My MBA saviors were Matthew, Neal, and Michael. They were current MBA students at BYU and all three of them accepted cold LinkedIn messages from me when I was writing my MBA essay.

When applying for an MBA program, make sure you talk with the people who are doing what you want to do. If you want to get into the Harvard MBA, for example, talk to as many current Harvard MBA students as you possibly can. They are the ones who succeeded in your current situation.

You’ll be surprised how willing people are to help those who want to follow their same path. As I jumped on phone calls with my BYU contacts, they gave me nuggets of information that completely changed the way I approached my MBA essay. 

MBA Essay Questions & Answers

Some common MBA essay questions include: ‘What is your favorite word and why?’ ‘Who do you most admire?’ and so on. Most schools will ask about your goals in some form or another, and your leadership capabilities. They will also ask questions prompting a response that shows how you would fit in their program.

When I applied to BYU, the application asked me to answer several questions in one big essay, also known as an MBA statement of purpose:

Write a carefully constructed statement of your academic preparation and goals, indicating how graduate work fits into those goals. This statement gives the admissions committee an opportunity to learn the following:

- your preparation and background for the program

- your academic or professional goals (both short (3-5 years) and long-term) and reasons for your choice of career

- your particular academic or professional reasons for applying to Brigham Young University and the scholarly or professional contributions you expect to make to the program

- Briefly describe a time that your leadership efforts have fallen short, a goal was not accomplished, or an aspiration was not achieved. What steps did you take to recover from this defeat? What resources did you use? How and why are you different today?

Before writing my MBA application essay, I spoke with an individual who had served on admissions committees in the past and he told me that directly answering the questions was very important. He said that I would be surprised at how many applicants write their entire essay without answering the questions. 

I didn’t want to miss that mark. My strategy was to read over this prompt several times, spend a few hours thinking of different relevant events in my life that I could tie to each question, and then start writing. 

My finished essay was almost nothing like my first draft, but for me, writing gets the creative juices flowing and eventually I end up with something I am proud of. 

After I had finished my essay, I shared it with family, friends, and unbiased sets of eyes to essentially rip it to shreds. 

I didn’t want anyone to pull any punches; this was not the time to be egotistical. I gathered all their input and went back to work. This process was repeated a few times until the feedback became trivial. That’s when I knew it was as good as it was going to get. 

Communicating Your Personal Brand

In your MBA essay, you might think you need to make yourself sound like you were born for business school; like you’ve cared about financial statements since kindergarten or that calculating the weighted average cost of capital is what you do for fun on the weekend.

The reality is that your MBA application is reviewed by human beings, and human beings long for connection. This was the approach I wanted to take. 

My MBA essay starts with a joke. That’s who I am! I like to make light of things and I believe laughter is the fastest way to connecting with people. Now, it wasn’t a joke that made no sense to the rest of my writing, I tied it into the next portion, but it was how I felt I could convey my personality right off the bat. 

Throughout my essay I also did my best to display authenticity and vulnerability (two attributes almost every admissions officer I’ve spoken to wants to see in an application).

Ultimately, your application essay is all about telling your story; communicating your personal brand.

MBA Essay Dos & Don'ts

Do:

- Be yourself

- Be completely honest

- Be vulnerable

- Research your audience in depth

- Talk to those who had winning essays (that were accepted)

Don’t:

- Embellish or stretch the truth

- Write what you think they want to hear

- Rush over the opening sentence—make sure it’s attention-grabbing

- Feel like you need to write a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel

- Re-hash what’s on your resume. It’s already on your resume!

If you are a die-hard underwater chess player, that part of your story can be used to get into business school. That’s the thing that makes you different from the sea of other applicants who also have a good GMAT score, GPA, and work history—and that’s what makes your personal brand stand out.

I struggled with the GMAT—you can read about my seven-month GMAT journey—but you shouldn’t feel disheartened if other aspects of your application are weaker.

The MBA essay gives you the chance to stand out from your competition and show who you really are to the admissions committee. To most admissions officers I have spoken with, your ability to tell your story effectively holds the most weight. 

Ryan Price, is the host and founder of MBA Secrets and is studying his MBA at BYU Marriott School of Business.

MBA Statement of Purpose: 

BYU Marriott School of Business

A successful CEO once said, speaking to one of his employees and standing in front of his new Porsche, “You know, I got this car from working hard, and if you work just as hard, put in all your hours, and strive for excellence, then I will get another one next year.” 

When I first heard this joke years ago, my response was not so much laughter as it was motivation. I wanted to become the CEO of my own a business in which hundreds of employees put in thousands of hours to grow my company and provide me with a very wealthy lifestyle. 

Then I entered the workforce and found myself in the role of the employee. Today, my desire to be the CEO has not changed, but my inspiration behind that goal is drastically different. Embracing the employee role over the last five years, I have come to learn very intimately that while I still want to run a business, I want to do it to lift and build the ones who actually make the business work. 

I want to be the successful CEO who says to his employee, “How is your family doing? We need to get you a new car, let’s go set goals for this year and see what we can make happen together.” Receiving an MBA from a faith-based institution with the values BYU lives by will undoubtedly lead to this desire becoming a reality. 

The most recent three years of my work experience have been filled with wonderful opportunities and challenges. After one year of assisting in growing partners like Wal-Mart and Overstock as a lower-level sales administrator in a small but rapidly growing company, I was quickly promoted to regional sales manager with the responsibility of taking over all operations in Europe. This was an amazing work and cultural experience for both my wife and me. 

My responsibilities in Europe stretched me greatly. I soon found that the new skills needed to grow the business in that region were so diverse and varied from what I had learned managing accounts in the United States. Ranging from needing to establish warehousing facilities to negotiating contracts and determining which products would appeal to several new markets, I found myself wearing many hats. 

All these new considerations were exacerbated by the necessity to also understand the cultures and nuances of communicating with buyers of major retailers in Germany and France whose native languages were completely unknown to me. Although gaining a bachelor’s degree in Entrepreneurship has given me deep insight into creating new business opportunities and improving existing business efficiencies, nothing can compare to the real-world experiences I acquired on my assignment in England.

MBA student Ryan Price explains how he put his MBA application essay together, what types of MBA essay questions to expect, and how to communicate your personal brand

© Yale via Facebook

During the company’s first year operating in Europe (the year before I assumed the role), the region had a single partner, and the annual revenue was about $150 thousand. Clearly, the company would need more dedicated and local efforts if Europe was to become a significant branch of the business. My first year in the role, I secured two more major retailers and finished with $1.2 million in sales. 

At the end of 2019, just before I left the company to pursue admission into BYU’s MBA program, our London office had increased by four more employees and we had onboarded another eight big-name retailers which brought our sales to $4 million. This was accomplished amid the cultural intricacies that exist even in the ecommerce market. 

One of those intricacies that I adapted to was that Europeans are much more traditional and slower to adopt the online shopping concept, particularly for bigger ticket items like furniture. This required careful efforts to work closely with my supply chain team to keep inventory at optimal levels for profitability. 

Since the challenges faced overseas were decidedly different in many cases from what we had been used to seeing in the U.S., my pattern for success was to actively listen to my British colleagues to gain their perspective, plug in concepts that made the company successful in the U.S. during its previous 10 years, and bridge the gap between the two continents. Following this process allowed for proven techniques to be tailored to the unique circumstances that prevailed in Europe. As a result, we consistently grew an average of 350% during my time as the regional sales manager for Europe. 

In order to illustrate what I will bring to the BYU MBA program, I would like to borrow the words of my previous company’s Vice President of Sales when he told me, “You bring out the best in others.” Projects, teams, and companies fail when a dictator takes over. Collaboration, humility, respect, and confidence of each team member are non-negotiable elements to a successful business, and that is a philosophy I have internalized. 

I truly enjoy working in positive environments and I feel like I can create those environments. Everyone should have a voice and should feel comfortable using that voice for the betterment of the team. 

I am also eager for the opportunity to have access to the vast wealth of resources offered by the program itself. I mentioned that I want to be an employee’s CEO. I want to be the leader that people want to work with. From my point of view, this is what BYU teaches its students. Being a leader in business requires acute understanding of business generally, something that BYU clearly gives to its students as evidenced by its globally lauded academic status. 

But even more than that, being a leader requires empathy, faith, and charity, among countless other traits. Without question, BYU is the foremost university at helping its students acquire these immensely important qualities in a business setting. Ultimately, my career goal is to successfully launch, run, and sell my own company or companies. But along the way, my true passion is to be able to attain an ability to provide meaningful and impactful help to those that join me on the journey. 

Nothing would make me happier from a career perspective than to give employees a job that they love. To give them a place they can come each day and not get the “Sunday night stomach ache” thinking about having to go to work the next day. I want to give them back what they deserve, which is more than just a paycheck. 

When I graduate from the BYU MBA program in the spring of 2023, I anticipate leaving with all the tools necessary to build, lift, improve, grow, and succeed. I believe I have the experience, acumen, and character to be admitted, but I do not yet have the tools to become the leader that can give those future employees what they deserve. 

That is why I am applying to this program. This program is the key to my becoming the future business leader that betters the lives of each employee that walks through the doors. I look forward to the opportunity to call myself a candidate for a Master of Business Administration from BYU.

Read the BusinessBecause MBA Essay Guide 2023: How To Write A Successful Application Essay