Carnegie Mellon Tepper

Application Essay Questions:

Required Essay

The Tepper community is dynamic and unique with students who strive to be collaborative, supportive, and inclusive. Please provide an example of when you experienced or created an inclusive environment and how you will use that experience to help members of the community reach their full potential. (Maximum 350-500 words.)

The Tepper community prides itself in being a small close-knit community that seeks to create a highly collaborative environment where people from diverse background can thrive. Through this question, the admission committee is interested in getting to know you experience with inclusion since it is core to their culture. Talking about your experience in leading teams that were diverse and your efforts to create an enabling environment where all members could collaborate and participate would be a core focus. Maybe you led a team which consisted of different nationalities, different cultures or different thought processes, how did you react to such a situation and what was your thought processes in ensuring everyone participated and felt included. If you haven’t had leadership experience, you can even talk about projects or assignments where various members came together to work on a single goal and how you in your small capacity would have enabled their active participation.

Lastly, the question also seeks to understand how you will leverage your learnings and understanding from this experience to further enable inclusion at Tepper. It can be in the form of starting a new initiative, hosting inclusion focused events, having focused training sessions on campus etc. Try to personalize the essay as that will create the maximum impact.

Video Essay: GOALS

We know this is an important component of your decision to attend business school. We take it seriously as well. Please describe your post-MBA career goals.

It would be helpful to consider the following information in your response:

You have up to 2 minutes to respond to this question.

Please be as specific as possible. If you have not yet identified specific companies, that is okay. Just tell us what interests you for your next role or company. What about the industry, company, or functional role is appealing to you?

If you have any criteria you are using to evaluate career opportunities, please share those as well. We may have great opportunities to add to your list.

How does this post-MBA career goal relate to your long-term career plan?

Through this added video, the Tepper admission committee wants to understand your career plans post your Tepper MBA. Use this video to showcase key elements and achievements of your prior work experience and talk about how you will leverage them along with key offerings in the Tepper MBA to pursue your short terms career aspiration. It is important to be specific and talk about the desired industry of interest along with some key companies which will be on your target.

Do talk about what specifically excites you about the industry / company and how you think you will be able to create an impact in the chose career. Its important to think beyond compensations and designations and maybe show an emotional connect with you desired role. Try to link this short-term aspiration to a larger long terms career aspiration with a focus on impact.

Since this is a video response, it is recommended to show your enthusiasm while talking about your career plans as they will be equally exciting for the admissions committee to hear.

Optional Essay

There also is an optional essay for additional information about your candidacy that you may wish to share with the admissions committee. Use this essay to convey important information that you may not have otherwise been able to convey. This may include unexplained resume gaps, context for recommender selection, etc. However, do not feel obligated to complete the optional essay.

Reapplicants

If you are a reapplicant, use the optional essay to explain how your candidacy has strengthened since your last application.

The optional essay is to be used to showcase any potential gaps in your application which you feel will need additional context / explanation to help the admissions committee. This space can be used to talk about reasons for potential employment gaps and what you have done during the time, reasons for low academic scores and any improvement since them, choice of a recommender who is not your immediate supervisor or any other gaps that would need additional context. Try to focus on alleviating the admissions committee concerns on why the gap may impact your performance in the MBA program.

Reapplicants can use the space to talk about their professional or personal growth since the last application be it in the form a promotion, new responsibility, change in jobs, improvement in test scores or even an exciting new project.

It is perfectly fine to leave this essay empty if you feel other aspects of the application demonstrate your candidacy appropriately.

Upcoming deadlines

The application deadlines for the Full-Time MBA Class of 2025 are: 

• Round 1: October 2,2022 (Decision December 7, 2022)
• Round 2: January 5,2023 (Decision March 8, 2023)
• Round 3: March 12,2023 (Decision May 28, 2023)
• Round 4: May 1,2023 (Decision June 18, 2023)

Applications are due by 11:59 pm ET

Reach out to our professional MBA Consultant and increase the probability of gaining acceptance to your desired business school.