harvard business school application essay

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• The HBS Essay

The HBS Essay: Writing Strategies that Work and What to Avoid

For the last few years, Harvard Business School has challenged MBA applicants with its sole, open-ended essay question:

• As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program? (900 words)

Where to Begin?

With its broad nature and 900-word limit, it’s no surprise that many prospective business students have trouble getting started with the Harvard MBA essay, and wonder what direction they should take to answer this perplexing prompt. 

Candidates who are applying to HBS in future rounds will likely face the same essay question. In this article, we highlight common mistakes that applicants make and consider the best way for future applicants to approach this unapologetically unlimited essay prompt.

The HBS Essay: What This Year’s Applicants Should Consider

First off, applicants must realize what they are up against before approaching the infamous HBS MBA admission essay. The Harvard Business School acceptance rate is just 11%. Of the roughly 930 individuals who are accepted, there is a very small slice of amazingly fantastic applicants who write the essay as merely a formality. For the rest of the applicants fighting for the available slots–perhaps loads of you reading this article–there are several candidates who are equally qualified fighting for the same seat: great jobs, great career trajectories, great GPAs and GMATs. This means that your personal essay is meant to differentiate you and show the admissions committee why they should select YOU rather than competing applicants.

Learn from those applicants that came before you and make sure to give special thought on how you can really convey who you are in answering this essay question. It is not your typical essay prompt, so it deserves your time and attention.

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Menlo’s Expert Consultant, Yaron Dahan, on: “What more would you like us to know?”

The best advice I can give applicants answering the HBS essay question is this: select a topic that will play as well in the case method as it does with an admissions committee. Ultimately that is what HBS is looking for in its admits: Will this candidate be able to contribute something unique in a case discussion?

Think about the nine areas covered in HBS’s year-one required curriculum (finance, accounting, leadership, marketing, operations, entrepreneurship, strategy, ethics, and government/economics), and figure out where you will be able to add the most value. Dee Leopold, the former admissions director at HBS, told the story of one student who did this very successfully in his interview, and was admitted to the HBS class the following year:

“This is a guy who worked in a small manufacturing facility in a tiny town in Michigan where they make baby formula. He was in quality control, working with union people. Early on the job, they discovered there were bugs in the machinery of the factory. They are contaminating the product, and management was obviously deeply concerned about the problem. The news trucks have gathered outside. The CEO comes. That is an amazing voice to bring to our course on Leadership and Corporate Accountability.”

As an applicant, it’s your job to accomplish the same thing in your essay that this candidate did in his interview. Show them you have a unique contribution to make. If you can do that, then you’ve mastered the HBS essay question.

In the video below, Yaron elaborates on how to approach the personal essays at HBS and Stanford.

Yaron Dahan on Personal Essays for HBS and GSB Admissions

The harvard mba essay: what doesn’t work, playing it safe. .

HBS wants to see several qualities in the applicants it admits: aptitude, accomplishment, character, and passion. Your GMAT and GPA will speak to your analytical aptitude, your resume to your accomplishment, and your recommenders to your character. That leaves your HBS application essay to speak toward your passion: will you have interesting stories and opinions to contribute to the HBS case discussions? Will you involve yourself in the broader Harvard community? Do you have the drive to achieve ambitious things after you graduate? To give the admissions committee confidence in your candidacy, you must let your quirks and passions come through. You cannot play it safe and write a simple, boring essay.

Although you cannot be boring in your MBA essays, you do NOT want to go overboard. In the video below, our co-founder Alice talks about things to avoid while writing the personal essay, namely:

• Using the essay to show literary creativity 
• Boasting in ways that are off-putting 
• Dishonesty and trying to conceal failures

Alice van Harten on Common Mistakes in HBS Essays

Answering the hbs prompt like a typical mba essay question..

The key point of the Harvard Business School essay is the phrase “what more,” which is a clear signal that HBS does not want you using the essay to rehash things that are already covered by your resume, career goals statement, professional recommendations or written application form.

If the HBS admissions team wanted to know why you wanted a business degree, or why you wanted to go to Harvard, or what your career path was, then they would ask. They certainly have asked applicants those questions in years past. But realize that, in providing this very open-ended prompt, HBS expects very open-ended answers. They want answers from applicants that could never be prompted by any questions the admissions committee could ask. They want to learn the things that make you different as an applicant. So take the hint, and realize that HBS ditched the standard essay prompts for a reason. They are looking for something different here. Be creative, and be genuine.

Focusing on one or more of your weaknesses. 

Every year, candidates seem to battle insecurities over the same issues: their GPA was only a 3.2; their GMAT is just a fraction too low; they don’t have many significant extracurriculars. It’s possible that those issues need to be addressed in your MBA application, but this essay is absolutely not the place to do it. HBS will never admit you for mitigating every possible weakness; they will only admit you for showing remarkable strength in one or two really interesting areas. Take the HBS essay question as the opportunity to demonstrate the latter, and leave addressing your GPA or extracurriculars for other parts of your application.

One Menlo Client’s Experience Working on the HBS Essay

Harvard’s MBA admissions essay is not for the faint of heart. It takes dedication, perseverance, and quite a bit of time. It is not a personal essay that you can whip out in one sitting, and we’ve heard many clients say that they woefully underestimated the time and effort needed to complete it well.

For Menlo Coaching client Vicky, the secret to HBS success was to go beyond just talking about her successful career in consulting and retail, and talk about her long-term vision for her family’s manufacturing business.

In the video below, she discusses how we helped her through the MBA admissions process generally, and with finding the right story for HBS specifically (use the chapter “Essay Writing Process” to jump directly to that part).

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HBS Essay Examples: How Former Clients Approached the Harvard MBA Essay & Application Journey and Won Admission

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Harvard Business School MBA Essay: 5 Things to Do

Our guide to one of the most important parts of the MBA application for Harvard Business School: the essay, including our hand-picked HBS coach recommendations and other articles to get you started.

Posted May 11, 2024

Deferred Admissions Panel: Crush Your MBA Interviews

Friday, may 17.

12:00 AM UTC · 60 minutes

Table of Contents

Harvard Business School is one of the most renowned universities and business programs in the world. Established in 1908, it boasts impressive alumni like Michael Bloomberg, George W. Bush, and Abigail Johnson. With such a reputation, it is no surprise that the HBS application can be a grueling process. This is our guide to one of the most important parts of that application: the essay. Read on for tips to help you distinguish your candidacy and present the best essay possible.

HBS Essay Prompts (2024): Traditional & Deferred

Traditional application essay prompt.

The HBS essay asks a simple and open-ended question that gives applicants the ability to highlight whatever they believe is most important and relevant. The prompt is as follows:

As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program? (900 words maximum)

On its website, Harvard advises applicants, “Don’t overthink, over craft, and overwrite. Just answer the question in clear language that those of us who don’t know your world can understand.” HBS has only recently instigated the limit of 900 words. With such an ambiguous question, it’s important to make every word count. It is easy to go on tangents, use the wrong example, or write simply to put words on the page. Students often don’t know where to start, and when to end.

HBS 2+2 Deferred MBA Essay Prompts

As of 2024, HBS has updated its deferred MBA essay prompts for the first time in many years. The new deferred essay requirements involve writing three short essays: two personal ones and one career one. Each essay has a limit of 300 words.

Personal Essays

The HBS classroom and community thrive when we bring together people who can share a variety of perspectives. To get to know you better and how you will engage at HBS, please choose two of the three prompts below to tell us more about yourself:

1. How have your experiences shaped who you are, how you lead, and how you will contribute at HBS? 2. What intellectual experiences have influenced your approach to learning and have led you to pursue an MBA? 3. What communities have you been engaged with that have defined how you invest in others?

Career Essay

How do the career plans you shared in the Career Plans section of the application fit into your current long-term career vision? What skills and/or professional experiences do you hope to obtain in the deferral period that will help build the foundation for your post-MBA career?

For more info on the HBS deferred MBA essays, read: HBS 2+2 Deferred MBA Essay Prompts & Tips (2024)

Now, here are our five HBS essay tips, designed to help you stand out among the over 9,000 applicants that apply to Harvard Business School each year.

HBS Essay Tips for Success

1. tell a story.

There is no set formula or “right” way to write your HBS essay. Every MBA candidate comes from a different background and unique circumstances. Your job with this essay is to paint the most accurate picture you can of who you are and why you should be accepted into Harvard. They want you to stay true to yourself and let your personality shine. Your resume, test scores, and GPA are important, but they don’t show character; the essay is where you can really make a difference in your application.

With that being said, don’t write what you think the admissions committee wants to hear. They have read through thousands of essays, but they have never read an essay by you , so capitalize on your individuality. HBS wants to know where you have come from and what experiences have shaped who you are. This essay should absolutely not be a retelling of your resume and professional achievements.

Through this essay, HBS wants to see that you understand yourself. They also want to know whether you align with Harvard’s missions and values. They are looking for future leaders who want to make a difference in the world. The best way to prepare for this essay is to deeply reflect on yourself. Who are you? What matters to you? Why are you the way you are? At the end of the day, if you can answer this question, posed by an HBS alum , then you have got a good start: “Could this essay also describe someone else?” If so, then you probably need to do some more introspection.

2. Be Concise

When in doubt, ask yourself, “Does the admissions committee need to know this?” If not, it’s probably safe to take out. There is no “right” length to hit as every candidate will have a different story they’re trying to tell; however, there is a difference between telling a story and rambling. Include relevant information and paint an accurate picture, but do so in a clear and concise manner. Imagine that your essay is the hundredth that the adcom member is reading that day. How would you write to keep them engaged while also preserving the integrity of your story? That is the balance that you are looking for.

3. Don’t Just Answer “Why HBS?”

Unlike many other business schools, Harvard does not ask the stereotypical “Why HBS?” question. With that being said, applicants often feel like they need to use the essay to demonstrate their commitment to HBS. Most of the time, this is not the right approach. Your essay should be about you. Harvard is one of the most prestigious universities in the world and you don’t need to justify why you want to attend. Using the precious space you have to talk about HBS is a missed opportunity to shed light on your experiences.

The caveat to this is if providing your reason for attending Harvard makes your overall essay stronger. Some applicants may have a personal story tying them to HBS that they want to expound on. If that’s the case, then include it. The same adage from earlier applies here: If your “Why HBS?” answer could also explain someone else, then you probably don’t need it.

4. Build, Build, Build

Like any good story, your HBS essay should have a thread of continuity throughout. Introduce a theme or lesson, touch base on it every once in a while, and tie everything together in the conclusion. In addition to making your essay more interesting, this will prevent it from coming off as disjointed. Building up to the main point will also keep the reader in suspense and eager to read on. Because the prompt is so open-ended, it’s easy to have many different things you want to talk about. Sticking to a theme will help you ensure that everything you include is relevant.

5. Get Feedback

After spending lots of time writing something, it can be difficult to step back and view your work with a fresh, unbiased eye. Once you’ve written a rough draft, have a peer or mentor read through your essay and provide feedback. Ideally, the person reviewing your essay will be an alum of the school. But if that’s not an option, choose someone with business experience and writing skills that knows something about your background.

Don’t overedit your essay. Drafts, reviews, and edits are all part of the writing process but you don’t want to overpolish, especially to the point that you rub out your individuality. Instead, we recommend starting your essay early so that you have plenty of time to self-reflect, write, and step back for perspective. Once you’ve completed your first draft, ask for feedback and make some edits, but then put it away for a while. When you come back to it, you will have a fresher perspective and be less bogged down by the details.

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Get Into HBS With the Help of an Expert

At Leland, we have a broad network of world-class coaches who can help with any part of the MBA application. Many of them are experts in essay writing, browse them here. Want to work with an HBS alum who has first-hand experience of the Harvard application process? Here are some of our highest-rated MBA admissions coaches.

Where Can I Start?

The application process can be daunting and difficult, especially without help. Read these articles to get started on your HBS journey.

• Harvard Business School: MBA Program & Application Overview
• How to Write a Powerful MBA Essay
• A Comprehensive MBA Timeline–With Chart
• How to Ace the HBS MBA Interview

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• Harvard Business School MBA Application Deadlines (2023-2024)
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How To Write Harvard HBS Essay With Examples

Harvard Business School’s MBA is one of the most well-known, acclaimed professional degrees in the world. When applying to HBS is a competitive next step in your education and career, every aspect of your application deserves careful deliberation and preparation, especially your HBS essay. 

The application essay requires even more thought because Harvard Business School views essays as a real-time representation of who you are (besides the interview and statement of purpose ), professionally and personally. This blog will take you through a step-by-step process so you’ll know exactly how to write the Harvard Business School essay.  

Hopefully, it will also help invigorate your pride in your own story, for Harvard Business School will be more likely to see your potential if you demonstrate that you see it too.

Harvard Business School Essay Prompts

The Harvard Business School essay is just one component of a complete MBA application, but it certainly has its own considerations. So, it is important that you take time to consider the essay separately from the rest of the documents and information in your application. The essay prompt is as follows:

As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program?

This essay question is particularly challenging for many applicants due to its vague nature.  The other potentially unexpected kicker to this prompt: there is no word limit. Regarding the length of your essay, the Harvard Business School webpage suggests that you “use your best judgment, and try to be clear… and concise.” 

We’ll discuss how to best work on this deliverable later in the blog, as it is an important factor in the overall presentation of your writing. 

Unless you have an exceedingly in-depth resume, the essay is definitely going to be the most personal aspect of your application. The essay is your chance to use your own words to describe yourself, your values, and your insights. 

It will be the most significant signal to the admissions committee as to how your background has influenced you and how HBS would fit well into your future.

How to Write Harvard Business School Essay in 6 Steps

Organization is key to ensuring quality in your HBS essay. It’s important to order tasks in an accomplishable, reasonable way where each goal is clear and manageable. 

Exploring blogs about MBA essay writing is one way to get ideas flowing. To help wrap your head around organizing your essay-writing efforts, here are some beginning-to-end steps for the creation of your HBS essay:

• Self-Reflection
• Decide on the Right Story and Its Theme
• Write an Outline
• Start Your Essay Carefully and Deliberately 
• Draft Your Essay and Revise
• Get an Outside Perspective ‍

1. Self-Reflection

Start the process of HBS essay writing with something as equally fundamental as it is simple: thought. Consider the role that the essay will play in your application and how to make the essay benefit your goal of getting into Harvard Business School. 

There are two sides to useful self-reflection regarding a goal like a Harvard MBA.

First, think purposefully about your career goals and tie them to an MBA at Harvard Business School. Ask yourself, how would a Harvard MBA help you get to where you want to go, professionally? What would you most like to gain from your time studying at HBS? 

Thinking about these things and then including them in your essay will demonstrate to the admissions committee that you have a clear trajectory for your MBA experience and your career. 

Additionally, revealing these considerations in your essay will speak to your confidence in your aspirations and in your decision to apply for Harvard Business School, which will likewise be attractive to the admissions committee.

The other side to a useful introspection would be considering what you as a student would contribute to Harvard and to its MBA program. A US News article about successful MBA essays encourages you to highlight what you would contribute to the HBS MBA program, so that you come across as a useful addition instead of simply a “taker.” 

If you were in the admissions committee's shoes, what would be the most enticing aspects of your past education, your experiences , and your personality. Essentially, you should think, specifically and without judgment, about what your biggest strengths as an applicant are, realistically. 

Knowing this will help you, both consciously and subconsciously, weave your most compelling characteristics into your essay so that the admissions committee gets to know your best side. ‍

2. Decide on the Right Story and Its Theme

You absolutely do not want to use your essay as a canvas on which to dump information about yourself. Harvard is not interested in reading an essay that expands on your entire resume or simply describes you. Tell a story! 

Elucidate on an impactful experience or explain a significant lesson you’ve learned. You’ll probably either overflow with abounding exciting examples to choose from, or you’ll struggle to find even one compelling anecdote. 

Don’t worry if you sit in this situation for a while; after all, you’ll ultimately still need to decide on just one topic, whether that means whittling down your options or sifting through your past to isolate that one perfect story. 

Once you finally do settle on that one excellent, fascinating subject that excites you enough to write about, you should also deliberate about what you intend your themes and tones to be. What would the ideal takeaway(s) be for a reader of your essay? 

Additionally, and this is annoyingly subjective, so apologies; how do you want to sound ? You should have a picture of how your essay will present your information, and you should have a picture of how your essay will present you . 

The admissions committee will use the essay to try to imagine you and the role you’d play at Harvard , so keep in mind how they would do this with the essay you write. ‍

3. Write an Outline

This step is fairly straightforward. Take the most important points of your topic, and put them in an order that would flow well as you write. Make sure, as you lay these points out, that they align with each other coherently and that they reflect your intended theme. 

From there, write out some thoughts on how best to integrate each point into a complete essay. You might want to explicitly write out which details are most crucial to each part of your story or subject. For example, let's say your compelling story about a transformative internship abroad begins by explaining what you were doing before it. 

Then, intuitively, you’d have to include details about where you were at this stage of the story and whether you were working, studying, traveling, etc. Put this information in your outline, so you know that you don’t leave things out and lose your reader. ‍

4. Start Your Essay Carefully and Deliberately

The way you begin your essay is quite important and will in many ways determine how the rest of your essay will shape out. First things first, make sure you feel good about your first sentence. 

Just like the opening scene of a movie, the first statement or two of your HBS essay will introduce your writing style and general tone to the admissions committee readers. Consistency always improves readability, and consistency starts with your opening sentence. 

Try to make the first couple sentences intriguing to garner some interest right from the get-go.

From the first sentence, ensure you’re keeping to your tone, at least peripherally. We can all agree a shift in tone tends to break the flow of good writing, and to have that break early on in your essay might throw the admissions committee off. 

The more sentences you write in a consistent tone and manner, the easier it will be to continue to write in holding with them. Because you’re trying to tell one, coherent story, the reader will be most interested if your writing follows an intuitive flow of ideas.

5. Draft Your Essay and Revise

From this last point, try as best you can to find a steady pace, and begin expanding on your outline. The nice part of this step is that you don’t have to get carried away with wording, sentence structure, or length. Again, focus on including all the relevant details and continue matching your tone. 

Try to write at a reasonable rate for decent chunks of time instead of writing intermittently while giving in to distractions. The more consecutively you write each sentence and paragraph, the better they’ll run together when someone’s reading them.

The reason you’ve already prepared an outline, and plan to edit throughout the rest of your writing process, is to make your first attempt at writing the essay as easy as it can be. 

Mistakes and breaks in your thinking can easily be caught by careful reading after the fact, so capitalize on inspiration when it hits and simply get your first draft onto the page. When writing an important, personal essay like this one, it also serves you well to keep boosting your confidence. 

If you fixate on word choice and how your writing is sounding, you’ll be more likely to break up the flow of your statements and make reading your essay feel choppy. You are telling your own story, and the point of the essay is for the admissions committee to get a better idea of your personality and character, so take pride in the fact that you’re unambiguously the best writer for this subject. ‍

6. Get an Outside Perspective‍

Once you’ve written the entirety of your essay and edited it carefully and precisely, get some extra peace of mind by having one or two other people read your essay. The more insightful and writing-experienced your readers of choice are, the more you’ll benefit from their critiques and opinions. 

The crucial part of this step is to get thoughts from someone unattached to your writing. As fervently and specifically as you may edit your own essay, you’ll always struggle to distance yourself from your emotional attachment to certain phrases, details, or even words. It’s ok. Every writer goes through this with the things they write. Trust us.

This other person allows you to hear a perspective from someone who read every sentence as how it sounded, not how it was intended. In this way, they fill the shoes of the admissions committee, but at a stage where you can still make changes to your essay. 

Don’t take criticisms personally; it's better to hear them now than to be at their mercy after submitting your application. 

No, you don’t need to force yourself to accept every change proposed by your reader(s). The point of an outside perspective is not to find a qualified editor and let them rewrite an essay about something important to you. 

This step is more useful just in reinvigorating your own thoughts about your paper because, in the late stages of your essay writing, it's much easier to get bogged down with the same considerations and forget the bigger things you’re trying to say to the admissions committee.

3 Successful Harvard Business School Essay Examples That Worked

Here are successful Harvard Business School essay examples to give you an idea of what to write. 

Sample Essay #1

“Start again,” my mother would demand after tossing my less-than-perfect homework into the trash. As a kid, I was taught that ‘work is finished when it’s not just your best work, but the best.’ Most kids would resent a parent for this, but I didn’t: my mom practiced the same rigor with her own work. She had to—a Latin immigrant with only a high school degree in 1980s [City] was held to a higher standard, especially one fighting to change both the media’s and corporations’ impressions about Latinx consumers.

I have applied this doctrine of “do better, be better” throughout my life, focusing on improving my own communities, be it through offering students a taste of food around the world with a college underground pop-up kitchen or planning a [Latinx event] as a conference chair. Last year gave me the chance to continue to work on being an inclusive leader in the Black/Latinx (B/LX) community as a ‘white-passing’ individual. Ultimately, however, these concerns were unimportant when given the opportunity to improve things now for the B/LX community. My new work projects helped me confront leaders I felt had not supported teams during the summer’s tragedies. I learned how feedback framed as suggestions could have powerful consequences. In fact, one of my managers actually came to me for advice on how to engage his peers in order to help his local community use pooled funds from [consulting group].

These experiences have helped me refine my long-term aspirations. Though I would still like to build on my mother’s legacy of a community-minded entrepreneur, I dream of founding my own venture capital fund. I want to alter the face of business by empowering young, diverse entrepreneurs who will bring novel approaches to lingering problems from past generations. Rather than improve my community only through projects supporting others’ priorities, I intend to be an active participant, building an incubator for entrepreneurs of color to eliminate barriers that maintain inequality such as urban food insecurity and underfunded education systems.

HBS will immerse me in the rapidly evolving entrepreneurial environment, helping me to understand process and practice creating ideas as both a founder and funder. On campus, I intend to be an active participant in HBS’ Anti-Racism goals, fighting to bring equity and inclusion with the same passion I have brought to my office and B/LX network. After graduating, I plan to continue engaging with HBS, either by working with student-run investment groups (like IVP’s Steve Harrick and the students behind the inclusion-focused Phoenix Fund) or working with professors to influence HBS’ future (like alumni Lulu Curiel and Eric Calderon, who helped develop a case study with Professor Alvarez to improve Latinx representation in MBA programs). Internalizing the case-method and the hands-on experiences acquired in my two years on-campus will embolden me to disrupt the status quo, both from the grassroots and executive levels.

What Made It Successful 

So, what works well in this thoughtful, personal HBS application essay? Starting with the introduction, the anecdote that this writer starts their essay with grabs attention through the strict rigor that their mother required for them growing up. 

Again, the key to the first few statements of an application essay lies in their ability to compel the reader to read on. An excellent introduction. will ensure  reading your essay is  a pleasure instead of a chore. 

Further on in this essay example, the reader understands where the applicant's motivation for equality and fair representation stems from, and this theme persists throughout the piece. It’s through demonstrating strong points like these that the reader reaches a higher empathy for the writer, which never hurts when applying to Harvard Business School. 

We also gain appreciation for the leadership skills of the writer due to their clear descriptions of past examples. Crucially, do not just hear how these examples played out, but what lessons the writer learned from them that they continue to apply. 

Finally, the essay’s conclusion cites both short-term and long-term goals for the writer's schooling and career, and this section feels very specifically written for HBS. 

Including references to Harvard Business School and its alumni, as done in this example, shows the admissions committee that your efforts in writing this essay are totally aimed at getting into HBS’s MBA, and that you’ve thought hard enough about the decision to do in-depth research.

Sample Essay #2

Our life experiences shape our skills, perspective and help define our paths. Reflecting on my personal and professional journey, I would like to share three lessons which have strongly shaped my journey and outlook.

My first lesson is about people. I feel fortunate to have understood the enormous potential in empathizing and collaborating with individuals to achieve community success, organizational targets and personal goals.

Perhaps due to my father’s frequent job transfers, I grew-up as a reticent, lone worker, shying away from forging long-lasting relationships. While excelling academically, I skipped participating in anything at school that required dependence on other people. It was only at my undergraduate institution, [University] that I really started building relationships with my hostel-mates and exploring the various opportunities [University] offered.

However, soon dark realities came to the forefront when a final-year student committed suicide while my close friend, [Name], got sucked into a vortex of depression due to his poor academic performance. Deeply shaken, I resolved to address mental-health issues on campus and joined the Institute Counseling Service, comprising student volunteers, faculty and professional counselors who sought to provide emotional and academic help to students.

Driven to make a difference, I led 240 student volunteers, strengthened our mentorship program to identify students in need of professional help and organized Orientation Programs. To dispel the stigma associated with mental-health and build trust, we increased the approachability of counsellors by initiating hostel visits and collaborated with NGOs to use theatre and generate awareness. I personally mentored students and it was heartwarming to create an environment in which people were able to discuss their personal issues freely with me. While I gained friends for life, I realized there is no greater happiness than witnessing one’s mentee overcome difficulties and be successful! Listening to varied personal experiences inculcated empathy and fostered ability to forge strong interpersonal connections.

This experience stayed with me during my professional journey with [Consumer Goods Company]. Just out of college, I had to navigate union strikes, reconcile socio-political contexts and motivate 600+ unskilled workers, several years my senior to transform the quality performance of an $800M factory in a small town. Leveraging interpersonal skills, I understood employee concerns and created an experiential training program. Listening to them, educating them, sharing success and owning failures together, I immersed myself in the workforce environment, instilling a culture of innovation and change. Our efforts reaped dividends as we eliminated all consumer complaints and achieved the best-ever performance in quality metrics, securing [Consumer Goods Company] market-share and launching 24 premium product variants. Thus, I learnt to drive organizational change by harnessing people’s potential.

My second life lesson is about values. I feel long-term success can only be achieved if one has the character to stand by one’s principles during testing times.

At age-5, I recall accompanying my mother to court hearings to witness a long-drawn trial involving my father. Overtime, I understood how my father had been slapped with a fake harassment case because he refused to accept a bribe for professional favors. Standing by his principles, he was later acquitted emerging as my inspiration and teaching me values of honesty and integrity.

After 17 years, these values were tested. Early-on in my role as Quality Manager of [Consumer Goods Company] plant, consumer complaints for a particular defect inflicted 10% market-share losses in [Big City]. On probing, I realized that we had overlooked an important data trend during manufacturing that could have averted the disaster. While corporate auditors were preparing a report attributing the occurrence of defect to chance, I presented the true picture, taking full responsibility. It was a difficult decision as our factory had already lost credibility prior to my joining. Our General Manager intervened to manage the crisis and while recognizing my ethics and courage, placed faith on my ability to redeem myself.

Motivated to prove myself, I worked incessantly with my team, ensuring that I drive systemic changes and build a culture of continuous improvement. Within one-year, we achieved benchmark performances, restoring faith in the unit/team. During our annual performance review, our unit was appreciated for data-integrity, reinforcing my belief in my value system.

The third lesson is about impact. I believe true success is achieved when people are guided by a desire to create sustainable impact and make a positive difference in society.

During a factory-visit, I engaged with our CEO, and advocated driving growth by monetizing [Consumer Goods Company] distribution network to service regional firms/startups. Intrigued, he inducted me into his office in the Trade Marketing and Distribution function in a strategic role, a move unheard for any non-MBA engineer. Initially, I engaged with product entrepreneurs to offer them [Consumer Goods Company] distribution for scaling-up. One case was [Company], a [City]-based startup that innovated on cost-effective sanitary napkins. We are helping them reach 60M consumers in [Country], a country where 75% women resort to unhygienic alternatives. Curious to understand their success, I engaged with the founder, [Name]. I realized [Name] was driven by a desire to positively impact the lives of rural women and this motivated him to innovate continuously.

Reflecting on this conversation, I identified how [Consumer Products Company] could play a larger role in adding to consumer-value and go beyond giving distribution access to CPG startups. If tech leaders such as Google, Microsoft could incubate technology startups, we needed to explore similar models in the CPG space. I formulated a strategic investor model to incubate and eventually acquire CPG startups, a first for an Indian CPG firm, and pitched it to senior leadership. They appreciated my vision of synergizing with startups, providing [Consumer Products Company] marketing expertise and product development insights to encourage product innovation, thereby creating an inorganic growth roadmap for [Consumer Products Company] vision of achieving $15B by 2030.

These lessons provide the foundation to succeed and define my professional ambitions. Going forward, I envision energizing the [Country] CPG startup ecosystem, stimulating innovation and strengthening symbiotic relationships with Corporations to deliver high social-impact products, creating sustainable value for 1.2B Indian consumers. While my experiences have created the primer, I see Harvard as the perfect catalyst to transform me into a change leader. Building on my life lessons, I can’t wait to engage with classmates who bring with them a wealth of global experiences and stories!

Sample Essay #3

I remember my hands trembling as I clenched the scissors, and my mother’s gorgeous locks fell to the ground − I was six years old. Compelled to quit her studies after marriage, my mother resumed her masters in [course] after ten stifling years. With my father’s solitary income going into tuition for my mother, sister and me, a proper haircut was a wasteful luxury. My parents shielded us from their struggles, but the gravity of our situation hit home as I cut my mother’s hair.

When my mother finally cleared her examinations, I expected things to change. Instead, she declined lucrative offers to join public-services, catering to marginalized populations through [country’s] public healthcare system. My parents unwavering desire to lead a life of meaning, fuelled my own. Over the course of my journey, I have carved my own path to making a difference – one of spreading my ideas and impact, beyond what I could accomplish alone. I would like to share how three transformative experiences, starting over a decade ago, have progressively shaped this lifelong approach.

At 13, I was devastated to see my sister’s tiny frame shake violently as she coughed from asthma. What affected me most was learning that we had all contributed to these respiratory problems, by making [city] the most polluted city in the world.

I refused to remain a silent spectator and started an environment club, [club], at school. Digging-up compost pits and conducting tree-plantation drives, our team explored every opportunity to make our premises greener. The efforts of our small 10-member team indicated to me the potential to spur larger change by motivating all 1500 students to step-up. Our idea to achieve this, by integrating environmental-awareness within our curriculum, was dismissed by the administration for lack of resources. Undeterred, I started writing applications to garner financial support, and within months, led our team to the first place in a national competition. The $15K we won infused both resources and enthusiasm to implement our eco-friendly curriculum.

Juggling my graduation-examinations and endless hours of organizing activities for the entire school, we grew [club] five-fold. Students stepped-up to expand our efforts, from transitioning our school to using solar energy to organizing large-scale zero-waste campaigns. ‘Exponential’ was no longer just a graph I studied, I could tangibly see my impact multiplying by mobilising individuals around me.

Eager to replicate our success beyond school, I initiated environmental workshops for children from urban-slums in [city].

“Boys don’t need to save money for dowry, do they not have to conserve environmental resources either?” asked 11-year old [name]. Half-way into my first workshop, my analogy of saving money to explain the concept of conserving environmental resources, had derailed my session-plan.

Having witnessed the consequences of gender-disparity in my own childhood I started my non-profit [non-profit], during college, to promote holistic life-skills education to uproot such evils. I was happiest spending weekends in community-centres and public-classrooms, with my team of student-volunteers, conducting activity-based workshops for hundreds of children. I vividly remember when, beaming with pride, [name] told me that she had saved enough money to buy her house. She not only grasped complex concepts of banking and savings, but acknowledged herself as a financially-independent female – albeit in a game of Monopoly!

By graduation, we grew to a 20-member team and reached 1,000+ children. However, once I moved to join Investment-Banking, our student-volunteer model disintegrated and fundraising for a full-time team seemed impossible. While struggling to sustain momentum, I saw a class-teacher enthusiastically taking initiative to support our program, during a workshop. Watching her, it struck me that scaling-up [non-profit] was not the only way to further impact.

‍ "Over the course of my journey, I have carved my own path to making a difference – one of spreading my ideas and impact, beyond what I could accomplish alone."

Restructuring our workshops into a comprehensive curriculum, we showcased it to the state academic department. Winning their support, we trained 100 public-school teachers and principals to deliver the program. Within two years, these teachers extended our program to 10,000 children and even co-opted their colleagues. Their efforts reaffirmed my conviction that enabling change-agents at a systemic-level could accelerate impact at scale.

To steer my journey in this direction, I decided to quit my investment-banking job in [country] and return to [country]. Forgoing the financial comfort I was finally providing my family weighed on me, but I chose to follow my heart. I joined [foundation], a philanthropy focused on driving systemic change to tangibly impact India’s education landscape.

Innovative, low-cost teaching-aids developed by [company], my [foundation] portfolio-organisation, drastically improved learning for children in rural classrooms. However, their low-monetization potential generated minimal funder interest, threatening their existence. Their question, “How will we serve these children, when we can barely stay afloat?” echoed my own struggles at [non-profit].

Collaborating with the [state] government, I helped [company] reduce costs through subsidies and extend their program to 40,000 students. I was leading large-scale projects with public systems at [foundation], but I realized that empowering social-enterprises such as [company] to drive systemic change could create ripple-effects throughout the ecosystem.

My ten-year-old self wouldn't believe just how far I have come – my hands no longer shake when I take decisive actions, whose outcomes I cannot always predict.

Today, non-profit social-enterprises in India fail to reach their potential, owing to lack of financial and strategic support - the largest remains 1/100th the size of its global peers. So, I took on the mandate to launch an Accelerator within [non-profit], to ensure this support, even though this meant leaving my team and starting out alone. My path was uphill, given [non-profit’s] strategic shift towards working directly with governments − the initiative was peripheral for every decision, be it budget-allocations or team-building.

The eagerness of portfolio-organizations in leveraging every support opportunity kept me going. Months of co-creating monetization strategies and facilitating government meetings paid off, in one instance, enabling immense expansion for the portfolio-organization to reach 800,000 children. Such successes helped evangelize our potential and we are now raising an independent fund to support 30 entrepreneurs to help transform education for 5M children.

My ten-year-old self wouldn’t believe just how far I have come – my hands no longer shake when I take decisive actions, whose outcomes I cannot always predict. Striving to continually widen my impact has helped me progress from empowering school-students to supporting social-entrepreneurs, towards enabling an entire ecosystem of social change-makers.

Battling one constant challenge throughout, that of inadequate resources, has highlighted how social-finance could be the ‘driving-force’ towards my goal. Most importantly, I have learnt that beyond individual efforts, by spearheading thought-leadership and global alliances, I can mobilize the entire ecosystem, catalyzing robust social-investment markets in India.

My friend [name] described how assimilating diverse perspectives through the case-method at HBS helped him understand nuances of business across cultures, while the vibrant community provided access to global networks. HBS equipped him to launch and grow his company across eight emerging economies, through partnerships with local entrepreneurs. Similarly, I am convinced that the ideas, experiences and relationships built at HBS will help me realize my vision where every [club], [non-profit] and [company] can go on to create the change it aspires to.

Mistakes to Avoid in Your Harvard Business Essay

1. Show Don’t Tell

If you use your essay to outright explain what you’re trying to show the admissions committee about yourself, you run a much higher risk of losing readability and taking your application from an opportunity to a plea. Instead, demonstrate your takeaways, your best qualities, through your story and its examples. 

The reader is far more likely to be compelled by the conclusions of your essay if they feel like they came to them themselves. By not explicitly explaining the point of your essay, you come across more sure in the topic you’ve chosen and its ability to reveal the point. ‍

2. Avoid Lackluster Anecdotes

Your essay will be bolstered or weakened by the intrinsic quality of the experiences about which you write. Only include anecdotes that you’d be just as comfortable and confident about retelling to dinner guests or friends at a bar. 

Obviously, the formality of those situations and the Harvard Business School MBA application differ starkly, but the gist of this statement is that if you’d feel awkward telling a story to your friends, it’d be hard to make it sound good for an unseen admissions committee reader. 

If it’s a story you’ll enjoy writing about, it’ll stand a better chance of being enjoyable to read. ‍

3. Don’t Narrate – Craft a Compelling Story

Ensure your topic flows seamlessly through relevant experiences and lessons. Establishing clear cause-and-effect relationships among different events not only maintains the reader's interest but also justifies each inclusion in your essay. While coherence is essential, be cautious not to force connections between unrelated experiences or anecdotes; instead, strive for a well-integrated narrative with a cohesive beginning-to-end structure."

4. Don’t Do This Yourself

Utilize guides and blog posts about the undertaking of applying to an MBA program, getting as specific to Harvard Business School as you can. 

Reviewing a concise guide about applying to Harvard Business School can be the best way to ensure that your application is sound, not just for any MBA program, but for Harvard Business School’s MBA.

 Many resources, like Final Application Reviews, will focus heavily on your essay, but will also provide insight on every aspect of your application so you feel best about your attempt.

If you still have questions about the HBS essay, check out these frequently asked questions. 

1. How Can I Best Edit My Essay?

To best edit your essay, focus on refining syntax, word choice, and common mistakes in MBA application essays. Research prevalent errors, specifically addressing them to catch the admissions committee's attention. Utilize tools like Grammarly for a comprehensive review, increasing the likelihood of submitting an error-free essay.

2. How Long Should My Essay Be If There's No Word Limit?

In the absence of a specified word limit, aim for conciseness while conveying your message effectively. Generally, one to three pages or around 500-1000 words is a reasonable guideline, allowing you to present a comprehensive narrative without unnecessary information.

3. Is the Essay Portion Different If I’m Reapplying?

No, if you're reapplying to Harvard Business School, the essay portion remains the same as for first-time applicants. There is no distinct essay prompt for reapplicants.

4. Can I Use the Same Essay If I’m Reapplying?

HBS does not explicitly prohibit this, but, intuitively, it’s probably a better idea to write a new essay. You would have no way of knowing that your essay and the topic you chose played no role in your initial rejection. 

5. Are There Bad Topics to Write About?‍

Yes, some topics are best avoided in your essay. Steer clear of overly controversial or sensitive subjects and refrain from solely highlighting academic or professional achievements unless they contribute to a broader, more personal theme. 

Also, avoid repeating stories already addressed in recommendation letters to provide the admissions committee with new insights. Choose an original and unique topic that reflects your character, emphasizing its personal significance. 

If you struggle to justify your topic's importance, consider opting for a more compelling subject for your essay.

6. Can I Over-Edit My Essay?

Excessive editing can make your writing sound stiff and fragmented. The concept of "over-editing" suggests a misuse of time better spent on other tasks. It's challenging to determine the perfect editing point, but if changes result in minimal, unclear differences, you may be over-editing. 

Recognizing this, it's advisable to ease back on editing efforts, especially if changes are made simply because they come to mind.

Conclusion‍

Harvard Business School's MBA program is highly competitive, and the HBS essay is your chance to stand out. Choose a topic that excites you and reveals your unique experiences. Use organizational resources and time management for effective essay development. 

Simplify the process with outlined steps, ensuring authenticity and enthusiasm. Maintain confidence in your chosen topic and writing style for a more assured essay. This is an opportunity to showcase why you're applying to Harvard Business School, so approach it with confidence and purpose.

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Essay - App Tips Series

Let me start by reminding you of the prompt:

“As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program?”

The first thing you should know about the essay is that we consider all the elements of the application to get to know you and never look at just one piece by itself. The essay isn’t more or less important than other elements of the application. If you’ve been stressed about the essay, hopefully this releases a little anxiety.

Two of the most important words in the prompt are: “ what more? ”  The most helpful essays build on the rest of the written application or share new information. It’s hard to say “what more” you’d like us to know if you haven’t already filled out the rest of the application (or at least thought about what you’d like to say). The essay should help you bring all the aspects of your application together.

We’ve had the same prompt for a few years now, and we like the freedom it gives you. Students who are currently at HBS have taken many (many!) different approaches to this essay and were successful in the application process. There are too many approaches to list, and if I started giving a few examples, you may feel like you had to take one of those approaches. You don’t.

Instead let me share some approaches that are NOT particularly helpful to your application:

• Essays that are basically a paragraph version of your resume: This is surprisingly common: I went to college X then decided to take job Y and that led me to job Z, and now I’m applying to HBS.  There’s nothing “wrong” with this essay per se; it just doesn’t add much to your application because we already know all of that from the other elements of your application. Of course you can build on things that are raised in other parts of the application—just make sure it’s additive.
• Essays that are too long: I wish I could give you a general rule that essays over X words are too long, but sometimes you need more space to bring things together. And that’s the reason there’s no word limit. Use your best judgment, and try to be clear and concise in your writing. What do we need to know to understand you that hasn’t been addressed elsewhere? (And what don’t we need to know?)
• Essays that aren’t about you: I know this sounds obvious. I like the advice I heard an HBS alum give recently: After you’ve written your essay, ask yourself, “Could this essay also describe someone else?” If so, it probably isn’t personal enough to add to your overall application, and you likely need to do some more introspection. For example, we occasionally receive essays that talk at great length about HBS or an element of the program like the case method, but only share a tiny bit about the person themselves. That’s a missed opportunity to bring us into your world, your decisions, your motivations or your formative experiences.

Final thought: I know from personal experience it’s tempting to write, rewrite and rewrite again. Be careful in all that polishing that you don’t “shine away” your personality. And, remember, the essay is just one element that we consider in the context of the overall application. Good luck!

Read the full Application Tips Series .

MBA VOICES BLOG

Harvard Business School Application Essay Example

Writing the Harvard Business School (HBS) essay is a daunting task, and candidates often find themselves staring at a blank screen wondering what on earth they should tell the HBS admissions committee and whether they have anything worthy of sharing. Try to ignore those seeds of doubt and take comfort in knowing that others have struggled with the same questions.

The following essay, along with its associated commentary, is one of fifty essays reviewed in “What Matters?” and “What More?”: 50 Successful Essays for the Stanford GSB and HBS (and Why They Worked) , a book co-authored by our firm’s founder, Liza Weale . We have selected this essay not only because it was successful (Andrey recently graduated from HBS and is building a career in investing) but also because the essay reads to us as approachable and might assure you that you do have things worthy of sharing!

Pre-Reading Commentary from Liza Weale, Founder of Gatehouse Admissions:

Andrey faces the unenviable task of needing to somewhat distract the admissions reader from his past, but not for the red flags you might imagine. On the contrary, his pre–business school credentials, including an analyst role at a prominent investment bank and a subsequent associate role at a fast-growing private equity firm, are very compelling. In fact, both HBS and the Stanford GSB allocate an impressive number of their seats to applicants from this very pool. Yet therein lies the problem: the path of “banker-to-investor-to-MBA” is incredibly crowded, which complicates such candidates’ efforts to stand out. Everyone in this group has worked on a “big deal,” pulled an all-nighter, and stepped up to pinch-hit in the role senior to them. HBS has heard these stories many times before! So, if you are part of this pool, what do you do?

The answer is to share things the school will not readily know about you rather than those it will! Andrey focuses his essay on the importance of community and how he strives to contribute to his. Although he mentions his work, it serves merely as a backdrop, and he discusses neither deals nor transactions and instead reflects on mentoring more junior analysts and building a new tool to benefit his entire group. Andrey thereby avoids characterizing himself as “just another finance applicant” and showcases traits that HBS might not be able to assume in reviewing his resume—compassion, humility, initiative, and empathy.

Andrey’s essay also exemplifies the old adage that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. None of Andrey’s stories on their own would likely be sufficient in convincing HBS that he is the stuff the school’s future alumni are made of. Yet by mentioning several examples (some bold and character building, others—such as his effort to drum up interest in his office’s March Madness tournament—smaller in nature), each of which deals with a slightly different challenge or learning, Andrey conveys his earnestness and proves to HBS that his dedication to strengthening communities will enable him to the very sort of leader the school desires.

Getting Outsiders In (885 words) – Harvard Business School Application Essay Written by Andrey, HBS MBA

I emigrated from Eastern Europe at the age of eleven without speaking a word of English. Enrolling in the 7th grade at a local public school, I was lost. No one helped—especially not the two other Eastern Europeans who seemed to enjoy watching me struggle. The more I was excluded, the stronger my commitment to learning English and dropping my accent became. I did whatever it took—watching the Olsen twins’ movies with my mother on weekends and reading ESL books during recess. As my English skills improved, so did my friendships. I initiated conversations—risking ridicule for my accent—and asked to join my classmates’ activities. Soon, I no longer had to ask to be included. In the 8th grade, my classmates gave their final proof of acceptance by electing me as class president. [1] Instead of staying on the outside looking in, I invested in friends, the culture, and the language. I had finally made America feel like home.

The next time I had to make a new place feel like home was in college. Though I had the language down this time, I again knew no one, so I immersed myself in student life. The organization I was drawn most to was Student Government which emphasized building an inclusive community above all else. I loved contributing to the sense of connectedness through planning and executing events such as the school-wide semi-formal, the annual gingerbread house competition, and our first carnival, a timely break right before exams. When elected as Community Lead, I shifted my focus to advocating on classmates’ behalf. I saw firsthand how my classmates were finding connections through our campus clubs. However, upon taking a closer look, I realized that many of my classmates felt that clubs could be improved. I investigated their issues; the themes I heard were consistent: “Not enough of a budget to get our word out there! Not enough help from the administration!” I launched an effort to help, putting together a proposal for the Senate Finance Team that showed the need for increased funding. I slowly built buy-in with the faculty chairs of the committee and ultimately defended our ask in front of the Dean of Student Life. As a result of my dedication, clubs were awarded increased budgets, and a new full-time staff member was added to liaise with the clubs. Not only was UPenn now home to me, but I had also changed that home for the better for current and future students. [2]

Starting out as a stranger in my own communities, I’ve discovered that I take joy in helping others get on the “inside” faster. [3] Throughout college, in addition to my roles in student government, I pursued positions as a Teacher’s Assistant (TA) for three professors and as a Welcome Member giving tours of the campus to prospective students. As a mentor to underclassmen, there were the easy tasks like editing a resume and explaining how to utilize Excel. But I’ve learned that helping others requires real dedication. After Alexander, a student with a learning disability, failed his accounting course, a professor asked me if I would help him with the class as he retook it. He needed much more of me than students I’d TA’ed—I created new materials better suited for his needs and started fresh, reviewing each individual concept with him. When he passed the class,I may have been happier than he was. Now, I’m helping Alexander navigate his first year in the professional world.

Today, I still invest deeply in building a sense of community and connections. My side sessions with fellow analysts on complicated modeling and new accounting topics led to me being selected as one of two first-years at BankCo to tutor the summer analysts. Two years later and they’re contacting me for guidance as they embark on the buy-side recruiting process—guidance I’m happy to provide. At Private Equity Partners (PEP), I introduced new energy into the March Madness and World Cup pools, replacing the generic email updates with my own 5-minute stand-up routine every Monday—drawing together partners and associates alike. As a UPenn alum, I’ve created panels and networking events to help current international students understand the visa process, a maze that I worked through myself years prior.

I also continue to make my mark on my “homes”: prior to leaving BankCo, I saw an opportunity to improve communication between industry groups and the M&A defense team by creating a website for defense team requests. On top of my regular responsibilities, I made the case for the investment and managed two technology developers in creating a website that is now used across the entire investment bank. At PEP, I championed the Tech Team Offsite, an opportunity to brainstorm sourcing strategies and new sub-sectors for investment. In addition to the new investment theses we articulated, the offsite served as a mechanism to further develop the relationships between junior members and senior advisors of the team. My experiences have shaped the type of leader I am today—one who believes strongly in the value of culture and connections and one who seeks change that will help a broader group. I know what it’s like to be on the “outs”—I strive to make an impact on others by helping them be on the “in.

Additional Commentary from Liza:

[1] Being elected class president one year after arriving at a school in a foreign land must have felt like a tremendous stamp of approval. Note, however, that Andrey does not focus too much on this success. Perhaps he recognized that in the eyes of the admissions committee, the achievement occurred too long ago to dwell on; perhaps he is humble and does not consider it as significant an accomplishment as the reader might. Whatever the reason, his choice ultimately strengthens the power of the example.

[2] Theme-wise, Andrey’s college story here is similar to his eighth grade story (starting on the outside, becoming a leader within), but he takes this one a step further by explaining how he made a lasting impact on the budget process. If you use a thematic approach in your essay, make sure that each story reveals something new or more about you.

[3] Note that only here at the start of paragraph three does Andrey state his thesis, but given what he has shared of his journey thus far, we already understand why community is so important to him.

If you would like to see more examples of successful HBS and GSB essays, you can purchase the entire guide here .

Wondering what to write for HBS’s essay? Read our essay analysis here.

Topics in this resource:

MBA Essay Examples MBA Essay Questions and Strategic Guidance

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June 29, 2023

Harvard Business School MBA Essay Tips and Deadlines [2023 – 2024]

The Admissions Office at Harvard Business School (HBS) has announced updates for the 2023-2024 admissions cycle. The most important update is that if you plan to apply to HBS and have yet to take an entrance exam, you should take the traditional GMAT test (including the AWA) or the GRE. HBS will not accept the GMAT Focus Edition exam because it will not be available until after the Round 1 deadline. This will eliminate any confusion that might occur across Rounds 1 and 2. 

The essay prompt and word limit will remain the same, at a maximum (not necessarily a requirement) of 900 words. The team also indicates that if you can tell your story in 500 words, that’s fine too.

• HBS MBA essay tips
• HBS 2023-2024 deadlines
• HBS class profile
• Sample HBS Essay
• More resources

Harvard will continue being one of the few, if not the only, school with just two rounds (September and January). HBS uses an April deadline exclusively for HBS 2+2, its deferred admission program.

Let’s talk about Harvard’s MBA application

On to the Harvard MBA application and essay question itself: HBS clearly likes  the responses it has received  to the past several years’ excellent essay question because this year’s question is identical. The essay is again required, and there is a 900-word limit

Harvard Business School MBA essay tips

There is one question for the HBS Class of 2026:

As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program?

The website provides the following advice as well: 

We think you know what guidance we’re going to give here. Don’t overthink, overcraft and overwrite. Just answer the question in clear language that those of us who don’t know your world can understand.

Before you begin to complete your application I have two suggestions for you:

• Review Harvard’s criteria for admission , and its MBA Application Tips: Essay video .
• Watch the embedded video on the case method at HBS.

This is a great essay question. It allows you to choose what you want the school to know about you without having to fit that information into a framework required by a question that doesn’t really align with your story. It also allows you to demonstrate judgment and communication skills, which are critical given Harvard’s residential culture , study groups, and case method. Finally, this essay is a chance for HBS to get to know you beyond your resume and the limited (and limiting) boxes. In fact, as Chad Losee says in his essay tip video, they want to get to know you through your essay. That’s the essay’s purpose.

Now THINK. What else – really and truly – do you want Harvard Business School to know about you? The HBS admissions committee has told you what they want to know in the other sections of the application. “What more” do you want the HBS readers to know?

Please note that your essay has to be additive. “What more” are the key words in the prompt. It shouldn’t be a resume in prose. And it shouldn’t be a series of vague generalities and assertions that would apply to many others. Finally, it can’t be a series of anecdotes with no meaning or significance associated with the experiences. It should reflect at least part of your unique story, the part that you want HBS to know. Finally, your essay should reflect your motivations, values, and dreams.

The answer to HBS’ question is not something I can give or even suggest to you in a blog post aimed at the many (for individual guidance, please see Accepted’s MBA Admissions Consulting ). It must be different for each of you. Again, refer to the HBS criteria, as you contemplate possible topics, but the options are infinite. A few possibilities:

• Provide context for events described in the required elements.
• Delve into your motivations for the decisions or commitments you have made.
• Discuss experiences that shaped your dreams for the future, which might just benefit enormously from an HBS education (caveat: HBS doesn’t ask why you want to attend Harvard, so don’t make this a central theme of your essay).
• Examine challenges you have faced. These could be personal challenges, or perhaps interpersonal challenges.
• Envision something you would like to accomplish at HBS.
• Provide more detail about an activity or commitment that is particularly important to you.

Please don’t limit yourself to these suggestions. I am offering them to stimulate your creativity, not to shut it down. 

If one thing is true, it is that HBS has valued concision. And, in today’s tweet- and sound-bite-driven world, it is requiring short responses in the other portions of the application. Don’t take this essay’s generous word limit as a license for verbosity. Make every word count, no pun intended.

A few cautions and warnings regarding this essay – it is NOT:

• Stanford’s “what matters most to you and why?” essay
• The kitchen sink in which you throw everything
• An autobiography
• A resume in prose or a rehash of your transcript and honors
• An ode to the awesomeness of Harvard (The admissions committee doesn’t need you to tell them they have a great institution that you would be honored to attend. They’ve heard it before.)

For expert guidance on your HBS application, check out Accepted’s  MBA Application Packages , which include advising, editing, interview coaching, and a resume edit for the HBS application. Looking to score some scholarship money while you’re at it? Accepted’s clients received over $3.5 million dollars in scholarship offers in the most recent application cycle.  Explore our services  for more information on how Accepted can help you get into HBS.

Harvard Business School 2023-24 application deadlines

Source: HBS website

* Applications must be submitted online by 12 noon Boston time.

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

HBS class profile [Class of 2024]

Here’s a look at HBS’s Class of 2024 taken from the  Harvard Business School website :

Number of applications:  8264

Enrolled:  1,015

Countries represented:  

• United States: 62%
• Mexico, Central & South America: 5%
• Middle East: 3%
• Oceania: 1%

Women:  46%

International:  38%

US minorities:  52%

Average GPA:  3.70

Average years work experience:  5.0

Percent of class taking GMAT:  74%

• Verbal range: 29– 51
• Quantitative range: 34 – 51
• Total range: 540–790
• Median verbal: 42
• Median quantitative: 48
• Median total : 730

Percent of class taking GRE:  30%

• Verbal range: 147 – 170
• Quantitative range: 150–170
• Median verbal: 163
• Median quantitative: 163

Breakdown of undergraduate majors (137 domestic universities and 158 international universities)

Breakdown of pre-mba industries, sample harvard business school essays from admitted hbs students, are you considering applying to business school.

We have the resources to help you navigate the options and make the right choice for you:

• M7 MBA Programs: Everything You Need to Know
• What It Takes to Get Accepted to HBS, Stanford GSB, and Wharton

Is HBS at the top of your wish list?

Get the competitive edge with HBS-specific advice and inside information:

• “I Wish the Admissions Committee Had Asked Me…” : How to answer open-ended MBA essay questions
• What Harvard Business School Is Looking For: Engaged Community Citizenship
• What Harvard Business School Is Looking For: Analytical Aptitude and Appetite
• What Harvard Business School Is Looking For: The Habit of Leadership
• 7 Important Tips for Your HBS Post-Interview Reflection

Hear directly from Harvard alumni in these inspiring blog posts:

• An MBA Success Story Reflects on His HBS Experience, 7 Years Later, podcast Episode 419
• A Harvard MBA’s Experience & Advice on Writing the Perfect Essay, podcast Episode 375
• Entrepreneurship at HBS: How Stride Will Help You Fund Your Future, podcast Episode 341
• How to Leverage an HBS Education: The Story of LeverEdge, podcast Episode 313
• Ida Valentine: Investment Banker, Inspirational Speaker, HBS 2021, podcast Episode 311
• The Journey from India to Harvard MBA, podcast Episode 220

Do you need help gaining admission to HBS or any other top MBA program? That’s what we do! Explore our MBA Admissions Consulting Services and work one-on-one with an experienced admissions advisor who will help you GET ACCEPTED.

As the former executive director of admissions at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School and assistant dean of admissions at Georgetown’s McDonough School and the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz School, Kelly Wilson has 23 years’ experience overseeing admissions committees and has reviewed more than 38,000 applications for the MBA and master’s programs in management of information systems, computational finance, business analytics, and product management.   Want Kelly to help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch!

Related Resources:

• What Is Harvard Business School Looking For?
• “I Wish the Admissions Committee Had Asked Me…”
• Best MBA Programs: A Guide to Selecting the Right One

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50 Successful Harvard Business School Application Essays: With Analysis by the Staff of The Harvard Crimson Paperback – December 27, 2022

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Fifty all-new essays that got their authors into Harvard Business School, including GMAT scores, showing what worked, what didn’t, and how you can do it too. Competition to get into the nation’s top business schools has never been more intense. Harvard Business School in particular draws thousands of elite applicants from around the world. As admissions departments become increasingly selective, even the best and brightest need an edge. Writing a personal statement is a daunting part of the application process. In a specific amount of characters, applicants must weave together experiences and passions into a memorable narrative to set them apart from thousands of other applicants. While there is no magic formula for writing the perfect essay, picking up this book will put them on the right track. The Staff of the Harvard Crimson's 50 Successful Harvard Business School Application Essays includes fifty standout essays from students who successfully secured a spot at Harvard Business School. Each student has a unique set of experiences that led them to applying for an MBA. Each essay includes analysis by Crimson editors on essay qualities and techniques that worked, so readers can apply them to their own writing. This book will aid applicants in composing essays that reveal their passion for business and the discipline they will bring to this demanding program and profession. It will give them the extra help they need to get into the best business school programs in the world.

• Print length 304 pages
• Language English
• Publisher St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date December 27, 2022
• Dimensions 5.4 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
• ISBN-10 1250845998
• ISBN-13 978-1250845993
• See all details

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ St. Martin's Griffin (December 27, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
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• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250845998
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250845993
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65 successful Harvard Business School application essays

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Harvard Business School Essay Example

June 8, 2023

Jeremy Shinewald

How do you write a standout Harvard Business School (HBS) admissions essay? The answer might surprise you. Your goal is not to “wow” the admissions committee with fancy adjectives or to share spectacular achievements that admissions officers have never read or heard about before. Instead, your HBS admissions essay is your opportunity to share your values —to stand out on the basis of who you are and what you stand for.

Let us start with the basics. HBS actually has just one essay question, with no word limit: “As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program?” 

The first thing to note about this question is that it is totally open-ended. Because it is so open-ended, many applicants have no idea where to start. And without a word limit, many also have no idea where to stop! Let us address the end first. We recommend that applicants target 1,000 to 1,250 words, but some candidates’ essays might be as short as 800 words or as long as 1,500. However, anything longer than 1,500 words can start to seem like an imposition on the admissions reader, while anything shorter than 800 could mean that you are short-changing yourself and not giving the admissions committee as full a picture of who you are. 

As for the open-ended nature of the question, the whole essay really hinges on the word more —“what more would you like us to know?” The admissions committee should already be able to learn a lot about the path you have taken via your resume and short answers, and they should also learn about your professional performance and character via your recommendations. But through your essay, they should truly learn more about you . As I noted earlier, the goal of your essay is to share more about your values—possibly even about your soul. 

To help illustrate my point, I would like to review here a successful application essay from my book “What Matters?” and “What More?”: 50 Successful Essays for the Stanford GSB and HBS (and Why They Worked) , titled “Shhh! Can You Hear Me Listening?” If you do not have a copy of the book, you can download the essay here. I want to start by highlighting a few key takeaways. First, this is not an essay about the kind of vocal leadership many people expect from an HBS MBA. In fact, it is the exact opposite; it is an essay about the often undervalued skill of listening and how it is reflective of the applicant Paul’s empathy. Those are the values Paul highlights throughout the essay: listening, empathy, better listening, more empathy. Rather than trying to hew to some perceived notion of who he thinks he “should” be for HBS, Paul discusses who he actually is! By doing so, he gets to a truly authentic place—he shares his soul. Second, this essay, like almost all essays should be, is a story of growth and change. We get a sense of both who Paul was and who he is now, and although he is not a radically different person, his growth and his ability to effectively wield his sense of empathy reveal themselves as very powerful, making his story compelling for the reader. 

Third, Paul makes almost no mention of his work. In his 11-paragraph essay, his work does not come up until the ninth and tenth paragraphs, and even then, his workplace is merely a setting. Paul does not reveal a big product launch or a huge win for the team.  He simply shares how he used his listening and empathy skills to break down interpersonal logjams at work, as he also does in his community and personal life. Now, I am not saying that you cannot write about your work accomplishments in this essay. My point is that you should not feel compelled to do so, and you definitely should not make your essay a work biography. Lastly, Paul does not mention his career goals or why he is targeting HBS for his MBA, and if you reread his essay, you will probably recognize that for him to suddenly shift gears at the end and begin discussing them would be very odd. His professional goals do not have much to do with listening or empathy, though these skills will serve him well. In short, the HBS prompt does not ask you to write about your career goals or “why HBS,” so do not feel that you must share this information in your essay, especially if you would have to force it to fit!  

Okay, so, let us dig into how Paul gets to that authentic place with his story. He does so by writing with honesty and simplicity. In this case, it is almost an equation: honesty plus simplicity equals authenticity. Consider this excerpt from the essay:

The 10-hour surgery, though harrowing, was a stunning success. Assuming my work was done, I flew home to San Francisco with an enormous burden lifted. In the subsequent months, though, my mother would call me almost every day crying. Sometimes she was upset that my father—struggling with his recuperation—wasn’t appreciative or, worse, was harsh with her; other times she was stressed by the body- and mind-numbing labor that goes into postsurgical care. I listened and would tell her that everything was going to be alright, but no amount of reassurance seemed to make her feel better.

In this short paragraph, we learn that Paul and his family have experienced a medical miracle, but Paul is not giving us the Hollywood ending. He talks about the emotional struggle of the recuperation and the helplessness he experiences during this time. Because of his straightforward language and his honesty in terms of the ups and downs, we can trust him as a narrator. In short, he reveals his authentic persona, and the admissions officer reading the essay will know that this applicant is a real person. 

I want to highlight in a little more detail how well Paul uses that simplicity in another part of his essay. The directness and clarity of the language is really wonderful.

One evening, I stumbled upon an opportunity to volunteer at Helping Hands, a suicide prevention hotline that focuses on providing emotional support. I knew that helping strangers would be rewarding in itself but also thought the program could expand my own perspective and help me guide my family through this emotional crisis, so I signed up on the spot.

Paul did not need to write, “I stumbled upon a compelling opportunity and urgently lunged for the phone. It was now my dream to volunteer with Helping Hands!” In short, creating faux drama is not an effective tactic. Your story either has a compelling angle or it does not. Because Paul’s does, the language does the work for him.

Of course, authenticity on its own is not enough. As I noted earlier, Paul’s story is compelling because we experience his growth. In the following excerpt, Paul discusses the impact of a challenge he faced, one for which he had to listen thoughtfully to a deeply troubled person as part of his volunteer work with the hotline. Clearly, he is tested when he has to empathetically listen to someone with whom he never would have engaged otherwise, and this becomes a unique catalyst. 

Working with Helping Hands also taught me the importance of knowing my own emotional limits, so I learned to practice self-care as a means to engage others. I started journaling regularly and became far more open to being vulnerable. Having inherited a stoicism from my father, I had to take an honest, critical look at myself in order to manifest this shift. When I allowed myself to truly unmask my feelings, I started to find real strength and resilience within.

As you write your HBS essay, remind yourself that you are not just sharing your journey or a theme—that is an oversimplification. Almost everyone, at some level, is going to be sharing how they have grown, developed, and become the person they are today. 

In the end, Paul’s essay is straightforward, yet fiercely original, not because he climbed Everest or cured cancer, but because he has engaged in life with tremendous self-awareness, faced deeply personal challenges, and grown by helping others. There is no magic recipe for how one should write their essay, but we can recognize a few key ingredients in Paul’s essay.

Of course, your story will be your own, and it will be distinct. For even more successful HBS essay examples, be sure to download a copy of our book “What Matters?” and “What More?”: 50 Successful Essays for the Stanford GSB and HBS (and Why They Worked) . If you would like to learn more about what your best story might be, or if you have any questions about your profile, sign up for a free 30-minute consultation . Members of our team are available to connect and give you thoughtful advice and feedback.

Application Tips Essays Harvard University (Harvard Business School)

Tags: example essay

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2023–2024 MBA Essay Tips

• Berkeley Haas School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• BU Questrom School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Cambridge Judge Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Chicago Booth School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Columbia Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management Essay and Examples
• Dartmouth Tuck School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Duke Fuqua School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Emory Goizueta Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• Esade Essay Tips and Examples
• Georgetown McDonough School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Harvard Business School 2+2 Deferred MBA Program Essay Analysis 2024
• Harvard Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• HEC Paris Essay Tips and Examples
• HKUST Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• IE Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• IESE Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• INSEAD Essay Tips and Examples
• International Institute for Management Development (IMD) Essay Tips and Examples
• Ivey Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• London Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• Michigan Ross School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• MIT Sloan School of Management Essay Tips and Examples
• Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Essay Tips and Examples
• Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• NYU Stern School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Ohio Fisher College of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Oxford Saïd Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• SMU Cox School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Stanford Graduate School of Business Application Essay Tips and Examples
• Texas McCombs School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management Essay Tips and Examples
• The Wharton School Essay Tips and Examples
• Toronto Rotman School of Management Essay Tips and Examples
• UCLA Anderson School of Management Essay Tips and Examples
• UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• USC Marshall School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• UVA Darden School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• UW Foster School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management Essay Analysis, 2023–2024
• Villanova School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Yale School of Management Essay Tips and Examples

Click here for the 2022–2023 MBA Essay Tips

MBA Program Updates

• Berkeley-Haas
• Boston University (Questrom)
• Cambridge Judge Business School
• Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)
• Columbia University (Columbia Business School)
• Consortium for Graduate Study in Management
• Cornell University (Johnson)
• Dartmouth College (Tuck)
• Duke University (Fuqua)
• Emory University (Goizueta)
• George Washington University (GWSB)
• Georgetown University (McDonough)
• Harvard University (Harvard Business School)
• IE Business School
• IESE Business School
• Indian School of Business
• Indiana University (Kelley)
• Ivey Business School
• London Business School
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
• New York University (Stern)
• Northwestern University (Kellogg)
• Notre Dame (Mendoza)
• Ohio State University (Fisher College)
• Oxford University (Saïd Business School)
• Penn State Smeal College of Business
• Rotman School of Management
• Saïd Business School
• Southern Methodist University (Cox School of Business)
• Stanford University (Stanford Graduate School of Business)
• University of California Los Angeles (Anderson)
• University of Cambridge (Judge)
• University of Chicago (Booth)
• University of London (London Business School)
• University of Michigan (Ross)
• University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler)
• University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
• University of Southern California (Marshall)
• University of Texas at Austin (McCombs)
• University of Virginia (Darden)
• Vanderbilt University (Owen)
• Villanova School of Business
• Yale University (School of Management)

Successful MBA Application Essays

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— Name: Stivaly Gomez GMAT Score: 660 GPA: 3.51 Undergraduate Institution: UT Austin Undergraduate Major: Biomedical Engineering Pre-MBA experience: Healthcare Technology Consulting and Product Management Number of years of experience pre-MBA: 7

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Creating something from nothing when i moved to the us.

“Stivaly, the facts can’t be changed. You got an F on your assignment because you didn’t turn it in.”

As I heard these words, I stood next to Ms. Santiago, my 11th-grade History teacher, in shock. I had just arrived in Florida from Venezuela a few weeks before and was still learning the language. This was one of the most transformational moments of my life. By failing, I had the space to reflect on what I had done wrong, and on the lesson that my grandmothers, aunts, and mom had passed on to me—to be strong and unafraid of making mistakes, because mistakes lead to blazing new trails.

My mother, inspired by her mother’s strength, moved away from her home and became the first in her family to earn a degree in Computer Engineering, a degree uncommon for the women in Venezuela in the 1980s. She started her own computer engineering business in Ciudad Ojeda, a city she had never lived in before. In less than 10 years and after a roller coaster of failures and successes, she became one of the city’s most successful entrepreneurs and a role model for other women starting their own ventures. My mother was always vocal about taking risks and learning through setbacks.

Throughout my college years, I leveraged my insights from my experience of emigrating from another country to tutor other students who were going through a similar transition.

Her determination taught me to stand up for myself and follow my dreams regardless of the challenges. After that F in History, I was determined to formulate a plan of action to correct my actions. I sought out new friendships with my classmates to establish a support network. I set my fear of not speaking fluent English aside and dared to make mistakes out loud, because I knew I would learn more that way. I asked for clarifications from teachers and classmates any time I needed it. By the end of my junior year, I had become one of the top students in every one of my classes. I ended the year with a 4.0 GPA, leading to my admission to the Miami Dade Honors College and later to UT Austin’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. At UT, despite the initial culture shock of being one of just five women of color in my Biomedical Engineering class, I continued pushing myself forward to define a career path where I turned my aspirations into real opportunities. I successfully collaborated as a research assistant in Dr. Hugh Smyth’s pharmaceutics lab, and my team was recognized for developing one of the top 10 novel medical device prototypes in a competition of more than 50 devices.

My mother also taught me that striving for greatness came with an obligation to uplift those coming behind us. Throughout my college years, I leveraged my insights from my experience of emigrating from another country to tutor other students who were going through a similar transition.

Having recently emigrated from Venezuela, Mariana was struggling to stay motivated to continue to pursue dentistry, the career of her dreams. Mariana was working to pay for her studies, and was supporting her little brother at home by helping him with his homework. By working with her to build a collection of resources and connecting her with other tutors, students, and faculty who were aligned to life sciences careers, I helped her improve her grades and identify programs that would help her continue to pursue her degree. Now she is on her way to graduating as a general dentist and will be the first in her family to earn a doctoral degree.

Creating Something from Nothing in My Work Experience

As the only Latina in my starting group at Accenture, I made it a point to engage in retention and recruiting initiatives from day one and established the first professional development workshops for Hispanics in the DC office. Through a curriculum focused on building leadership, communication, and networking strategies, I created a platform to support our members and provide them with the tools to build a successful career path inside and outside of the company. This model became the footprint for leads that followed and a key piece to the value offerings provided by the DC office and other offices across the nation.

I joined Accenture to grow my career in the healthcare technology sector. However, the lack of opportunities and resources in the health sector in the federal space local to Washington DC forced me to build a network and career path from scratch. After various networking events and hundreds of emails, it only took one person, a managing director named Matt Farrell, to empathize with my passion for the impact I wanted have in the industry and the grit I had to pursue it. I was staffed on a life sciences project as the lead of the team tasked to create a cloud-based patient services application. Since then I have been positioned to lead projects and teams of experts to deliver on a set of client requirements despite having little to no experience with managing teams or launching products. Exceeding my clients’ expectations has earned us additional work for every project I have led. I have gained the trust of leaders in my practice and established my reputation, and now I am proud to participate in groundbreaking projects that only people with high recommendations could partake in.

I have gained the trust of leaders in my practice and established my reputation, and now I am proud to participate in groundbreaking projects that only people with high recommendations could partake in.

How HBS Will Help Me Build My Vision

My journey at Accenture has allowed me to fight for my passion: creating low-cost medical products that can be accessed by a wider population. This was important because I experienced first-hand how a lack of access to quality healthcare deteriorates a society—I lost my Aunt Marilu to cancer because she lived in a low-income community in Venezuela where she could not access effective treatments.

I aim to dedicate my life’s work to democratize low-cost innovative medical technologies from the US to hospitals across Latin America to improve the quality of care offered in the region. The portfolio of opportunities promoted by the HBS Health Care Initiative will expand my exposure to the sustainable alternatives I will use to address gaps in local and international healthcare systems.

Along with my husband, Jose Mena, who is also applying, I consider Harvard Business School to be my first choice because its focus on leadership. Being the originators of the case method, Harvard offers a unique environment for authentic leadership development where I will learn to be less self-critical, speak with assertiveness, and make tough decisions. Through HBS, I will engage in a collective endeavor to formalize my vision into a reality.

Background:

At Ivy Advisors, after working with hundreds of applicants with a wide range of experiences and backgrounds, we have developed a strong perspective on ‘how to draw out someone’s special spark’. When we engaged with Stivaly, it was very clear from the first interaction that she carried a certain spark, but it was deeply buried behind her fears of having a lower-than-average GMAT score. Her essay is the product of multiple coaching calls and sessions that helped her build a sense of self-confidence in her application so that she can proudly own who she really is beyond her stats and show -not just tell- the value she will add to the Harvard Business School.

At around 1100 words, this is a long essay. However, breaking the essay down into meaningful moments that shaped the applicant made the content much easier to read. The subtitles provided a quick way to transition from one story to another while still holding a central theme.

The average GMAT score of admitted students at HBS is around 730, while the average undergraduate GPA is around 3.7. With stats lower than average, Stivaly needed to show through other data points that she is committed to academic excellence and continues to be a competitive high performer in the workplace and an attractive candidate for MBA recruiters. With seven years of pre-MBA work experience (higher than the average 4.7 years), Stivaly was able to showcase, though her resume and other parts of her application, a rich professional background including three promotions and a number of other academic and professional recognitions. She let the other parts of her application speak to her professional achievements, so that she could make space for the essay to talk about her motivations behind her achievements.

Stivaly’s first story is about leadership and perseverance. First, she starts with a failure. Generally speaking, most people wouldn’t think about starting their Harvard Business School essay by admitting that they got an F at some time in their life. But Stivaly wanted to show who she really is – someone unafraid of failures

While she contextualizes the reason for her failure – moving to a new country and speaking a new language – she never made excuses for it. She owned her mistake and made sure that she would not repeat that mistake again. This sense of ownership demonstrates her not only her maturity at a young age, but also her action-oriented problem-solving character, something essential for leaders in the business world. In a few paragraphs, we get to see the go getter fighter who is clearly committed to excellence.

In addition, Stivaly showed that her pursuit of education was something that extended beyond herself or her grades. She made it clear that it was about continuing the legacy of the women in her family and she felt a sense of responsibility in carrying that legacy forward. She demonstrates that early sign of leadership by pointing to an example of how she used her experience as a way to help someone else who reflected a past version of her.

HBS’s mission is to “Educate Leaders who make a difference in the world”. With this first half of the essay, Stivaly made it clear that she follows a higher purpose. She showed that she was a leader and trailblazer in her community, who is persistent, action-oriented, and who was making a difference in a small way – in someone else’s life.

With this first half of the essay, Stivaly made it clear that she follows a higher purpose. She showed that she was a leader and trailblazer in her community, who is persistent, action-oriented, and who was making a difference in a small way – in someone else's life.

The second half of the essay goes on to expand on Stivaly’s consistent habit of perseverance and impact, as a professional, and at a later point in life. She uses her experience to reshape how organizations think and operate. Despite an unlucky start in Healthcare, she takes immediate action to reverse the situation. The personal connection to her area of impact – helping Latinos and working in Healthcare – show that she is vested in them and she will won’t stop finding ways to improve the status quo. Again, she makes it clear that the motivation behind these pursuits was something beyond herself.

In other words, Stivaly showed through her stories that she is a leader who makes a difference in the world.

Lastly, Stivaly effectively and succinctly articulates why HBS is the right place for her. She doesn’t make the mistake of running a laundry list of items that she will do at HBS (at Ivy Advisors, we see many applicants make that mistake). On the contrary, Stivaly is hyper focused on linking her purpose with the HBS learning environment.

At Ivy Advisors, we believe in the applicant and we propel that applicant with the best version of their authentic selves. With this philosophy, we have helped hundreds of people across backgrounds and styles land at their top business schools.

Lastly, at Ivy Advisors we care about preserving the authentic voice, tone, and style of the applicant. Although many will assert that this essay isn’t perfectly polished like an award-winning novel, we acknowledge and assert that we intentionally respected the style of the applicant. She is imperfect in many ways and her openness to admit it makes her the perfect candidate.

— • Country/State: China • Gender: Female • Ethnicity: Asian • GPA: N/A • GMAT: 710 • Undergrad Major: Mechanical Engineering • Age: 35 • Pre-MBA Industry: Automotive Manufacturing

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INSEAD ESSAY

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 (500 words). Three months ago, when I was looking for bridesmaids for my wedding, I reconnected with a friend. She told me: “You’re my role model. When I met you, I told myself to become a woman like you: strong-willed and open-minded”. But I was not always this way. I was born as an ethnic minority in a mountainous rural area of Southwest China, where poverty prevailed, and educational opportunities were rare for girls. As a kid, I asked my mom whether boys were smarter because teachers said so. But she, a college educated woman, told me they are not. She took me to Beijing for a short trip, encouraging me to cross those mountains that surrounded us. This inspired me to grow from a girl who led other girls to play wildly in playgrounds, to a woman capable of leading a global team to overcome the most challenging projects. In university, I was bullied because I could not speak English; at work, people questioned my ability to lead big projects because I am not a German male. It has been joyful to surmount these obstacles. I have even passed determination to others as when I coached another female peer to become a successful project leader or when I guided a team of inexperienced members to collaborate effectively.

These experiences shaped me to feel naturally comfortable in international settings and built up my ability to alleviate cultural conflicts.

I only started to work with Western coworkers when I was 25, and set my feet outside of China for the first time in 2013. Since then, numerous international trips to various countries grew my curiosity for different cultures. A strong affinity opened my heart to express respect and care for people from different backgrounds and to bridge us with universal values. As a result, not only am I currently enjoying life in a country as different to China as Germany, but I am married to a French, and I combine professional career in Germany with continuous trips to France. These experiences shaped me to feel naturally comfortable in international settings and built up my ability to alleviate cultural conflicts. Thomas - the best boss I have ever met – gave me complete autonomy to leverage my problem-solving skills in order to discover issues and search for solutions. I, therefore, created processes to close gaps in change management after I observed changes were not tracked systematically. I organised resources to modify designs inherited from past products in Germany when I saw they no longer fulfilled new requirements. As a female leader, I am always proving myself to be as capable as men. Therefore, I tend to carry others’ workload all by myself without asking for help when needed, which puts unnecessary pressure on myself. I am just concerned that I will be judged as a woman who cannot honour commitments. My husband is helping me to discover that it is okay to properly show my struggles and seek support. INSEAD Gender Initiatives will bring me to an international community of female leaders who have experiences to share on how to position ourselves in men-dominated industries.

Probably the most important essay in INSEAD’s application, this is not a straightforward strengths and weaknesses essay since INSEAD also wants applicants to describe themselves as a person and highlight the factors that influenced their development. Caroline was very concerned about her profile. By the time she applied, she was about to turn 35 whereas the age range of INSEAD’s class is 26 to 32. Her GMAT score was on par with INSEAD’s average (710), which as a Chinese applicant would be considered on the lower side. She also believed her international exposure was somewhat limited compared to a “typical” INSEAD student, and her industry (automotive manufacturing) was not the most attractive of industries for business schools.

With this in mind, we decided to approach the essay with simple language and with a very positive tone and vibe, while touching upon strengths that could be connected to all four INSEAD's admissions criteria...

Caroline begins the essay with a novelist style paragraph. She puts us in a recent situation where she is conversing with a friend who shares with us right away two of Caroline's strengths (“strong-willed and open-minded”). She closes the paragraph with a sentence (“But I was not always this way”) that makes us wonder about her personal story and want to keep reading. She then walks us through her childhood, and we understand that she does not come from an affluent background. She touches upon her mother influencing her to overcome obstacles as a kid and later as a project leader because of the simple fact of being a woman. In this paragraph, we understand she is connecting her strengths to two of the admissions criteria: Leadership Potential and Ability to Contribute. Then she moves on to a paragraph that highlights her international experiences to date and how these have made her be more adaptable in international settings, and curious, respectful and caring for other cultures. Her reference to being married to a French man is a clear indication of this, and it is very easy to derive from this that she definitely meets the International Motivation criterion.

She uses the next paragraph to emphasize her problem-solving skills and her ability to think outside the box. Both strengths are connected to the Academic Capacity criterion. She also briefly mentions that Thomas is the best boss she’s ever had and gave her a great degree of autonomy. This indicates that Thomas had a great influence in her development, and it also shows that she is an appreciative and grateful person, which could also be linked to the Ability to Contribute criterion. She concludes with one weakness. While she has chosen a cliché, I like her choice because this weakness doesn’t go against any of the admissions criteria nor against her career goals. Furthermore, she has approached it from the female angle, which makes it less of a cliché. In short, she has been able to capture the reader’s attention from the very beginning and has connected all her strengths to INSEAD’s four admissions criteria in a very clear and straightforward way, while keeping a very positive tone and vibe throughout the entire essay.

Disclaimer: With exception of the removal of identifying details, essays are reproduced as originally submitted in applications; any errors in submissions are maintained to preserve the integrity of the piece.

— Country/State: International GMAT: 740 GPA: 9+ on 10 Undergrad Major: Engineering Pre-MBA Industry: Consumer Goods

Sponsored by Admissions Gateway : Admissions Gateway has helped 800+ candidates, worldwide, achieve their dreams of gaining admission to the top MBA programs. We specialize in applying to the top-15 programs. Our candidates have a 97%+ success rate with scholarship awards of up to $150,000. Our founder is the #1 rated consultant on Poetsandquants.

Our life experiences shape our skills, perspective and help define our paths. Reflecting on my personal and professional journey, I would like to share three lessons which have strongly shaped my journey and outlook.

My first lesson is about people. I feel fortunate to have understood the enormous potential in empathizing and collaborating with individuals to achieve community success, organizational targets and personal goals.

Perhaps due to my father’s frequent job transfers, I grew-up as a reticent, lone worker, shying away from forging long-lasting relationships. While excelling academically, I skipped participating in anything at school that required dependence on other people. It was only at my undergraduate institution, [University] that I really started building relationships with my hostel-mates and exploring the various opportunities [University] offered.

However, soon dark realities came to the forefront when a final-year student committed suicide while my close friend, [Name], got sucked into a vortex of depression due to his poor academic performance. Deeply shaken, I resolved to address mental-health issues on campus and joined the Institute Counseling Service, comprising student volunteers, faculty and professional counselors who sought to provide emotional and academic help to students.

Driven to make a difference, I led 240 student volunteers, strengthened our mentorship program to identify students in need of professional help and organized Orientation Programs. To dispel the stigma associated with mental-health and build trust, we increased the approachability of counsellors by initiating hostel visits and collaborated with NGOs to use theatre and generate awareness. I personally mentored students and it was heartwarming to create an environment in which people were able to discuss their personal issues freely with me. While I gained friends for life, I realized there is no greater happiness than witnessing one’s mentee overcome difficulties and be successful! Listening to varied personal experiences inculcated empathy and fostered ability to forge strong interpersonal connections.

This experience stayed with me during my professional journey with [Consumer Goods Company]. Just out of college, I had to navigate union strikes, reconcile socio-political contexts and motivate 600+ unskilled workers, several years my senior to transform the quality performance of an $800M factory in a small town. Leveraging interpersonal skills, I understood employee concerns and created an experiential training program. Listening to them, educating them, sharing success and owning failures together, I immersed myself in the workforce environment, instilling a culture of innovation and change. Our efforts reaped dividends as we eliminated all consumer complaints and achieved the best-ever performance in quality metrics, securing [Consumer Goods Company] market-share and launching 24 premium product variants. Thus, I learnt to drive organizational change by harnessing people’s potential.

My second life lesson is about values. I feel long-term success can only be achieved if one has the character to stand by one’s principles during testing times.

At age-5, I recall accompanying my mother to court hearings to witness a long-drawn trial involving my father. Overtime, I understood how my father had been slapped with a fake harassment case because he refused to accept a bribe for professional favors. Standing by his principles, he was later acquitted emerging as my inspiration and teaching me values of honesty and integrity.

After 17 years, these values were tested. Early-on in my role as Quality Manager of [Consumer Goods Company] plant, consumer complaints for a particular defect inflicted 10% market-share losses in [Big City]. On probing, I realized that we had overlooked an important data trend during manufacturing that could have averted the disaster. While corporate auditors were preparing a report attributing the occurrence of defect to chance, I presented the true picture, taking full responsibility. It was a difficult decision as our factory had already lost credibility prior to my joining. Our General Manager intervened to manage the crisis and while recognizing my ethics and courage, placed faith on my ability to redeem myself.

Motivated to prove myself, I worked incessantly with my team, ensuring that I drive systemic changes and build a culture of continuous improvement. Within one-year, we achieved benchmark performances, restoring faith in the unit/team. During our annual performance review, our unit was appreciated for data-integrity, reinforcing my belief in my value system.

The third lesson is about impact. I believe true success is achieved when people are guided by a desire to create sustainable impact and make a positive difference in society.

During a factory-visit, I engaged with our CEO, and advocated driving growth by monetizing [Consumer Goods Company] distribution network to service regional firms/startups. Intrigued, he inducted me into his office in the Trade Marketing and Distribution function in a strategic role, a move unheard for any non-MBA engineer. Initially, I engaged with product entrepreneurs to offer them [Consumer Goods Company] distribution for scaling-up. One case was [Company], a [City]-based startup that innovated on cost-effective sanitary napkins. We are helping them reach 60M consumers in [Country], a country where 75% women resort to unhygienic alternatives. Curious to understand their success, I engaged with the founder, [Name]. I realized [Name] was driven by a desire to positively impact the lives of rural women and this motivated him to innovate continuously.

Reflecting on this conversation, I identified how [Consumer Products Company] could play a larger role in adding to consumer-value and go beyond giving distribution access to CPG startups. If tech leaders such as Google, Microsoft could incubate technology startups, we needed to explore similar models in the CPG space. I formulated a strategic investor model to incubate and eventually acquire CPG startups, a first for an Indian CPG firm, and pitched it to senior leadership. They appreciated my vision of synergizing with startups, providing [Consumer Products Company] marketing expertise and product development insights to encourage product innovation, thereby creating an inorganic growth roadmap for [Consumer Products Company] vision of achieving $15B by 2030.

These lessons provide the foundation to succeed and define my professional ambitions. Going forward, I envision energizing the [Country] CPG startup ecosystem, stimulating innovation and strengthening symbiotic relationships with Corporations to deliver high social-impact products, creating sustainable value for 1.2B Indian consumers. While my experiences have created the primer, I see Harvard as the perfect catalyst to transform me into a change leader. Building on my life lessons, I can’t wait to engage with classmates who bring with them a wealth of global experiences and stories!

Analysis: In this essay, the author shares the three life lessons which have most strongly shaped his experiences and outlook. Each one brings forth a different side of his personality. The first focused on developing empathy and lasting relationships having mostly favored solo working up until his undergraduate days. The second lesson is built around personal family experiences that drove home the importance of standing up for his values: honesty and integrity. The third and final lesson drives home the author’s desire to achieve a lasting positive impact in his professional life, by fostering an internal culture of innovation, and championing start-ups in the Indian CPG industry.

Topic: The difficult part of an open-ended Harvard prompt is deciding what one wants to share. The writer shares the three life lessons which have strongly shaped his experiences and outlook. We think this is a great approach as the writer shows the admissions committee “who” he is and “what” his values and motivations are.

Each lesson brings forth a different side of his personality. The first focused on developing empathy and lasting relationships having mostly favored solo working up until his undergraduate days. The second lesson is built around personal family experiences that drove home the importance of standing up for his values: honesty and integrity. The final lesson drives home the author’s desire to achieve a lasting impact in his professional life, by fostering an internal culture of innovation, and championing start-ups in his country’s CPG industry.

Tone and readability: This essay does not have dramatic flair. Because that’s fine as flair is not everyone’s style and one should stick to his or her style! The writer comes across as someone who has reflected on his experiences and what is important to him. He also comes across as genuine and shows vulnerability as he goes along. There is a certain humility that comes of the page - someone who has accomplished a lot but is comfortable in his skin and able to share not only his achievements but also his failures.

Why this essay wins: We can see the candidate’s accomplishments in his resume and have heard from his recommenders. This essay wins because it allows us to answer the question:

“Would you want this person to be in class with you?”

— • Country/State: International • GPA: 3.32 • GMAT: 750 • Undergrad Major: Economics • Pre-MBA Industry: Non-profit

Sponsored by Ivy Groupe : Ivy Groupe is a boutique MBA admissions consulting company founded by Shaifali Aggarwal , a graduate of Harvard Business School. Shaifali’s philosophy focuses on authenticity and storytelling to help clients craft compelling and differentiated applications that stand out. With this approach, she has successfully helped hundreds of applicants gain admission to top-tier MBA programs. Shaifali has been quoted/featured in US News, Business Insider, Forbes, Entrepreneur, The Economist, and The Muse for her expertise. Read our stellar testimonials / request a free consultation !

PROMPT: As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA Program? (no word limit)

This essay was provided by the experts at Admissions Gateway .

I remember my hands trembling as I clenched the scissors, and my mother’s gorgeous locks fell to the ground − I was six years old. Compelled to quit her studies after marriage, my mother resumed her masters in [course] after ten stifling years. With my father’s solitary income going into tuition for my mother, sister and me, a proper haircut was a wasteful luxury. My parents shielded us from their struggles, but the gravity of our situation hit home as I cut my mother’s hair.

When my mother finally cleared her examinations, I expected things to change. Instead, she declined lucrative offers to join public-services, catering to marginalized populations through [country’s] public healthcare system. My parents unwavering desire to lead a life of meaning, fuelled my own. Over the course of my journey, I have carved my own path to making a difference – one of spreading my ideas and impact, beyond what I could accomplish alone. I would like to share how three transformative experiences, starting over a decade ago, have progressively shaped this lifelong approach.

At 13, I was devastated to see my sister’s tiny frame shake violently as she coughed from asthma. What affected me most was learning that we had all contributed to these respiratory problems, by making [city] the most polluted city in the world.

I refused to remain a silent spectator and started an environment club, [club], at school. Digging-up compost pits and conducting tree-plantation drives, our team explored every opportunity to make our premises greener. The efforts of our small 10-member team indicated to me the potential to spur larger change by motivating all 1500 students to step-up. Our idea to achieve this, by integrating environmental-awareness within our curriculum, was dismissed by the administration for lack of resources. Undeterred, I started writing applications to garner financial support, and within months, led our team to the first place in a national competition. The $15K we won infused both resources and enthusiasm to implement our eco-friendly curriculum.

Juggling my graduation-examinations and endless hours of organizing activities for the entire school, we grew [club] five-fold. Students stepped-up to expand our efforts, from transitioning our school to using solar energy to organizing large-scale zero-waste campaigns. ‘Exponential’ was no longer just a graph I studied, I could tangibly see my impact multiplying by mobilising individuals around me.

Eager to replicate our success beyond school, I initiated environmental workshops for children from urban-slums in [city].

“Boys don’t need to save money for dowry, do they not have to conserve environmental resources either?” asked 11-year old [name]. Half-way into my first workshop, my analogy of saving money to explain the concept of conserving environmental resources, had derailed my session-plan.

Having witnessed the consequences of gender-disparity in my own childhood I started my non-profit [non-profit], during college, to promote holistic life-skills education to uproot such evils. I was happiest spending weekends in community-centres and public-classrooms, with my team of student-volunteers, conducting activity-based workshops for hundreds of children. I vividly remember when, beaming with pride, [name] told me that she had saved enough money to buy her house. She not only grasped complex concepts of banking and savings, but acknowledged herself as a financially-independent female – albeit in a game of Monopoly!

By graduation, we grew to a 20-member team and reached 1,000+ children. However, once I moved to join Investment-Banking, our student-volunteer model disintegrated and fundraising for a full-time team seemed impossible. While struggling to sustain momentum, I saw a class-teacher enthusiastically taking initiative to support our program, during a workshop. Watching her, it struck me that scaling-up [non-profit] was not the only way to further impact.

pullquote align=left text="Over the course of my journey, I have carved my own path to making a difference – one of spreading my ideas and impact, beyond what I could accomplish alone."}

Restructuring our workshops into a comprehensive curriculum, we showcased it to the state academic department. Winning their support, we trained 100 public-school teachers and principals to deliver the program. Within two years, these teachers extended our program to 10,000 children and even co-opted their colleagues. Their efforts reaffirmed my conviction that enabling change-agents at a systemic-level could accelerate impact at scale.

To steer my journey in this direction, I decided to quit my investment-banking job in [country] and return to [country]. Forgoing the financial comfort I was finally providing my family weighed on me, but I chose to follow my heart. I joined [foundation], a philanthropy focused on driving systemic change to tangibly impact India’s education landscape.

Innovative, low-cost teaching-aids developed by [company], my [foundation] portfolio-organisation, drastically improved learning for children in rural classrooms. However, their low-monetization potential generated minimal funder interest, threatening their existence. Their question, “How will we serve these children, when we can barely stay afloat?” echoed my own struggles at [non-profit].

Collaborating with the [state] government, I helped [company] reduce costs through subsidies and extend their program to 40,000 students. I was leading large-scale projects with public systems at [foundation], but I realized that empowering social-enterprises such as [company] to drive systemic change could create ripple-effects throughout the ecosystem.

My ten-year-old self wouldn't believe just how far I have come – my hands no longer shake when I take decisive actions, whose outcomes I cannot always predict.

Today, non-profit social-enterprises in India fail to reach their potential, owing to lack of financial and strategic support - the largest remains 1/100th the size of its global peers. So, I took on the mandate to launch an Accelerator within [non-profit], to ensure this support, even though this meant leaving my team and starting out alone. My path was uphill, given [non-profit’s] strategic shift towards working directly with governments − the initiative was peripheral for every decision, be it budget-allocations or team-building.

The eagerness of portfolio-organizations in leveraging every support opportunity kept me going. Months of co-creating monetization strategies and facilitating government meetings paid off, in one instance, enabling immense expansion for the portfolio-organization to reach 800,000 children. Such successes helped evangelize our potential and we are now raising an independent fund to support 30 entrepreneurs to help transform education for 5M children.

My ten-year-old self wouldn’t believe just how far I have come – my hands no longer shake when I take decisive actions, whose outcomes I cannot always predict. Striving to continually widen my impact has helped me progress from empowering school-students to supporting social-entrepreneurs, towards enabling an entire ecosystem of social change-makers.

Battling one constant challenge throughout, that of inadequate resources, has highlighted how social-finance could be the ‘driving-force’ towards my goal. Most importantly, I have learnt that beyond individual efforts, by spearheading thought-leadership and global alliances, I can mobilize the entire ecosystem, catalyzing robust social-investment markets in India.

My friend [name] described how assimilating diverse perspectives through the case-method at HBS helped him understand nuances of business across cultures, while the vibrant community provided access to global networks. HBS equipped him to launch and grow his company across eight emerging economies, through partnerships with local entrepreneurs. Similarly, I am convinced that the ideas, experiences and relationships built at HBS will help me realize my vision where every [club], [non-profit] and [company] can go on to create the change it aspires to.

Provided by Ivy Groupe

What is most compelling is how through the three examples, the applicant demonstrates leadership, initiative, and impact at increasing levels throughout the essay, starting from a very young age.

The essay is engaging, right from the opening paragraph, when the applicant takes the reader directly to the scene as a six-year-old cutting her mother’s hair. The applicant provides important personal context with respect to the experiences that have shaped her perspective and values, “My parents unwavering desire to lead a life of meaning, fuelled my own.” This in turn, has influenced the applicant’s own desire to take action and “[carve her] own path to making a difference,” which is so clearly stated in the applicant’s thesis statement.

Throughout the essay, the applicant demonstrates her passion for giving back to the community as well as her impactful leadership and initiative.

Throughout the essay, the applicant demonstrates her passion for giving back to the community as well as her impactful leadership and initiative, first in school by starting an environmental club, then by launching a non-profit in college, and finally, by creating an accelerator within the non-profit that she joined. In doing so, she shows the reader how she went about implementing change and the ensuing impact that resulted. However, these successes have not been achieved without their share of challenges and obstacles (“battling inadequate resources”), and so what the reader comes away with is the applicant’s humility and humanness. Moreover, the story-telling is very smooth as the applicant does an excellent job of transitioning from one story to another.

As the essay concludes, the applicant comes full-circle, referencing the opening anecdote, “My ten-year-old self wouldn’t believe just how far I have come – my hands no longer shake when I take decisive actions, whose outcomes I cannot always predict.” The last paragraph is a concise but insightful conclusion that weaves in how the applicant has gotten to know Harvard Business School and how the MBA program will help her achieve her goals.

— • Gender: Female • GPA: 3.8 • GMAT: 710 • Undergrad Major: International Relations and Economics

Sponsored by ATLA.MBA : MBA Admissions Consultants: Best Results for Harvard, Stanford, Wharton.

“The birthing ward is to the right,” the woman explained through our translator pointing to a dark room with no electricity and six cots, three on each side. Flies swarmed throughout the open-air hospital. I was in Vilanculos, Mozambique with colleagues from the IFC. As the team responsible for monitoring the firm’s investment in a gas field joint venture (“JV”) with Sasol (a South African petrochemicals company), we had come for quarterly partner meetings. On this trip however, we had ventured out of Maputo to conduct a site visit of the gas processing plant, and a local hospital funded with its revenues. As we passed the hospital’s pharmacy we came to a leaking tank, water forming a muddy puddle beneath it. Our guide explained the water tank at the hospital had been broken for the past several months. Consequently any water that was needed had to be carried from the nearest borehole.

The previous week in Washington I had updated the valuation for the investment, worried about increasing capital expenditure and how it would impact IFC’s return. This hospital, with its dirt floors and lack of plumbing, put into question my preoccupation with the financials. It was shocking that a gas plant with multi-billion dollar sales agreements could not fund this $500 problem. I soon realized however, it was emblematic of a much larger issue: the complicated relationship between the project’s stakeholders, including the Government, local community and foreign investors.

The JV had gained “community” support through promises of economic growth and the construction of social infrastructure. Yet on our visit to Vilanculos, it was clear the local people had not significantly benefitted from the gas plant. They continued to eke out livelihoods the ways they always had and would for their foreseeable future. The Government’s healthy tax and royalty revenues were the project’s real drivers. These funds could have fixed the hospital; however, when it was told about the leaking tank, the Government claimed fixing the issue was not in its current budget. Just as I in my DC office had lost sight of the individuals who could benefit from the project’s lofty developmental goals, so too had the Government. To preserve the sustainability of the hospital, the JV partners were hesitant to crowd out government responsibility for this public resource with additional private funds. Unfortunately no constructive partnership had been reached between the Government and the providers of private capital to prevent these situations.

Through my work at Goldman Sachs and the IFC, I have developed a strong understanding of finance and firsthand experience of the core issues faced when investing internationally.

After returning to Washington, I worked to ensure the water tank was fixed and the beneficiaries of the development goals were not forgotten. First, I involved broader IFC resources, including a team specializing in strategizing and implementing community outreach. Second, we established a sub-committee to ensure greater accountability and alignment amongst all JV partners for these development initiatives. The water tank has since been fixed, however these broader issues involving the division of public and private responsibility are ongoing.

Through my work at Goldman Sachs and the IFC, I have developed a strong understanding of finance and firsthand experience of the core issues faced when investing internationally. Including when working in frontier markets rarely is monetary funding enough to ensure success on all fronts. IFC’s investment thesis for the Mozambique JV contained two broad objectives: financial and developmental. Without the engagement of a diverse group of stakeholders, including governments and local communities, and their expectation for sustainable returns—the developmental goal would remain unrealized.

My interest in emerging markets and the career ambitions it has fostered are deeply intertwined with my upbringing. My Father is British, and my parents used our resulting dual-citizenships as an excuse to travel. At university, I double majored in Economics and International Relations to further study the convergence of finance and geopolitics. While studying abroad in Shanghai and researching my thesis on foreign investment’s role in the economic growth of Western China, I became aware of my own biases. After receiving a poor grade on an essay I asked the professor how to improve. “You only took account the western point of view,” he said, “what about the Chinese”? I re-wrote the paper and learned to remember both sides. My Mother is an attorney who has successfully managed to run her own law firm and raise two daughters. From her role modeling I learned that I could turn these priorities into a career with significant impact.

To reach this goal will require me to combine the technical knowledge and experiences I have garnered thus far, with a deeper understanding and development of my leadership abilities.

Going forward, I plan to work in private equity within frontier markets and in the longer-term apply my knowledge to a role in international diplomacy. To reach this goal will require me to combine the technical knowledge and experiences I have garnered thus far, with a deeper understanding and development of my leadership abilities.

My most rewarding personal leadership experience has been serving as a mentor to Chason Pan, a first-generation college student at Baruch College who moved from China when he was 18. Chason wants to become an investment banker; however, when we first met he was culturally and experientially unprepared to compete for this position. At the beginning I was frustrated and unsure of the value I could add, as the hurdles to achieving this goal felt insurmountable. One day Chason mentioned a painting that had inspired him. As a fellow art lover, on a whim I suggested we go to the Met. While there his depth of knowledge surprised me. This day, leaving the confines of an office building and getting to see a different side of Chason, was the beginning of our common understanding and working relationship. After knowing Chason holistically, his challenges to achieving a finance internship did not seem as large. His intellect and disciplined work ethic would be an asset to any firm. We incorporated these attributes into his resume and cover letters. Finally, to address his obstacles, I pulled on my own experience recruiting, as well as my network of friends and colleagues, to provide him greater knowledge of the finance industry and the path to get there. After two years of working together, Chason successfully achieved an investment banking internship at JP Morgan last summer.

In business school, I want the opportunity to refine the leadership techniques I have learned though my work with Chason in order to apply them on a broader scale. Additionally, upon graduating I aim to possess a toolkit of strategies to effectively confront the macro issues I experienced in Mozambique—successfully coupling financial return with developmental sustainability.

Our mantra is a very custom program to deliver an essay that:

• considers the candidate's specific competitive pool;
• is integral to the unique positioning of the application;
• demonstrates the applicant's potential to have positive impact;
• shows authenticity, clarity of thought, and a considered self-awareness; and,
• connects with the admissions committee reader.

— • Country/State: International • Gender: N/A • Ethnicity: N/A • GPA: 8.2/10 • GMAT: 750 • Undergrad Major: Engineering • Age: N/A • Pre-MBA Industry: E-commerce/Retail

Sponsored by The Jaffe Advantage : The Jaffe Advantage is a full service MBA Admissions Consultancy – with a strong belief in the power of storytelling. I have been advising prospective MBA candidates since 2010 and have helped multiple applicants gain entry to the top U.S. and European business schools.

Prompt: Kellogg’s purpose is to educate, equip and inspire brave leaders who create lasting value. Provide a recent example where you have demonstrated leadership and created value. What challenges did you face and what did you learn?

Most [Nationality] women would remember their first lingerie shopping experience. It is hard to forget the experience of slipping into a dingy shop with your mother, getting eyed up by the male seller, buying without trial and rushing out before, God forbid, the world realizes you bought a bra.

Lingerie remains a taboo topic in [Country], and fashionable lingerie is considered especially risqué, with a ‘one-size, one-style – fits all’ mindset. Aiming to provide an uninhibited lingerie shopping experience, [Company’s] CEO entrusted me responsibility to make [Company] the largest lingerie player in [Country].

Our primary challenge was to create a transformational lingerie shopping experience in a conservative society. Women were apprehensive to share details and openly purchase lingerie, especially from an unknown start-up. I initiated a pan-India “Fit-for-all” campaign highlighting body diversity and the importance of well-fitting lingerie both for health and self-confidence. The campaign spanned 100+ micro-influencers and connected 5Mn+ women, enrolling 400K followers on social-media.

With [Company's] rapid growth, I focused on ensuring sustainability by building a service-oriented culture.

With traditional firms selling standard sizes this campaign helped identify unavailability of non-average sizes. I then led “Fit-athons’, measuring hundreds of women and built a fit recommendation engine. Collaborating with the Sourcing Head, my team standardised raw materials to ensure comfort and quality across 300+ sizes. To promote correct fit, we disseminated educational content at offline events and social-media.

Reaching women in underpenetrated, non-urban areas was challenging. We developed a strategy to build an e-commerce platform supported with retail stores. Targeting consumers through social-media/affiliates, we focussed on customer-experience across touchpoints – instructional website interface, quality checks, discrete delivery across 28k+ zip-codes and easy try-and-buy options. This increased consumer retention and boosted revenue to $[X]Mn/year.

Concentrating on offline expansion through a micro-markets approach, I identified cities with large addressable markets to open exclusive stores. Leveraging our USP as ‘fit experts’, we introduced consultation programs at our omni-channel outlets, employing virtual inventory exposure to provide the right fit across 10k+ styles. We improved offline accessibility through ~600 neighbourhood stores establishing [Company] in 10 cities with ~$[X]Mn in offline sales and the fastest breakeven for company stores.

With [Company’s] rapid growth, I focused on ensuring sustainability by building a service-oriented culture. Tracking consumer feedback; conducting weekly reviews, introducing soft-skills training and setting-up a NPS-linked appraisal process for 150+ employees, my team enabled 35% uptake in NPS.

Growing [Company] taught me to build brand salience through product differentiation. I learnt to step into the customer’s shoes and innovate by creating interactive, immersive experiences to overcome consumer hesitation. Building consumer loyalty highlighted the importance of product quality, and the need for an unobtrusive service-oriented culture.

Today, [company] serves 2Mn customers, is set to reach $[X]Mn revenue by 2020, and is growing into a women’s fashion brand with aim to expand into Asia-Pacific, the Middle-East and Africa. ___

This introduction immediately captured my attention. Not only is it humorous and engaging, but it establishes that the writer is about to embark on a story focused on leadership and change. Two of the most common mistakes I see candidates make are 1) beginning their essay with a sentence that essentially reiterates the question and 2) writing an introduction that is interesting but long-winded.

Admissions officers read application essays from morning to night. Anytime a candidate can provide a respite from the “ordinary” they are one step ahead. At the same time, it is important to ensure that the essay establishes its thesis early. In this case, the writer has done both by the third sentence.

After establishing context, the writer spends the rest of the essay focusing on her actions. She addresses four different sub-topics: establishing a value proposition based on fit; reaching women in rural areas through e-commerce, creating stores in micro-markets, and building a service oriented culture. Addressing different strategies allows the writer to showcase the variety and magnitude of her experience. She demonstrates her deep knowledge of marketing from e-commerce to customer experience to social media to the use of influencers. Business schools want to know that each of their students will bring a new perspective and point-of-view to the classroom. By using a leadership essay to demonstrate a deep understanding of marketing, the writer sets herself up as an expert who can add value to Kellogg both inside and outside the classroom.

While the essay asks about leadership, Kellogg is known for its focus on teamwork. The writer does an excellent job interweaving the two. She writes about collaborating with the Sourcing Head and she makes sure to credit her team for much of the work. The essay reflects the culture of the school by putting emphasis on working well with others.

Overall this is an excellent essay. However, as a third Party Admissions Consultant (I am reviewing this essay post submission) I can’t help but notice a few things I would have recommended changing. These aren’t show-stoppers, but they are important.

• First, the solution doesn’t actually address the issue. The writer starts her essay by focusing on the fact that lingerie remains a taboo subject in her country. In order to provide an uninhibited shopping experience, it would be important for the writer to show how she changed the mindset of the consumer. Instead she focuses first and foremost on fit. While she does make reference to a “discreet delivery” in rural markets and writes about micro-influencers (who conceivably would be the ones making lingerie an acceptable subject) she never really addresses how she made lingerie acceptable. Had I been providing advice, I would have recommended that the writer explain how she used micro-influencers (or other tactics) to change the conversation in the country.
• Second, the writer interchanges the use of “I” and “we.” While it is important to own the story in a leadership essay, there are other grammatical constructions that can be used. The writer could have used the words “our” or “we” only following a reference to the company or her team.
• Finally, there is one grammatical error. She writes “[Company’s] CEO entrusted me responsibility to make…..” This should have been “[Company’s] CEO entrusted me to make ” or [Company’s] CEO entrusted me with the responsibility to make.” Though the writer is foreign, the essay is written in perfect English making this stand out as an error rather than a sentence written by a candidate whose second language is English. While one grammar mistake will not make or break an application, candidates should be extremely careful to proof their essays multiple times.

Overall this is an excellent approach to Kellogg’s leadership essay. Combined with her above-average academic credentials, I am not at all surprised to learn this candidate was admitted.

The Crimson's news and opinion teams—including writers, editors, photographers, and designers—were not involved in the production of this content.

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Writing Application Essays and Personal Statements

Some applications ask that you write an essay that draws on more personal reflections. These essays, sometimes called Personal Statements, are an opportunity to show the selection committee who you are as a person: your story, your values, your interests, and why you—and not your peer with a similar resume—are a perfect fit for this opportunity. These narrative essays allow you to really illustrate the person behind the resume, showcasing not only what you think but how you think.

Before you start writing, it’s helpful to really consider the goals of your personal statement:

• To learn more about you as a person: What would you like the selection committee to know about you that can't be covered by other application materials (e.g. resume, transcript, letters of recommendation)? What have been the important moments/influences throughout your journey that have led to where (and who!) you are?
• To learn how you think about the unsolved problems in your field of study/interest: What experiences demonstrate how you've been taught to think and how you tackle challenges?
• To assess whether you fit with the personal qualities sought by the selection committee:  How can you show that you are thoughtful and mature with a good sense of self; that you embody the character, qualities, and experience to be personally ready to thrive in this experience (graduate school and otherwise)? Whatever opportunity you are seeking—going to graduate school, spending the year abroad, conducting public service—is going to be challenging intellectually, emotionally, and financially. This is your opportunity to show that you have the energy and perseverance to succeed.

In general, your job through your personal statement is to show, don’t tell the committee about your journey. If you choose to retell specific anecdotes from your life, focus on one or two relavant, formative experiences—academic, professional, extracurricular—that are emblematic of your development. The essay is where you should showcase the depth of your maturity, not the breadth—that's the resume's job!

Determining the theme of an essay

The personal statement is usually framed with an overarching theme. But how do you come up with a theme that is unique to you? Here are some questions to get you started:

• Question your individuality:  What distinguishes you from your peers? What challenges have you overcome? What was one instance in your life where your values were called  into question?
• Question your field of study:  What first interested you about your field of study? How has your interest in the field changed and developed? How has this discipline shaped you? What are you most passionate about relative to your field?
• Question your non-academic experiences:  Why did you choose the internships, clubs, or activites you did? And what does that suggest about what you value?

Once you have done some reflection, you may notice a theme emerging (justice? innovation? creativity?)—great! Be careful to think beyond your first idea, too, though. Sometimes, the third or fourth theme to come to your mind is the one that will be most compelling to center your essay around.

Writing style

Certainly, your personal statement can have moments of humor or irony that reflect your personality, but the goal is not to show off your creative writing skills or present you as a sparkling conversationalist (that can be part of your interview!). Here, the aim is to present yourself as an interesting person, with a unique background and perspective, and a great future colleague. You should still use good academic writing—although this is not a research paper nor a cover letter—but the tone can be a bit less formal.

Communicating your values

Our work is often linked to our own values, identities, and personal experiences, both positive and negative. However, there can be a vulnerability to sharing these things with strangers. Know that you don't have to write about your most intimate thoughts or experiences, if you don't want to. If you do feel that it’s important that a selection committee knows this about you, reflect on why you would like for them to know that, and then be sure that it has an organic place in your statement. Your passion will come through in how you speak about these topics and their importance in forming you as an individual and budding scholar. 

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Mba applicants wary about unrestricted use of ai in admissions essays.

Over 300 aspiring business school students across the United States participated in the survey © shironosov/iStock

Aspiring MBA applicants have mixed views on using generative AI for business school admissions, according to a new survey

Wed May 8 2024

Over 300 aspiring business school students across the United States participated in the survey, conducted in March and April 2024.

It found significant portions of prospective students had misgivings about the use of AI during admissions. 

Generative AI regulations in business school admissions

While a majority (56%) of respondents agreed that AI should be allowed for admissions essays with certain guidelines in place, on the other hand 20% were against any use of AI in the admissions process. A further 18% believed there should be no restrictions.

“Aspiring MBA students are going to have to take the GMAT exam without the use of GenAI. And they also built up their GPAs without using it either, considering how new the technology is, so it’s not surprising that many think it's necessary for business schools to put guardrails around its use in the admissions process,” said Stacey Koprince, director of content and curriculum at Manhattan Prep, which is owned by Kaplan.

A separate Manhattan Prep and Kaplan survey released earlier this year revealed few business schools have guidelines for how applicants can use AI in their admissions essays.

Generative AI gives applicants an unfair advantage

The survey revealed some concern that AI gives certain applicants an unearned edge.

Half of respondents believed AI essays give applicants with weaker writing skills an unfair advantage, although 32% disagreed and another 18% remained unsure.

“Our results show that many are eager to use GenAI to their advantage if allowed,” said Stacey.

In fact, 60% of participants said they would likely use AI tools if the schools they were applying to allowed it, while 24% said they were unlikely to use it, and 16% weren’t sure.

“Most MBA programs have no policy at all when it comes to allowing applicants to use GenAI in admissions essays, [but] we don’t believe that’s a tenable long-term position, as they will increasingly get questions from prospective students who want to know the boundaries of acceptable use," said Stacey.  

"Our prediction: Many business schools will be developing GenAI policies in the coming year,” she added. 

Generative AI use beyond admissions

The survey also considered student attitudes towards AI use beyond the admissions process.

Two-thirds (67%) believed enrolled students should be allowed to use AI tools at business school , but under certain guidelines and restrictions. Only a small minority (8%) were against any use of AI at business school, while 20% believed its use should be completely unrestricted. The remaining 6% were unsure.

In respondents’ personal and professional lives, just 8% said they “always” used AI, with 25% using it “frequently”, 38% “occasionally”, 19% “rarely” and 10% said “never”.

Elsewhere, a recent study found AI was the most sought-after study area for MBA applicants. 

With a rising demand for AI proficiency in the workplace and the risk of job cuts  due to the technology, ambitious professionals are keen for business schools to equip them for the evolving business landscape.

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Harvard MBA Essay Examples

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A soldier who served on the front lines in Afghanistan. A process engineer challenged by a long series of early failures. And a female consultant whose passion became healthcare.

Three MBA applicants to Harvard Business School last year. Three students in the newest crop of MBA students at Harvard this fall. All of them answered the question now being asked of 2017-2018 applicants to Harvard:  As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program?

The school provides minimal guidance for applicants trying to make an impression. “There is no word limit for this question,” advises HBS admissions. “We think you know what guidance we’re going to give here. Don’t over think, overcraft and overwrite. Just answer the question in clear language that those of us who don’t know your world can understand.”

Each of the three applicants above wrote a clear and compelling essay in their applications, essays that Poets&Quants is reprinting with permission from the MBA Essay Guide Summer 2017 Edition recently published by The Harbus , the MBA student newspaper at Harvard Business School. The guide contains 39 essays written by successful candidates who are now starting the MBA program at HBS. Proceeds from the sale of the guidebook go to benefit the non-profit foundation that supports The Harbus .

With application deadlines rapidly approaching at Harvard Business School and many other prestige MBA programs, these successful essays will, no doubt, give current candidates a bit of guidance. More importantly, the essays that follow are most likely to provide comfort, that there is no formula or singular way to craft a successful answer.

THREE SUCCESSFUL ESSAYS. THREE VERY DIFFERENT APPROACHES.

The latest edition of the MBA Essay Guide from The Harbus costs $61.49

In his 1,130-word essay, the U.S. Army applicant ties together his experiences of leading soldiers on the front line in Afghanistan together with staff postings in Army operations and logistics to paint a portrait of a dedicated and people-oriented leader.

Inspired by a selfless act from her nine-year-old mentee, this management consultant decided to challenge herself to make an impact in healthcare. In a 937-word essay, she uses a particularly difficult turnaround situation which she was put in charge of as exemplifying her strongest skills: building relationships and uniting people around a common goal.

In a 1,358-essay, a process engineer opens up to a long series of failures in his early life. By showing both vulnerability and honesty, he is able to transform this list of fruitless endeavors into a credible “badge of honor,” evidence of his resilience, determination and strength of character. It quickly becomes apparent that what appeared to be failures in the first half, actually proved to be successes or openings for new opportunities, given enough time and perseverance.

ONE APPLICANT DID 25 DRAFTS BEFORE COMING UP WITH ONE SHE LIKED ENOUGH TO SUBMIT

Behind every MBA application is a person and a story, and in this trio of representative essays the approaches taken by each candidate is as different as the essays they submitted to the admissions committee at HBS.

The engineer went through took eight drafts over two months. “I thought about what personal traits I wanted to share with the ADCOM and identified stories from my past that identified those traits,” he explains. “After two or three drafts, I’d figured out the right narrative and kept refining it, taking as much as a week to finalize each draft. My best advice is to be honest, start early, and have someone who knows what the ADCOMS are looking for to read through a couple of your drafts and give you pointers.”

The consultant estimates that she went through 25 drafts to get to her final version. “I think the most important thing with the essay is to iterate,” she advises. “Because the question is so open-ended, it is important to reflect as much as possible and give yourself the time (in my case two months) to go on the journey necessary to realize what you care most about communicating and how to do so in the most effective way. I also cannot overstate the importance of finding someone who will give you honest feedback.

(See on the following pages the complete and full MBA essays submitted to Harvard Business School)

Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below.

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Beating the Odds: Crimson Education’s Class of 2028 Acceptance Rates

Success by the Numbers

Crimson Ivy League Admit Rates

Excelling Beyond the Ivies

Success Year After Year

Last year marked a significant milestone for Crimson Education — our ten-year anniversary.

While we celebrated this milestone with readers at the end of 2023, the true highlights came from our students and the dedicated team behind them, who experienced remarkable success at the Ivies, at the top 20 US schools (non-Ivies), and even at Cambridge and Oxford.

Now after digesting all the results for the Class of 2028, we’ve got more great news to share, with a spotlight on Crimson student acceptance rates, compared to other students.

Class of 2028 Admissions Success: By the Numbers

In March and April the final admission offers for the Class of 2028 were mailed, opened, and in case after case celebrated by our students.

With our students’ successes now tallied and independently verified by auditors, it’s clear the combined efforts and steadfast dedication of our team members and the students they advise have culminated in extraordinary success.

Below, we’re going to show you exactly how Crimson student acceptance rates for the Class of 2028 stack up compared to general admission rates at some of the best schools in the US.   We think you’ll be amazed at the difference Crimson’s expert advisor network and personalized advising model make in our students’ lives.

For example, Crimson students applying to the Ivy League beat the odds by 6.75x overall, compared to general acceptance rates for the same schools.

We stand by our numbers too. The results we're sharing today come with an impeccable level of assurance, having been independently verified by one of the big four auditing firms.

So keep reading and check out this year's numbers… And, remember, we get results like these for young scholars from more than 100 countries around the globe. That means, in addition to professionalism and transparency, our specialists have valuable knowledge and insights to offer, making Crimson Education the best choice to get tangible results for your own college journey.

Crimson supported me in making every part of my application as good as it could be. It was their engagement that made those acceptances all that more special.

- abby (verified crimson trustpilot review).

Crimson’s Class of 2028 Ivy League Admit Rates

Crimson students performed exceptionally well this year, securing hundreds of offers from top-tier schools during early and regular round application cycles for the Class of 2028.

Offers gained from Ivy League schools were no exception. What’s truly remarkable is the measure by which Crimson students beat the odds overall despite today’s super competitive admissions landscape:

• The number of Crimson students admitted to the Ivy League increased by 33%, compared to last year’s admission statistics.
• The overall Ivy League acceptance rate for Crimson students was around 31%, compared to an average 4.2% Ivy League general admission rate.
• Crimson students applying to the Ivy League for the Class of 2028 beat the odds by 6.75x overall, compared to general acceptance rates for the same schools.

Crimson's USA Class of 2028 Ivy League Admit Rates

While Ivy League schools are often the highlight, our students also excel at top non-Ivy institutions, including schools as selective as Stanford and MIT.

Our network of experienced strategists and Former Admissions Officers can provide expert insights that are also personalized. This ensures every application a student submits, across any number of prestigious universities, both public and private, is tailored to get the best results possible.

Crimson's USA Class of 2028 Top Non-Ivy Admit Rates

Across these eight outstanding universities, Crimson students experienced a 37% acceptance rate compared to the average 6.5% acceptance rate, beating the odds at these highly selective US schools by about 6x.

Crimson's Legacy of Success: Exceptional Results Year After Year

At Crimson Education, our commitment to meeting and beating expectations isn't just a yearly goal — it's a consistent promise upheld across all our years of operation.

That said, we've also raised the bar each year, striving to make every new class surpass the accomplishments of the last. This legacy of success is a testament to our effective strategies, our comprehensive model, and the hard work of our students and their committed advisors, strategists, mentors, and tutors.

Crimson's All-Time Acceptances

Unmatched acceptance rates with unparalleled professionalism and trust.

Crimson Education has an exceptional track record. No other college admissions consultancy can match the outcomes our students experience ; proof that the expertise of our Advisor network, our personalized and holistic approach to application prep, and our students’ high levels of motivation are an unbeatable combination.

Today, our successes and claims are more than just promises; they’re backed by real results and high levels of client satisfaction.

Unparalleled Customer Satisfaction: Across more than 118,000 reviews, Crimson Education has earned an impressive 4.74 out of 5 stars on average. This exceptional score is a testament to the passion we have for helping students around the world overcome impressive odds in pursuit of transformative educational opportunities.

Impeccable Transparency: : We’re immensely proud of the results we get for our students, but in our commitment to transparency,  we’ve gone the extra mile to provide the highest level of assurance possible.

The acceptance rates experienced by our students, like those we've just shared, are now independently verified by one of the big four auditing firms. This makes Crimson Education the only leading college admissions consultancy with independently verified results, ensuring our track record is one you can count on.

Next Steps…

If you’re already part of the Crimson network, you know about our professionalism, comprehensive approach, and personalized strategies.

If not, you may be wondering if partnering with Crimson is right for you. In which case, we want to encourage you to find out more.

Explore Crimson’s Unique Approach

Typically students who get connected with Crimson earlier on their college journey enjoy better outcomes. Start with a free consultation with one of our application specialists. It’s the perfect opportunity to discuss your goals and understand how our tiered and personalized programs and services can work for you .

Consider the Value of Your Future

When evaluating the cost of college planning services, consider it in terms of return on investment . Attending a prestigious university can significantly influence your career and personal growth opportunities. Investing in Crimson’s admissions counseling is not just about gaining admission — it’s about educational opportunity and setting a foundation for other lifetime successes and experiences.

Staying Ahead of the Curve

When aiming for excellence, the importance of strategic preparation is hard to overemphasize. By partnering with Crimson, you benefit from our expertise right from the outset — whether you’re beginning to shape your school list, honing your application profile and materials, or refining your application essays as deadlines approach.

Final Thoughts

Our Class of 2028 students are now poised to turn their dreams into reality, as a result of their hard work and our support. Thanks for celebrating with us!

We hope this glimpse into their success inspires you to consider how Crimson can elevate your college journey.

Whether you're in middle school, starting high school, or soon to be starting your own college applications, we look forward to being a partner on your journey to excellence!

And… Don’t worry. As remarkable as our team members are, they’re easy to talk to and happy to walk you through our many services and resources. So schedule your call today and together let’s put your college journey on a track to success.

What Makes Crimson Different

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About the Contributor

Arkesh Patel

Arkesh Patel is the Chief Operating Officer of Crimson Education, the world's largest and most successful university admissions consulting firm. Crimson Education has helped thousands of students gain admission into the Ivy League and top universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, MIT, and many others. Arkesh graduated from the University of Cambridge with a B.A in Chemistry (First Class Honors) and received his M.B.A with Distinction from Harvard Business School.

More Articles

Princeton withholds admissions stats for class of 2028.

Historical Low: Boston College Accepts 14.6% of Students to the Class of 2028

Barnard College Accepts Only 7% of Students to the Class of 2028

Crimson students are 7x more likely to gain acceptance to their dream college!

Remember, you don't have to navigate this journey alone. crimson provides a comprehensive suite of services, from academic mentoring and test prep to essay assistance, extracurricular guidance, and career mentoring, ensuring a holistic approach to your college preparation journey..