mbaMission: Columbia Business School 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 first analysis, for Columbia Business School.
Introductory Note: Typically, Harvard Business School launches the MBA application season and then other business schools quickly follow suit. Earlier this week, HBS admissions director, Dee Leopold, announced that HBS would be releasing its essays during the final week of May. Meanwhile, Columbia Business School’s Admissions Director, Amanda Carlson, sent a message that she waits for no one. CBS officially released its essay questions today “ you will find the questions and our analysis below.
This year, Columbia Business School (CBS) continues a trend that has developed over the past three seasons, once again reducing the number of words applicants can use to tell their story. Last year, CBS allowed applicants 200 characters with which to respond to its short-answer question and 1,250 words total for its three essays”not much room to showcase one’s strongest attributes and set oneself apart from the pack. Now, CBS candidates have a mere 100 characters for the short-answer question and 1,000 words for the three essays.
Unfortunately, this reduced word count does not make your task as an applicant any easier”especially when you have only one essay (Essay 3) in which to discuss something outside the professional/academic realm and reveal your more personal side. Hopefully, our essay analysis can help you strategize
Short Answer Question: What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (100 characters maximum)
Do not pretend to be anything you are not. Reveal honest, ambitious goals that are also realistic.
These two sentences are 98 characters long. You can now see just how brief you need to be with CBS’s short-answer question. Yet you must still demonstrate that you can convey a point within such strict limits. So, we are sticking with the advice in our example. Do not misguidedly believe that admissions officers have a preference for specific professions or industries”they do not. Think about what you truly want to do with your career and state it directly. Then, be sure that the rest of your application provides evidence that this goal connects to your existing skills and profound interests, making your professed goal achievable and lending credibility to your statement here. If you can do this in 100 characters”and remember that we are talking about characters, not words”you will have answered this question quite well.
Essay 1: Given your individual background, why are you pursuing a Columbia MBA at this time? (Maximum 500 words)
Because the CBS admissions committee is asking why you have chosen to pursue an MBA, you can justifiably delve into your professional career and explain how you identified your need for this particular advanced degree. However, take care not to overwhelm the admissions committee with an unnecessary level of detail about your career history. We cannot emphasize this strongly enough”the admissions committee does not want a recap of your entire resume”moreover, such detail would use up valuable word count. Approximately 100“150 words on your past should be enough to provide appropriate context.
You could perhaps offer an anecdote that reveals an academic or experiential void on your part, or explain that now is the right time for you because you have just completed a lengthy assignment and are ready to transition to the next phase of your career. A number of good reasons exist for wanting to earn your MBA now”just make sure that in your essay, the story of your progression is clear and you demonstrate the momentum and advancement that have brought you to this point. You will then need to explain how and why an MBA will serve as a bridge to the next level of your career. Notice that the school very specifically asks why you wish to earn a Columbia MBA, so you absolutely must incorporate into your essay elements of the CBS experience that are pertinent to your candidacy. Do not just list classes, but give a reasoned argument that explains how your goals, timing and CBS all intersect to make this the right time and the right experience for you.
Because personal statements are similar from one application to the next, we have produced thembaMission 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 CBS’s academic program/merits, defining characteristics, crucial statistics, social life, academic environment and more, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to Columbia Business School. We also suggest that you visit the campus (a must if you live anywhere near New York) and use your network to connect with students to gain a firsthand understanding of the CBS experience.
Essay 2: Columbia Business School is located in the heart of the world’s business capital “ Manhattan. How do you anticipate that New York City will impact your experience at Columbia? (Maximum 250 words)
Please view the videos below:
New York City “ limitless possibilities
New York City “ fast paced and adaptable
This question may seem challenging, but the key here is not to consider what New York City offers in general, but to instead focus on what you need from your educational experience and then address how this will be fulfilled or enhanced by the school’s location. We strongly encourage you to develop your core ideas before you watch the two videos the school provides as context for this question. Watching these videos first might lead you to deliver a canned or clichéd response, rather than honestly contemplating your needs and New York City’s ability to respond to them.
If you find that your sincere reasons for wanting to study in New York City are ones that others can also claim”such as proximity to Wall Street”you will need to do your homework and take your research a step further. Offering proximity to Wall Street alone would constitute a clichéd response, but taking your essay to a more granular level and discussing how specific experiential opportunities speak directly to your niche interests will allow you to own those resources and really personalize this brief, 250-word essay.
Essay 3: What will the people in your Cluster be pleasantly surprised to learn about you? (Maximum 250 words)
Stop now and consider what the admissions officers will know about you at this point from the other elements of your application they have already reviewed. They will probably have read your resume and thus gotten a sense of your career path to date. Your other essays should have provided an understanding of your goals and why you want to be at CBS and in New York City. They may have had some brief glimpses into your personality through these avenues, but this essay is your overt opportunity”albeit brief”to give the admissions committee a sense of your true character.
The key words in this question are pleasantly surprised. Although you certainly want to offer something surprising, you obviously do not want that surprise to be unpleasant. Surprise does not need to be understood as shocked. Do not think you need to totally revolutionize their understanding of you in a mere 250 words (though if you can, that is fine). Our point is that you should not worry if you have not climbed Mount Everest or launched a $50M venture capital“backed start-up. You are not expected to have spectacular achievement to share”CBS just wants to get to know you better by learning about an interesting aspect of your life. Whether you spent a month volunteering in Peru, helped put your sister through school or are passionate about flamenco dancing, these are all suitable stories, and one is not necessarily better than the other. What is important is that you show how what you do is manifest. You must offer a narrative that engages the reader in your actions and emphasizes how you conduct yourself.
We should note that you do not need to answer a question that was not asked. So in this case, you do not need to tie your response to CBS and explain how this aspect of your life will allow you to contribute to the school or your cluster. Not only is this unnecessary, but such attempts are also often transparent and cloying. If the school wanted you to include such information, it would have asked for it.
Optional Essay: An optional third essay will allow you to discuss any issues that do not fall within the purview of the required essays.
However tempted you might be, this is not the place to paste in a strong essay from another school or to offer a few anecdotes that you were unable to use in any of your other essays. Instead, this is your opportunity, if needed, to address any lingering questions that an admissions officer may have about your candidacy, such as a poor grade or overall GPA, a low GMAT score, a gap in your work experience, etc. In our mbaMission Optional Statement Guide, we offer detailed advice on when and how to take advantage of the optional essay, with multiple examples, to help you mitigate any problem areas in your profile.