Aerial view of the Dartmouth Campus
The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth just announced that its application for the 2015 / 2016 season is now open. There were no significant surprises this year.
You can’t get through an MBA application without being asked about your career goals, but a lot of applicants struggle to answer the question convincingly. This post is dedicated to helping you do just that. I’ll not only be talking about the keys to writing a convincing career goals essay, but I’ll also be using my own career goals essay from my HBS application to illustrate my points.
Ultimately, a good career goals essay is five things: it’s clear, it’s specific, it’s genuine, it’s ambitious, and it’s congruous. Let’s take each of the five in turn.
Be Clear. State your goal unambiguously and immediately. No one ever got admitted to business school for a beautifully written and captivating introduction, but plenty have gotten dinged because admissions committees couldn’t understand what exactly the applicant’s career goal was. My advice to applicants is always the same: lead your essay with a clear statement of your career goal. Here’s the first sentence of my HBS career vision essay:
“My career will focus on launching and managing social ventures that can provide innovative private-sector solutions to public problems.”
It’s simple, straightforward, and most importantly, it isn’t hiding amidst paragraphs of cliche prose and wannabe poetry.
The one ding I’d give myself is that, by itself, it’s a little broad, which is why it’s also important to quickly get very specific…
As Harvard Business School is about to release a new batch of admissions offers, we thought that prospective applicants would enjoy watching this video. It was released by Harvard in Q4 2013 on youtube, but it still provides a pretty accurate of what HBS is about. Kyle and I even recognized some of our classmates… Please do not hesitate to share your thoughts with us after watching it; we would love to hear from you ! Good luck to everyone expecting an email from the school this round.
Just a few hours before the first application deadline for Harvard Business School, we thought that MBA applicants could use a checklist for items to review before hitting the “Submit” button.
View of Harvard University and the Charles River
[Author’s Note] Although we initially wrote this article with HBS in mind, it has now been edited to meet the needs of applicants to most MBA programs. Please let us know if you disagree with its content or think we missed anything. Thank you!
We recently covered the new application essay and overall HBS application process in several posts. Make sure to check them out. Continue reading