Showcase Your Fit For Your Dream B-School
Business schools seek students who value their offerings. Given hundreds of schools offering MBA degrees, admission committee wants to know why you want to pursue MBA from the specific B-school. Some schools seek answer to this question directly in the form of essays while others may do so indirectly. As an applicant you need to answer these questions with specific details. Avoid being too generic and simply stating that the school is your dream school without providing specifics. Schools want to hear about your unique perspective and your plans for utilizing their offerings or resources. Even if the school has not asked these details directly, it will be a good practice to include these aspects into your answers or essays. Bottom line is, they need to know your thought processes or your aspirations behind joining the program.
You can begin by highlighting specific programs offerings, diversity in electives being offered. One way is to mention your strengths and weaknesses and align your strengths with the school’s offerings. For instance, if you have marketing experience, explain how this background will add value to the school and how you plan to address your weaknesses within the school’s context. If you aim to transition into finance and the school has a very strong finance program, emphasize this point. This shows that you have set strategies in place for utilizing school’s offers. Mention specifics- kind of classes, pedagogy, explaining how they align with your learning style.
Some schools have their flagship conferences or events or clubs. These could be one source of your motivation behind your interest in joining the program. Highlight specific aspects of these flagship programs, include numbers, impact they have created in past, diversity within the participants of these events, deals coming out of these events, kind of networking opportunities facilitated by these events. Do 360-degree review of these events or clubs. If the clubs are course specific and are relevant for your expertise or connections in that space, you can highlight this aspect.
Focus on the legacy the school has built and how it motivates you and what you hope to contribute towards furthering of that legacy. You can talk about industries which generally recruit from the school. Do thorough research by going through their career outcomes and look for specific trends in the careers post MBA. If your dream school offers immersions (international or national or even rural immersions), explain how that can help you in your career aspirations. International exposure can help with your global aspirations, rural immersions can build grassroots connections.
If the school has student exchange programs or collaborations with multinational corporations or other global institutions, and these align with your goals, be sure to include this in your answers. You should include if you have written to any professors, or you have interest in research work of professor and their experiences. Mention if you had interactions with current students or alumni of the school. This will give you better perspective on the program, real picture of the course. You can have better understanding on how school has groomed its alumni towards post MBA challenges. Share what excites you most about their experience with the school and align those experiences with your aspirations.
Alignment of your personal interest with the school’s values or program structure or talk about your emotions, may be involve extra-curricular activities, your hobbies and how you are planning to continue those activities with the school and offerings by the school which can help you in continuing your hobbies.
