Blog Archive Stanford Graduate School of Business Essay Analysis, 20162017

Blog Archive Stanford Graduate School of Business Essay Analysis, 2016â€"2017 *Please note: You are viewing an essay analysis from the 2016-2017 admissions cycle.  Click here to view our collection of essay analyses for the current admissions season.   The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) may be known for educating great innovatorsâ€"think Phil Knight and Jacqueline Novogratz, just for startersâ€"but this year, the school’s admissions office is leaving the innovating to others and keeping its essay questions the same as last year’s. In fairness, maybe we should assume that the admissions office finished its innovation phase years ago and has iterated and tweaked its essay prompts enough to have arrived at its version of perfection. Who knows? And more importantly, does it even matter? The Stanford GSB’s task is to craft the questions, but your task is to answer them. With this essay analysis, we have done our best to help you do so successfully… Essay A: What matters most to you, and why? (School-suggested word count of 750) For this essay, we would like you to: Do some deep self-examination, so you can genuinely illustrate who you are and how you came to be the person you are. Share the insights, experiences, and lessons that shaped your perspectives, rather than focusing merely on what you’ve done or accomplished. Write from the heart, and illustrate how a person, situation, or event has influenced you. Focus on the “why” rather than the “what.” When candidates ask us, “What should I write for what matters most to me?,” we offer some pretty simple guidance: start brainstorming for this essay by asking yourself that very question. What does matter most to you? This might seem like obvious advice, of course, but many applicants get flustered by the question, believing that an actual “right” answer exists that they must identify to satisfy the admissions committee. As a result, they never pause to actually consider their sincere responses, which are typically the most compelling. We therefore encourage you to contemplate this question in depth and push yourself to explore the psychological and philosophical motivations behind your goals and achievementsâ€"behind who you are today. We cannot emphasize this enough: do not make a snap decision about the content of this essay. Once you have identified what you believe is an appropriate theme, discuss your idea(s) with those with whom you are closest and whose input you respect. Doing so can help validate deeply personal and authentic themes, leading to an essay that truly stands out. Once you have fully examined your options and identified your main themes, do not simply provide a handful of supporting anecdotesâ€"or worse, recycle the stories you used in a similar essay for another school. A strong essay response to this question will involve a true exploration of the themes you have chosen and reveal a thorough analysis of decisions, motives, and successes/failures, with a constant emphasis on how you conduct yourself. If you are merely telling stories and trying to tie in your preconceived conclusions, you are probably forcing a theme on your reader rather than genuinely analyzing your experiences, and any experienced admissions reader will see right through this. In short, be sure to fully consider and identify your most authentic answer(s), outline your essay accordingly, and then infuse your writing with your personality, thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Stanford encourages you to give special attention to why the subject you have chosen to write about is the most important to you. This “why” element should be clear in your essayâ€"it should be implied by what you are discussing and sharing. If you need to explicitly declare, “And what matters most to me is…,” your essay is not making a strong enough point on its own. A well-constructed essay that is infused with your values and motivation and that clearly conveys why you made certain decisions should effectively and implicitly reveal the “why” behind your chosen topicâ€"and will almost always make a stronger point. One final note is that you can write about a popular theme as long as you truly own the experience. However, the odds are very low that you could write on a theme that the Stanford GSB’s admissions committee has never read about before. You can discuss whatever you truly care about in your essay, but you absolutely must support your topic with a wealth of experience that shows how you have uniquely lived it. Therefore, for example, you cannot successfully write about “making a difference” if you have volunteered only occasionally, but if you have truly had a significant impact on someone’s life, then the topic is no longer a clichéâ€"it is true to who you are. So, focus less on trying to choose the “right” subject for your essay and more on identifying one that is personal and authentic to you. If you write powerfully about your topic and connect it directly to your experiences and values, your essay should be a winner. Essay B: Why Stanford? (School-suggested word count of 400) Enlighten us on how earning your MBA at Stanford will enable you to realize your ambitions. Explain your decision to pursue graduate education in management. Explain the distinctive opportunities you will pursue at Stanford. One of our favorite admissions quotes is from Stanford’s director and assistant dean for MBA admissions, Derrick Bolton, who declared, “Resist the urge to ‘package’ yourself in order to come across in a way you think Stanford wants” (emphasis added). What the admissions committee really wants is to know what and/or who you want to be. The school’s admissions committee does not have a preferred job or industry in mind that it is waiting to hear you say you plan to enterâ€"it truly wants to understand your personal vision and why you feel a Stanford MBA is a necessary element to facilitate this vision. If you try to present yourself as someone or something you are not, you will ultimately undermine your candidacy. Trust the admissions committee (and us!) on this one! Short Answer Question:   Tell us about a time within the last two years when your background or perspective influenced your participation at work or school. (1,200 character maximum) The Stanford GSB, like mostâ€"if not allâ€"top MBA programs, values applicants who can contribute as students to its greater community and the educational experience for all. This query gets at the heart of that by asking you to show your willingness and capacity to draw on either your past or your natural inclinations and abilities, if not both, to contribute to a project or situation. To this end, note that the school is not asking simply about a time when you applied your knowledge or offered input because it was asked of you but instead for a time when you were drawn to a situation because of some personal connection with itâ€"“when your background or perspective influenced your participation.” For example, perhaps you encountered a problem that was similar in many ways to one you had faced before, and the insight and proficiency you gained from that earlier experience inspired you to want to assist in addressing the more recent one. Or maybe an opportunity arose that involved an element close to your heartâ€"as in, it related to a value you hold dear or to a personal interest or hobby that you especially enjoyâ€"and your connection to that element compelled you to become involved. Do not overlook that your response must not exceed 1,200 characters, which to our understanding includes spaces. This is basically the length of the previous two paragraphs (together). 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. And for a thorough exploration of the Stanford GSB’s academic program/merits, defining characteristics, crucial statistics, social life, academic environment, and more, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Stanford Graduate School of Business. 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