After a news-heavy week last week, we wanted to pick up where we left off in terms of essay tips with our thoughts on Anderson’s essay questions for this year. At a relatively slim five pages total, UCLA’s three required essay questions cover quite a bit of ground chronologically, reaching into the distant and recent past and extending into the future. We recommend a fair amount of up-front reflection before tackling these essays, as it seems particularly important to arrive at a broad view when approaching this school’s application. Let’s take a look at each of the required responses and think about how each fits into the complete picture.
Essay 1: Please provide us with a summary of your personal and family background. Include information about your parents and siblings, where you grew up, and perhaps a highlight or special memory of your youth (2 page limit).
While we generally caution applicants against writing at length about their families and upbringing when they could cover other topics in their essays (lest they sound immature or create the impression that they haven’t done anything of note more recently), Anderson makes the unusual move of explicitly requesting information on this subject. The school is likely asking this to get at information that might not otherwise come up in an applicant’s file – such as a childhood spent abroad or difficult socio-economic cirmcumstances overcome – to get a more complete sense of the person as a whole and what an applicant might bring to the community in terms of background and perspective. Another possible motivation might be to identify reflective and self-aware applicants who are able to identify the ways their early experiences have influenced who they are today. No matter what approach you choose to take in framing your comments, remember that in spite of the somewhat unconventional subject, it’s important to speak directly to the question and cover all of the requested points.
Essay 2: Discuss a situation, preferably work related, where you have taken a significant leadership role. How does this event demonstrate your managerial potential? (Limit to 1 page.)
This is a great opportunity to share a professional success story (taking the adcom’s hint that they would prefer a work-related example), ideally one in which you made a positive impact on your company or a group. The rather broad request to discuss a “leadership role” leaves the applicant with a wide array of options in terms of potential subject matter, so candidates are open to explore varying modes and avenues of influence and directing the work of others. They key will be to explicitly tie the comments about this previous experience to potential for the future in response to the final component of Anderson’s question. A final thing to keep in mind is that the relatively short length of this essay will require that the anecdote be fairly focused and concise.
Essay 3: Discuss your career goals. Why are you seeking an MBA degree at this particular point in your career? Specifically, why are you applying to UCLA Anderson? (Limit to 2 pages.)
This is a fairly standard career goals/why MBA essay, though it is a bit unusual that this inquiry closes rather than opens the full set of essays in the application. While it’s important to provide a candid account of your professional objectives and interest in Anderson’s program, remember that a truly artful set of essays will introduce common themes that run throughout all three responses. Ideally, then, the topic of this essay will not come as a complete surprise to an adcom member who has read the previous essays.
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