The MBA question archetypes
ARCHETYPE 1: WHY AN MBA?’
1. Examples3
Briefly assess your career progress to date. Elaborate on your future career plans and your motivation for pursuing a graduate degree at the Kellogg School. (Kellogg)
Think about the decisions you have made in your life. Describe the follow- ing. Past: What choices have you made that led you to your current pos- ition? Present: Why is a Stern MBA necessary at this point in your life?
Future: What is your desired position upon graduation from the Stern School? (Stern)
Why do you want to do an MBA at the London Business School at this point in your life? What will you do if you are not offered a place on the London Business School MBA or any other MBA? (London)
2. How to recognize this archetype
Keywords: progress, past, present, future, career, goal, plan, aspiration, ambi- tion, decision, position, objective, intention, aim, purpose, life, short term, long term.
Figure 9.1 The ten MBA essay question archetypes.
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3. The underlying issue the committee is asking you to address
Stripped of its verbiage, this question always asks you: Why do you need an MBA, why now and why from us? Your response forms the backbone of your essay set and your whole application.
Note that there are five parts to the question, covering three time periods:
• Past – What experiences have led you to this point and this ambition?
• Present – Why an MBA now, at this point in your career?
• Future – What do you want to do with your degree, in the short and long term?
• Why an MBA from this school particularly?
• Why an MBA at all? (Why not another kind of Masters, or a PhD?) You should touch on all five topics somewhere in your complete essay set, but be careful to answer this and all questions exactly as posed. If the question is broadly posed, as with Kellogg above, all topics can be addressed in full. Note, however, that Stern does not ask for long-term goals and LBS has a particular sub-question.
In general, shape your ‘why an MBA’ answer carefully to whether the question asks more about your past (‘What has led you to want an MBA?’) or about your future (‘What will you do when you graduate? How will an MBA help you?’).
4. How to tackle it
This essay should be done in a clear and straightforward way. You can be creative in your answers to many other questions but here it is too risky. Here the committee is looking above all for unequivocal evidence of your professional maturity, as shown by your clarity of purpose.
Show due diligence
The ‘why an MBA’ question is one of the best places to prove you have done your homework on the school, and to argue that there is a specific match between your agenda and what’s on offer. Mention the school’s features, courses or extramural opportunities and say which are relevant to you and why.
Have definite goals
The admissions committee is looking for an organized career strategy that rests on solid self-understanding. They want to know why you have made the decisions you made, how they have brought you to this point in your life and where you are going from here. Goals can include broader, non-career and THE MBA ESSAY QUESTION ARCHETYPES 85
personal or community aspirations – but your first priority is to establish a clear professional path.
Connect past to future
The committee is asking how your past connects to your future via business school. You must show that the MBA is the bridge between you yesterday and you tomorrow. Paint a picture of a future that rests naturally on your past, assuming the MBA from the school in question. Past, present and future can be presented in any order. What works will depend on the details of your situation.
A generally versatile template is:
• Start with your direct goal on graduation.
• Then give a sense of your long-term (major) goals.
• Say why an MBA is relevant to these goals, and why now.
• Bolster this with what in your past has led you to this point.
• Finish with the particular aspects of the target school that are relevant and attractive, given your stated goals.
Communicating future aspirations Dream and be real
You have to walk a fine line here. On the one hand, you must think big.
Whether you want to manage a billion dollars, or create new brain technology industries, or fix Africa – whatever it is, you should communicate high aspir- ations and a potential career worthy of an MBA graduate in twenty years from now. On the other hand, you must demonstrate career-path realism: your dreams will take a lifetime to mature, and even then they may not. You should sound like you understand how careers evolve in your field and the ways you might have to ‘do your time’ (even if highly paid) before you become a true titan of your industry.
Show first steps
The best don’t wait for acceptance of their business school application before getting on with their dreams. You raise your stock immeasurably if you can show you have already taken steps towards the goal you claim to aspire to.
Have you done the certifications you need for your career move? Do you have a plan for attracting investors to the business you hope to set up? Convince the committee that you will make it happen no matter what, even if you don’t get into their school, or any school.
Have a worthwhile future
Faced with applicants who have equivalent grades and Gmats, the admissions committee will promote those who are on a unique, interesting, worthwhile 86 ESSAY MANAGEMENT
career mission. You may have to work hard to polish up whatever dullness or omissions lurk in your past, but your aspirations are safely ahead of you where no committee can verify them. So don’t hesitate to project yourself into valuable, distinctive roles.
Don’t hedge on your aspirations
Applicants sometimes say something like: ‘I want to go to Silicon Valley and create a startup using my knowledge of XPF-Bio data mining. If that doesn’t work out I may go back to my old job at Bear Stearns, or join the family business.’ Adcom prefers to bet on candidates who have a single-minded focus and who will do anything (legal) to realize their dream. If you don’t back yourself 100%, the committee won’t either.
Differentiate yourself
A common question is: ‘Should I include a family and kids in my stated life goals?’ The problem in doing this is not that you will appear a less serious candidate if you want a family, it is that you will spend precious space talking about a very common goal. You benefit most by focusing your reader on aspirations that set you apart.
5. How to flunk the ‘why an MBA’ question
You will mess up this essay if:
• You don’t answer parts of the question asked, or you answer parts not asked.
• Your style for this essay is flippant or frivolous.
• You fail to talk about the specific attributes of the program you are applying to, and why they are relevant to your education and your future.
• You have aspirations that are too low or too dull, or you are uncertain of them.
• Your career goals don’t require an MBA, or the role of an MBA is not clear.
• You have goals that are unrealistic, or you fail to explain a realistic path to them.
• Your goals are illogical or an extreme stretch given your past, suggest- ing career flakiness. (You’re a Kurdish linguist: you want to be a Wall Street analyst.) The committee will ask: ‘Is this aspiration logical? Will [he or she] be recruited?’
THE MBA ESSAY QUESTION ARCHETYPES 87
Mission goals versus functional goals
Most candidates make the mistake of leaving their goals at the level of func- tion – what they seek to do on a daily basis, rather than what they seek to achieve. They will say, for example, ‘I want to be a commercial real-estate analyst, or an equities trader, or a fund manager.’ Or, they may say, ‘I want to run my own firm’ or ‘I want to manage a multinational company.’ This is okay for a start, but you should seek to move rapidly past function and onto mission. A mission is something you want to achieve via the successful exercise of various functions – for example, commercializing your biomass energy company and taking it public, or turning Reykjavik into a free port, or creating a beauty-parlour empire in Indiana.
A function is what you do every day. A mission is what it all adds up to. It is true that many rich and successful MBAs are primarily well-paid functionar- ies: bankers or consultants or other kinds of highly paid managers their whole lives. You may well become that too. But this is not the way to get the atten- tion of the admissions committee. To get into business school, you should shape your functional aspirations in terms of a mission. Function is general, mission is specific and concrete and therefore more distinctive, more valuable.
Whatever your intended function is, it is likely to be shared by many appli- cants. Your mission will tell the committee something unique and resonant about you. It will suggest your passion and your dream.
Your mission goal is a second admissions ticket
Creating a career mission that is interesting, viable and worthwhile is like buying another lottery ticket in the admissions sweepstakes. If you are border- line and might not have been accepted on your merits as a candidate, you might sneak in on the merits of your worthwhile goal. Adcom is not in the business of discriminating between different candidate missions. But given a choice between two equal candidates, one of whom has a clear and support- able mission and the other who has merely determined his career function, Adcom will support the mission. It is very hard to turn down a candidate who is hoping to do something interesting and valuable in the world. It is easier to reject the candidate who will be just one more consultant or banker, or private equity analyst in the world.
The career arc
Your post-MBA career, if it all works out as planned, will look something like a rocket launched into sub-orbit. You will shoot very quickly upwards, then you will progress more slowly and perhaps in less of a straight line to your highest point, after which you will begin your decent into quasi- and eventually full 88 ESSAY MANAGEMENT
retirement. There are broadly three phases: the climb, the peak and the dénouement. Very often in the last phase, successful career-minded MBAs go in a new (but related) direction and turn more attention to community and philanthropy. They start consulting firms or turn their lifelong hobbies into businesses.
Women, but increasingly men as well, may take time out for parenthood along the way, but the shape of this broad life and career arc will still apply.
You should be able to say how this arc applies to you, how the sections will fit together and what broad themes will go with you all the way through your personal and professional life.
ARCHETYPE 2: STRENGTHS, SUCCESS AND ACHIEVEMENT