Your personal statement for MBA is not very easy to accomplish. The process can be daunting especially if you think about the impact of your admissions essay on your future. Fortunately, Career Services provides some of the guide questions for your convenience. Here are some of them:
Questions regarding your goals on your essay
What are your long and short-term professional goals? How does this graduate degree play into these goals?
You have to connect your goals to your application. When you state your goals, you have to do it clearly. make sure that you include very specific goals and not vague and general ones. This is the best way to answer such a question.
Here’s another guide question from Career Services:
Questions on your focus and fit on your personal statement for MBA
What specific discipline or concentration will you pursue in graduate school? How did you arrive at this interest?
You need to explain what program interests you most and how your interest was triggered. It also pays to talk about the things that make you deserving of a spot for school admission. You have to evaluate your goals and purpose for this.
More guide questions from Career Services
What details of your life (personal or family history, notable accomplishments, etc. that have helped shape your goals) might set you apart from other applicants?
The whole purpose of writing a personal statement for MBA is to sell yourself to the admissions panel. Because of this, you have to emphasize the unique and special things about yourself. Just make sure that you maintain a sincere and honest voice to avoid sounding insincere, fake, or detached.
Which field-related volunteer and/or campus activities have you experienced? What did you learn from them?
When you talk about the activities with social impact, you are giving an impression that you are mature enough and skilled enough to share your knowledge and skills with other people. It also shows how the community may benefit from the skills and training you gathered from the program.
Here’s another guide question from Harvard Business School:
What have you learned from a mistake?
This is important because this would help the admissions panel determine what shaped you as a person or how you handled mistakes and failures in the past.
If you don’t have an idea where to start with your admissions essay, try to choose several questions that will serve as a guide. You have to answer those questions with sincerity. You have to keep in mind that the admissions panel have read numerous essays before your own, and they probably have a means of seeing through your lies.
Before you can write a notable personal statement for MBA, you must know the different things that would make your personal statement for MBA less impressive than other application essays. The MBA Rejects can provide you with more info about this. Read on for the factors that could make your admissions essay weak and ineffective:
Your personal statement for MBA goals do not connect with the program
According to The MBA Rejects:
Although connecting your goals and ambitions with your target school’s resources is always critical, in a competitive year – when a school can easily accept one candidate over the other for the most arbitrary of reasons – ensuring that your essays have profoundly linked you to your target programs is especially important.
In general, it is best if your goals and other important details are related to your application. It is easy to write a unified essay if the ideas on it are connected. Don’t make random discussions when writing your application essay. According to some admission experts, they want to see how and why you’ve chosen a specific program. How does it relate to your goals? This way, they can see if you’re likely to go far ahead with the given training and newly developed skills.
Your career goals are not clearly stated
Another tip says that:
As you reexamine your application, another potential trouble spot to consider is your goal statement. Without realizing it, many candidates offer superficial goals and do not convey the requisite passion for or knowledge of their prospective careers
Clarity should always be given importance when you write your personal statement for MBA. In your effort to be enthusiastic, you may easily lose focus. Before writing your application essay, you may want to first assess your strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. This will give your essay a clear direction.
Another common mistake cited by The MBA Rejects include:
Using admission essay reasons that are cliche
Without realizing it, many candidates offer very trite and cliched reasons for wanting to attend target schools. It is not enough to write at a high level: “Kellogg offers a world-renowned marketing program and a strong team environment.” The prospective applicant must truly make his/her own personal case, offering details of classes, clubs, professors, research centers, etc.
Be honest and sincere. The best way to come up with persuasive arguments is to reevaluate your personal reasons. This will reflect on your writing and make your discussions more substantial.
Application details from University of Washington recommend that:
It should contain both motivation for applying and an overview of academic and professional qualifications. When discussing qualifications, applicants should focus on the specific skills and areas of expertise.
Based on this suggestion, you have to avoid giving vague and general details. Specific ones will render originality and uniqueness to your personal statement for MBA. This will also give depth to your application.
You have to be careful and avoid the pitfalls of writing a personal statement for MBA school. You have to state your goals and other details clearly and specifically. You also have to avoid writing in cliches.
No matter how skilled you are as a writer, sometimes your mind seems so empty that you can’t do anything except stare at the blank page before you. This emptiness probably resulted from your fear that you will fail to impress the readers with your essay. The University of Toronto Student Life Blogs has interesting ideas on how you can conquer writer’s block.
Be confident and courageous
The secret to writing is that almost nobody gets it right the first time, so don’t be afraid to express yourself.
To fight a blank page, jot down whatever comes to mind. It can be single words, phrases, or sentences that may or may not make sense. Remember that brainstorming stage of essay writing we were all taught back in high school? It’s probably not necessary to draw bubbles to connect ideas, but scribbling does help to stimulate your thinking.
The most importamt thing is that you have to learn to trust your abilities. It is also necessary that you think positively. This will inspire you start writing and pour your thoughts.
Evaluate yourself
What defines you as a unique person? Make a list of your strengths, weaknesses, abilities, visions, experiences and anything else that you feel is a part of you. It doesn’t have to be immediately relevant to the program you are applying to, although later on you can certainly mold it into one using strategic wording. The key is for you to be proud of yourself, to feel how much you’ve accomplished thus far in life, so much so that you will want to tell others about it in a coherent manner.
When you have evaluated yourself and determined your strengths, you then have to develop the confidence that is necessary to make your personal statement for MBA noteworthy. Always keep in mind the purpose for getting an MBA degree.
Read samples of personal statement for MBA
You might not think that it would have any drastic effect on your writing, but trust me, when you read, relevant phrases and words do tend to linger somewhere in your short-term memory so that when you finally sit down to write, you might be surprised at how often these amazing words just seem to “pop out of nowhere.”
By reading the works of others, you gain interesting ideas and insights. These could help you come up with interesting ideas for your own essay or explore effective writing styles.
Add enough dose of creativity on your MBA admissions essay
Creativity can make your essay remarkably fresh and attention-grabbing. Your creativity will also help you think of more interesting ideas for your essay. According to this excerpt from another article:
Creativity engages the reader. Don’t be afraid to take risks with your writing. Use creative examples.
You have to make sure, however, that your creativity is used the right way and for the right purpose. Being overly creative is not advisable. You should still focus on your application and make sure that you are clearly expressing yourself.
When you don’t have interesting ideas on mind, all you have to do is to summon your confidence and courage on writing, evaluate yourself, read the works of others, and then use your creative flare.
Some may say that the personal statement is just a small part of your application. After all, it is just an essay about yourself. But the truth is that this is a crucial element to your admission success. Miyamiyami Blog has useful advice that could help you write a winning personal statement for MBA. Here are some tips:
Be clear on your goal on your personal statement for MBA
The basic thing that you should determine when applying for an MBA is the reasons why you are applying for an MBA. Saying that your parents want it or that you think it will look good in your resume isn’t just going to cut it. You would need to do some serious reflection (if you haven’t done it yet) on the reasons why you would like to get an MBA. Sure, it sounds impressive, but you should remember that getting an MBA is more about you, your goals, and how an MBA will contribute to your growth as a person.
Talking about your goals and real purpose with clarity gives an impression that you are mature enough to handle the challenges of MBA school. You should able to convey why you need the MBA degree, specifically how you will benefit from it.
The blog author also adds that:
…getting into an MBA is not as simple as choosing your shampoo or the brand of cereal to buy. You need to remember that your MBA goals should reflect your personality, abilities, knowledge, experience, and how those make you fit well with the MBA program that you’re applying for. Basically, you should show that you know what you are doing with your life by applying for an MBA, and that you can help your organization and the community by doing so.
Make sure that when you write about your goals and aspirations, you are using an honest and sincere voice. Don’t just pick any topic but try to discuss those that interest you most and give you encouragement. Enthusiasm will surely reflect on your essay. Also focus on a central theme.
Speak from the heart but also keep your readers in mind
The best approach usually is to speak from the heart. As personal statements are devised to let admission officials know you personally, you should let your personality, beliefs, and opinions show in your personal statement. But that doesn’t mean that anything goes. You should also be selective in the details that you present; you should present details that show your goals and your abilities, and forward your convictions and qualifications for deserving an MBA.
It is important that you make your sincerity palpable on your personal statement for MBA. But make sure that you consider the admissions committee when you talk about certain things. Select the details well. They might be of great value to you but not to the admissions panel.
Here are other writing guides from another article:
Start early, plan on writing and revising several drafts. Schedule specific times for this important and time-consuming task. Understand the questions thoroughly. Brainstorm your achievements, career goals, leadership, and personal interests. Narrow your emphasis to one specific theme or point. Begin your essay with this theme and the following paragraphs should logically develop and illustrate it. Work towards a rough draft. Then revise it. Have others read it. Continue to revise the draft until you have a clear, concise, error-free essay.
Remember that your personal statement for MBA is crucial to your admission. You need to be clear, honest, and sincere. Aside from these, you need to start your preparation early and don’t forget to edit and proofread well what you have written.
