B-school Application Essay Guide

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Are you applying to business schools for MiM, MSc or even MBA programs? Having trouble with your application essays?

This guide was created exactly to help you with that ✌🏼

Inside, you'll find a collection of 20+ different and popular essay questions from schools like HEC Paris, ESSEC and others, and advice on how to answer those questions:

• Suggested outlines/structures
• What schools are looking to see for every question
• Questions you need to ask yourself to write detailed essays

What is covered?

Frameworks:

1. The SRA Framework
2. The PAS Framework
3. The AIDA Framework (adapted to application essays)
4. Storytelling in application essays

Motivational Essays:

1. Please tell us your motivation for applying to the [program].
2. What learning outcomes are you aiming to achieve as part of your masters programme? What challenge(s) might you encounter?
3. What is your personal history with [subject]?
4. Provide two reasons that would convince the admissions committee to offer you a seat.
5. What other programs are you applying to? Why is [school] a differentiator?
6. What other programs are you applying to, and why?

Career Essays:

1. How do you envision your professional career?
2. How will this program help you reach your career goals?
3. Do you see any barriers that you may need to overcome to achieve this (career) goal?
4. Describe your short-term career goals.
5. Give an account of your last work/internship experience.
6. How would you use your degree to make a positive impact?

Personal Essays:

1. Can you tell us about a time when you failed and what you learned?
2. Tell us the experiences that have shaped the person you are. You can illustrate these by outlining situations you have encountered in academic, professional or personal contexts.
3. What is leadership to you, and how do you recognise a great leader? Please include a personal example(s).
4. Tell us about a time when you challenged a belief or an idea, or had a belief of your own challenged.
5. Describe your three most important interests. Justify your answer.
6. What can you contribute to the program?
7. What personal achievement are you most proud of?
8. Anything else you want to add?

What isn't covered?

Please note that there are no actual essays or examples in this guide. For each of the essays, there are only outlines, advice, and suggested things to include. Including actual (but anonymized) essays from student that were admitted is something that I'm working on doing, but they are not present in the guide at the moment.

What did people who bought this say about it?

15+ people have already bought the guide so far. Here is some of the feedback I've gotten on it.

If you're not satisfied with the guide for any reason, reach out to me and I will refund you. I'll only ask you for the reason you're not satisfied.

Who am I?

My name is Mayank, and I graduated from the MiM program at HEC Paris in 2021.

I've made more than 50 YouTube videos about MiM/studying in France/HEC Paris/expat life, with over 2M+ views across all of them.

I work as a marketer, content creator and writer, and I've also recently started helping people get into their dream B-schools by giving advice on their application essays.

I've also once been a part of a B-school admissions jury.

In this guide, I've put in everything I know about writing application essays, from my experience helping people, my copywriting knowledge, as well as my hundreds of interactions with students, alumni, professors and administration of B-schools like HEC Paris.

What if I have more questions?

1. What if something isn't covered in the guide? If something isn't covered in the guide, you can reach out to me over email and I'll work on it and include it, free of charge.
2. What if I'm not satisfied? If for any reason you're not satisfied with the guide, I'll refund you. All I ask in that situation is your feedback on how to improve it.
3. Where did you study? I studied at HEC Paris.
4. How is the guide delivered? The guide is delivered as a Notion page, but you don't need a Notion account to access it. Just any web or mobile browser.

If you need any more help before or after buying this guide, just send me an email at mayank [at] mayanksehgal [dot] com, and I'll be happy to help you out.