Dear MBA candidate: I know, you’re busy. You’re deep in the heart of application season, grinding out resumes and MBA essays, checking on recommendations, worrying about whether your GMAT score is good enough. But before you hit submit, let’s take a minute to talk about your application Essay.

Have you ever stopped to think about why admissions committees require essays from their applicants? It’s simple. They want to get to know you. Not as a collection of facts in an applicant file, but as a real, living, breathing human being who may potentially walk their halls and go on to represent their School.

Every school approaches this goal in different ways. This year, Stanford GSB is asking “What matters most to you, and why?” Kellogg asks applicants to “tell [them] about a time you have demonstrated leadership and created lasting value”. Harvard only asks applicants “What more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy?”

What your response looks like will depend on your experience and your personal brand. But if you want your essay to be effective, to help the admissions committee get to know you, it needs to accomplish three things:

– It should be memorable
– It should differentiate you from other candidates
– It should illustrate your leadership ability

Being memorable

Many MBA essays fail at the brainstorming stage. Your ideas are the most important part of your essay, so don’t just run with the first thing that comes to you. Step back and ask yourself how your chosen topic is memorable and interesting, whether it will stick in peoples’ minds.

Realize that when you’re answering an essay prompt like “What matters most to you, and why?”, many people are going to have similar answers: My first guitar. A book my grandfather gave me. Family. Faith. Integrity.

Look for a different angle, a different approach. If your topic is a dime a dozen before you even begin, how can it catch the attention of the adcom?

Differentiation

Imagine you’re an investment banker applying to an M7 school. What message should your essay send to the adcom? “I am good at finance and have strong analysis and quantitative skills”? YAWN. Guess what – your competition can all say the exact same things. Talking about those skills is boring, it’s old hat. If you make it a numbers game, the odds are high that there is someone who landed a bigger deal than you, who worked on a bigger project than you.

You need to show your strengths, but don’t make them your whole story. Was there something different about your approach or your experience, some way that you or your skills were stretched that other people at your level, or in your role, were perhaps not stretched?

If you don’t have these differentiating work factors, focus your essay on something that truly sets you apart. This will often come from personal life, just because so many of your competitors will have similar work experience. Let your recommenders speak to the strength of your workplace experience. Don’t be afraid to get personal in your essay – it’s a great way to set yourself apart. Remember, the adcom wants to know you, not your job descriptions.

Demonstrating leadership

Leadership is incredibly important to b-school admissions these days, and your MBA application essay absolutely must position you as a leader. What does leadership mean to an adcom? Kellogg’s essay prompt describes it as “creating lasting value”. When you think about leadership, you want to think about the ways in which your project, role, or organization was better off after you than it was before you started.

Examples and specifics will always make your case stronger: Who did I lead, oversee, mentor? What aspect of the project did I manage or own? What changes did I make, and what value did those changes produce? What IMPACT did I have when all was said and done?

The bottom line

When you sound like everyone else, you are not a compelling candidate. You are background noise. If you want to be admitted to business school, you need an MBA application essay that presents you as a unique and uniquely competent individual.

Need more help showing your target schools why you’re the clear choice for admission? EXPARTUS can help. Our expert admissions consultants have helped hundreds of applicants gain acceptance to elite business schools by understanding their unique story, and developing a comprehensive application strategy to maximize strengths and mitigate weaknesses. Get in touch with us at [email protected] to see how we can help you.