Resources

Columbia Business School (CBS) requires three essays as part of its application. Through your essays, the school hopes to better understand your experiences and career goals, as well as your rationale for wanting to pursue your MBA at CBS specifically. We at Gatehouse appreciate the program’s range of essay topics, because the variety allows applicants to communicate a broad picture of their candidacy.

Essay 1: Through your resume and recommendation, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals over the next three to five years and what is your long-term dream job? (500 words)

Columbia has been asking this question for several years now, so we at Gatehouse have considerable experience coaching candidates on how to effectively respond to this prompt. We know what makes a good essay response, and even better, we know where applicants are likely to stumble.

Our first piece of advice is to make sure that you are answering the school’s entire question. CBS wants to learn two distinct things: what your career goals are for the three to five years after you graduate with your MBA, and what your long-term dream job is. Too often, candidates combine these two elements into one when crafting their essay. Instead, follow the prompt and address each one distinctly! Also, make sure that your short-term goals flow logically into your dream job. They should ideally prepare and position you to achieve that dream job.

For both your short- and long-term goals, focus on what you will be doing (role, industry, and/or function), as well as the kind of impact you want to have—the problems you want to solve, the products you want to create, the team you want to lead. This is especially important when you are describing your “dream job.” Your dream job likely inspires you, and the admissions committee wants to know why.

The essay prompt does not explicitly ask how your goals relate to where you are now, but that does not mean you should ignore the connection. Although the admissions committee is all but telling you not to rehash your resume here (which would make for a poor MBA application essay for most schools, anyway), we encourage you to refer to specific accomplishments and/or experiences if doing so provides context that will help the admissions committee better understand your goals or assess your likelihood of reaching them.

Lastly, consider this essay a goal statement essay. The core components of a goal statement essay are (1) your vision for the future, (2) an explanation of how that vision relates to where you are today, and (3) the reasons you need to attend business school to make your vision a reality. Although you will also discuss (3) in CBS’s Essay 3, you can nonetheless make a clear case for needing an MBA in this essay as well.

For additional guidance on how to craft a compelling goal statement essay, watch our video workshop Your Career Statement – Fact, Fiction, and How to Build One.

Essay 2: The Phillips Pathway for Inclusive Leadership (PPIL) is a co-curricular program designed to provide students with the skills and strategies needed to develop as inclusive leaders.  Through various resources and programming, students explore and reflect on the following five inclusive leadership skills:  Mitigating Bias and Prejudice; Managing Intercultural Dialogue; Addressing Systemic Inequity; Understanding Identity and Perspective Taking; and Creating an Inclusive Environment.

Describe a time or situation when you had the need to utilize one of these five skills, and tell us the actions you took and the outcome. (250 words)

We at Gatehouse are excited to see this question in CBS’s application. Not only does the prompt give applicants a sense of how CBS is adjusting its MBA experience to meet the leadership needs of the moment, but it also offers candidates the chance to share a specific relevant experience. When executed well, this essay can reveal much about your motivations, unique candidacy, and ability to observe, learn, and grow.

While you can choose which of the five highlighted skills you want to focus on, Columbia is clear about what it wants you to share: the situation, actions, and results—or SAR. We suggest you use the fuller STARR (Situation, Task, Actions, Results, and Reflection) approach in crafting your response. Each of these elements is important in storytelling.

• The Situation helps your reader “see” your world.
• The Task conveys the challenge or goal at hand.
• The Actions illustrate who you are as a doer. We often see applicants shortchange their actions in their responses. Instead, take the necessary time to identify the discrete actions you took, and then consider and share both the rationale and the “how” behind them. These specifics will ensure that your story is one that only you could tell.
• The Results are, of course, the outcome of your efforts and experience (the “so what” of your story!).
• The Reflection element covers how the experience affected and shaped you. Why was it meaningful to you?

Applicants often assume that because they are applying to business school, they should recount only positive stories—stories in which they were the hero or did everything right. You could absolutely choose to share such a story (as long as you also explain how the situation affected and shaped you). However, another approach could be focusing instead on an experience that did not end positively or one in which you were not at your best. If you choose to highlight this sort of experience, really lean into that last “R”—the Reflection—and be sure to think about and discuss how you have developed since. Columbia is not expecting perfection; on the contrary, the school’s MBA program exists expressly because CBS believes you are capable of additional growth and change going forward.

If you would like more tips on crafting a story essay, watch our video The Importance of Business School Application Essays (and How to Write Them).

Essay 3: We believe Columbia Business School is a special place with a collaborative learning environment in which students feel a sense of belonging, agency, and partnership–academically, culturally, and professionally.

How would you co-create your optimal MBA experience at CBS? Please be specific. (250 words)

This essay prompt is similar to prompts CBS has used in the past, but the wording has been tweaked considerably. Rather than asking candidates to simply explain how they “fit” with CBS, the school is now demanding a much more active response. (We suspect that Columbia changed its prompt this year because the school was receiving too many responses that simply listed various advantages of the CBS program, without showcasing the applicants and their expected role in the school’s community.)

A well-executed essay response to this prompt will present clear connections between you, the aspects of the business school that you find compelling, and the contribution you hope to make while in the CBS community. Consider each of the areas that Columbia mentions (academics, culture, and career) vis-à-vis why you are pursuing an MBA (i.e., the experiences, skills, knowledge, and/or connections you are lacking), and then prove to the admissions committee that you know how CBS specifically can fulfill those needs. Note the resources and offerings (whether well-known or somewhat obscure; they do not have to be arcane to make a strong case!) that resonate with you and will help you advance toward your career goals. Also, reflect on what you anticipate getting involved in and what your contribution will be. The verb “co-create” in the prompt is important! How do you envision working alongside your peers and professors to make the Columbia experience what you need it to be?

We strongly caution you against empty pandering! Simply describing CBS in glowing terms and praising its resources does nothing to enhance your candidacy. By telling the admissions officers what they already know about the school they represent, rather than what they want to know about you, you run the risk of losing their attention—and worse, their support.