mbaMission: Dartmouth College (Tuck) Essay Analysis, 2013–2014
We’ve invited mbaMission to share their Business School Essays Analyses as they’re released for the 2013-2014 application season. Here is their analysis for Dartmouth College (Tuck).
As MBA programs move toward PowerPoint presentations, creative essays and essays without word limits, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College sticks to its tried and true approach: three 500-word essays, one of which is a classic career statement, while the others ask candidates to reflect on individual experiences. Given the more straightforward nature of these prompts, Tuck applicants will likely take comfort in knowing for certain that they have provided what the school wants—they have not missed the point of the questions or veered too far afield. Tuck in some ways allows candidates to more easily showcase their stories in a direct manner, and this means the school will be better able to compare candidates one-to-one—though applicants are hardly “apples to apples” in nature.
Please respond fully but concisely to the following essay questions. There are no right or wrong answers. We encourage applicants to limit the length of their responses to 500 words for each essay. Please double-space your responses.
1. Why is an MBA a critical next step toward your short- and long-term career goals? Why is Tuck the best MBA fit for you and your goals and why are you the best fit for Tuck?
Because personal statements are similar from one application to the next, we have produced the mbaMission Personal Statement Guide, which helps applicants write this style of essay for any school. We offer this guide to candidates free of charge. Please feel free to download your copy today.
For a thorough exploration of Dartmouth Tuck’s academic program, merits, defining characteristics, crucial statistics, social life, academic environment and more, please check out thembaMission Insider’s Guide to the Tuck School of Business.
2. Tell us about your most meaningful collaborative leadership experience and what role you played. What did you learn about your own individual strengths and weaknesses through this experience?
By specifying “collaborative” leadership, Tuck takes an interesting spin on a classic leadership question. The school does not want to hear about a time when you aggressively took control of a situation, nor about a time when you were just a cog in a wheel. The admissions committee wants to learn about a situation in which you shared power with someone else (or various people) and achieved an objective. Keep in mind that leadership is not a matter of title—you can be the associate to someone else’s vice president or vice versa and still be a collaborative leader if you are helping to drive something forward. In other words, think about your actions, not about the org chart.
As you write this essay, incorporate the dynamics of the experience into your narrative. Do not spend a lot of time explaining the leadership arrangement, and instead simply let the story of the situation unfold, then show your actions and the subsequent reactions (complementary or otherwise) from your co-leader(s).
To effectively reveal your “strengths and weaknesses,” you will need to demonstrate that you encountered challenges along the way and show how you overcame them. You cannot tell the story of your experience and then just tack on a mention of some unrelated—and thus “unproven”—lesson at the end. This is a common mistake, so be extra careful to avoid it. You must also reflect on the experience, because the question asks you to, but make sure the reflection you share is derived directly from the experience you describe in your essay. If you write 350–400 words of narrative and 100–150 words of related reflection, you should be on the right track.
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mbaMission: University of Chicago (Booth) Essay Analysis, 2013–2014
We’ve invited mbaMission to share their Business School Essays Analyses as they’re released for the 2013-2014 application season. Here is their analysis for University of Chicago (Booth).
Why not start our analysis of the University of Chicago Booth’s essay questions for this season with a few important words directly from the school’s admissions committee?
“This year’s questions have been specifically designed to get to know you on a deeper level and to go beyond why it is that you want an MBA. As you review the essay questions … we encourage you to think about the experiences that have shaped and influenced you, your passions and interests (professionally and personally), and what you think the Admissions Committee needs to know about you in order to fully understand your candidacy. While essay questions are just one part of a holistic evaluation process, they are still a very relevant and valuable component for our Admissions Committee.
You may notice that we do not have a formal essay question asking you to outline your career goals and reasons for an MBA. Our full online application, which will go live within a couple of weeks, will offer an opportunity for you to share this important information as well.”
So what is the admissions committee saying here? The message is that the school values applicants’ essays/presentations as vehicles through which to gain a profound sense of who its candidates are and what they stand for. Chicago Booth is essentially asserting the importance of this part of the admissions process—to ensure that you take it seriously. So, perhaps more than ever, you will need to think very carefully about what stories and messages you want to share with the school before you start writing. Brainstorm thoroughly and create a personal inventory of sorts, then plan your essays so that as much of that inventory as possible finds its way into your submissions. Do not worry about showing that you have many strengths and talents. Effective business leaders are not one-dimensional, but are quite the opposite. The admissions committee will be happy to discover that you have a depth of skills and experience.
Short Answer Essays
1. My favorite part of my work is…. (250 word max)
Ideally, you will have multiple ideas for how to respond to this query, but what should you avoid writing? Definitely do not write about how you can become completely consumed with a singular aspect of your job, like spreadsheets! Although the admissions committee wants to know that you are a passionate person, that passion has to have external implications. In other words, your passion needs to have an impact on others (and please don’t make the contra argument that this can be achieved through spreadsheet modeling!).
Your favorite aspect of your work might be your company’s annual off-site, the generosity that your boss shows in mentoring you, the creative process involved in launching a new product/campaign or even the satisfaction of winning a mandate or earning praise from a client for a job well done. What is important in this essay is not the particular aspect of work you choose, but that it reveals a character trait or skill that reflects a contribution you will make to the Chicago Booth community. You should not just write, “My favorite part of my work is the company off-site.” Even though you have only 250 words for this essay, you can still convey in some detail how you experience this aspect of your work—not just what it is, but what kind of reaction/emotion it triggers in you and how this relates to who you are as an individual and what you value. Relay the story of why the off-site is so meaningful for you.
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