Given the increasing number of applicants targeting full time MBA programs in Europe, we’d like to spend some time today offering tips on approaching INSEAD’s essays. This school is unique in its division of questions into “job essays,” which are looking for a factual account of your current position and overall professional progression, and “personal essays,” which invite the sort of reflection and exposition to which MBA applicants are accustomed.
Job Essays
1. Please give a detailed description of your job, including nature of work, major responsibilities; and, where relevant, employees under your supervision, size of budget, number of clients/products and results achieved. (250 words)
While the essays for most programs begin by addressing the overall progression of your career up to this point, INSEAD’s first question is requesting a snapshot of your career at this moment. Even if you have held a number of positions within the same organization, your focus should be your current position and responsibilities. Keeping in mind that this will be the adcom’s introduction to your materials, it’s important that you provide the context necessary for the reader to understand your place within the organizational structure and the work that occupies your days. While there is some room to talk about “results achieved,” don’t get bogged down in the specifics of certain projects or engagements – you’ll need to keep your comments fairly general (and focused on the present) here, and incorporate some more specific information about your career’s “greatest hits” later on in response to other questions.
2. Please give us a full description of your career since graduating from university. If you were to remain with your present employer, what would be your next step in terms of position? (250 words)
This is a tall order for a 250 word essay, so brevity and efficient use of language will be key here. The adcom is looking for an applicant who can present her career as a coherent whole, and demonstrate that she has been on an upward trajectory since the outset. While it would be ideal for you to include some comments on lessons learned and skills gained over the course of your career, the primary focus should be touching upon each full time post you’ve held, explaining the reasons behind each move you’ve made and commenting on increases and changes in responsibility.
Personal Essays
1. Give a candid description of yourself, stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary. (400 words approx.)
This essay is actually very similar to Harvard’s “strengths and weaknesses” question, and the same general approach applies – applicants will want to lead off with two or three positive qualites (grounded in specific illustrative examples) and then comment on one or two weaknesses that they’ve taken steps to address. INSEAD’s framework gives applicants free reign to select personal, professional or extracurricular examples, so make sure that you select your examples with an eye to presenting a balanced picture of your interests and experiences.
2. Describe what you believe to be your two most substantial accomplishments to date, explaining why you view them as such. (400 words approx.)
This is another fairly straightforward question. We would recommend that one, if not both, of the examples you use in this essay cover your professional achievements. Remember that it will be important to ground your comments in specific details and fully explain why these achievements were significant, both in terms of the results you produced and the lessons you learned.
3. Describe a situation taken from school, business, civil or military life, where you did not meet your personal objectives, and discuss briefly the effect. (250 words approx.)
This failure essay has a particularly restrictive word limit, making it all the more important for applicants to summarize and explain the failure as concisely as possible. Make sure that you avoid ending this essay on a negative note. While not meeting a personal objective would undoubtedly have some negative repurcussions, it’s likely that “the effect” included a valuable lesson learned.
4. Discuss your career goals. What skills do you expect to gain from studying at INSEAD and how will they contribute to your professional career. (500 words approx.)
This is the standard career goals essay, with an interesting focus on skills as they relate to INSEAD classes and future goals. The phrasing of this question might indicate that the school is looking for applicants who have really thought through the limitations they face given their current skill sets, and have a clear sense of what they need to learn (and how they will do so through an MBA) in order to be successful in a very specific career path. This just goes to underscore the fact that well-defined goals and school-specific detail are essential to a successful application.
5. Please choose one of the following two essay topics:
a) Have you ever experienced culture shock? What did it mean to you? (250 words approx.), or b) What would you say to a foreigner moving to your home country? (250 words approx.)
This sort of question is designed to gauge applicant’s cultural sensitivity and ability to conduct business in an international setting. It should come as no surprise to applicants who are familiar with INSEAD’s reputation as a highly international program (73 countries are represented in this year’s class). The first option asks applicants to recount a trying experience in another country or environment, and to explain the resulting personal growth and process of adjustment. Meanwhile, the second asks applicants to reflect on the unique characteristics of his or her own culture and anticipate the issues that a visitor might encounter. In both responses, the successful applicant will manage to demonstrate cultural flexibility, offering evidence for his or her ability to operate as a global citizen and work in diverse teams. Of course, many of the best essays will manage to incorporate a healthy dose of lessons learned, indicating that cultural adjustment can be fraught with trial and error rather than sugar-coating a response and failing to outline the struggles or periods of adjustment. As always, vivid anecdotes will be more supportive of your candidacy than broad claims.
