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Due to its tremendous locational advantage, NYU Stern attracts thousands of applicants, especially international applicants from Asia and Africa. Stern continues to attract hundreds of quality applicants from India, China and other Asian countries – which is why entry into Stern is a highly competitive affair. In writing this essay, explain your short-term goals in terms of position, industry job responsibilities, and target location. Take a big picture view of your career and state your overall ambition. Don’t just focus on the job title or position. Instead, tell them what inspires you to accomplish these goals and what value you wish to add to an industry, or to society, or maybe just to your organization.
Your only job in the admission essays and other short questions in the NYU application form is to showcase your differentiation.
If, after reading your goal essay, NYU’s admissions officers can’t differentiate you from ten other applicants in your demographic pool, then you are in a hole. Therefore, once you are through with your essay, seek feedback from close friends. If they can’t tell you apart from someone with a similar profile as yours, you should start editing your essays once again.
There is a pattern in how almost all serious applicants go about their business -- they pay a campus visit, attend admission events or webinars, and interact with current students, alumni and admission officers. In their essay, they also make it a point to dwell on NYU’s locational advantage, the excellence of its faculty members, elective courses, the dynamism of its student-driven clubs, the educative value of its global exchange program, etc. So what something special can you do to make yourself different? It does look like a big ask, but there is a way.
I have worked with several successful NYU applicants, and my suggestion to you is this: consider all the things other applicants in your demographic pool might write. You, of course, shouldn't write along the same lines. Needless to say, you need to research and brainstorm a good deal before you get down to writing this essay. Your imagination and knowledge of the mindset of other applicants will, no doubt, be an invaluable asset.
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In today’s global business environment, the only constant is change. Using NYU Stern’s brand call to action, we want to know how you view change. Change: _____ it. Fill in the blank with a word of your choice. Why does this word resonate with you? How will you embrace your own personal tagline while at Stern? Examples:
This is a classic one! Due to technological disruptions and macroeconomic interventions by governments all across the world, the global economy is perpetually changing in shape and size. Cutting-edge technological products and services provide us with newer opportunities to live our lives with renewed vigor. Quite rapidly, the old is making place for the new. As a result, change management is the buzzword in the corporate world.
NYU Stern aspires to know how you deal with changes in your organization or in your career. Would you ask for such a change? Or, react slowly to it? Or, embrace it? Or, actively drive it? Your answer will largely depend on your leadership style and personality. The best way to write this essay is to narrate a story from your professional life. ‘Show, don't tell’ how you have dealt with change during that period of your life.
Finally, you need to explain how you will deal with change as a student of NYU Stern. The Stern community is a vibrant body of thousands of students and faculty members. It has hundreds of student-driven clubs that organize famous conferences and seminars with industrial leaders, networking events, various events on extracurricular activities such as music, sports, scuba diving, wine tasting and so on. How will you participate in the Stern community and deal with change? Will you dare to make any change and actively drive it? Or, empower other students so that they can participate in such changes?
Writing an effective answer requires substantial knowledge of the Stern community.
Read some of the sample essays that I have helped my clients create for their successful B-school applications. All of them have been written and rewritten multiple times to project their differentiation. Read both the finalized essays and the basic write-ups given by the clients in order to understand the huge difference between the two. A meticulous review will help you to realize how many discussions and modifications were done to create the final pieces. Please don’t copy the ideas. I don’t mind if you do. But the chances are, they won’t suit your profile, and it will jeopardize whatever odds you now have with NYU Stern.
Describe yourself to the Admissions Committee and to your future classmates using six images and corresponding captions. Your uploaded PDF should contain all of the following elements:
Note: Your visuals may include photos, infographics, drawings, or any other images that best describe you. Your document must be uploaded as a single PDF. The essay cannot be sent in physical form or be linked to a website.
This is a gem of a question, for which you need to get your creative juices flowing to create a masterpiece. You should reflect on your personality and define who you are (and also understand who you aren’t). Each picture should demonstrate one particular aspect of your personality. Selecting the pictures and writing suitable captions are not the most difficult part. The major challenge lies in understanding your leadership personality and keeping your message in sync with your goal essay. At the same time, you have to make sure you come across someone special and out of the ordinary, someone worth investing in.
Generally, applicants select one image from childhood, another from academic life, two from their professional careers and, finally, two more pertaining to extracurricular activities or community life. The crux of creating a great essay is in the kind of images you select and the overall story you tell the admissions committee.
As in the previous essay, try to figure out what the other applicants in your demographic pool are likely to come up with. Taking that as a baseline, think up what you can effectively say that, in all likelihood, others won’t. Create an outline of your overall message and then go ahead and select the images that depict your story.
Many applicants do otherwise -- they randomly highlight what they consider the high points of their lives. Usually, these are leadership accomplishments in career, projects they have managed, extracurricular activities they have excelled in, or life changing experiences or hobbies, etc. However, what they forget is the competition they are up against. Other applicants in their demographic pool put out stories that are all too similar. Consequently, all the stories lack punch.
If you are at a loss as to what kind of stories other applicants might narrate, it would be a good idea to talk to a few current or past NYU applicants. Of course, you could also talk to me -- I have worked with numerous such applicants, and I have a fair idea about what goes on in their minds.
One final word: Don't even think of going it alone when it comes to MBA admissions in the Top 15 schools in the US. Find a coach who’s an old hand at MBA admissions. It could be me or someone else. But I would advise you to get an expert so that you don’t have to reapply next year.
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Please provide any additional information that you would like to bring to the attention of the Admissions Committee. This may include current or past gaps in employment, further explanation of your undergraduate record or self-reported academic transcript(s), plans to retake the GMAT, GRE, IELTS or TOEFL, or any other relevant information.
Please review my tips on optional application essays in the following blog posts:
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Politicians have speech writers. Journalists use news editors. Famous writers and columnists have an army of professional editors. Don’t you think you also need to have one?