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MBAPrepCoach
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Farrell Nelson: MBA
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CBS EMBA Essay Tips - 2025-2026 31 Oct 2025, 13:37
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Through your resume and recommendations, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals over the next three to five years and what is your long-term dream job? (Maximum 500 Words)

One thing that might come as a surprise: they expect you to include career-relevant CBS resources here.

First, Situation/Problem. They emphasize a future orientation for the essay, but a bit of context will help them understand your "why MBA." What is the problem you are solving for? Do you want to manage a team effectively? Obtain a leadership position in a new industry? Obtain the skills to start or scale a business? If you are doing this to increase credibility at work or with investors, that is fine, but make something else the focus so they know you will be fully engaged.

Give some thought to your “why” to arrive at something pithy. For example, learning finance is not a “why.” A goal might be to make profitable company investments, to build up the foundation for a cause that matters to your company. And learning finance would be the action you can take at CBS to catalyze this goal.

You can give them the 3-to-5-year goal(s) and then the dream job, or open with the dream job first and chronologically show the 3 year and 5-year plan to get there. Avoid stating that you want to switch both industry and function by the end of the program, which would likely require an internship. But it’s fine to show how you might make a stepwise move in this direction over time.

Next, Task. What do you need to get done? Where are the gaps/opportunities? For example, to better manage a team, you might need more leadership skills and a deeper understanding of change management, motivation, negotiation. A lot of entrepreneurs feel they’ve maximized their current skills and want to shorten the learning curve before taking their business to the next level. It’s OK to just state personal development goals as well if your personal development will have a broader positive impact.

Then, Action. Task is what you need to get done, action is how you plan to do it. What is your business plan for business school? There is a lot you can speak to when it comes to the three Cs: Clubs, Culture and Curriculum.

When it comes to what separates CBS from other EMBA programs, of course, the biggest and most obvious one is NYC. They like to think of NYC as a living laboratory for what you learn at CBS. This NYC factor heightens the value of what they offer across the board, including EIR (Executive-in-Residence) mentorship, speaking events, adjunct professors, and clubs members.

The cluster system is also unique to CBS: each class/cohort is broken into 4 clusters. It creates closeness because you learn in a small cluster of 30-70 students with learning teams of 5-6 for all your core courses (the first year.) Each cluster has leadership i.e., Cluster Chair, Cluster Spirit Rep, Academics Rep etc., which shapes a greater sense of community. This also provides those cluster leaders with the opportunity to apply classroom and executive coaching learnings in practicum.

Last, but not least, Result. This is the problem statement flipped. Once you have learned this and become that, then what? How will you be adding more value to your current company? Is there some unmet need that you will fulfill? If there is a socially beneficial aspect to the work you plan to do, mention that.

Please share a specific example of how you made a team more collaborative, more inclusive or fostered a greater sense of community within an organization. (250 words)

I would recommend you use CARR format for this: challenge, action, result, reflection.

This is an essay that needs to get across teamwork, leadership and inclusiveness all in one tidy little story. The question behind the question is - how would you behave in your learning team and cluster at CBS? CBS wants satisfied customers and realizes positive experiences with fellow clustermates is at the core of that.

So, they want to admit people who will uplevel the experience for others by drawing out the quiet ones rather than sidelining them. Encourage a shared-power dynamic rather than one of domination.

If you choose an example that speaks to enhancing community/collaboration, it’s best for that to be from a diverse organization (at work or outside of work) that resembles the diverse student body makeup at CBS (rather than the annual family reunion committee.)

Is there something else you feel would be helpful for the Admissions Committee to know? An optional third essay will allow you to discuss any topics that do not fall within the purview of the required essays. This does not need to be a formal essay. You may submit bullet points. (Maximum 500 Words)

CBS goes on to mention these might include, but are not limited to:

  • Adverse circumstances in your background
They want to account for any major hardships or life events that created a setback. This gives them context for how much you achieved or didn’t achieve during a certain period, rather than being forced to engage in unsupervised thinking. If done well, this essay can be effective in creating more of an emotional tie with admissions and help them know how a particular challenge affected and shaped you.

  • An exciting side venture in which you are working
Ideally, you will create a section for this in the CV, but this is a space where you can give more of the qualitative deep dive; reason for starting it/co-founding it, why you’re passionate about it. They are looking to understand 1) you as a person and 2) how your subject matter expertise and “lessons learned” might contribute to the cohort.

  • Areas of concern in your academic record
This one is obvious but don’t draw unnecessary attention to getting a B- in a class or a 3.3 GPA at Princeton. If that is your situation, it’s better to use this space to discuss things that shore up the plus side of admitting you. Now, if your transcripts would in fact raise red flags, then explain why and particularly important, illustrate how you have changed or how that situation would not affect your studies at Columbia.

  • Or just a fun fact!
Think about your areas of mastery, special knowledge, or passions. Consider ways you have contributed in the past, at work, school, or in the community. For one entrepreneur, he spoke about how he reached out to new startups published in ProductHunt and shared important advice around their business model to help them avoid failure.

"I was nervous even applying to M7 EMBAs as an Indian national in tech, with a 149 EA score. With Farrell's help I cracked both Kellogg and Booth EMBA, and offered 25k and 35k scholarships respectively. " – S.S, Chicago