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Nov 1909:00 AM PST
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What’s in it for you- Live Profile Evaluation Chat Session with Jenifer Turtschnow, CEO ARINGO. Come with your details prepared and ARINGO will share insights! Pre-MBA Role/Industry, YOE, Exam Score, C/GPA, ECs Post-MBA Role/ Industry & School List.
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Nov 1911:00 AM PST
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Join us in a live GMAT practice session and solve 30 challenging GMAT questions with other test takers in timed conditions, covering GMAT Quant, Data Sufficiency, Data Insights, Reading Comprehension, and Critical Reasoning questions. 
Nov 2010:00 AM EST
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If you’re applying to Columbia, NYU Stern, or Yale SOM, you need more than strong stats. Each school defines “leadership” differently, and your essays must reflect that. Join Sia Admissions founder, Susan Berishaj on November 20th
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Join our free expert-led Essay Workshops to discover how to choose impactful stories, highlight your core values, and align your background with each school’s distinct culture, making every word truly count.
Nov 2108:30 AM EST
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Nov 2109:30 PM IST
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Learn how to craft powerful, authentic essays by mastering the 3 “WHYs” every top MBA program looks for: Why MBA, Why Now, and Why This School.
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09 Jun 2025, 23:18
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Essay 1 (Leadership): What unique experiences have shaped who you are? What have these experiences taught you about leadership and the kind of leader you aspire to be? (400 words).
What a broad canvas ISB has handed over to the applicants, through this essay!
Start the essay by introducing who you are as a person. This is equivalent to breaking the ice with the evaluator of your essay. Narrate significant influences that have shaped up your personality. This requires self-reflection into your growing-up years. For instance, if your Dad was in a transferable job, you would have changed cities, schools, and friends every few years, shaping you into a very adaptable and amenable person; if you are from a business background, you would have witnessed the vagaries that any business has to endure, honing your risk-taking abilities; if you were in a boarding school or had working parents, independence comes quick and easy; if you were a part of NCC in school or are from an army background, discipline becomes your forte; if you were the eldest sibling, responsibility comes naturally to you.
The essay-prompt specifically asks about leadership experiences. Any person’s leadership experiences would broadly fall into two categories:
i) Exhibiting leadership: Applicants with lesser work-experience might not have had any chance to formally lead teams at work. However, formal authority is a very narrow and restricted view to associate leadership experiences with. A person’s leadership potential is best exhibited in his/her ability to influence others, even without any formal authority (in fact, ISB used to have an essay prompt on leadership without formal authority). So, introspect such instances in your life; this could be the informal leadership that you assumed in a group-project set-up in college, a position of responsibility that you assumed as part of your college-fest, or a sports-team that you led in school.
ii) Witnessing leadership: All of us come across people who rub us off in a “good” way: the compassionate teacher in school who was always willing to go out of her way to help students with their academics, the super-enthusiastic friend in college who had the ability to always inspire fellow-students to contribute to an endeavor, or the empathetic supervisor at work who is willing to stay after-office hours to just slog it out with the subordinates. These experiences might have firmed up your own views on the kind of leader you aspire to be.
We discourage applicants from mentioning that they aspire to be the kind of leaders that (say) Bill Gates or Steve Jobs was. While they were truly inspirational leaders, reference to such leaders will come across as very impersonal.
Essay 2 (Why MBA): What intellectual experiences have influenced your approach to learning and have led you to pursue an MBA? Please describe using anecdotes from your own experiences. (400 words).
"Why MBA" is what this essay prompt is essentially asking you. This is basically the goals essay. This essay is best addressed along three major points.
a) First what you have done in life so far (primarily on the professional/academic front)
b) Second what you want to do in future
c) Third how does MBA fit into the scheme of things
Clearly there are some experiences, attributes, and interests that you already have. This is your past. You have aspirations in life; you hope these aspirations to become your future. What is currently holding you back, from realizing your aspirations? This is where MBA comes into picture.
Essay 3 (How would you contribute to ISB): Share with us any intellectual pursuits, unique perspectives, or experiences that you pursued that have shaped your worldview, your growth through these pursuits, and how they could potentially contribute to our learning community (Optional 250 words).
This essay prompt is essentially asking:
How would your peer-group at ISB benefit from your presence?
Peer learning is a crucial component of the ISB PGP experience. Hence, applicants should consider mapping their personal experiences, academic experiences, work experience, and extra-curricular to their contribution to peer learning at ISB. For instance, your academic / professional background in a discipline (such as Marketing, Finance, or Operations) would directly enable you to bring real-life experiences in the corresponding discipline to classroom discussions and case-studies. If you have significant experience in a discipline, it might also enable you to assume a leadership position at a student run club at ISB, thereby contributing to the entire ISB community.
While applicants should emphasize their academic and professional experiences, life at ISB is not just about academics; there is a thriving life outside of classrooms as well. So, your personal background, your extra-curricular, and your hobbies can also contribute to the vibrant ISB community.
Note: While Essay-3 is an ‘optional’ essay, we suggest that applicants treat it as a mandatory essay and attempt it.
We hope that ISB PGP Essay Analysis presented above will help applicants effectively work on their PGP application.
--
Ashish
What a broad canvas ISB has handed over to the applicants, through this essay!
Start the essay by introducing who you are as a person. This is equivalent to breaking the ice with the evaluator of your essay. Narrate significant influences that have shaped up your personality. This requires self-reflection into your growing-up years. For instance, if your Dad was in a transferable job, you would have changed cities, schools, and friends every few years, shaping you into a very adaptable and amenable person; if you are from a business background, you would have witnessed the vagaries that any business has to endure, honing your risk-taking abilities; if you were in a boarding school or had working parents, independence comes quick and easy; if you were a part of NCC in school or are from an army background, discipline becomes your forte; if you were the eldest sibling, responsibility comes naturally to you.
The essay-prompt specifically asks about leadership experiences. Any person’s leadership experiences would broadly fall into two categories:
i) Exhibiting leadership: Applicants with lesser work-experience might not have had any chance to formally lead teams at work. However, formal authority is a very narrow and restricted view to associate leadership experiences with. A person’s leadership potential is best exhibited in his/her ability to influence others, even without any formal authority (in fact, ISB used to have an essay prompt on leadership without formal authority). So, introspect such instances in your life; this could be the informal leadership that you assumed in a group-project set-up in college, a position of responsibility that you assumed as part of your college-fest, or a sports-team that you led in school.
ii) Witnessing leadership: All of us come across people who rub us off in a “good” way: the compassionate teacher in school who was always willing to go out of her way to help students with their academics, the super-enthusiastic friend in college who had the ability to always inspire fellow-students to contribute to an endeavor, or the empathetic supervisor at work who is willing to stay after-office hours to just slog it out with the subordinates. These experiences might have firmed up your own views on the kind of leader you aspire to be.
We discourage applicants from mentioning that they aspire to be the kind of leaders that (say) Bill Gates or Steve Jobs was. While they were truly inspirational leaders, reference to such leaders will come across as very impersonal.
Essay 2 (Why MBA): What intellectual experiences have influenced your approach to learning and have led you to pursue an MBA? Please describe using anecdotes from your own experiences. (400 words).
"Why MBA" is what this essay prompt is essentially asking you. This is basically the goals essay. This essay is best addressed along three major points.
a) First what you have done in life so far (primarily on the professional/academic front)
b) Second what you want to do in future
c) Third how does MBA fit into the scheme of things
Clearly there are some experiences, attributes, and interests that you already have. This is your past. You have aspirations in life; you hope these aspirations to become your future. What is currently holding you back, from realizing your aspirations? This is where MBA comes into picture.
Essay 3 (How would you contribute to ISB): Share with us any intellectual pursuits, unique perspectives, or experiences that you pursued that have shaped your worldview, your growth through these pursuits, and how they could potentially contribute to our learning community (Optional 250 words).
This essay prompt is essentially asking:
How would your peer-group at ISB benefit from your presence?
Peer learning is a crucial component of the ISB PGP experience. Hence, applicants should consider mapping their personal experiences, academic experiences, work experience, and extra-curricular to their contribution to peer learning at ISB. For instance, your academic / professional background in a discipline (such as Marketing, Finance, or Operations) would directly enable you to bring real-life experiences in the corresponding discipline to classroom discussions and case-studies. If you have significant experience in a discipline, it might also enable you to assume a leadership position at a student run club at ISB, thereby contributing to the entire ISB community.
While applicants should emphasize their academic and professional experiences, life at ISB is not just about academics; there is a thriving life outside of classrooms as well. So, your personal background, your extra-curricular, and your hobbies can also contribute to the vibrant ISB community.
Note: While Essay-3 is an ‘optional’ essay, we suggest that applicants treat it as a mandatory essay and attempt it.
We hope that ISB PGP Essay Analysis presented above will help applicants effectively work on their PGP application.
--
Ashish
