Tuesday Tips: MIT Sloan School of Management MBA Essay Tips

On its website, MIT Sloan highlights programs from Entrepreneurship to the Digital Economy. Innovation is key for MIT Sloan and the program seeks interesting students to build a class that can learn from each other and continue the tradition of innovation.

When approaching this set of essays, your task is to remain focused on your overall application strategy and choose the key stories that can showcase your achievements at school, work and extracurricular activities while demonstrating that you will contribute to MIT Sloan’s mission.

Essay 1
The mission of the MIT Sloan School of Management is to develop principled, innovative leaders who improve the world and generate ideas that advance management practice. Discuss how you will contribute toward advancing the mission based on examples of past work and activities. (500 words or fewer, limited to one page)

The MIT Sloan application relied heavily on “behavioral essays” in the past. This year there is only one essay of this style, that requires you to describe your past accomplishments and experience on a specific level. These questions have typically focused on understanding how you work, think and act in a variety of situations. As you provide examples of past work and activities ideally you are highly specific about your thoughts and actions in the situation.

This question is seeking to understand how you develop and execute on ideas. A work or extracurricular example where you demonstrated the ability to generate strategy and execute upon it would be ideal here. How did you identify your idea? What did you do to develop it? What did you ultimately accomplish? This essay will demonstrate your intellectual capacity and curiosity, which are crucial attributes MIT Sloan is looking for in MBA admits.

Essay 2
Write a professional letter of recommendation on behalf of yourself. Answer the following questions as if you were your most recent supervisor recommending yourself for admission to the MIT Sloan MBA Program: (750 words or fewer)

• How long and in what capacity have you known the applicant?
• How does the applicant stand out from others in a similar capacity?
• Please give an example of the applicant’s impact on a person, group, or organization.
• Please give a representative example of how the applicant interacts with other people.
• Which of the applicant’s personal or professional characteristics would you change?
• Please tell us anything else you think we should know about this applicant.

MIT Sloan asked candidates to submit a cover letter for their MBA application for several years. This iconic essay challenged candidates every year to encompass career goals, reasons for an MBA and interest in MIT Sloan in a short professional style cover letter.

This year MIT Sloan returns to a typically professional format with a requirement to draft a letter of recommendation for yourself. You are placed in the role of your most recent supervisor and asked a series of questions that MBA programs typically ask of your professional recommenders. The wrinkle to this question is that your most recent supervisor may also be writing an actual letter of recommendation for you. MIT Sloan is one of the few MBA programs without a preference for your current supervisor as a primary recommender, so you could also avoid that scenario. Regardless, this “recommendation letter” should both reflect similar feedback as your actual recommendation letters and provide new information.

The key challenge in answering this question is the tone to take. Ideally you are measured about both your strengths and weaknesses, while showing confidence that you are accomplished and also that you are able to improve when you need to. The ideal tone is mature and logical, without overt bragging. Your actual supervisor may get away with more glowing terms when describing your work, but you will want to keep in mind that self-awareness and interest in improvement are assets to an MBA applicant.

Take note that several elements of this question focus on interpersonal skills. This is your opportunity to showcase leadership and teamwork. Self-awareness about your impact on others will come through here and demonstrates you know yourself and how you come across to your team, managers and peers.

The Admissions Committee invites you to share anything else you would like us to know about you, in any format. If you choose to use a multimedia format, please host the information on a website and provide us the URL.

MIT Sloan’s entirely open-ended optional essay invites applicants to respond to the essay in any format desired. This allows you to do anything you need to with this space, including clarifying any concerns or highlighting interesting aspects of your background or profile.

This essay is an ideal opportunity to provide any information that you were unable to work into the other two essays and provide a new angle on your candidacy. If you have an unusual background, hobby or extracurricular experience, this may be an opportunity to provide that information to the admissions committee. With similar questions asked by other MBA programs in the past Stacy Blackman Consulting has advised candidates on everything from photo journalism projects to customized multimedia presentations. The format is far less important than the content, but it’s also true that images or presentations can provide a new perspective on your application.

Stumped by your MIT Sloan MBA application? Contact Stacy Blackman Consulting to learn how we can help.