INSEAD MBA Essays

Essay Writing Tips and Application Deadlines

Give a candid description of yourself (who are you as a person), stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary (approximately 500 words).

EssayLever Suggestions:

• What are your most significant strengths?
• How did you build them?
• What are your most significant weaknesses?
• What are you doing to overcome them?

Describe the achievement of which you are most proud and explain why. In addition, describe a situation where you failed. How did these experiences impact your relationships with others? Comment on what you learned(approximately 400 words).

EssayLever Suggestions:

Choose an experience where you made a difference, created an impact, demonstrated leadership. Where you set goals and achieved them. An experience that brought important learning, made you grow, discover aspects that you were previously blind to. Consider experiences from work, everyday living, family interactions, interactions at school/college, extracurricular involvements...

For the second part of the question, choose an experience when you failed despite your best efforts. What could you have done to avoid the failure? Why couldn't you do the right thing? What did you learn from this experience?

For the last part of the question, explain how the achievement and the failure impacted relationships with others who were involved?

Other questions in the application that require a descriptive response:

Job Description Essays

Briefly summarise your current (or most recent) job, including the nature of work, major responsibilities, and where relevant, employees under your supervision, size of budget, clients/products and results achieved. (200 words)

What would be your next step in terms of position if you were to remain in the same company? (200 words)

Please give a full description of your career since graduating from university. Describe your career path with the rationale behind your choices. (300 words)

Discuss your short and long term career aspirations with or without an MBA from INSEAD. (100 words)

If you are currently not working or if you plan to leave your current employer more than 2 months before the programme starts, please explain your activities and occupations between leaving your job and the start of the programme. (optional)

Describe all types of extra-professional activities in which you have been or are still involved for a significant amount of time (clubs, sports, music, arts, politics, etc). How are you enriched by these activities? (approximately 300 words)

Is there anything else that was not covered in your application that you would like to share with the Admissions Committee? (approximately 300 words)