Tips for Columbia Business School’s 2024-2025 Essays

With an acceptance rate of 22%, Columbia Business School (CBS) isn’t easy to earn an acceptance letter. The business school seeks out the best of the best—and most applicants will need more than just strong numbers to get an acceptance. Crafting a well-rounded and impactful application is crucial and understanding the intricacies of the essay prompts can make all the difference.

Jeremy Shinewald, an admissions consultant at mbaMission, recently offered a comprehensive breakdown of CBS’s 2024–2025 essay prompts, providing valuable insights and strategies for crafting a compelling application.

SHORT ANSWER QUESTION

This year’s CBS short answer question asks applicants the following:

What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (50 characters maximum) 

The limited 50-character count means you’ll have to keep your response concise and direct. Shinewald recommends getting straight to the point and having a clear and achievable goal to convey.

“So think about what you truly want to do with your career in the short term, and state this aspiration directly,” Shinewald says. “Keep in mind that the rest of your application needs to provide evidence that your stated goal aligns with your existing skills and profound interests, especially once they have been augmented by an MBA education. This will show that your professed goal is achievable and lend credibility to your statement.”

ESSAY 1

The first CBS essay prompt asks applicants the following:

Through your resume and recommendation, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals over the next three to five years and what is your long-term dream job? (500 words)

This essay is less about recapping your career thus far and more about where you see yourself going. Shinewald says applicants should try to be creative and challenge themselves to think big.

“CBS wants individuals who do not just follow prescribed paths according to someone else’s blueprint but who are aspirational and more inclined to forge their own way,” Shinewald says. “This is not to suggest that if you have a more traditional plan in mind that you are in trouble or at risk of losing the admissions committee’s attention, but you might need to take a little extra time to consider your ambitions from the perspective of ‘what if?’ and to delve more deeply into what you hope to achieve to find the more personal and inspiring elements of your goals. Showing creativity and individualism here can only be helpful.”

ESSAY 2  

The second CBS essay prompt asks applicants the following:

The Phillips Pathway for Inclusive Leadership (PPIL) is a co-curricular program designed to provide students with the skills and strategies needed to develop as inclusive leaders. Through various resources and programming, students explore and reflect on the following five inclusive leadership skills: Mitigating Bias and Prejudice; Managing Intercultural Dialogue; Addressing Systemic Inequity; Understanding Identity and Perspective Taking; and Creating an Inclusive Environment.

Describe a time or situation when you had the need to utilize one of these five skills, and tell us the actions you took and the outcome. (250 words)

The PPIL program was designed to help students navigate topics and situations related to diversity and inclusion. This essay, Shinewald says, is the admissions committee’s way of gauging your understanding of the concepts and how you apply them.

“To start, you must understand that true inclusion goes beyond simply providing a seat at the table, so to speak, for everyone on a team and demands that each person be invited or at least allowed to contribute in a meaningful way and that those contributions be valued on par with those of other team members,” Shinewald says. “Fully illustrating and exemplifying the ‘how’ element is crucial for this essay to be its most effective, so be as thorough as possible (within the rather restrictive 250-word limit) in explaining your thought process and the steps you took to make a difference.”

Sources: mbaMission, P&Q

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