How To Write Stellar Columbia MBA Essays

The CBS MBA application includes two short-answer questions and three essays. The essays and short answers form a crucial part of the application, helping the admissions committee gain a deeper understanding of who you are – your professional experience, future aspirations, unique personality, motivations, and fit with CBS/program.

Preliminary Steps Before Drafting Essays and Short Answers

Before diving into each component and the strategies for writing them, it’s helpful to understand what the school is looking for and undertake the following exercises to ensure alignment of your career path with CBS’s values and expectations:

First-level Research on the Internet (blogs/school website):

Start with a first level of research on the internet to understand the offerings and requirements of the school, focussing on three key areas: academic offerings (courses, curriculum, faculty, learning environment, methodologies, etc.), experiential opportunities (clubs, networking opportunities, conferences, etc.) and extracurriculars aligned to your goals and past experiences. 

Reflecting, Visualising and Articulating your Long-term & Short-term Goals

Goals are the centerpiece of any B-school application. They demonstrate why an MBA is an ideal and logical next step in your career. Thus, before drafting your essay and short answer responses, it is important to reflect, visualize, and articulate your goals (both long-term and short-term). This will enable a cohesive narrative, with your experiences, skills/strengths, and the school’s offerings tied to your long-term vision and short-term goals. 

Long-term Goals 

Long-term goals typically refer to where you see yourself 10 years after graduating from B-school and should echo the following: 

(i) Substantial Community-Related Problem/Need: Your goals should identify and seek to solve a community-identified need at a large scale, such as affordable healthcare, access to clean drinking water, inclusion, etc. 

(ii) Interconnection with Past Experiences: The community-identified need, when anchored to your past personal and professional experience, will demonstrate why the problem resonates with you and your personal hook/connection with it.

(iii) Scalable and Sustainable Impact: The solution should produce scalable and sustainable impact i.e., has the potential to impact people at a large scale. The onus lies on you to convince the reader why the problem matters and needs to be solved. 

(iv) Transcend Geographical Boundaries: While each solution to the community problem may not cross geographical boundaries, it’s worth considering whether it has the potential to transcend them and create a broader impact.

Short-term Goals

Short-term goals represent where you wish to be 2 years after graduating from B-school. Once you have drafted your long-term goals, work backward to form a logical bridge between your eventual goal and what you immediately aspire to do. 

Networking

Networking is crucial to essay writing. Interacting with alumni and current students provides a deeper understanding of the school’s offerings and how it will support your skill set development to make your long-term vision a reality. By referencing these conversations in your essays, you can better articulate your contributions and reasons for choosing CBS, adding a layer of credibility and personal connection with CBS. Additionally, networking also helps you double-check information on the school’s website, such as any clubs that have become dormant or courses that are no longer being offered. 

Short Answer Questions

The CBS application requires answering two short-answer questions, the maximum limit for each being 50 characters. Here are a few general tips for answering the short answer questions: 

Short Answer Question 1 

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

Through this question, the admissions committee seeks to understand your goal immediately after pursuing an MBA at CBS. This short answer serves as an overview of the deeper, more detailed career objectives you will discuss in Essay 1, so it’s important to make it clear and to the point while still showcasing your professional aspirations. 

The answer should be concise and specific, providing a snapshot of the type of role you aim to pursue, the organization, industry and team / vertical you intend to join.

For example, “Join an MBB in healthcare consulting to drive innovation of xx” or “Join the World Bank to lead impact investment initiatives in developing countries.” 

Short Answer Question 2 

How do you plan to spend the summer after the first year of MBA? If in an internship, please include target industry(ies) and/or functions. If you plan to work on your own venture, please indicate a focus of business (50 characters maximum)

The question asks for a specific response, and, as a result, you should mention the organization you plan to work with, along with the particular project, team / vertical you’ll be involved in. Alternatively, if you plan to launch your own venture, mention the venture, area of focus, and how it furthers your goals.

It’s important to align your response with both your short-term and long-term career goals, demonstrating how your summer plans fit into your overall professional trajectory. 

Essays  

Essay 1

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)

Evidently, as mentioned in the prompt, the idea is to go beyond your resume and recommendations to provide context around your career goal (both short-term and long-term). 

Approach to drafting the essay

Two-thirds of the essay should focus on your personal and professional motivations. 

Personal Hook/ Connection: Ideally, begin the essay with a personal hook or connection—a defining moment or an experience that put things in perspective for you and ignited your passion for solving a particular problem, i.e., your long-term goal. This story can come from your formative years, or something you encountered through your personal, professional, or extracurricular experience. For e.g., the loss of a loved one/family member due to lack of healthcare access, financial hardships motivating to revolutionize the credit/lending ecosystem, etc. 

Statistic/Headline: To sensitize the reader to the scale of the problem, you can use a compelling statistic or headline to emphasize why the issue matters. 

Credibility: Once you have demonstrated your personal connection and motivation to solve the stated problem, it’s also essential to highlight your skills and knowledge, i.e., how your past professional experiences have equipped you to tackle this issue. Establishing this link (between the problem and your previous work) helps you reinforce your credibility and shows a deep understanding of the issue and its underlying causes. 

Short-term & Long-term Goals: Finally, articulate your long-term and short-term goals, and share your vision for the future—how do you envision society evolving, and how will you contribute to that vision? The goals you set for yourself should be realistic and aligned with the problem statement highlighted above. 

Sample Framing of Short-term & Long-term Goals: 

Post-MBA, I will join the “x” team at “(name of organization)” to “(mention purpose i.e. what you seek to do and learn)”

My long-term goal is to (establish/lead/head/ etc.) to (mention larger vision/end goal)

The remaining one-third of the essay should focus on how CBS will help you achieve your goals in a specific manner by delving into:

• A project/experience where you gained insight into the importance of specific skills (industry or problem-specific) that you seek to hone/develop at CBS. This will show your readiness to leverage CBS’s resources/offerings. 
• Explain how CBS can enable you to realize your vision and better your skills using three pillars: academic, experiential, and extracurricular. 
• Additionally, mention interactions with current students and alumni to further buttress your point.

Essay 2

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. Please respond to one of the below (250 words).

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. 

Alternatively, please share a specific example of how you made a team more collaborative or fostered a greater sense of community within an organization.

The goal is to show inclusive leadership through this essay, demonstrating both self-awareness and leadership. 

The essay prompt outlines five key inclusive leadership skills, namely Mitigating Bias and Prejudice, Managing Intercultural Dialogue, Addressing Systemic Inequity, Understanding Identity and Perspective-taking, and Creating an Inclusive Environment. While it’s not necessary to address all five skills, focussing on 2-3 skills will be sufficient. 

For this essay, it’s ideal to draw from a recent work-related experience, though you may also discuss a sustained extracurricular activity – preferably one you’ve been involved in for at least a year. 

Approach to drafting this essay – Situation, Task, Action, Result (STAR) format: 

• Personal Anecdote / Connection: Start the essay with a personal anecdote, a quote, or an observation that captures the climax of the situation and draws the reader into the story.
• Problem Statement: Clearly define the problem or challenge you encountered, outlining the issues you identified.
• Actions and Challenges: Focus on the actions you took to address the problem, emphasizing the challenges you overcame in the process. It’s important to highlight not just what you did but also the obstacles you faced and how you navigated them.
• Impact and Learnings: Conclude by describing the tangible impact and lessons from your actions, linking it to the specific skill(s) you want to showcase.

Essay 3 

We believe Columbia Business School is a special place with a collaborative learning environment in which students feel a sense of belonging, agency, and partnership–academically, culturally, and professionally. How would you co-create your optimal MBA experience at CBS? Please be specific. (250 words)

Through this essay, the admissions committee seeks to understand your contributions to CBS and the impact you will make. The school values initiative (driving change, conceiving and executing new projects/ideas), partnership (tying up with others in a collaborative manner), agency (the ability to make   a difference and take things in your own control), and belonging (making CBS your home and a home for others). 

In light of these values, the essay should highlight 2-3 unique/game-changing contributions you intend to make at CBS from different standpoints/facets. By referencing specific opportunities at CBS (academic, experiential, or extracurricular) and providing sufficient context around your personal connection, anecdotes, experience, or values, you can effectively demonstrate the potential impact you are capable of making. 

Examples of contributions: 

“I will establish (name of Club) and conduct workshops on (mention a cause you resonate with) with CBS alumni (name) to (end goal).”

“I will launch (name of initiative) to (provide mentorship) and organize panel discussions with leaders like (name of leader) to share insights on (mention the topic) to enable / address (elaborate end goal).”

Follow the STAR approach, touching upon the situation (context), task/action (steps you took), and the result (impact of your efforts). Conclude by expressing your eagerness to join CBS, emphasizing how the school/program aligns with your goals and how you plan to make meaningful contributions.

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