Why Stanford’s Iconic MBA Essay Still Matters

Stanford Graduate School of Business

If you’re still coming up short as to what really matters to you, start by noting down all of your experiences to date, and exploring themes such as:

• What was your upbringing like? How did key figures and your surroundings shape you? Were you a happy child? What were you regularly involved in (by force or by choice)?
• What was school like? Were you focused? What were your friends like and how did they influence you? How did you feel, emotionally as a teenager?
• What has your career been like? Are you proud of your choices? Any regrets? What do you like/dislike about your job and why?
• What extra-curricular activities and hobbies did you/do you engage in and what’s the reason behind them?
• What do you love or hate about life? What makes you happy, sad, or angry?
• What makes you want to get up (or not get up) in the morning? What motivates you and what do you really care about?

IT’S ALL DEEP WITHIN YOU

Now review your answers – including what you initially wrote down as your gut response. Can you identify an underlying theme (or themes) throughout your life? I bet you can. It might amaze you that you have a method to the madness in your life. You could even talk to family and friends as they may have some anecdotes about you that you’ve forgotten about. Now, through telling a compelling story, highlight the key themes and connect them to the general ideas expressed in your essays.

Even though you might have to spend hours on this essay through brainstorming, research, talking with others, writing a draft, then another (and then another), just remember that it’s all deep within you… it’s your story, and you just have to dig deep, find it, and pull it out.

Shouldn’t we all really think about what matters most to us, whether we’re applying to business school or not? This essay is, in fact, a very valuable exercise to help with self-awareness, to understand why we do certain things, and why we make certain choices in life. Take this on as a personal challenge, not as an MBA essay question. Stanford wants to know what matters most to you, and so should you.

Matt Symonds

Matt Symonds is a founding partner of Fortuna Admissions and also the co-founder of QS World MBA Tour in 1995, and launched the Kaplan Test Prep franchise in continental Europe. His MBA admissions workshops have been attended by more than 80,000 business school hopefuls around the world.