deadlines

RoundSubmission DeadlineDecision Notification

1September 24, 2020December 3, 2020

2January 12, 2021March 18, 2021

3April 1, 2021May 20, 2021

Chicago Booth ScholarsApril 1, 2021June 3, 2021

Source: [url=https://www.chicagobooth.edu/programs/full-time/admissions/apply]Chicago Booth website[/url]

[b]Stay on top of MBA deadlines with the [url=https://www.accepted.com/calendar]MBA Admissions Calendar[/url]![/b]

[[url=https://calendar.google.com/calendar/b/2?cid=ZWdybWVsZ3IzZTZtczUxYzMwOGY0MGxiODhAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ]Click here[/url] to add the calendar to your Google calendar; or [url=https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/egrmelgr3e6ms51c308f40lb88%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics]here[/url] to add the calendar to another app.]

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with individual programs to verify the essay questions, instructions and deadlines.***

[url=https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/58291/89580a2d-0c5b-425c-bf95-80e39a346328][img]https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/58291/89580a2d-0c5b-425c-bf95-80e39a346328.png[/img][/url]

[img]https://blog.accepted.com/linda-abraham-accepted-founder/[/img]
By Linda Abraham, president and founder of Accepted. Linda earned her bachelors and MBA at UCLA, and has been advising applicants since 1994 when she founded Accepted. Linda is the co-founder and first president of AIGAC. She has written or co-authored 13 e-books on the admissions process, and has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News, Poets & Quants, Bloomberg Businessweek, CBS News, and others. Linda is the host of Admissions Straight Talk, a podcast for graduate school applicants. [b][url=https://www.accepted.com/services?utm_campaign=Blog&utm_medium=blog_bio_linda&utm_source=blog]Want an admissions expert help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch![/url][/b]

[b]Related Resources:[/b]

[list][*][url=https://reports.accepted.com/mba/guide/why-mba]Why MBA?[/url], a free guide to writing about MBA goals[/*][*][url=https://reports.accepted.com/mba/guide/top-mba-essay-tips]School-Specific MBA Application Essay Tips[/url][/*][*][url=https://blog.accepted.com/m7-mba-programs-everything-you-need-to-know-in-2020/]M7 MBA Programs: Everything You Need to Know in 2020[/url][/*][/list]

Tags: [url=https://blog.accepted.com/category/mba-admissions/]MBA Admissions[/url]

The post [url=https://blog.accepted.com/chicago-booth-mba-essay-tips-deadlines/]Chicago Booth MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021][/url] appeared first on [url=https://blog.accepted.com]Accepted Admissions Blog[/url].
This Blog post was imported into the forum automatically. We hope you found it helpful. Please use the Kudos button if you did, or please PM/DM me if you found it disruptive and I will take care of it. -BB
MBA Admissions Consultant
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Toronto Rotman MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021] [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: Toronto Rotman MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021]
[img]https://blog.accepted.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Toronto-Rotman-MBA-essay-tips-and-deadlines.jpg[/img]
[url=https://reports.accepted.com/mba/guide/top-mba-essay-tips][img]https://blog.accepted.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Toronto-Rotman-MBA-essay-tips-and-deadlines.jpg[/img][/url]

The University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management is one of the leading business schools in Canada. Known for its design approach to MBA education and strong emphasis on problem solving, Rotman’s program continues to grow in renown.

This year’s essay question reflects Rotman’s “[url=https://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/Degrees/MastersPrograms/MBAPrograms/FullTimeMBA/Program/CreativeMethodology]creative methodology[/url].” The adcom will get a snapshot of your goals through the application form; this essay is the place to demonstrate the self-knowledge and personal insight that characterize maturity and simultaneously conveys your fit with the values and culture of the program.

Toronto Rotman 2020-2021 MBA application

Rotman MBA essay question

Our admitted students stand out by doing interesting things with their personal and professional lives — [url=https://blog.accepted.com/toronto-rotman-mba-seeks-spike-factor/]something we describe as the ‘spike factor’[/url]; what are the things that you have done in your life that demonstrate Passion/ Grit/ Resilience/ Innovation/ Drive/ Ambition and more? This can cross all or any aspects of life outside of work – hobbies, volunteerism, awards, entrepreneurial ventures, sports and the arts. We believe that exposure to a rich diversity of viewpoints makes for a superior learning experience, and pride ourselves on building a diverse class of exceptional individuals who will go on to make the School proud as professionals and alumni.

Explain your spike factor (something unique about yourself) that you believe will contribute to the Rotman community and is aligned with [url=https://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/Connect/AboutRotman/OurValues]Rotman values[/url]. (Up to 1000 words)*

Optional – Please upload 1-3 of your ‘spikiest’ pictures to the supplemental items section of your application [url=https://getstarted.rotman.utoronto.ca/Ellucian.ERecruiting.Web.External/Pages/Login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2FEllucian.ERecruiting.Web.External%2FPages%2Fapplicationlist.aspx&NeedsLogin=True]here[/url]. Note: Your photos must be uploaded as a single PDF.

“Spike factor.” Those words say a lot. You should make this essay, and the points it contains, not just interesting – it should also bring a grin to the reader’s face or make them nod and think “Yes!” They should feel a tingle of enjoyment on reading it.

“Explain.” This word on the other hand can mislead you into lengthy abstractions. Make any explanation short and sweet. You do have to explicitly explain your “spike factor” because the question directs you to. But you don’t have to do it at the start of the essay, and you don’t have to do it at length. Better to [url=https://blog.accepted.com/5-elements-telling-attention-grabbing-story/]start off the essay with an anecdote[/url] to engage the reader.

Once you decide on the spike factor that you want to present, find 1-3 illustrative anecdotes from outside of work and from work (but definitely not all or only work) that illustrate it – if more than one, make sure they show different contexts. And do be strategic about which anecdotes you use; what are some desirable “zoom-in” moments or experiences from your (ideally relatively recent) life that would enhance your application in relevant ways? Use this essay to fill in the mosaic of who you are.

As for that spike factor – you don’t need some exotic point that no other person would ever think of or possess. Rather, dig into your own experience and personality and find a point that shows what makes you tick. You will then make that point distinctive, vivid, and memorable through your examples and stories.

[url=https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/58291/9bb31be0-3cf6-45f0-be3d-3791cc1bd9bd][img]https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/58291/9bb31be0-3cf6-45f0-be3d-3791cc1bd9bd.png[/img][/url]

Rotman MBA required video interview

Required video interview (2 questions) with a new timed written response component (10 minutes in length). Check out our blog posts for [url=https://inside.rotman.utoronto.ca/admissions/2012/09/14/innovation-in-the-admissions-process-introducing-the-video-essay/]more details on the video essay[/url] and the [url=https://inside.rotman.utoronto.ca/admissions/2015/09/03/rotmans-2016-intake-application-is-open/]timed written component[/url].

Without knowing what the questions are, it’s best to [url=https://blog.accepted.com/how-to-practice-for-a-video-interview-or-essay/]approach the video interview[/url] with both your own application and the Rotman program fresh in your mind. This will help you to simultaneously avoid both (a) being redundant and (b) being contradictory or inconsistent. I suggest viewing and approaching it as a continuation of the dialogue. It presents special challenges, particularly for non-native English speakers and writers who may typically take more time to polish their writing in English. While it’s natural for a follow-up piece like this essay to be less polished and thought through than essays on which you reasonably spend much more time, it also shouldn’t sound like a different person or present such a gap in English writing fluency that it raises doubts about your authorship of the other written portions of the application. If you are worried about these elements – practice. Give yourself sample topics and a 5-10 minute response window. Use tough questions, to make the actual one (hopefully) seem easier! (NOTE: The Rotman website gives an example – not an actual sample – question.)

[b]For expert guidance with your Toronto Rotman MBA application, check out Accepted’s [url=https://www.accepted.com/mba/services/application-packages?utm_campaign=Blog&utm_medium=mba_essay_tips&utm_source=blog]MBA Application Packages[/url], which include comprehensive guidance from an experienced admissions consultant. We’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to top MBA programs and look forward to helping you too![/b]

Toronto Rotman 2020-2021 MBA application deadlines

 Application DeadlineDecisions Released

Early RoundAugust 7, 2020September 4, 2020

Round 1October 5, 2020December 11, 2020

Round 2January 11, 2021March 5, 2021

Round 3March 8, 2021April 30, 2021

Round 4April 26, 2021June 4, 2021

* To be considered for specific Combined Program awards we advise applicants to the JD/MBA, MGA/MGA, Skoll/MBA and Pharma/MBA Programs to apply by the Round Two deadline. 

** All international applicants (excluding US Citizens) are highly encouraged to apply by Round Three in order to ensure ample time for visa processing after accepting the offer of admission.

Source: [url=https://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/Degrees/MastersPrograms/MBAPrograms/FullTimeMBA/GettingIn/How_to_apply]Toronto Rotman[/url] website

[b]Stay on top of MBA deadlines with the [url=https://www.accepted.com/calendar]MBA Admissions Calendar[/url]![/b]

[[url=https://calendar.google.com/calendar/b/2?cid=ZWdybWVsZ3IzZTZtczUxYzMwOGY0MGxiODhAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ]Click here[/url] to add the calendar to your Google calendar; or [url=https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/egrmelgr3e6ms51c308f40lb88%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics]here[/url] to add the calendar to another app.]

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with individual programs to verify the essay questions, instructions and deadlines.***

[url=https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/58291/a921552d-3588-4837-b48b-f2b386f0a230][img]https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/58291/a921552d-3588-4837-b48b-f2b386f0a230.png[/img][/url]

[img]https://blog.accepted.com/cindy-tokumitsu-accepted-consultant/[/img]
Cindy Tokumitsu has advised hundreds of successful applicants, helping them gain acceptance to top MBA and EMBA programs in her 20 years with Accepted. She would love to help you too. [url=https://www.accepted.com/service-request-cindy?utm_campaign=Blog&utm_medium=blog_bio_cindy&utm_source=blog][b]Want Cindy to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch![/b][/url]

[b]Related Resources:[/b]

[list][*][url=https://reports.accepted.com/mba/guide/why-mba]Why MBA?[/url], a guide to acing the MBA goals essay question[/*][*][url=https://blog.accepted.com/toronto-rotman-mba-seeks-spike-factor/]Toronto Rotman MBA: The Spike Factor[/url], a podcast episode[/*][*][url=https://blog.accepted.com/how-to-practice-for-a-video-interview-or-essay/]How to Practice for a Video Interview or Essay[/url][/*][/list]

Tags: [url=https://blog.accepted.com/category/mba-admissions/]MBA Admissions[/url]

The post [url=https://blog.accepted.com/toronto-rotman-mba-essay-tips-deadlines/]Toronto Rotman MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021][/url] appeared first on [url=https://blog.accepted.com]Accepted Admissions Blog[/url].
This Blog post was imported into the forum automatically. We hope you found it helpful. Please use the Kudos button if you did, or please PM/DM me if you found it disruptive and I will take care of it. -BB
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Last Chance to Save During Our Price Rollback [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: Last Chance to Save During Our Price Rollback
[img]https://blog.accepted.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Price-Rollback-Blog-nobutton.png[/img]
[url=https://www.accepted.com/services?utm_campaign=Blog&utm_medium=price_rollback_last_chance&utm_source=blog][img]https://blog.accepted.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Price-Rollback-Blog-nobutton.png[/img][/url]

Feeling stressed? We don’t blame you! Getting into a top school is no easy task. The competition is fierce, and your application needs to be polished, persuasive – practically perfect – if you hope to have a shot at acceptance. But you don’t have to carry that load alone!

Our experienced consultants have the admissions expertise that only comes from years of proven experience on both sides of the admissions table. Leverage that knowledge to your advantage and [b][url=https://www.accepted.com/services?utm_campaign=Blog&utm_medium=price_rollback_last_chance&utm_source=blog]save up to hundreds of dollars during our temporary 2017 price rollback[/url]![/b]

You’ve only got [b]only until July 21[/b] to take advantage of this rare opportunity to receive any Accepted service or package at a price that hasn’t been seen in 3 years!

The money you’ll save during this 2017 rollback could buy you quite a few unicorn frappuccinos, tickets to see Wonder Woman in theaters, or “Despacito” downloads (you know, if you really want to relive the year).

This promotion doesn’t require a promo code — just add the services you’re interested in, view the updated pricing in your shopping cart, and take advantage of this special 2017 rate. July 21st is the final day of this rollback, so you only have a few hours left before our services go back up to 2020 prices. Don’t miss your opportunity to save big!

[b][url=https://www.accepted.com/services?utm_campaign=Blog&utm_medium=price_rollback_last_chance&utm_source=blog]<< SHOP NOW & SAVE! >>[/url][/b]
[url=https://www.accepted.com/services?utm_campaign=Blog&utm_medium=blog_bio_gen&utm_source=blog][img]https://blog.accepted.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/accepted_admissions_consulting.jpg[/img][/url]
For 25 years, Accepted has helped applicants gain acceptance to top undergraduate and graduate programs. Our expert team of admissions consultants features former admissions directors, PhDs, and professional writers who have advised clients to acceptance at top programs worldwide including Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge, INSEAD, MIT, Caltech, UC Berkeley, and Northwestern.
[url=https://www.accepted.com/services?utm_campaign=Blog&utm_medium=blog_bio_gen&utm_source=blog][b]Want an admissions expert [/b][b]to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch![/b][/url]

Tags: [url=https://blog.accepted.com/category/college-admissions/]College Admissions[/url], [url=https://blog.accepted.com/category/grad-school-admissions/]Grad School Admissions[/url], [url=https://blog.accepted.com/category/law-school-admissions/]Law School Admissions[/url], [url=https://blog.accepted.com/category/mba-admissions/]MBA Admissions[/url], [url=https://blog.accepted.com/category/medical-school-admissions/]Medical School Admissions[/url]

The post [url=https://blog.accepted.com/last-chance-to-save-during-our-price-rollback/]Last Chance to Save During Our Price Rollback[/url] appeared first on [url=https://blog.accepted.com]Accepted Admissions Blog[/url].
This Blog post was imported into the forum automatically. We hope you found it helpful. Please use the Kudos button if you did, or please PM/DM me if you found it disruptive and I will take care of it. -BB
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A Harvard MBA’s Advice on Writing the Perfect Essay [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: A Harvard MBA’s Advice on Writing the Perfect Essay
[img]https://blog.accepted.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Podcast-interview-with-Harsha-Mulchandani.jpg[/img]
[url=https://media.blubrry.com/admissions_straight_talk/p/www.accepted.com/hubfs/Podcast_audio_files/Podcast/375_Harsha-Mulchandani_2020.mp3][img]https://blog.accepted.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Podcast-interview-with-Harsha-Mulchandani.jpg[/img][/url]

How to write an acceptance-worthy essay for HBS [Show summary]

Harsha Mulchandani, member of the [url=https://blog.accepted.com/harvard-business-school-class-of-2021-profile/]Harvard Business School Class of 2021[/url], offers her perspective on student life at HBS, as well as what her work on the Harbus Essay Guide has taught her about writing the perfect admissions essay.

How can The Harbus Essay Guide help you craft your admissions essays? [Show notes]

Is HBS on your list? [url=https://media.blubrry.com/admissions_straight_talk/p/www.accepted.com/hubfs/Podcast_audio_files/Podcast/375_Harsha-Mulchandani_2020.mp3]Hear from this student[/url] about her experience so far at Harvard Business School (shut down and all) and about how the Harbus Essay Guide can help you get accepted.

Our guest today, Harsha Mulchandani, lived most of her life in India. She earned an integrated MS in mathematics and computer science in 2015 from IIT Kanpur. She then launched her professional career at Boston Consulting Group and left BCG to become an investment analyst in 2017. She moved to Boston to attend Harvard Business School last summer and join the class of 2021.

For her summer internship, she is an M&A and operations associate while also serving, separately, as a product manager for Harbus, HBS’ student newspaper. For Harbus, she works primarily on the [url=https://www.harbus.org/the-essay-book/]Harbus Essay Guide[/url], which just came out, and its interview guide, which will come out shortly.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and what you like to do for fun? [2:05]

I grew up in India. For the largest part of my life, I was in a town in the northern part of India called Jaipur. You may have heard of it as the “Pink City” or a city famous for forts and palaces, or more recently for weddings. It’s getting popular. I spent a large part of my time, until I was 18, there. And then I shifted to Kanpur to do my integrated master’s in mathematics and scientific computing. I spent about five years there. After that, as you mentioned, I launched into management consulting with the Boston Consulting Group. A large part of my two and a half years there was focused on consumer goods, and I did a project with the government of Rajasthan, which is my home state as well. And then from there, I went on to a private equity fund called Westbridge Capital. I spent about a year and a half there, and I’m here now. That’s what I did before joining HBS, other than of course getting married.

And for fun, I’ve been into dance all my life. I used to do a lot of dance growing up, in college and now in HBS. And I like to go for short runs and listen to some of my favorite podcasts.

Why did you decide to get an MBA? [3:46]

I guess this is the question that people ask any MBA graduate often, or someone who is deciding to go into an MBA. I guess the most important question to answer is, [url=https://reports.accepted.com/mba/guide/why-mba]why an MBA?[/url] And I guess for me, the answer was never just about only the hard skills or only the more tangible skills. It was a mix of a hard skills agenda and a more personal development agenda. And the answer for me somehow has always been a cross cut of those two. My exposure to working styles had only been focused on my own geography, which is India, so being able to develop a more global working style, interacting with some of my colleagues who have had experience working here or have grown up here. That was one of the things on my list. I wanted to interact with people and figure out what it is out there.

A lot of people do it on investment calculations and take the salary of their next job and say, “Okay, in how many years can I make up for the salary?” But I guess for me, it was always that you have to add that personal development equation into that. It’s a melting pot of so many different cultures, being able to listen to speakers from Brian Stevenson to Alan Horn. And also personally for me as an entrepreneur, I guess America is a much deeper market capital wise. Just to be exposed to the venture capital/private equity community here. I guess if I put all of that into the equation, it would seem favorable for me to come here and do an MBA.

Do you remember anything particularly challenging about your MBA application process, or was it smooth sailing? [5:23]

No. It was definitely one of the toughest things I’ve done in my life. I say that because I guess the process just needs a lot of patience and perseverance to go through the same essay, the same story again and again, and just having them be true, to be able to define it every time and having those meaningful conversations and figuring out what matters to you the most, developing a coherent story and saying, okay, this covers the entirety of my life. These are the events which are the most important to me, but does it also speak truly of who I am? It speaks to my achievements, it speaks to my strengths, but it’s also unique in my voice. Getting all of that together and figuring out the right set of people and mentors who were really important to me to guide me through the journey, that was the most important, crucial, critical part of the process for me.

[url=https://blog.accepted.com/harvard-business-school-mba-essay-tips-deadlines/]Harvard Business School MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021][/url]

You had very high expectations of Harvard when you decided to attend. Is it meeting your expectations? [6:32]

It’s definitely meeting my expectations, and I say that not just because I started in this school and I did make that choice. But I think in terms of giving me the access (and not just me of course, all the students), that can be really crucial and be able to let this moment in our lives, be it through speakers in a startup boot camp, or be it through a speaker who’s coming as a part of your course and speaking in the auditorium. And then bringing some of those speakers within the class and having them discuss their stories with you, through the case that you just read, and discuss extensively with your classmates.

It’s difficult to concisely put it, but I guess in those bits and pieces is where the actual change is happening. When we are in the process and stuff we can say, this is tangibly how I’m changing every day, but when you’re outside of those two years, that’s when you realize, okay. Yes, wow. This is what I took back from the experience.

I’m just going to go through the process, focus on the stuff that I like, and be sure to expose myself to everything that I came for, and take stock at the end of two years of how it went. But as of now, I think I got all that I could by being in all the right places and by speaking to a great number of people. I have developed a community of mentors, of professors, and my colleagues here who came from a breadth of experiences. And I love that.

[b]Is there anything that could be improved at Harvard? [8:27][/b]

I’ve thought about this a lot. And I think in terms of what could be improved, I’d say the flexibility of the academy curriculum. I think [url=https://reports.accepted.com/mba/webinar/harvard-business-school]HBS[/url] has specifically designed the first year in a way that’s mandated a certain set of courses for everyone to take, but I guess for people coming from varied experiences, like for me, I had a little bit more experience in finance than maybe some of my other classmates. Some others may have a little bit more experience in operations. So I guess for everyone to be able to curate their own experience academically for the first year I felt was important. I wouldn’t say that I didn’t learn from the courses, but maybe I could have learned more if I had the opportunity to curate them myself.

How was your adjustment to online learning, social distancing, and sheltering in place in terms of your experience as a Harvard Business School student? [9:26]

When this thing broke out, somewhere in the beginning of March, we were told that our spring break travel was going to be canceled. And that was just one in a large line of dominoes that were going to be kicked down. And then immediately we were told that, through the spring break, HBS is going to work with all the classes on a Zoom model, to see how the case method could be adapted online. And then when we opened up, all we saw was our classmates replaced with these 49 boards on the Zoom screen, our actual hand being replaced with this Zoom hand that we could raise in order to be able to speak in class.

So it’s been interesting. It’s been an interesting learning experience. Some of what we lost was those 20 minute conversations in between the classes, reading from the body language of some of my classmates, going back and following up on some of the comments asking, “You said this, but did you really mean this?” I guess some of those conversations have been cut short, but to put this in light of whatever else is happening in the world right now, I still feel we are in a much better place. I think we are in an age, in an era where technology can take care of a lot of this. I don’t know if this would have happened 10 years back, how any of these courses could have been adapted to it. HBS sent out an email saying it was the first time since World War II that in-person, physical classes were being suspended and an online model was taking over.

[b]WATCH: [url=https://reports.accepted.com/mba/how-will-covid-19-impact-your-mba-admissions-journey]How Will Covid-19 Impact Your MBA Admissions Journey[/url] >>[/b]

The challenge was also on the other side for some of the professors who were so used to an in-class teaching to be able to adapt their teaching to online. How do you call everyone in the class from a calling pattern basis fairly? How do you make people feel they are heard? How do you make your appreciation still felt for everyone’s views? So I guess those were some of the changes. On the more personal side of it, my husband and I immediately shifted to deciding who’s going to take their course from the room, who’s going to sit in the living area, who’s going to make breakfast, who’s going to make lunch. So those are some of the changes that we went through.

Were there any silver linings to remote learning? [12:00]

This is a question that I’ve thought about a lot and not just for the podcast. One thing that resonates with me a lot is what online has done is it’s made everyone equally distant. No one is far, no one is near. And to that end, I think the access, which we felt was high in the sense of being able to get great speakers in school … For example, you would see that sometimes a speaker couldn’t fly in because they were snowed in or some other reason, but now given everyone is so used to this way of thinking, so used to Zoom, access to anyone and everyone is possible. So I guess bringing all those people in, being able to listen to many more people than we could have thought we would, I guess that is something which to me is an interesting experiment.

If things remain online next year or even moved to a [url=https://blog.accepted.com/harvard-business-schools-campus-will-open-in-the-fall/]hybrid model[/url], that is something that I’d expect a lot more of. And I think the second bit is that people generally started becoming a lot more sympathetic towards either the class of 2020 or those who were in their MBA process in 2020. People just generally were more receptive to us reaching out, more helpful as mentors. A lot more internships opened up towards the end because so many internships got canceled in the process too, that a lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t think of internships just came out. Even the HBS alumni group came out and said, “Okay, we are going to create these internships for you. Why don’t you come and work for us?” There are definitely some silver linings, although a large part of it is, I would say, disappointing compared to where could have actually been.

If you had known, let’s say in 2019, what was going to happen and that part of your education was going to be entirely online, would you still have wanted to come? [13:40]

It’s a difficult question to answer. It’s hard to imagine because we’ve lived through it. And honestly, it doesn’t seem like things are too bad because we find ways to connect somehow. It’s human to find ways to stay in touch, to find ways to be in touch with people who you’ve spent the last one year with. So I don’t think I would have canceled. Knowing what I know now, I would still not have possibly canceled my MBA because I still have the unique connections that I’ve formed. It’s just impossible to think that I could have replicated them with anything else.

A lot of people have reached out to me. And what I suggested to them was, because HBS classes are open for anyone to attend, I suggested a lot of them to come and attend classes. See for themselves how the Zoom experience works out. There will be technical glitches very often. You will have your hand raised and you still won’t be called a lot of the time, but I guess that’s the new reality we live in and we make the best of it.

Was your internship canceled, or did it go smoothly? [15:19]

When I came in, I wanted to work in a startup to see if that entrepreneurial bug that I have is actually worth exploring and to be able to see if that hustle is really for me. For me, it went fairly smoothly. It continued the way I had planned it to be. But I guess for some of my colleagues, I did see internship offers being rescinded in some of the later days as companies realized that they didn’t have enough resources to direct towards the internship program. A lot of programs were shortened. Even some of the larger firm names ended up changing their programs to a six week program from what was originally a 10, 12 week program.

How did you get involved with Harbus and the Harbus Essay Guide? [16:10]

Writing has always been a thing for me. I tried to write a personal blog. In my undergrad days, I was the newsletter editor for the entrepreneurship newsletter. The writing bug was there somewhere. And when I saw the opportunity to combine the idea of having a newspaper, and then having alongside that some products that I could product manage and eventually be independently handling, that idea was really exciting to see how we could modernize the concept of a newspaper and bring more products that are digitally available, which makes the process and the whole concept of HBS more accessible to applicants. It was exciting for me. And I remember writing down when I was researching before coming to HBS, I remember writing down Harbus as one of the top three clubs that I wanted to join.

What new products have you come up with for Harbus? [17:18]

Some of the products that we used to have are going to be presented with fresher content again this year. So we have an essay guide, which we will be talking about. And then there is an interview guide, which we are working through, to make a new version for and have it out in time so that people can address what to do as they prepare for their interviews this year or for the next year. That is another product that we’re thinking of having. We recently revamped our website. We are thinking of making some of the older newspaper archives available for alumni or for people who want to know what’s generally going on in the campus but cannot be in it. Other than of course the digital version, which is already available on the website, and some of the archives as well. Those are some of the plans that we have for this year. We may have something totally new at the end of this year.

What’s new in the guide (since Harvard’s essay question hasn’t changed)? [18:20]

The format of the guide remains exactly the same. It has 22 essays this time. We tend to keep it to that number. It starts with a brief analysis by one of the Harbus editors. We have the essay, and then we have some commentary from the person whose essay it is. What’s different and what continuously changes is that we try to bring a set of fresher voices because as career paths change, as the admissions committee looks at careers in a different way … For example, three years back, HBS did not look at startups in India the same way as it does now. The recruiting from India was a lot more focused on private equity, maybe some of the more standard career paths, but now we have some of the more unconventional career paths being taken seriously too. (This is true for a lot of geographies; I just gave an example that I’m aware of.)

[b]READ: [url=https://blog.accepted.com/sample-essay-from-admitted-hbs-student/]Sample HBS Application Essay from The Essay Guide[/url] >>[/b]

We keep bringing those fresh voices to the fore and keep expanding the book of possibilities to say, “Well, this is acceptable too and this is acceptable too.” The two guides will read very differently in terms of the kind of choices people talk about, the kind of risks people take. For us, we always try to expand these choices because personally for me, when I read the guide that was available during our time, I kept thinking, “Oh, okay. So this can also be that. This essay might not work for me. This story is not mine, but I know this is possible too. And this is possible too.” It’s to keep expanding those boundaries.

Do you think there’s any difference in the nature of the essays in this essay guide, since there was a change in director in the admissions office, and the world has changed? [20:03]

Definitely. The last guide was around the time when Chad Losee became Director of Admissions. Other than what I spoke about in terms of how people have voiced some of their stories, I don’t think there is a large change. What we are trying to say is some of the things that held true, still hold true. And a lot of it is continuously changing. So the point is not to work in a given set of industries, but to be articulate about what you can take from it and keep moving forward. The primary benefit of the guide is to be able to give you all the possibilities out there. There is no perfect essay that would exactly work for you, but if any of it makes sense to you, then do think about applying.

When we say that no essay is perfect, it means that this voice might not be yours, but you have a voice and it is important for that to be heard too. [url=https://blog.accepted.com/sample-essay-from-admitted-hbs-student/]People want it to be an authentic reflection of themselves[/url], and that’s why it’s important for us to keep putting these out, to tell people what’s really out there and that your story matters too.

I can think of one or two of the essays, which when I read them, I thought, “Oh, this person took a really big risk.” For example, I think in one of the essays, a person talks about their failures, their mistakes, and their weaknesses. And I thought, “Would you want to expose all of that to the admissions committee?” But I guess that’s the voice. If you have the confidence to speak out about it, and that’s what you took from that experience, it’s a powerful experience. And it’s a narration that deserves to be told.

Similarly, I remember there’s another essay which talks about a person who’s worked in banking and private equity, yet the entire essay almost focuses on beauty and how there’s some beauty in working in a wedding dresses business or in yoga, in practicing that form of exercise. It’s about how you bring your experiences together in a coherent format and be true to what you think your personality really is. This is the only part of your application which is [url=https://blog.accepted.com/5-elements-telling-attention-grabbing-story/]effectively a story[/url]. Everything else is where you’re putting facts. Your GMAT score is a fact; your resume is a collection of facts. This is authentically your story. And as humans, stories for us have been the most effective form of communication. So put all your heart and soul into it.

What are your plans for the future after the MBA? [24:04]

That’s, I guess, the million dollar question! I don’t know. With all that’s going on with the world right now and uncertainties, a lot of this is also changing the way we thought of our careers in a more global way. It’s tough to say which geography I might end up in. Will it be in the U.S. for a few more years or back to India immediately? My aim is always, and has always been, to be an entrepreneur. I come from a family of entrepreneurs. It’s a really abused term, but creating products is something that has always excited me. My family has a confectionery business, and I guess took my love for consumer products from there. The industries that I want to be in are not necessarily food-related; I think the concept of the rapidly revolving industries of skincare or apparel or fashion tech are superbly exciting to me. I see myself landing somewhere in that zone in the future.

What would you have liked me to ask you? [25:25]

Generally, whenever someone asks me about my advice on researching or thinking about an MBA, I generally tell them to not singularly focus on that one dimension of their career, or “How will this advance my career? How will this help me make a career switch?” That’s a really important question to ask because it’s a monetary investment. But through my time, I’ve realized that your own personality is such a multidimensional thing. Speak to as many people, as many seniors as you want from the school, or who have had the experience of applying, just to understand what else is added to their personality, not just career. How else did it help them? Did it help them meet new people or help them attend classes across the river or to another school? Because Boston is a wonderful town. It has MIT, it has all the other Harvard schools. What did it help you do other than be in the classroom and have the career that you wanted? If you look at that question from a more multidimensional perspective, it makes a lot more sense.

Where can listeners learn more about the Harbus Essay Guide? [26:52]

Our website is [url=https://harbus.org/]harbus.org[/url]. There is a link on the website that links to the essay book, and the direct link is [url=https://harbus.org/the-essay-book/]harbus.org/the-essay-book[/url]. You’ll get the guide there available in three formats. We are presenting the latest version, which is the 22 essays, and we also have combined essays from some of the previous years and some of the previous guides. Pick what works the best for you. I personally had a combo guide which worked the best for me because it told me how things have evolved through the years, what kind of stories were much more acceptable now. It was a super helpful resource for me. So personally, big recommendation! Go ahead and buy it.

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[b]Related Links:[/b]

[list][*][url=https://harbus.org/]Harbus website[/url][/*][*][url=https://blog.accepted.com/harvard-business-school-mba-essay-tips-deadlines/]Harvard Business School Application Essay Tips[/url][/*][*][url=https://reports.accepted.com/mba/webinar/harvard-business-school]Get Accepted to Harvard Business School[/url], an on-demand webinar[/*][*][url=https://blog.accepted.com/sample-essay-from-admitted-hbs-student/]Sample HBS Application Essay from The Essay Guide[/url][/*][*][url=https://www.accepted.com/mba/services?utm_campaign=Blog&utm_medium=podcast_375&utm_source=blog]Accepted MBA Admissions Services[/url][/*][/list]

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[list][*][url=https://blog.accepted.com/mba-insider-shares-his-secrets-in-new-book/]MBA Insider Shares His Secrets in New Book[/url][/*][*][url=https://blog.accepted.com/preparing-for-life-as-an-mba-student-at-toronto-rotman/]Preparing for Life as an MBA Student at Toronto Rotman[/url][/*][*][url=https://blog.accepted.com/when-is-the-mba-worth-the-time-and-money]Is the MBA Worth It, or Is the Sky Falling Down on the MBA Degree?[/url][/*][*][url=https://blog.accepted.com/how-to-leverage-an-hbs-education-the-story-of-leveredge/]How to Leverage an HBS Education: The Story of LeverEdge[/url][/*][*][url=https://blog.accepted.com/ida-valentine-investment-banker-inspirational-speaker-hbs-2021/]Ida Valentine: Investment Banker, Inspirational Speaker, HBS 2021[/url][/*][*][url=https://blog.accepted.com/hbs-22-student-launches-innovative-new-student-loan-start-up-episode-341/]Entrepreneurship at HBS: How Stride will Help You Fund Your Future[/url][/*][/list]

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The post [url=https://blog.accepted.com/a-harvard-mbas-experience-advice-on-writing-the-perfect-essay-episode-375/]A Harvard MBA’s Experience & Advice on Writing the Perfect Essay [Episode 375][/url] appeared first on [url=https://blog.accepted.com]Accepted Admissions Blog[/url].
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Cornell Johnson College of Business MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: Cornell Johnson College of Business MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021]



If you are looking for a small MBA class in an idyllic location with warm and genuine classmates, then Cornell Johnson may be your program. While Johnson places the largest portion of its class in the financial industry after graduation (37% of the class of 2019), 28% entered the consulting industry, 15% joined the technology industry, and 6% went into manufacturing, which is a diversity of industries that reflects the strong quant, analytical, and marketing curricula of the school. Cornell’s class of less than 300 students is known to be close knit and collaborative. Most first-year students choose to spend their second semester in an Immersion Experience, a unique combination of course and field work that positions them to thrive in their summer internships.

Below are Johnson’s essay questions and the admissions office’s guidance, followed by my tips.

Cornell Johnson MBA goals statement

Use this short-answer section to succinctly share your short- and long-term goals. If you’re invited to interview, you will have the opportunity to elaborate on your statement further, and you should be prepared to connect your prior experience with your future aspirations.

Goals Statement Prompt:

A statement of your goals will begin a conversation that will last throughout the admissions process and guide your steps during the MBA program and experience. To the best of your understanding today, please share your short and long term goals by completing the following sentences and answering the enclosed short answer question (350 words maximum):

Immediately post-MBA, my goal is to work as a(n) [Role] at [Company] within [Industry].

Targeted Job Role:
Target Job Company:
Industry:

In 5–10 years post-MBA, my goal is to work as a(n) [Role] at [Company] within [Industry].

Targeted Job Role:
Target Job Company:
Industry:

How has your experience prepared and encouraged you to pursue these goals?

If your goal immediately after graduating from Johnson is not deemed possible by the Admissions office, then you might as well not bother finishing the application. No applicant will be accepted if their short-term goal is unachievable. Admitting a student with unrealistic, if not unachievable, goals at the very least will ruin Johnson’s placement rating, but at worst it could potentially leave a graduate in a great deal of debt and little or no means to repay it.

Cornell students are very active in their post-MBA job pursuit: 26% of 2018 graduates ended up in roles that they pursued independently – i.e., outside of the on-campus recruitment process. Now you understand why Cornell is asking this question: you are likely to access your personal network to land your post-MBA position, so proving that preparation and alignment with your goals is particularly important.

Speak to current students and recent graduates to hear about the recruiting process, positions available, and the qualifications, if any, that students must have to enter your field of interest, Then, use this essay space to share one or two examples from your prior experience that demonstrate that you have those skills. Discuss how these skills and experiences will help you perform particularly well in your desired future role.



Cornell Johnson impact essay

This essay is designed to explore the intersection of engagement and community culture. Our students and alumni share a desire to positively impact the organizations and communities they serve. To help you explore your potential for impact, we encourage you to engage with our students, alumni, faculty, and professional staff before submitting your application. You may choose to connect with them via email or phone or in person during one of our on-campus or off-campus events. As you seek their input and insight, please be respectful of their time and prepare a few discussion points or questions in advance.

Impact Essay Prompt:

At Cornell, our students and alumni share a desire to positively impact the organizations and communities they serve. How do you intend to make an impact during the next several years of your education and/or career? (350 words maximum)

The best answers to this essay question don’t solely focus on the impact you hope to make at Cornell Johnson and beyond but rather share how your background and previous impacts have prepared you to make this future impact. To prove you will be an engaged community member in Ithaca and your future career, you will need to show in what other environments you have been such a member in the past. Use this essay to demonstrate your knowledge of the Cornell community and how you plan to immerse in it, in addition to sharing how you uniquely intend to make your mark professionally or in your future community.

Cornell Johnson back of your resume essay

This essay gives you the opportunity to present yourself as an individual. We encourage you to think about your proudest accomplishments, interests and passions, and personal highlights that will help us to get to know you as a person and potential community member. We value creativity and authenticity and encourage you to approach this essay with your unique style.

Alternative submission formats may include a slide presentation, links to pre-existing media (personal website, digital portfolio, YouTube, etc.), as well as visually enhanced written submissions. Maximum file size is 5 MB. If you choose to submit a written essay, please limit your submission to 350 words or fewer. Multimedia submissions should be under three minutes.

Back of Your Resume Essay Prompt:

The front page of your resume has given us a sense of your professional experience and accomplishments as well as your academic summary and extracurricular involvement. If the back page reflects “the rest of your story,” please help us get to know you better by sharing ONE example of a life experience, achievement, or passion that will give us a sense of who you are as a potential community member.

The front page of your resume lists what you have achieved, the impacts you have made both professionally and in your extracurricular engagements. This essay is your opportunity to share another side of you: the character, values, and interests that propelled you to achieve them. The new shorter word limit this year means you can only choose one or two of your most significant leadership experiences and reveal the drive and personal qualities that you applied to accomplish them.

I highly recommend taking Cornell up on its invitation to submit a multimedia presentation here instead of another essay because three minutes of text, pictures, and video will bring you to life so much more than a simple 350-word essay can.

Cornell Johnson MBA optional essay (required for reapplicants)

You may use this essay to call attention to items needing clarification and to add additional details to any aspects of your application that do not accurately reflect your potential for success at Johnson (350 words maximum).

If you are reapplying for admission, please use this essay to indicate how you have strengthened your application and candidacy since the last time you applied for admission. Please also review our Application Guide for additional information about reapplying (350 words maximum).

If you are a reapplicant, use this space to demonstrate that you have made considerable efforts to improve your candidacy: you have improved your GMAT score, taken on more leadership roles, reached out to more Cornell staff and students to understand the program and how you will fit into it, and/or researched your career goals in greater depth.

If you are a first-time applicant, then you should use this space to address any issue that you feel the application left unaddressed. For example, if you feel your grades require some explanation, if you have an employment gap, or if you have chosen a non-traditional recommender for any reason, this is the space to explain.

For expert guidance with your Cornell Johnson MBA application, check out Accepted’s MBA Application Packages, which include comprehensive guidance from an experienced admissions consultant. We’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to top MBA programs and look forward to helping you too!

Johnson at Cornell 2020-2021 MBA application deadlines

One-Year MBA:

Early ActionSeptember 8, 2020

October RoundOctober 8, 2020

January RoundJanuary 5, 2021

RollingMarch 8, 2021

Two-Year MBA:

October RoundOctober 8, 2020

Consortium Early ApplicationOctobre 15, 2020

Consortium Traditional ApplicationJanuary 5, 2021

January RoundJanuary 5, 2021

April RoundApril 8, 2021

Source: Cornell Johnson website

Stay on top of MBA deadlines with the MBA Admissions Calendar!

[Click here to add the calendar to your Google calendar; or here to add the calendar to another app.]

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with individual programs to verify the essay questions, instructions and deadlines.***




By Jennifer Bloom, admissions consultant at Accepted for 20 years and Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW). She is an expert at guiding you to produce application materials that truly differentiate you from the rest of the driven applicant pool. If you would like help with your application, Jennifer can suggest a number of options that work with any budget. Want Jennifer to help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch!

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Emory Goizueta Business School MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021 [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: Emory Goizueta Business School MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021]



Taken together, these essay questions cover a lot of ground: your professional path and plans, your alignment with the program’s core values, and your interpersonal and communication responsiveness. Moreover, this vast ground is covered in few words – the written essays are short, requiring tough decisions about what key points and anecdotes to include and what to leave out. Write simply and directly to pack as much meaning and impact as possible into each word. Not least, ensure your video “personality” aligns with your written “personality.”

Emory Goizueta 2020-2021 MBA application essays

Emory Goizueta essay question #1

Define your short-term post-MBA career goals. How are your professional strengths, past experience and personal attributes aligned with these goals? (300 word limit)

This question challenges you to define your short-term goals in three dimensions: your past experience, your skills, and your unique character. Yet, with only 300 words, you can’t give a comprehensive, detailed delineation of those elements. I suggest discussing one point from each category that is relevant to your goals. The key to making this part of the essay work is specificity, detail, and anecdote – e.g. don’t just say you have a charismatic personality that brings people together; show through a brief anecdote how it lets you be the glue in a rough-and-tumble team. Then discuss directly the relevance of this quality to your short-term goal. The question’s emphasis on short-term goals suggests practicality and concreteness: what (type of) position and in what industry, to achieve what, and why (and, sometimes, where).

Emory Goizueta essay question #2

The business school is named for Roberto C. Goizueta, former Chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, who led the organization for 16 years, extending its global reach, quadrupling consumption, building brand responsibility, and creating unprecedented shareholder wealth. Mr. Goizueta’s core values guide us in educating Principled Leaders for Global Enterprise. Provide an example of your leadership – professional or personal – and explain what you learned about yourself through the experience. (300 word limit)

I suggest addressing this question as a story (a very succinct story): describe a time you led in a situation of some significance. Walk through it straightforwardly, focusing on your actions. In a final, brief paragraph reflect on what this leadership experience taught you about yourself; don’t list ten things, but rather focus on the one to two most meaningful points.

To select the best topic or experience to portray, look for something that is fairly recent and that has a clear impact. While most people will want to grab this opportunity to showcase their impact at work, it may make sense to select a non-work story if, for example, it reflects a situation or experience that truly distinguishes you in a relevant way and illustrates substantial leadership as well. Think strategically in selecting the topic and choose one that enhances your overall application and adds to the information found elsewhere.

Video essay

Within the application, you will be provided with a question to answer. You will have 30 seconds to gather your thoughts and prepare your answer. You will then have up to 60 seconds to respond to the question. You will be permitted 3 attempts to record your video essay, however each opportunity could present a different question.

You can’t prepare content obviously, but you can prepare approach and presentation. A great way to do that is to practice – literally give yourself questions and video yourself answering. (Even better, see if someone can ask you random questions so you are really prepared for anything without knowing what it is first.) Don’t just stand in front of a mirror or talk into a room for 60 seconds. It feels a lot different to be talking while being videoed – if you’re like most people you’ll really benefit from doing it enough to make it second nature.

Additional information

Should you feel there is an important part of your story missing from your application (e.g., unexplained gaps in work experience, choice of recommenders, academic probation issues), please use this section to provide a brief explanation. We ask that you limit your response to 100 words; responses in bullet point format are preferred.

Use this essay to address any extenuating circumstances. Obviously, be succinct.

Reapplicant essays

Applicants who have applied to Goizueta Business School in the past are required to answer the following questions:

1. Define your short-term post-MBA career goals. How are your professional strengths, past experience and personal attributes aligned with these goals? (300 word limit)

See tip for Essay 1 above. If your goal has changed since the previous application, explain why.

2. Explain how you have improved your candidacy for Goizueta Business School’s MBA Program since your last application. (250 word limit)

This is THE key question for all MBA reapplicants. Goizueta just asks it explicitly. See MBA Reapplication 101 for more advice.

For expert guidance with your Emory Goizueta MBA application, check out Accepted’s MBA Application Packages, which include comprehensive guidance from an experienced admissions consultant. We’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to top MBA programs and look forward to helping you too!

Emory Goizueta 2020-2021 MBA application deadlines

Round 1September 23, 2020

Round 2January 13, 2021

Round 3March 17, 2021

Source: Emory Goizueta website

Stay on top of MBA deadlines with the MBA Admissions Calendar!

[Click here to add the calendar to your Google calendar; or here to add the calendar to another app.]

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with individual programs to verify the essay questions, instructions and deadlines.***




Cindy Tokumitsu has advised hundreds of successful applicants, helping them gain acceptance to top MBA and EMBA programs in her 20 years with Accepted. She would love to help you too. Want Cindy to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!

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Chicago Booth Executive MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021] [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: Chicago Booth Executive MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021]




Chicago Booth EMBA gives you just one mandatory essay, but with ample space to make your case holistically. This approach to the essay question indicates that they are looking for people who can organize their thoughts, build a credible and compelling case for their candidacy, and maintain an extended yet focused discussion. The Booth EMBA adcom clearly puts value on verbal expression for its students, both during the program and as an indicator of success later in their careers. Give yourself time to develop and refine your essay accordingly.

Chicago Booth Executive MBA application essays

Chicago Booth Executive MBA essay #1

Why are you seeking an MBA from Chicago Booth and what unique knowledge and experiences do you hope to contribute to the program? (maximum 2 pages, 12 pt. Times New Roman)

The question zeroes in on the elements directly relevant to the adcom, and also allows you to elaborate within those parameters. Considering the pivotal role this one required essay plays in your application, the key challenge to making it shine is making good decisions about the following four elements:

  • Within the overall space allowance, how much space should you allocate to each part of the question?

    It will vary person to person. For example, a person who has her own company will require some “backstory” for context setting before discussing future plans, so she would allocate more space to goals than someone who is rising up the ladder at well-known McKinsey. Someone with atypical goals will need to spend more time clarifying why he wants the Booth MBA than a more conventional applicant will. Analyze your own case and block out the essay accordingly.

  • You have to discuss your professional goals in order to explain why you are “seeking an MBA from Chicago Booth,” but how to present them?

    Since EMBA programs are part-time, an ideal place to start is your current work: what do you want to achieve and how do you want to grow during the years in the program? (This has the added benefit of giving the adcom a view of what you’ll bring to the table based on this work.) From there, move on to your goals for the 5-year period following graduation – give the most detail here; make it really concrete. Then sketch your longer-term career vision/plans, necessarily less detailed.

    Finally, explain how each of these career/goals phases require skills, knowledge, and perhaps relationships derived through the Booth EMBA.

  • How should you structure this relatively long, complex essay?

    Simply and straightforwardly is usually best. Start with your current/immediate goals. (If you need to provide some backstory for context, as noted above, do so as succinctly as possible.) Then progress through your goals. Next, discuss why you need the Booth EMBA now, connecting your reasons to the previously stated goals. Finally, present your contributions.

  • What “unique knowledge and experiences” should you talk about?

    Select two to four, and for at least two, give concrete examples. For all, discuss relevant insights – after all, that’s what you’re really bringing, not just the fact of having done something. To select the best examples, consider what aspects of your experience would be interesting and/or useful to the Booth EMBA cohort and give them fresh insight or perspective. These experiences could be related to industry, function, geographic/global experience, a formative personal experience, a particularly meaningful extracurricular (community or other non-work) involvement, etc. Choose points that expand the reader’s understanding of you, things they won’t necessarily glean from your resume.

Chicago Booth Executive MBA essay #2 (optional)

If there is anything else you would like the Admissions Committee to know about you, please share that information here. (maximum 1 page, 12 pt. Times New Roman)

This question invites you to present new material that will enhance your application, as well as to explain anything that needs explaining (e.g., gap in employment, choice of recommender if not using a direct supervisor, etc.). As far as enhancement points, there should be a clear value to the information you’re sharing – and it should not be content that more appropriately belongs in the main essay (contributions of unique knowledge and experiences).

Chicago Booth Executive MBA essay #3 (reapplicants only)

Please give us an update on your professional, academic, and community activities since your previous application and highlight what you have done to strengthen your application. (maximum 1 page, single spaced, 12 pt. Times New Roman)

Whatever developments you discuss, for each, describe the situation/experience concretely and clarify the impact you had. Also clarify how it demonstrates growth (i.e. not just “another” achievement), and why it makes you a stronger candidate.

For expert guidance with your Chicago Booth EMBA application, check out Accepted’s MBA Application Packages, which include comprehensive guidance from an experienced admissions consultant. We’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to Chicago Booth’s EMBA program and look forward to helping you too!

Chicago Booth 2020-21 Executive MBA application deadlines

Early DeadlineOctober 5, 2020

First DeadlineDecember 7, 2020

Second DeadlineFebruary 1, 2021

Final DeadlineApril 7, 2021

Source: Chicago Booth website

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with individual programs to verify the essay questions, instructions and deadlines.***




Cindy Tokumitsu has advised hundreds of successful applicants, helping them gain acceptance to top MBA and EMBA programs in her 20 years with Accepted. She would love to help you too. Want Cindy to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!

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Oxford Saïd MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021] [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: Oxford Saïd MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021]



Oxford lets your resume, recommendations, application form, and transcript(s) speak for themselves. The one required MBA essay question indicates that the adcom wants a glimpse of you beyond these core elements. It seems like a simple question – but there is a little twist in it that amplifies its importance in the application and its connection between you and the admissions readers. Also realize that the adcom learns about you from this essay not just through the details of the topic you present but also through your decision to use that topic. That decision reflects your values, your understanding of fit with Oxford, and your overall perspective.

Oxford MBA 2020-21 MBA application essay

Tell us something that is not covered in your application which you would like the Admissions Committee to know about you. (Maximum 250 words)

While the “something” will be the topic of the essay, the real heart of this essay question lies in the phrase “which you would like the Admissions Committee to know.” It almost posits a dialogue between you and the adcom; it sets up a relationship, a dialogue. It’s personal; they’re talking to YOU. Reading the spirit as well as the literal meaning of these words, you can infer that the adcom is looking for a story or a message that gets to the essence of who you are in some way.

Therefore, don’t try to find the most dramatic or exotic topic possible; this essay doesn’t have to shout. Rather, it should incisively reveal a fresh dimension of you – one that is relevant to the application and that will add to the Oxford Saïd community.

That leaves a lot of room for topic choice. I suggest committing to one topic and discussing it in as much depth as is possible in 250 words. Make this single essay vivid and memorable by basing it on your actual experience, which gives the adcom not just information about you but also your unique perspective on an aspect of your life.

As for topic, be strategic in selecting one that is relevant, will engage the Oxford adcom, and enhances your fit for Oxford Saïd.

For expert guidance with your Oxford Saïd MBA application, check out Accepted’s MBA Application Packages, which include comprehensive guidance from an experienced admissions consultant. We’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to Oxford Saïd’s MBA program and look forward to helping you too!

Oxford Saïd 2020-2021 MBA application deadlines

Stage 1September 11, 2020

Stage 2October 30, 2020

Stage 3January 8, 2021

Stage 4April 9, 2021

Source: Oxford Saïd website

Stay on top of MBA deadlines with the MBA Admissions Calendar!

[Click here to add the calendar to your Google calendar; or here to add the calendar to another app.]

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with individual programs to verify the essay questions, instructions and deadlines.***




Cindy Tokumitsu has advised hundreds of successful applicants, helping them gain acceptance to top MBA and EMBA programs in her 20 years with Accepted. She would love to help you too. Want Cindy to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!

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Wharton Executive MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020-2021] [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: Wharton Executive MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020-2021]



The Wharton EMBA adcom, through its three required questions, expresses its values and its interest in students who share those values. Its questions ask you to show both vision and responsiveness to uncertainty. Essentially you will need to show both focus and flexibility.

  • Essay question 1 focuses on your goals and Wharton’s important role in helping you achieve them.

  • Essay question 2 invites you to share your recent experiences regarding the pandemic.

  • Essay question 3 seeks confirmation that you understand in practical terms what a commitment to attending the program involves.

Wharton Executive MBA application essays

Wharton Executive MBA essay #1

What are your career objectives and how will the Wharton MBA Program for Executives contribute to your attainment of this objective? (750 word limit)

An effective (and natural) way to start is to briefly sketch your current career situation to set the context. You can then progress to detailing your future goals – in doing so, clarify how each step leads to the next or builds on the previous one, creating an organic flow. In describing your goals at any given point, indicate why you are taking that step or pursuing that role; this “why” is what truly animates your goals, elevating them from explanation to a story. Put more detail into the roles you plan immediately post-MBA and the several years following; longer-term goals need less detail, but they still should show a clear direction.

In discussing how the program will benefit you, describe what skills and knowledge you need at specific future roles/positions and how the program meets those needs. Also refer to the structure and special features of the program, detailing how they will support you and your goals.

Structurally, there are three approaches to this part: (a) weave in the “Why Wharton?” details after each goals phase, (b) have a separate “Why Wharton?” paragraph containing this entire discussion holistically, or (c) a mix of (a) and (b), adding some specific “Why Wharton?” points into the goals section and then an additional paragraph with more encompassing “Why Wharton?” points. All three work; use the one you find most natural.

Wharton Executive MBA essay #2

During the spring of 2020, Wharton Professor Mauro Guillen created and taught the course “The Impact of Coronavirus.” As part of this course, Prof. Guillen interviewed Prof. Sigal Barsade on the concept of emotional contagion and its impact on leadership. Please review this interview and then respond to the question below: Profs. Mauro Guillen & Sigal Barsade discuss Emotional Contagion What have you learned about yourself during the Coronavirus pandemic? Please share special examples about how these times have impacted you personally and professionally. (750 word limit)

Interestingly, the question asks you to listen to the interview, but does not ask you to write about or respond to it.  Even so, I suggest that for at least some of your examples, address the issues (directly or indirectly) discussed in the interview. Why? By referencing the interview, the adcom is asking you to clarify fit with the program through your examples. 

Here are some pointers:

  • Rather than simply listing numerous examples of how you’ve been impacted by the coronavirus, present 2-3 examples (covering both personal and professional) and write with some detail about each. 

  • For each point, conclude with a bit of reflection and insight about the experience – after all, it’s not just the facts that count but what you have to say about them, what you’ve gleaned from them, that you’ll bring to the MBA table. 

  • As for structure, if you organically come up with an overarching theme, great – use it, but, if not, don’t worry and don’t strain for it; rather, focus on getting quality substance out of each example/story.

  • Given the question, you will be zooming in on very recent experiences, but within each anecdote there may be opportunity to “refer back” to important or impressive elements of your experience, perhaps contrasting before/after or growth from point A to point B. E.g., one person I know was leading an in-house largely expat team comprising many different countries and cultures; once COVID hit, her team members were quite isolated from loved ones far away and in sometimes dire circumstances, causing ongoing anxiety and stress. She realized that part of her role now is to help the team members deal with that isolation and anxiety and to provide personal support. She could write about her earlier strong leadership of a diverse team and how she’s adapting now.

There’s another slant to this question to bear in mind: adaptability. It requires you to discuss how you are adapting in real-time to a global crisis. While you’ll naturally address this, you needn’t have all the answers or have every issue perfectly worked out. It’s a struggle, and everyone is in somewhat of a trail-and-error mode. But do convey awareness of the need and willingness to adapt and lead within immense uncertainty, even if you’re figuring it out as you go (and who isn’t?).

Wharton Executive MBA essay #3

Given your already demanding job and the desire to remain committed to important family and personal obligations, how do you plan to handle this additional demand on your time once you enroll? (500 word limit)

This straightforward question deserves a straightforward answer. Discuss the accommodations you will make at work, such as delegating more, adjusting travel schedules, etc. Don’t mention every single thing you can think of – focus on the most significant two or three adjustments.

Also address your personal responsibilities and how you will meet them with this additional significant demand on your time and energy; even acknowledging that you’ll have less time at the playground with your toddler or mentioning the support of your significant other will show that you’re facing this issue squarely. If you’ve already successfully balanced school and working full time, definitely mention it.

Wharton Executive MBA essay #4 (Optional)

If necessary, you may use this optional essay to explain any extenuating circumstances of which the Admissions Committee should be aware. (300 word limit)

Only use this essay if you need to address extenuating circumstances. That includes issues such as a gap in the resume, a bad grade, not having a supervisor provide a recommendation.

For expert guidance with your Wharton EMBA application, check out Accepted’s MBA Application Packages, which include comprehensive guidance from an experienced admissions consultant. We’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to top EMBA programs and look forward to helping you too!

Wharton EMBA application deadlines for 2020-2021

Round 1December 2, 2020 (11:59 p.m. PST)

Round 2February 10, 2021 (11:59 p.m. PST)

Source: Wharton website

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with individual programs to verify the essay questions, instructions and deadlines.***




Cindy Tokumitsu has advised hundreds of successful applicants, helping them gain acceptance to top MBA and EMBA programs in her 20 years with Accepted. She would love to help you too. Want Cindy to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!

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INSEAD MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021] [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: INSEAD MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021]



Communication is key for INSEAD – in part because it is a key factor that their recruiters look for. Hence the INSEAD application elicits your communication effectiveness. First, INSEAD asks you to write reflective essays – and to do so succinctly. Balancing this emphasis on written communication is a video component – the adcom wants to see you articulate your thoughts in a spoken, interpersonal setup as well. Ultimately, verbal acuity really matters in the INSEAD program because the ability to comprehend, synthesize, communicate, and act on complex ideas across cultures is central to global leadership.

Motivation is the second driving interest of the INSEAD adcom. The application form terms its three essays “Motivation Essays.” Keep that word “motivation” in clear focus as you draft those essays; it indicates that you should express not just what you’ve done but why – what drives you; what propels your choices, decisions, and actions. These written essays are the first “getting to know you” element. Taken together in both form and content, the written and video components should portray both sophisticated communication abilities and self-awareness of who you are and what inspires you, moves you, propels you forward.

INSEAD MBA 2020-2021 motivation essays

INSEAD MBA essay #1

Give a candid description of yourself (who are you as a person), stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary. (Maximum 500 words)

This question gets to a key point: how well do you know yourself, and are you able to openly acknowledge your motivations and shortcomings? (Perhaps one could interpret it as “Are you mature?”) Note that “strengths” and “weaknesses” are plural – and they should be personal, not professional, characteristics. A personal weakness such as “impatience with detail” could certainly have professional impact, but don’t cite a weakness that is purely work-related.

I suggest 2-3 strengths and 1-2 weaknesses. Provide examples for all of them – these examples can vary in length – sometimes a sentence will suffice. Also, try to bring in anecdotes/examples from outside work and from work. Sometimes, one anecdote can cover both a strength and a weakness, and, also, sometimes, a strength, taken to excess, can turn into a weakness – just possibilities to keep in mind when deciding on content for the essay.

The main formative factors you choose to cite may be related to and integrated with the strengths/weaknesses; in addition, you can discuss key elements of your background that differentiate or distinguish you and are truly key to your personal development.

(NOTE: There is potential for some overlap in this essay with Essay 2, so look at both questions together and organize content before writing them.)



INSEAD MBA essay #2

Describe the achievement of which you are most proud and explain why. In addition, describe a situation where you failed. How did these experiences impact your relationships with others? Comment on what you learned. (Maximum 400 words)

With only 400 words to describe 2 significant experiences, and the specified discussion points, use stories that can be told without a lot of background information. And keep in mind Essay 1 – don’t use stories that reflect exactly the same messages.  

“Achievement of which you are most proud” is a high bar, and it can be from either work or outside of work. It also should be something that reveals qualities or attributes about you that are positive and relevant. I suggest using something from the last two to three years. Luckily you don’t have to write about the failure about which you are most ashamed… ? Discuss a failure that is specific, fairly recent, and meaty enough to have rattled you a bit. Again, work or non-work topic is fine.

In discussing what you learned from the experiences and how they impacted your relationships, either identify one specific thing each for each story, or integrate “impact relationship” and “what you learned” into one point – avoid broad learnings, as targeted, specific insights will be more thoughtful and illuminating.

INSEAD MBA essay #3

Describe all types of extra-professional activities in which you have been or are still involved for a significant amount of time (clubs, sports, music, arts, politics, etc.). How are you enriched by these activities? (Maximum 300 words)

Simply discuss the range of activities you participate (or have participated) in – those that are major passions, and those that are “just fun” – clarifying their relative role and importance in your life. Be straightforward in how they enriched you – insight is what’s important. Imagine you are meeting with clients or superiors – between the business dealings (and perhaps over a drink), you and they chat about non-work interests – approach this essay like such a conversation. Not quite as casual as with a peer, but still conversational, straightforward, and connecting on a person-to-person level.

INSEAD MBA essay #4 (optional)

Is there anything else that was not covered in your application that you would like to share with the admissions committee? (Maximum 300 words)

Use the optional essay to explain anything that needs explaining and/or to give them one more reason to accept you. DON’T use it for a superficial summary, a restatement of your other essays, or anything similarly boring and trite. If you choose to write it, produce a tight, focused essay revealing something you haven’t yet discussed.

INSEAD MBA video component

After you hit the “submit” button on the application, you will receive on your dashboard 4 questions (a link will also be emailed to you). Your application will be deemed completed only after you submit your video interviews. The questions will likely further explore your motivations and perspective. Finally, presentation matters. If they only wanted the content, presumably they would have had written questions. Find that perfect balance – be yourself, but be professional. Polished, but not slick or contrived. This “perfect balance” will be different for different people, depending on their culture, their personality, their profession. To prepare, if you haven’t had formal training in presentations or communication, it would be a good idea to try some self-videos with random questions and analyze them, looking as well as listening.

For expert guidance with your INSEAD MBA application, check out Accepted’s MBA Application Packages, which include comprehensive guidance from an experienced admissions consultant. We’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to INSEAD’s MBA program and look forward to helping you too!

INSEAD MBA application deadlines for September 2021 intake

Round 1September 11, 2020

Round 2November 6, 2020

Round 3January 8, 2021

Round 4February 26, 2021

Source: INSEAD website

Stay on top of MBA deadlines with the MBA Admissions Calendar!

[Click here to add the calendar to your Google calendar; or here to add the calendar to another app.]

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with individual programs to verify the essay questions, instructions and deadlines.***




Cindy Tokumitsu has advised hundreds of successful applicants, helping them gain acceptance to top MBA and EMBA programs in her 20 years with Accepted. She would love to help you too. Want Cindy to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!

Related Resources:


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Kellogg Executive MBA Application Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021] [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: Kellogg Executive MBA Application Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021]



Kellogg’s 2 required EMBA application essay questions present a paradox: they’re straightforward and complex. Together, they draw out a fully rounded view of you as a person and as a professional, what you’ve done and how you think and perceive the world. To the extent possible, ground your essays in detail and concrete experience, and use reflection as the thread weaving those details and experiences into a vivid whole.

Essays 1 and 2 together should amplify and resonate with each other. They should be neither redundant nor discordant. Before or while drafting them, consider them as a whole. While they must each succeed as a separate statement, to do you the most justice they also should work together as parts of a dynamic whole.

Kellogg Executive MBA 2019-20 Application Essays

Kellogg EMBA Essay #1

What do you want to achieve in your professional life? What have you already done to get there and how do you think Kellogg can help you? (approximately 450 words)

“What you want to achieve” means your career vision; therefore, discuss the impact you hope to have. Support this vision by describing your goals in specific terms: likely positions, which company or companies, desired location, and some related context, e.g. anticipated challenges you or your organization may face, your take on industry trends and how they affect your goals, and so forth. Then connect the dots: explain how this stated path will enable you to achieve the vision.

In asking what you have already done to pursue these goals, the adcom is essentially seeking evidence that you are truly committed to this career path. Answering this part allows you to show that you are proactive, strategic, and resourceful. Don’t cite everything you’ve done in this regard, but rather identify the 2-3 most important experiences – and what you gained from them. In discussing why Kellogg will be the next important step on that path, link the resources of the Kellogg EMBA to the specific learning and professional needs arising from your planned path. (And keep in mind essay 2, to avoid redundancy.)

Kellogg EMBA Essay #2

Values are what guide you in your life and work. What values are important to you and how have they influenced you? (approximately 450 words)

This question aims right at the heart of who you are, and that is what Kellogg cares about (and always has). The goals (in essay 1) may be great, but here is the context for them.

The practical aspects of answering this question: First, note that it says “values” – plural. So, you must discuss at least two. But with only 450 words and the need for some elaboration, don’t offer a list of admirable values. Select the top 2-3 that at this point in your life are most compelling to you – and that are somewhat different – e.g. don’t use empathy and compassion as two different values, considering their similarity and overlap.

Of course, “values” is an abstract term, but avoid an abstract (mind-numbing) discourse. Instead, in answering how the values have influenced you, base it on your actual experience. That needn’t mean dramatic things; reading a book can change your life – you just have to make it come alive to the reader if that’s the case. This approach will both enhance the credibility of your essays and make a memorable read for the adcom.

Last but not least, I do suggest presenting examples/anecdotes here that are not work related; it’s fine to discuss work and link some of the discussion to it, but work should not be the focus of this essay. The question suggests a more holistic approach.

Kellogg EMBA Essay #3 (Optional)

If needed, use this section to briefly describe any extenuating circumstances (e.g. unexplained gaps in work experience, choice of recommenders, inconsistent or questionable academic performance, etc.).

This question explicitly limits the potential topics to extenuating circumstances, so don’t use it to further market yourself by presenting new material to enhance your application. If you do not have extenuating circumstances, do not write the essay. If you do need to provide such information, do it succinctly and straightforwardly.

If you would like professional guidance with your Kellogg Executive MBA application, check out Accepted’s MBA Application Package, which includes advising, editing, interview coaching, and a resume edit for the Kellogg EMBA application.

Kellogg Executive MBA application deadlines for January 2021 and September 2021 start dates

 January 2021 Start DateSeptember 2021 Start Date

Round 1August 19, 2020April 21, 2021

Round 2October 7, 2020June 2, 2021

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with individual programs to verify the essay questions, instructions and deadlines.***




Cindy Tokumitsu has advised hundreds of successful applicants, helping them gain acceptance to top MBA and EMBA programs in her 20 years with Accepted. She would love to help you too. Want Cindy to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!

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UC Berkeley Haas MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021] [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: UC Berkeley Haas MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021]
[img]https://blog.accepted.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Berkeley-Haas-MBA-essay-tips-and-deadlines.jpg[/img]
[url=https://reports.accepted.com/mba/guide/top-mba-essay-tips][img]https://blog.accepted.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Berkeley-Haas-MBA-essay-tips-and-deadlines.jpg[/img][/url]

Haas changed one of its required essay questions this year.

A few things haven’t changed. While Haas has made it very clear that you need outstanding academics to get in, they will not compromise their values to maintain those stats. The Four Defining Leadership Principles are taken very seriously by Haas’ administration and admissions team. You need to show you share and live by those principles if you are to receive serious consideration at Haas. The Four Principles are:

[list][*]Question the Status Quo

[/*][*]Confidence Without Attitude

[/*][*]Students Always

[/*][*]Beyond Yourself[/*][/list]

Keep those principles very much at the forefront of your mind as you prepare your Haas application.

Haas is one of the few schools that doesn’t have an essay about goals. Don’t be surprised, however, if you are asked about your goals and how Haas will help you achieve them when invited to an interview.

Haas School of Business Application Essays

Be sure to visit the [url=https://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/admissions/essays]Haas website[/url] which provides excellent resources and advice.

Haas MBA essay #1

What makes you feel alive when you are doing it, and why? (300 words maximum)

This question asks about something that “[url=https://blog.accepted.com/passion-action-dedication/]makes you feel alive when doing it[/url].” Since most of us like to feel alive, we’ll return to that kind of activity again and again for the sense of vitality it gives us. This activity could be a hobby. It could be a responsibility tied to giving in a community service activity. It could be something to do with nature. Hiking, scuba diving, parachuting, gardening, or thousands of other activities could fit the bill. Perhaps it’s something that ties you to your tradition and belief system. The possibilities are endless.

However, while the options may be limitless, the word count is not: 300 words. A possible structure for this essay would be to start with a vivid description of the activity and then go into why it makes you feel “alive.” The why is probably going to be harder than describing the activity, but make sure you do it.

Try to connect to relevant elements of Haas’ Four Principles without parroting them mindlessly.

Haas MBA essay #2

The definition of successful leadership has evolved over the last decade and will continue to change. What do you need to develop to become a successful leader?  (300 words max)

How do you define “leadership” in this dynamic environment? What qualities do you need to develop further to be a successful leader as you define it? 

Can you give an example of a time when [url=https://reports.accepted.com/guide/leadership-in-admissions-2]you succeeded in a leadership role[/url] by revealing some of the qualities required for leadership, as you define it? ? That example would serve as a great start to this essay. Then acknowledge what you need to develop and improve to become the kind of leader you really want to be. .If your example also reveals that you share Haas’ 4 principles you will further strengthen your case for admission.

Haas MBA Optional Information #1

We invite you to help us better understand the context of your opportunities and achievements.

[list][*]What is the highest level of education completed by your parent(s) or guardian(s)?

• Did not complete high school

• High school diploma or equivalency (GED)
Associate’s degree (junior college) or vocational degree/license

• Bachelor’s degree (BA, BS)

• Master’s degree (MA, MS)

• Doctorate or professional degree (MD, JD, DDS)

[/*][*]What is the most recent occupation of your parent(s) or guardian(s)?

• Unemployed

• Homemaker

• Laborer

• Skilled worker

• Professional

[/*][*]If you were raised in one of the following household types, please indicate.

• Raised by a single parent

• Raised by an extended family member (grandparent, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew, cousin)

• Raised in a multi-generational home

• Raised in foster care

[/*][*]What was the primary language spoken in your childhood home?

[/*][*]If you have you ever been responsible for providing significant and continuing financial or supervisory support for someone else, please indicate.

• Child

• Spouse

• Sibling

• Parent

• Extended family member (grandparent, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew, cousin)

• Other

[/*][*]Please elaborate on any of your above responses. Alternatively, you may use this opportunity to expand on other hardships or unusual life circumstances that may help us understand the context of your opportunities, achievements, and impact. (300 words maximum)[/*][/list]

Simply and honestly answer the short answer questions and then elaborate in #6 if relevant or use this essay to discuss hardships, disadvantages, or “unusual circumstances” that are the context for the rest of the application.

In providing that context, especially when talking about hardships overcome, provide enough information for the admissions committee to understand the hardship, but not so much that you end up writing a pity essay or you end up appearing somehow “damaged” or broken. [url=https://blog.accepted.com/personal-statement-tip-dealing-with-hardship/]Overcoming hardship[/url] can strengthen a person. That’s the kind of image you want to create if you choose to write on the topic. Yes, you may have experienced something difficult, maybe even tragic or terrible, but you have overcome this and are stronger as a result. The reader’s reaction? Admiration, not pity.

For an example, listen to [url=https://blog.accepted.com/ida-valentine-investment-banker-inspirational-speaker-hbs-2021-episode-311/]Ida Valentine: Investment Banker, Inspirational Speaker, HBS 2021[/url].

Haas MBA supplemental information

[list][*]If you have not provided a letter of recommendation from your current supervisor, please explain. If not applicable, enter N/A.

[/*][*]List, in order of importance, significant community and professional organizations and extracurricular activities in which you have been involved during or after university studies. Include the following information for each using the format below:
[list][*]Name of organization or activity

[/*][*]Nature of organization or activity

[/*][*]Size of organization

[/*][*]Dates of involvement

[/*][*]Offices held

[/*][*]Average number of hours spent per month

[/*][/list][/*][*]List full-time and part-time jobs held during undergraduate or graduate studies indicating the employer, job title, employment dates, location, and the number of hours worked per week for each position held prior to the completion of your degree.

[/*][*]If you have ever been subject to academic discipline, placed on probation, suspended, or required to withdraw from any college or university, please explain. If not, please enter N/A. (An affirmative response to this question does not automatically disqualify you from admission.)[/*][/list]

For expert guidance with your Berkeley Haas MBA application, check out Accepted’s [url=https://www.accepted.com/mba/services/application-packages?utm_campaign=Blog&utm_medium=mba_essay_tips&utm_source=blog]MBA Application Packages[/url], which include comprehensive guidance from an experienced admissions consultant. We’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to Berkeley Haas’ MBA program and look forward to helping you too!

Source for questions: [url=https://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/admissions/essays]Berkeley Haas website[/url]

Berkeley Haas 2020 – 2021 MBA application deadlines 

 Application DeadlineDecision Notification

Round 1September 24, 2020December 17, 2020

Round 2January 14, 2021March 25, 2021

Round 3April 5, 2021May 13, 2021

Source: The deadline chart can be viewed inside [url=https://applynow.haas.berkeley.edu/apply/]Berkeley Haas’ online MBA application[/url].

[b]Stay on top of MBA deadlines with the [url=https://www.accepted.com/calendar]MBA Admissions Calendar[/url]![/b]

[[url=https://calendar.google.com/calendar/b/2?cid=ZWdybWVsZ3IzZTZtczUxYzMwOGY0MGxiODhAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ]Click here[/url] to add the calendar to your Google calendar; or [url=https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/egrmelgr3e6ms51c308f40lb88%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics]here[/url] to add the calendar to another app.]

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with individual programs to verify the essay questions, instructions, and deadlines.***

[url=https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/58291/6b0fdd55-fcfa-4cfb-8b5b-ee21a234e020][img]https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/58291/6b0fdd55-fcfa-4cfb-8b5b-ee21a234e020.png[/img][/url]

[img]https://blog.accepted.com/linda-abraham-accepted-founder/[/img]
By Linda Abraham, president and founder of Accepted. Linda earned her bachelors and MBA at UCLA, and has been advising applicants since 1994 when she founded Accepted. Linda is the co-founder and first president of AIGAC. She has written or co-authored 13 e-books on the admissions process, and has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News, Poets & Quants, Bloomberg Businessweek, CBS News, and others. Linda is the host of Admissions Straight Talk, a podcast for graduate school applicants. [b][url=https://www.accepted.com/services?utm_campaign=Blog&utm_medium=blog_bio_linda&utm_source=blog]Want an admissions expert help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch![/url][/b]

[b]Related Resources:[/b]

[list][*][url=https://reports.accepted.com/guide/leadership-in-admissions-2]Leadership in Admissions[/url], a free guide[/*][*][url=https://blog.accepted.com/different-dimensions-diversity-episode-193/]Different Dimensions of Diversity[/url], a podcast episode[/*][*][url=https://blog.accepted.com/write-about-overcoming-challenges-without-sounding-like-a-whiner/]How to Write About Overcoming Challenges Without Sounding Like a Whiner[/url][/*][/list]

Tags: [url=https://blog.accepted.com/category/mba-admissions/]MBA Admissions[/url]

The post [url=https://blog.accepted.com/uc-berkeley-haas-mba-essay-tips-deadlines/]UC Berkeley Haas MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021][/url] appeared first on [url=https://blog.accepted.com]Accepted Admissions Blog[/url].
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A Stanford MBA with a Passion for Both Business and Humanities [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: A Stanford MBA with a Passion for Both Business and Humanities



What’s it like being a student at Stanford GSB? [Show summary]

Ilana Walder-Biesanz’s eclectic background includes engineering, opera, product management, ballroom dance, data analytics, and theatre. In this episode, she shares why she also pursued an MBA from Stanford GSB.

Should you include interests and experiences that are not directly business-related in your MBA application? Absolutely! [Show notes]

This show’s guest is a true Renaissance woman, currently interning for a company in Nigeria, after earning her MBA from Stanford GSB as a member of the Class of 2020. She also has a fascinating series of experiences before arriving at Stanford.

Ilana Walder-Biesanz earned her bachelor’s in engineering from the Olin College of Engineering in 2013. As a student at Olin, she also had an arts and humanities concentration in theater and founded the Olin Opera Organization. After graduating, she pursued her masters at the University of Cambridge in European Literature and Culture and was a Gates Cambridge Scholar. She then studied for a year at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich as a Fulbright Scholar. Returning to the U.S., she worked for three years for Yahoo as a Product Manager and joined Stanford’s GSB class of 2020, where she was a Siebel Scholar and an RJ Miller Scholar. She just became a data analyst marketing intern, working remotely for a Nigerian-based company on behalf of Stanford Seed, the Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies. And what I’ve told you is just the tip of the iceberg. Ilana has traveled extensively. Per her LinkedIn profile, she speaks English, Spanish, German, and Italian reasonably well, and some Japanese, French, and Hebrew. I’m not exaggerating when I say she is a true Renaissance woman.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background? [2:26]

I grew up in Portland, Oregon to two parents who had both studied theater in college and had started their careers as actors. So they pretty much pushed me onto the stage as soon as I could walk and talk. I think that’s been a through-line of things I’m interested in throughout my life in engineering and business: I’ve been an avid actress and theater-goer. Dance came a little bit later. I was horribly graceless as a child, and my mother (who was actually also a dance teacher on the side) despaired of me and pulled me out of dance classes because I was so bad at it. But at some point later in life, I found my feet and really developed a passion for ballroom dancing.

Can you go into a little more depth on how you developed your interest in engineering and analytics, along with your interest in opera, dance, and the humanities? [3:27]

The humanities and opera and dance definitely came first. I actually discovered engineering through Girl Scouts probably when I was eight or nine. My Girl Scout troop went to a Lego Robotics sampler. Just a day where we all built robots out of Legos together. I thought it was the coolest thing. I signed up for Lego Robotics after school and eventually graduated to building robots out of metal instead of Legos. I did that throughout middle school and high school and that was what sparked the interest in engineering and in building robots, which is pretty much what I did for my four years of my engineering degree.

Why did you decide to go for an MBA? [4:25]

I was working in tech as a product manager, and I think there were two things that sparked the MBA decision there. One was I felt like in my role as a product manager, a really solid grasp of business was what I was lacking most. I had the communication skills, I had the technical background, but product managers make a lot of business strategy decisions. I felt like I was Googling around for things and didn’t really have a solid framework or understanding of the best way to approach those. I also had a hypothesis that I wanted to move out of product management and be more directly involved in the business side of things and switch to working on the business side of nonprofits. An MBA seemed like a really good chance to explore that hypothesis more and see whether that was actually for me and also to gain skills that would be really useful regardless of whether I stayed in tech or did make that switch.

Do you see yourself using your MBA for some of your more humanities-oriented interests? [5:29]

Absolutely. Fifteen or 20 years from now, I would love to be the general manager of an opera or theater company.

Do you remember anything particularly challenging about your MBA application process? [6:00]

Part of the challenge for me is that I decided pretty late that I wanted to apply the year I was applying. It was still within round one, and I knew I would only apply in round one because of some scholarship eligibility things. But I decided pretty late before the round one deadline that I wanted to do it that year. So I think the biggest challenge was the scramble to sort of get my tests scheduled, get everything drafted, get recommendations and everything in by that round one deadline.

One of the things that we sometimes see with clients, especially those with varied interests and a lot of accomplishments, is that they have trouble deciding what to focus on in writing their essays. Did you have that trouble? [6:34]

For me, it was pretty clear that my story was going to be about opera.

How did you handle the challenges in terms of time management? [6:57]

Honestly, as soon as I made the decision and committed, I forced myself to sit down and draft everything pretty much right away, knowing that there would have to be provisions and that I would want some feedback from trusted friends, etc. But I think just getting something on paper as fast as possible was the only way to guarantee that it was done on time and without great stress.

Let’s talk about your experience at Stanford, before COVID hit. What did you like most about your experience? [7:27]

Everyone says the same thing, but it’s true, right? It’s the people that you meet there. It took me a while, I would say, to find my people at Stanford simply because, in terms of my interests and what I do for fun, I don’t think I’m the stereotypical MBA student. I’m not particularly into partying, which is what people imagine when they think of MBAs. But once I found the group of people that I really connected with, it’s just a wonderful, wonderful group of friends. And I also met my partner at the GSB, so naturally that was a highlight as well in terms of the people.

Was there anything that you found particularly satisfying or intriguing about the program? [8:12]

I think the most satisfying things for me were the roleplay-based classes. It fits with my acting, but with acting, you generally have a script, right? And I actually don’t like improv very much. I like having a script. And when you’re doing roleplay, you have to put yourself into the shoes of someone who’s in charge of a business and carry out that scenario. I’m less talking about case-based, “what should the strategy be” from a third-party perspective, and more the roleplay classes where it’s, “Alright, you’re the CEO, you’re firing your CTO, sit down and have that conversation with them.” How do you manage that day-to-day of being a leader and being a manager? And it’s really hard the first few times you’re put on the spot to do that in class, but both by doing it and by watching other people do it and see how they do it, I do think you gain a lot that’s really valuable going forward.

What would you have liked to see improved in your MBA experience? [9:22]

I think a lot of GSB students would say this as well, but I think people often find many of the first year required classes a bit frustrating because it’s very heavily numerical, and they’re taught in more traditional ways, which I think isn’t what people enjoy the most or want the most, these sort of classic lectures at a blackboard. A problem set that you do at home is far less exciting than those more hands-on interactive courses.

You went to GSB with some specific goals in mind. Did you achieve your goals there? [10:36]

I absolutely did. What I’m doing right now in terms of work is 100% drawing on that. I could have Googled around and made a go at it before, but I’m definitely doing it in a more structured and efficient and productive way than I would have without that. I think for many jobs, you don’t need an MBA. You can figure out what you need regarding the business side. But certainly for some roles, it makes you a lot more effective.

What did you do as an admissions ambassador for Stanford GSB? Did that change your perspective on the admissions process at all? [11:32]

It mostly just means that I gave tours of the campus and also did Q&A info sessions kind of like this, but with a bunch of prospective students asking me the questions. We didn’t get any inside insights into the process. They were trying to give everybody student perspectives, and they were pretty open about letting us be as honest as we wanted to be. So if people asked, “What was your favorite part?” and someone said, “Well, it was that all-night party in Vegas,” if that’s the honest answer, that’s the answer the admissions department wanted you to give. So I liked that honest approach to it, but I don’t think I learned more about the process.

I did notice that many applicants came in too polished and too prepared in their questions, especially after the official info sessions, which are one-on-one. They were trying to get the secret thing that they should write in their essay. And no matter how many times you said, “Everyone who got here wrote something really different, and it was the authenticity that got them through, rather than picking the right topic,” people were really trying to get the secret that doesn’t exist.

How was your adjustment to online learning, social distancing, and sheltering in place? [13:16]

I’ve got to admit, I hate online learning. It’s not a comment on the teaching. I was actually really impressed by what most of my professors did to make the online learning engaging, the ways they used Zoom features to the max to make classes more interesting. But I got Zoom fatigue pretty rapidly on the days that I had a lot of classes. It was a tough adjustment. So much of a business school is the social element with your classmates, and it’s just not the same to have Zoom hangouts with them, even if you’re doing fun online games. Figuring out a cadence for that, where I could still feel really connected to my friends but not have it be one more chore that was adding to that Zoom fatigue, was hard. I partially figured it out, a little bit. Picking activities to do together, not necessarily just chatting, but finding games to do together via Zoom helped in addition to chatting, but it’s hard.

What are you doing for the company in Nigeria, CreditRegistry? [14:34]

I did go for a classic post-business school job, and I will be starting with Bain, but Bain delayed everybody’s start dates. I was originally going to start with Bain in August and take time off. Now I’m starting with Bain in December, and that seems like too long of a break, so I decided to find some things to fill the gap. The thing that I found for July and August was working with Stanford’s Seed program, which places both MBAs and undergrads with companies based primarily in Africa and India in business roles to help those companies grow. So I was paired with this company based in Nigeria, CreditRegistry. It’s the largest credit bureau there and the first one that was founded. I’m working with them on analyzing and visualizing a lot of the data they have, because as you can imagine, a credit bureau has a huge amount of data. I’m also working on some of their content marketing and trying to pull those two threads together and find ways for them to be the authoritative voice of credit in Nigeria. It’s been really interesting so far. I’m on day four, so I’m still finding my feet, but it’s been really cool. I really hope to visit them at some point in future when it’s possible, and the CEO has extended an open invitation for when travel is possible again, for me to please come visit in person. But I don’t think it will be during my work for them just because that’s only a few months.

What are your plans for the future? [16:14]

For the next couple of months, I’m working with CreditRegistry. Also, during my business school experience, I’ve been doing some consulting on the side for some nonprofits and startups. So probably when this internship ends, I’ll keep doing some of that independent consulting for the remaining couple of months before Bain starts. Then I’ll probably try to wind those down before I start with Bain, because I hear that’s a rather all-consuming job.

How do you see yourself satisfying both your love for the humanities and your passion for quantitative subjects, as well as using your obvious talents in both areas? [16:59]

In the immediate future, I think consulting’s not a bad way to do that. I hope, alongside whatever I’m doing as my main cases, to be able to do some pro bono work for nonprofits and maybe even for some arts nonprofits. In the long term, that’s something I’m still figuring out. I think in almost any strategy job, being strong in both very quantitative skills and qualitative skills is very valuable, really understanding the data and also being good at communicating it and making decisions based on it. But how exactly will that play out in my future? I’ll let you know when I know.

What advice would you have for those contemplating applying for the class of 2023? [17:48]

Authenticity and a unique voice I think are what matters the most, shining through in the application, in the interview, in all of that. And excitement for whatever it is that you’re writing about. I don’t care if it’s opera, in my case, or ice cream, or your family. In fact, I’m quite certain at least one of my classmates wrote about ice cream, but it’s just got to be true to you.



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The post A Stanford MBA with a Passion for Both Business and Humanities [Episode 377] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.
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MIT Sloan MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020-2021] [#permalink]
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FROM Accepted.com Blog: MIT Sloan MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020-2021]



This year’s MIT Sloan MBA application, like most MIT applications in the last fifteen years, includes its signature cover letter and resume. It also retains the video component.

MIT Sloan MBA cover letter and resume

MIT Sloan seeks students whose personal characteristics demonstrate that they will make the most of the incredible opportunities at MIT, both academic and non-academic. We are on a quest to find those whose presence will enhance the experience of other students. We seek thoughtful leaders with exceptional intellectual abilities and the drive and determination to put their stamp on the world. We welcome people who are independent, authentic, and fearlessly creative – true doers. We want people who can redefine solutions to conventional problems, and strive to preempt unconventional dilemmas with cutting-edge ideas. We demand integrity and respect passion.

Taking the above into consideration, please submit a cover letter seeking a place in the MIT Sloan MBA Program. Your letter should conform to a standard business correspondence, include one or more examples that illustrate why you meet the desired criteria above, and be addressed to the Assistant Deans of Admissions, Rod Garcia and Dawna Levenson. (300 words or fewer, excluding address and salutation)

MIT helpfully provides insight into what it’s looking for in the cover letter. Like all cover letters, this one is a marketing document. If you apply for a job, you research the firm to learn what it values and is seeking. Based on your research, you send your resume with a cover letter designed to make you as attractive to the company as possible, one that shows you have what the firm wants.

Similarly, your MIT Sloan cover letter should show that you have what MIT is looking for. Make your case for admission using your accomplishments, specifically those where you show the qualities mentioned above. How do the talents revealed in your examples demonstrate fit with the MIT Sloan program, its tight-knit community, and its innovative, culture of doers? Your resume should reveal above-average progression on the job and increasing responsibility, as well as the creativity and contribution that MIT Sloan requires.

In making your case and mentioning your accomplishments, highlight your role and the impact on the entities you contributed to. Those results are “your stamp on the world” so far.

Note: this is not an essay. Make sure your letter is formatted as a professional letter with a date, address, header, salutation, and close.

Please submit a one-page resume (Times New Roman 10 point font preferred) that includes your employment history and academic record in reverse chronological order. Other information appropriate to a business resume is welcomed and encouraged, including extracurricular activities, awards, and achievements. Please REDACT your name, address, and contact information. For formatting purposes, please list the information in the following order:

    • Education – please feel free to include relevant awards, scholarships, professional societies
    • Work Experience – please list in reverse chronological order and include: company name, title, results-oriented bullets that demonstrate your skill set, and dates.
    • Additional information – languages, extracurricular activities/community service, technical skills/certifications, special skills/interests (if appropriate)

For the MIT Sloan’s detailed resume formatting instructions, visit the MIT Sloan website.

In your resume, go beyond mere job descriptions to highlight achievement. If your title is “consultant,” saying that you “consulted on diverse projects globally” is redundant and uninformative at best. Writing that you “Led a 6-member team working on a biotech outsourcing project to Singapore with a budget of $X; it came in on time and under budget.” conveys infinitely more.

Quantify your impact as much as possible. You want the reader to come away with a picture of you as an above average performer on a steep upward trajectory who has the creativity and hands-on, problem-solving focus that demonstrates you belong at MIT Sloan.

<<Applying to MIT Sloan? Listen to our podcast interview with the Director of Admissions>>

MIT Sloan MBA video statement

Please take a minute to introduce yourself to your future classmates via video. Include a bit on your past experience and why MIT Sloan is the best place for you to pursue your MBA. Videos should be a single take (no editing) lasting no more than one minute and consisting of you speaking directly to the camera. We recommend using an application such as QuickTime or iMovie to record yourself.

Upload the video file according to the detailed instructions within the application. We support the following file formats: .avi, .flv, .m1v, .m2v, .m4v, .mkv, .mov, .mpeg, .mpg, .mp4, .webm, .wmv.

Should you experience difficulties uploading your file, please ensure that you’re using a modern web browser (Chrome, Firefox, or Safari) on the fastest wired Internet connection available. An intermittent or slow Internet connection can cause uploads to timeout.

The video statement was introduced at MIT Sloan about four years ago. Your goal here: deliver your statement with poise and presence. I suggest you outline a 60-second statement that you would use to introduce yourself to your classmates (not the admissions committee members; they’re just important flies on the wall who happen to be listening in).

Don’t be too casual; your classmates are your future professional network and social group, but do be friendly and remember to smile. What would you tell them about yourself? What would show that you are already a member of MIT’s community – you just don’t happen to pay tuition yet?

A few tips for the video part of this exercise: Practice in front of a webcam so that you get used to talking to a little lens that has no affect, feedback, or expression. Recording yourself on video is not the same as talking on Skype with another human being. I suggest you put a smiley face beneath or above the camera to remind you to smile at appropriate points in your statement. Then view your practice videos looking for poise and presence. During some of the practices, maybe have a friend present to encourage you, but also practice without anyone else in the room. We at Accepted are happy to help you prepare too.

For the real statement, dress in business or business casual attire. If you’re not confident that your attire is appropriate, it probably isn’t; dress more conservatively. Make sure your location is quiet and that roommates, pets and children are in a location where they won’t be heard or disturb you. Make sure your background is neutral and not a distraction. Blank walls make a great background.

For expert guidance with your MIT Sloan MBA application, check out Accepted’s MBA Application Packages, which include comprehensive guidance from an experienced admissions consultant. We’ve helped applicants get accepted to MIT Sloan’s MBA program and look forward to helping you too!

CREATE A SUCCESSFUL MIT SLOAN MBA APPLICATION! >>

MIT Sloan application deadlines for August 2021 entry

 Application DeadlineDecisions ReleasedRound 1October 1, 2020December 16, 2020Round 2January 19, 2021April 2, 2021Round 3April 12, 2021May 20, 2021

*Applications must be submitted by 3:00 p.m. EST

Source: MIT Sloan website

Stay on top of MBA deadlines with the MBA Admissions Calendar!

[Click here to add the calendar to your Google calendar; or here to add the calendar to another app.]

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with individual programs to verify the essay questions, instructions and deadlines.***




By Linda Abraham, president and founder of Accepted. Linda earned her bachelors and MBA at UCLA, and has been advising applicants since 1994 when she founded Accepted. Linda is the co-founder and first president of AIGAC. She has written or co-authored 13 e-books on the admissions process, and has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News, Poets & Quants, Bloomberg Businessweek, CBS News, and others. Linda is the host of Admissions Straight Talk, a podcast for graduate school applicants. Want an admissions expert help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch!

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FROM Accepted.com Blog: The Key to Acing Your Wharton Application



Wharton is the world’s oldest collegiate school of business, and it comes by its storied reputation honestly. If it’s at the top of your MBA wish list, you’ve got your work cut out for you. But we can help!

Accepted founder and CEO Linda Abraham has more than 25 years of experience helping candidates navigate Wharton’s unique application process, and she’ll be sharing that wealth of knowledge in a free webinar on Wednesday, August 19th. Mark your calendar now and join us for Get Accepted to Wharton. You’ll come away from this session prepared to tackle your Wharton application strategically. This live webinar is being offered at two timeslots for your convenience. Register today for either the 10am PT/1pm ET session or the 5pm PT/8pm ET session and we’ll see you on August 19th!

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For 25 years, Accepted has helped business school applicants gain acceptance to top programs. Our outstanding team of MBA admissions consultants features former business school admissions directors and professional writers who have guided our clients to admission at top MBA, EMBA, and other graduate business programs worldwide including Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Booth, INSEAD, London Business School, and many more. Want an MBA admissions expert to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!

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FROM Accepted.com Blog: All About Georgetown’s New Master of Science in Business Analytics Program



Why Georgetown’s new MSBA program may be just what you’re looking for! [Show Summary]

Dr. Sudipta Dasmohapatra, Academic Director of Georgetown’s MSBA program, goes in-depth on who the new online master’s program is for and how will prepare students for careers in data science leadership.

Earn your Master’s of Science in business analytics online in just 16 months, while continuing to work. [Show Notes]

Are you attracted to business analytics but don’t want to take the time off work to enter a full-time program to master the topic? Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business has just what you’re looking for: an online master’s designed for working professionals. Today’s guest is the director of that program, and we’re going to learn all about it.

Dr. Sudipta Dasmohapatra earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in India and her PhD from Penn State, and she’s always been a numbers geek. She started her career as a data scientist in 2004 and her teaching career at North Carolina State, where she was Associate Professor of Marketing and Customer Analytics until 2017. In 2017, she became, among other duties, the Director of the Master’s in Statistical Science at Duke University, and in 2020 she joined Georgetown as Academic Director of its brand new online MS in Business Analytics (MSBA) program for working professionals.

Can you provide an overview of Georgetown’s MSBA program? [2:06]

The Georgetown Master’s in Business Analytics offered by the McDonough School of Business is coming online in January 2021. It is an online, 16-month, comprehensive analytics program. We have designed it with the goal of preparing future business leaders and managers that are interested in learning how to understand data and how to use data to create, share, and sustain value.

The graduates of this program will be prepared to lead in key growth sectors where graduates that have deep business analytic skills are highly sought. This particular program has been rigorously curated to meet the needs of the current marketplace. We have integrated the technical aspects of data analytics with the managerial business functions so that the students can learn to speak and communicate the language of data.

Within this particular program, we have both asynchronous classes, as well as synchronous sessions in which the students can join their cohort, as well as a prominent faculty, in a virtual classroom. Students also have the opportunity to come to campus. We have two week-long campus-based residencies that provide integrated hands-on activities to the students through a very intensive, week-long curriculum.

One of the cornerstones of this particular program that I want to talk about is the capstone project. The capstone project, over six months, applies the program’s concepts and methods and tools that the students learn in a challenging business data analytics assignment with a project sponsor. Students that come into this program can not only leverage the core McDonough and Georgetown community network, but being in the global capital city of Washington DC, we are going to connect the students to a network of people, programs, and complex data that have real-world consequences.

Could you give an example? What do you think a capstone project would be? [4:17]

A capstone project could be from a real-life sponsor. We might have, let’s say, the military that has all this different data to do, say, cyber analytics. We might go to them and leverage our existing contacts and get data from there, and students would be able to work on projects where they can see the application of what they have learned in a real-life project. That’s what we are envisioning right now with the capstone project.

Wow. How large of a cohort do you plan to admit this year and in subsequent years? Is it a lockstep program, where all participants take the same courses together, or are there electives where they can branch out? How does that work? [4:59]

For the inaugural class of spring 2021, we are targeting a class size of approximately 50 students. Our goal is to make sure that the students who graduate from the program can receive the McDonough advantage and are able to advance and launch and grow their career in the fields of business analytics.

In terms of your question regarding a lockstep program, we will be following the cohort model, and all the students are going to go through the same classes at the same time. With every class, the students will be incrementally growing in their skills. We have designed the classes with content that is integrated, and throughout the 16 months, the students will first learn foundational skills and then build them over time. Having said that, I would still say that we definitely want to have the McDonough experience where the students get individualized attention in order to meet their career goals.

What kind of jobs are graduates preparing for? How will the career service team assist them at that end of the program? [6:13]

There are a variety of different types of graduate programs that exist across the nation and across the globe today. Students can choose any of these programs, but specifically, our program was designed to prepare students for analytics and data science leadership roles in a variety of industries that use data. So we have consulting and financial services and risk management and technology, retail, you name it. We believe that most students in this program will be prepared for advancing their career, with the goal of managing projects and meeting their teams.

You asked about career services, and we will have dedicated career services for the students in this particular program. Our team is going to provide professional development and leadership skills and exposure to various types of data analytics roles that the students are going to come across, as well as any other activities that help to prepare the students for roles of their choice. 

How is the program structured to provide the flexibility that working professionals need? [7:31]

That’s a great question. We have designed this online program very thoughtfully, with working professionals in mind. The curriculum has been built with our past experience and success with other online programs at McDonough. You must have noticed that the timeline is 16 months. We want to provide both conceptual and practical skills at a pace that will be comfortable for working professionals. That’s why we are not cramming everything in two or three semesters in a one-year program; it’s a 16-month program.

We have created a very highly flexible learning environment with interactive recordings and readings, which students will be able to do in their free time through the asynchronous content. The synchronous content will include live sessions that will build on the asynchronous content with case studies, projects, and applied work.

We do not formally, at this point of time, require any kind of time sponsorship from employers to be sure that the students will be able to provide the time commitment that is required for going through this program at a comfortable pace. I would like to say here that when the students join the program, they will become a member of a caring community of faculty and staff and students, and we’re going to provide them that individualized attention to help them learn and achieve their goals through their time.

Can you describe the application process for the MSBA? [9:11]

The Master of Science in Business Analytics will begin their first cohort in January, 2021. We require the applicants of the program to submit an online application, their resume and CV. We also require undergraduate degree transcripts as the last transcripts from any graduate programs. There’s a personal statement that is required and two letters of recommendation. One of the things that students are asking us who have been applying to such programs is whether they require a GRE or GMAT, right? While we do not require them to have the test scores, they are strongly recommended. But we will consider waivers based on prior academic performance or work experience that students have. For non-native English speakers, we need them to have TOEFL or IELT scores.

I also want to stress here that once an application has been submitted, it will be evaluated by an admissions committee. That can be a director; that’s going to be me. Then we will use a holistic approach when making admission decisions. We are really looking for applicants who are aligned with our values and our mission to have a positive impact in society and that they could be collaborative members and team players. We want to make sure that we’re admitting students who we believe will add value to their entire class, as well as to the larger Georgetown community.

What kind of work experience, both in terms of quantity and quality, do you expect? [10:43]

The admissions committee expects applicants to have about two to five or more years of work experience. The type and quality of the work experience obviously will be evaluated in terms of the whole person that is applying to the program. If there are non-work experiences, in other forms, we will also give serious consideration to those. For example, volunteer work, extracurricular activities during college, leadership positions that they have held in non-work organizations, any kind of special awards or achievements. All of these are going to be considered when we look at applicants’ experience.

Do you expect people to be working in quantitative fields or to have a quantitative academic background when they apply? [11:26]

Not really. We are thinking about students who can think quantitatively. They are curious about the data. They’re motivated and are keen to learn skills that will help them draw insights from complex data. The students that have technical backgrounds are perhaps going to be more competitive, but it doesn’t mean that students who are not in technical backgrounds cannot be because if you are curious about data, you can come from any field. If you’re curious about learning these skills and are motivated and want to make a difference in society and businesses and how you make decisions using data, absolutely.

In terms of a formal coursework, the only thing that we need the students to have taken is undergraduate-level math courses. If it’s a technical discipline, it just adds to that. But we are not really looking for students to have any formal statistics or programming languages. We are going to teach them that in the program. That’s what the program is. We are talking about linear algebra, calculus, that kind of work. Once they have that, they’re going to be good to come into our program.

Can you share the essay question or personal statement question? [12:47]

In terms of the personal statement, we are really looking for students to tell us about why they want to enroll in a business analytics program. What kind of past experience, if any, do they have in analytics? Why do they want to attend Georgetown University? What are their career aspirations and expectations after they received this MSD degree? We also have an optional scholarship essay. Students that want to apply for scholarships can do that. They write an essay that explains the unique values and perspectives they would bring into the program. We do have some limited scholarships that we offer within the program.

Is an interview required? [13:32]

Yes. All applicants will do a short video conference interview with an admissions representative. The interviews typically focus on an applicant’s background, analytics, any kind of data science experience that they would have and their career goals. We may ask certain candidates to participate in a second interview if we need more information from the student. All interviews are online; it’s an online program. We want you to know how to work in a virtual environment.

Beyond COVID, will you want in-person interviews, or will you still do them online? [14:03]

We are going to do online interviews. We want to make sure the student is also comfortable in an online environment, this being an online program. That’s what we have done successfully across different programs, and we are going to do that as well in this program.

Georgetown McDonough also has a Flex MBA with a focus on analytics. How does the MSBA differ from the Flex MBA with a focus on analytics? [14:27]

The full-time and the Flex MBA now actually offer a STEM designated management science major, and as part of the curriculum, the students can earn a certificate in data analytics and insights. Depending upon a student’s career ambitions, pursuing an MBA with this track is the right choice if the analytics piece is perhaps as equally important as a comprehensive understanding of the core business fundamentals that the MBA program brings in. The MBA provides the students with a breadth of knowledge that covers many areas of business with a little bit of analytics in it, while the MSBA is designed for students that are more interested in a specialized program that focuses on developing a data-first mindset, along with rigorous analytic skills. These are both necessary to prepare you for a career where analytics is key to making better business decisions. The MBA is mostly an in-person program, when we are not in a pandemic, of course, while the MSBA is designed to be online. The MSBA is also shorter. It’s 16 months.

Many business people are inundated with data, and it’s not always presented in the most accessible way. Is part of the course also filtering the data so that the decision-maker gets what’s really important? [15:54]

Absolutely. We are going to train the students to not only think data, but also walk data, talk data, and communicate in the right way. Data has become very complex now. If you really look at the data science world today, it is overwhelming. It’s not only in-store data anymore. If you look at data, it’s also all this digital data that’s coming from social media and everywhere. We are going to make sure that the students can get not only the conceptual understanding but also the practical knowledge that is necessary to generate insights or draw insights from the data where they are going to be able to filter all the noise and look at the signals they can use to make the decisions. We’re going to provide them the tools and techniques and a handful of other types of knowledge they can utilize in order to solve the complex data problems that we have going on today in the marketplace.

The whole idea with a business analytics program is to make sure that the students can come in front of a group of people that they may be working with, where you have non-statisticians and statisticians. You may have people who are technical and engineers who understand this versus those that can’t understand the language of data, but then you are able to draw insights that solve business problems in the right way that non-statisticians can access as well.

The world has become completely data-centric, and people who have the knowledge to draw these insights from data are going to have a competitive advantage over others. It’s absolutely essential. I talked about the capstone course earlier and some of the courses that we will have within this program. All the courses will have some applied aspect within them, so students can see for real how data is used to transform business decisions and make sure that we can draw solutions from the problems based on data science methods and different types of tools that they can actually utilize in this program.

You mentioned that the inaugural class is going to be roughly 50 people. Do you see it growing, or do you want to keep it small? [19:45]

We do anticipate this number going up as we move forward. As more potential applicants hear about the value of getting this degree, we do anticipate getting more applications as well. However, one of the things to keep in mind is we will definitely keep it at a comfortable size where we are able to maintain our cohort nature and provide individualized learning and growth opportunities to students and deliver the McDonough and Georgetown experience and value to them. That’s what we are thinking about as we look forward to growing after the inaugural class of spring 2021.

The priority application deadline for this inaugural class is September 15th. Do you anticipate a later deadline also, since this is the priority? What is the advantage of applying by the priority deadline? [20:40]

Applications are accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis. Our priority deadline is September 15th, 2020, and applications that are received by this date will be given prior consideration for some limited, merit-based financial aid. Since they are assessing applications on a rolling basis for a limited number of seats, it is advantageous for students to apply early, but we have our final application deadline as December 11th, 2020 for the first cohort.

What about those planning ahead to apply later, if this isn’t the right year to apply? How can those applicants prepare themselves to apply effectively, either in 2021 or 2022? [21:29]

I mentioned before that we don’t require them to have any kind of formal coursework in statistics or programming, but if you are thinking of applying a year later, it’s always advantageous and you’re going to be very competitive if the students coming into the program learn about statistics and data science methodologies and some other programming tools through some kind of an online learning environment like Coursera, or DataCamp, or through a formal course at a university level. If there are keen applicants, then they may be able to work with some publicly available datasets. There are all kinds of publicly available datasets. Let us know about that in the personal statement. Again, these are not required, but it definitely makes the applicants much more attractive.

What is a frequently asked question that you get about the program that’s perhaps surprised you since announcing the MSBA? [22:47]

I talked about the two five-day-long residencies: one at the beginning of the program, and one is at the midpoint of the program. Students have been asking about the required residencies with the COVID situation, and I know that that’s on the top of their minds. This is an online program, it’s going to be delivered virtually, and we are very competent at McDonough in delivering content online. We have had successful virtual in-person residencies for other programs, so we understand how to deliver these strategies and provide an equal experience and benefits to students online.

The other question that we are getting is about a value-based MSBA. We talk about the fact that the MSBA degree is going to be helpful in gaining perspective that translates data analytics to provide value to both the business organization and society, and that’s something that the students are asking for more clarity about. As we think about providing value to businesses, we will constrain the overall impact to the businesses if we only think about the economic bottom line. We want to make sure that the students within this program can think beyond that and think about creating sustainable strategies that not only make an economic impact but also make an impact on the environment and society. Ethical decision-making is a part of value-based decision-making that we are going to provide to the students within our programs. Those have been a couple of questions that students have been asking.

Is there a question you would like to answer that I didn’t ask about the MSBA? [24:37]

Data is the language that successful leaders speak today and will speak in the future. We have launched the Master’s of Science in Business Analytics program with a futuristic vision with very carefully considered content, tools, and applications in business. Students that come into this particular program are going to join the outstanding McDonough faculty and staff and their cohort that will prepare them to become globally minded, principled leaders, ready to address the most significant challenges and opportunities facing business and society.

One of the things that I did not mention earlier is that being at McDonough and Georgetown, the students in this program are going to be able to take advantage of a lot of data analytics resources across the university. This includes the massive data institute, which harnesses modern data and computing power to produce cutting-edge research and improve decision-making. We are in the process of collaborating with them to make sure that the students can take advantage of that.

Where can listeners learn more about Georgetown’s MSBA? [25:52]

Potential students, potential employers, and anybody that wants to learn more about the program can go to msb.georgetown.edu, and then go under “Degree Programs” to learn more about this particular program. Students that want to ask an admissions consultant can go to msbaadmissions@georgetown.edu and email our admissions counselors.



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The post All About Georgetown’s New Master of Science in Business Analytics Program [Episode 378] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.
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