Accepted: Your MBA Goals Essay: Get Ready, Get Set, THINK!

You’ll be applying to b-school this fall, aiming for the Round 1 deadlines. You may also be working full-time, juggling a few other responsibilities, and perhaps trying to hike up that GMAT score. What should you be doing now? Thinking about why you want to go to b-school, and for that, you’ll need to formulate your MBA goal.

You really don’t have time to spare. Here’s what you need to do to identify and write about your MBA goal.

Pre-application to-do: Define those goals!

The first thing you need to do is to start defining your MBA goal – the more introspection you do before you write your MBA goals essay, the faster and smoother the actual writing of the essay will be later on.

To begin, jot down possible specific roles and industries that you’d be able to discuss in an MBA goals essay.

The challenge here is to think of goals that go beyond the obvious (or at least to think of an original way to express your less-than-original goals). For example, “I want to go into marketing” won’t cut it on its own, but if marketing is a passion and a goal of yours, then there are other ways to frame it without falling into the boring, generic trap, mainly through the use of details.

Writing about your goals

Here are some tips you should keep in mind when preparing for writing a compelling, extraordinary MBA goals essay:

Distinguish between short-term, long-term, and intermediate goals.
At each of these stages, what would your ideal position be? What type of company? And in what industry? These positions/companies/industries may change as you transition from the short-term to the long-term. Use specific examples of job titles and companies to further illustrate how much you’ve thought about your future.
Continue to identify the details of the short- and long-term and the intermediate goals by thinking about what specific goals you’d like to accomplish during each of the phases.
Don’t just talk about what you want to get out of an experience, but about the impact you want to have on the people that you encounter and the industry during that time. The details that surround your MBA goals are what will make your goals essay stand out from all the other future marketers in the stack. Details will make your essay interesting, credible, and individualized.
Do your research so that your goals prove realistic.
Look up hiring trends, services, organization, market status, products, competitive concerns, etc. at your desired companies. Now is the time to do all this research!
Become familiar with the challenges of your chosen industry.
Are there any current events that have affected your industry? You need to know the answer to this!
Be prepared to discuss why you’re attracted to your target positions/industry.
Most questions won’t specifically ask about your motivations for pursuing your particular goals, but keeping your motivations in mind while you write will help you present a more engaging story with a stronger message – ingredients that will further help your essay stand out.

Introspection is key

Following these steps during the pre-writing stage of your goals essay will help you formulate a clear, compelling, and original portrayal of what your goals are. It will also make the actual writing of the essay move more quickly and effortlessly. Use your time wisely and pace yourself – those applications will be due before you know it!

Accepted’s expert advisors can assist you with this and any other element of your business school application. Explore our one-on-one MBA Admissions Consulting & Editing Services for more information on how we can help you GET ACCEPTED.

For 25 years, Accepted has helped business school applicants gain acceptance to top programs. Our outstanding team of MBA admissions consultants features former business school admissions directors and professional writers who have guided our clients to admission at top MBA, EMBA, and other graduate business programs worldwide including Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Booth, INSEAD, London Business School, and many more. Want an MBA admissions expert to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!