Financial Times: Application essays: Be sure to talk with students and alumni

Source: Financial Times

by Sunny Sheng, Copenhagen Business School,
10.12.2016.

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t is hard to believe it has been 18 months since I submitted my MBA application to Copenhagen Business School. In January last year, when I was preparing my essays, I took a week to think seriously about why I wanted to do an MBA, what I wanted to get out of it and why Copenhagen’s MBA was the right one for me.

There are four essays required for the Copenhagen MBA application, which are mainly about showing your personal interests, understanding of leadership, interests in the core area of the programme and post-MBA career goals. Now that my MBA journey is over, it is clear this pre-MBA process of self-exploration was key to understanding my own strengths and post-MBA desires. I can now also look back at my essays and see that, luckily, my original career plans have not changed much.

[pullquote cite=”” type=”right”]When brainstorming, think big and be creative.[/pullquote] To prepare I went through a process that included brainstorming, editing and refining. If I could do it again, I would include talking with MBA students or alumni. My first tip is to plan ahead and make sure you have enough time to include each one of these steps in your preparation.

When brainstorming, think big and be creative. I had many business ideas including opening an organic food restaurant in China. Then I listed my strengths and weaknesses to see in what areas I should improve to achieve these goals. By doing this I figured out that Copenhagen’s MBA was the programme I should do. The key to writing good essays is not to focus on how perfect you are, but to show what it is that makes you and your professional experiences unique.

Talking with MBA students or alumni can simplify your essay preparation. It can help you understand how the business school admissions manager thinks and how they evaluate candidates through the essays. Most importantly, it can help you to avoid unnecessary mistakes.

A tip for editing and refining is to ask a friend or colleague to review your essays for grammar, typos, logic and essay styles. For me, it was helpful to get a different perspective.

As Steve Jobs said: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”