A statement of your goals will begin a conversation that will last throughout the admissions process and guide your steps during the MBA program and experience. To the best of your understanding today, please share your short and long term goals by completing the following sentences and answering the enclosed short answer question (350 words maximum):
Immediately post-MBA, my goal is to work as a(n) ____[Role]____ at ___[Company]___within___[Industry]___.
In 5-10 years post-MBA, my goal is to work as a(n) ____[Role]____ at ___[Company]___within___[Industry]___.
How has your experience prepared and encouraged you to pursue these goals?:
First and foremost, this is not the usual career goals essay question. Here you don’t have to repeat your goals as you have already done that in the fill in the blank questions. In this essay, you need to clearly answer how your past academic and professional experiences have strengthened your desire to achieve your career goals. Your academic background offered you plenty of intellectual abilities and your professional career have sharpened your leadership skills. Think about all the pivotal moments in your career and imagine how the eye-opening lessons you have obtained from various episodes of your life have prepared you for your future career. How have these experiences helped to crystallize your passions and goals? Articulate your thoughts with proper anecdotes and examples.
You must show Cornell that you have the leadership DNA and fire in the belly to achieve your goals. Moreover, the Impact essay will cover more of your accomplishments and leadership abilities.
Cornell Johnson is very conservative in their approach. They want to play safe. Hence, if your immediate post MBA goal is perceived as unachievable, then you are in deep trouble here. Johnson generally doesn’t admit applicants whose short-term goal is quite a stretch. For instance, if you aspire to join management consulting or investment banking but your GMAT is 650, then Johnson might think that your goal is unachievable. The school also knows that they are not located in the heart of New York or Chicago and you won’t have plenty of options to network with top consulting or investment banking firms. So, if you can’t secure a job within three months of your graduation, at the very least it will ruin Johnson’s placement rating. But, at worst, it could potentially leave you in bigger trouble. You will be saddled with huge debts. So, network with students and alumni, and attend admissions webinars to know more about Cornell’s career placement opportunities. Thereafter, choose your goals keeping your foot firmly on the ground.
At Cornell, our students and alumni share a desire to positively impact the organizations and communities they serve. How do you intend to make an impact during the next several years of your education and/or career? (350 words maximum)
First and foremost, you need to do in-depth research on the Johnson community in order to effectively answer this question. Network with current students via LinkedIn or Facebook, talk to alumni, attend webinars and try to visit the campus at Ithaca. Reach out to friends, family and office colleagues to see if anyone knows a current or past member of the Johnson community.
Cornell has an intense collaborative community. It offers clubs for interests ranging from rugby to wine tasting. It also has an array of professional clubs for every possible career track. Once you have identified opportunities to contribute to the Johnson community, support your narrative with evidence from your previous experiences. Demonstrate how your background and previous impacts have prepared you to make this future impact.
In order to prove that you will be an engaged community member in Cornell, please explain your contribution to your undergrad school or other associations in your past. For instance, if you hail from the Oil & Gas industry and wish to invite prominent leaders from this sector to speak to the Johnson Energy Club, show the admissions committee that you have done similar things for your undergrad school or for your local community. Narrate about an experience in which you invited engineers from your company to your local community chapters to explain about carbon emissions and global warming. Or maybe, you have volunteered for Habitat for Humanity local chapters in your city for the last few years. Show Johnson your passion to construct houses in poor neighborhood and thereafter narrate how you are going to take an active role in the Johnson Community Impact club. If you have done if before, certainly you can do it in future as well.
The front page of your resume has given us a sense of your professional experience and accomplishments as well as your academic summary and extracurricular involvement. If the back page reflects “the rest of your story,” please help us get to know you better by sharing ONE example of a life experience, achievement, or passion that will give us a sense of who you are as a potential community member.
We value creativity and authenticity and encourage you to approach this essay with your unique style. Alternative submission formats may include a slide presentation, links to pre-existing media (personal website, digital portfolio, YouTube, etc.), as well as visually enhanced written submissions.
Maximum file size is 5 MB. If you choose to submit a written essay, please limit your submission to 350 words or fewer. Multimedia submissions should be under 3 minutes.
Who are you? What kind of person you are? What do you like? What are your strengths? What are you passionate about? What inspires you? What frustrates you? What sort of challenges do you love to solve? What is your style of leadership? Do you love to lead your team from front or you are comfortable in delegating strategic tasks to other member of the team? Basically, Cornell wants to know how you are as a leader as well as a human being.
This essay is a golden opportunity to show Cornell the person behind the application. Here is your chance to demonstrate crucial highlights of your life, in text, pictures, or multimedia to trigger Johnson’s interest in your profile. You can share one of your crucial life experiences that taught you eye-opening lessons on life or leadership. You can choose an experience that changed your perspective on life. It can be either from professional or personal life; but, I prefer personal stories in this essay.
Alternately, you can talk about any major achievements of yours, professional or personal. Have you assisted any colleague who was struggling with his job? Did you lead any initiative to assist hurricane victims or clean up any sea beach on weekends? Have you played a pivotal role to institutionalize Six Sigma or Agile software development methods in your department? If yes, then this is the perfect place to talk about such accomplishments and thereby explain your values/beliefs/leadership style/team skills to Cornell.
This question can be written as a 350-word essay, or delivered in a slide presentation, links to pre-existing media (personal website, digital portfolio, YouTube, etc.), or visually enhanced written submissions. I personally favor the multimedia options. Three minutes of multimedia will give Cornell enough material to really get to know you – to see and hear you. If done well, this can convey much more than what a 350-word essay would.
For instance, if you wish to project your talent on music, sports or public speaking, perhaps a YouTube video is the best way to showcase that experience. If you wish to portray your involvement in American Red Cross or The Salvation Army, then a slide presentation will be a good bet. Or, you may also create a nice video covering your various activities and contributions in that non-profit organization. If you have launched your own entrepreneurship, then you may want to showcase it on a website. So you can choose any format to project your leadership accomplishments. However, keep in mind that your core message to Cornell is the most important part of the essay, not the format.
You may use this essay to call attention to items needing clarification and to add additional details to any aspects of your application that do not accurately reflect your potential for success at Johnson (350 words maximum).
If you are reapplying for admission, please use this essay to indicate how you have strengthened your application and candidacy since the last time you applied for admission. Please also review our Admissions Policy for additional information about re-applying (500 words maximum).
Please review my tips on optional application essays in the following blog posts:
If you are a reapplicant, then this is the place to illustrate that you have made significant efforts to strengthen your candidacy: you might have improved your GMAT score, taken courses on statistics, joined any communication class, taken on more leadership roles at office, joined a local non-profit, networked with Cornell admissions officers and students, or reflected deeply into your career goals.
If you would like professional guidance with your Cornell Johnson MBA application, please consider our MBA Essay Support or our MBA Application Packages, which include advising, editing essays, interview coaching, a resume edit and reco edit for the Cornell Johnson application.
The Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management is the business school of the Cornell University, a private Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York. Johnson offers two full-time MBA options as well as a one-year MBA program at Cornell Tech in NYC focusing on technology. Hallmarks of the Johnson MBA program are its immersion-learning program and enormous emphasis on leadership, starting with the Johnson Leading Teams Practicum that students complete in their first semester. It is ranked #15 by US News and # 17 by FT in 2018.
Admission to Cornell is quite competitive. The class size for the batch of 2019 is 277. The average GMAT score is 700, and the middle 80% of the scores ranges from 650 to 740. The average undergraduate GPA and age are 3.36 and 28 years respectively. The average work experience is 5 years and the middle 80% have work experience of 3~7 years.
In the Class of 2019, 34% are international citizens, representing 38 nationalities, women comprise 27% and 31% are U.S. minorities. 11% are US military veterans.
The student body is extremely diverse in terms of professional and academic background. 34% of the students hold undergraduate majors in business, while 22% majored in engineering, and 20% pursued humanities and social science. 26% of the students worked in financial services, 17% in consulting and 8% in manufacturing.
In terms of placement, the mean base salary of the Class of 2017 was $125,578 and average signing bonus was record high $31,604. 38% of the students joined finance and investment banking, 26% went into consulting, and 17% opted for general management.
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