Top HBS Essay Questions Answered

For many years, HBS has asked applicants to its MBA program to answer only one 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)

For such a simple question, it certainly produces a lot of confusion! Here are some of the top questions we at Stratus hear about this prompt, along with some advice to help you tackle it.

How should I begin the essay?

Many applicants we work with struggle with how to begin their essays in a compelling way. It often works well to open the essay with an anecdote, experience, or quote that you can later connect to your career aspiration. For example, a candidate whose aspiration is to work on solutions to climate change might open the essay by sharing an anecdote from their personal life about growing up in a part of the world that gave scant attention to the issue and discussing the downfalls of that approach. Then they would begin to tie that concept to their overall career interests. The most interesting openings draw the reader right in so they want to keep reading and understand how you got there and where you are going. We have seen successful essays that open with personal and with professional content, so choose the strongest way for YOU to begin this essay.

Should I include more personal or professional content?

The quick answer is “it depends.” As you think about what to write about and which examples to include, you want to consider your career goals, the themes you are trying to convey about yourself in your application, your important life and career experiences, and what they say about you. In the climate change example, the applicant might include professional examples that show leadership on this issue. If their current role is not related to environmental issues, the applicant might draw on experiences from their involvement in a nonprofit environmental group, for example. Your passion for the issues you care about can be sparked at work, from your personal life, or from an extracurricular activity. There is no one right or wrong way to tackle the balance between the two, so your own life and career experiences should be the guide here. If you’re interested in something but you have no examples in your life of experiencing it or working to fix it, then it might not be the best thing for you to be writing about.

Can there be any overlap with the HBS short-answer questions?

As with all components of your application, you want the different pieces to complement, not overlap with, each other. For example,  Your answer might discuss a situation that also appears in your essay but from a different angle. For example, in the short-answer section, you might write about the difficulty of working cross-functionally on a product when not all the players saw things the same way and then explain what you did to overcome the challenge. In the essay, with more words available, perhaps that example appears but includes more about HOW you navigated the complex interpersonal dynamics within the team or WHY you as a leader chose the approach you did, as well as what you learned about yourself and/or about leadership.

For professional examples, should I include quantifiable results of my accomplishments?

Imagine that your resume includes the “whats” and the essay includes the “hows” and “whys” behind the whats. So, if you include a bullet on your resume that says you identified X amount of cost savings through data analysis, the essay could include how you accomplished that, who you worked with to accomplish that, and what you learned from that experience. But consider whether you need to include that X amount. There is no rule that you cannot include numbers in your essay, and many people do, but be careful that you are not just rehashing something that is already on your resume but instead sharing something new.

Jennifer Jackson is an MBA Admissions Consultant at Stratus Admissions Counseling. Jennifer’s background includes four years at Edelman Public Relations, where she focused on communication strategies. After completing her MBA, Jennifer joined Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm.

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