We’ve got this offer we make here on the blahg where an intrepid BSer can send along their draft (hopefully polished and well prepared!) and we’ll kick it around and see if it’s up to snuff in this competitive game called MBA admissions. Heck, it’s free! (Well, you have to pony up for membership to the premium stuff, but yeah. Basically free.)
Well, we’re a little sheepish about this but, someone submitted this draft of their Tuck essay in 2015 and we’ve been sitting on it this whole time. Suffice it to say, we did not give this BSer a free review at the time. In our defense, it was ‘cuz they sent it in on December 30th, and as any of you Round 2 Warriors recall, that’s like three days before the deadline. We were, shall we say, BUSY at that time. Hopefully this BSer went on to big MBA admissions and has since graduated and is out in the world as a bschool success story, out of Tuck or some other great school! It’s unlikely this person is around reading this post today, but if they are, the ‘Snark says “Thank you” for sending this in, and “Sorry” for us not quite getting any comments to you in a time where it would be actually useful.
And, we’re hoping it may be useful to you! Because guess what? The Tuck essay questions at the time were actually somewhat similar to what Kellogg is asking you to write about now!
Here’s the prompt for the long-ago Tuck essay:
Tell us about your most meaningful leadership experience and what role you played. How will that experience contribute to the learning environment at Tuck?
And here’s what Kellogg wants you to answer today:
Kellogg’s purpose is to educate, equip and inspire brave leaders who create lasting value. Provide a recent example where you have demonstrated leadership and created value. What challenges did you face and what did you learn?
So what did we get in this draft about a meaningful leadership experience and does it also give us something to discuss about leaders creating value?
Here’s how it opens:
Our firm was recently engaged to by a Tier 1 automotive supplier to support the development of a product roadmap that would help the company position itself for the future of the industry. Typically, a project is managed by a more senior member of the management team but the Senior Partner appointed me as Project Manager of a team of five consultants due to my prior successful leadership of smaller projects. The client asked wanted to conduct an analysis of 50 vehicle technologies help support the development of its future strategy.
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So yeah. Some possible potential there, in terms of the actual essay content that followed that opening which could have something useful buried within — but it’s not being realized. In this no-GMAT era, then the essays are going to be super important to prove that you’ve got qualities that the school will want to have around in the Fall.
If you’re wondering what actually qualifies as leadership… Our Accomplishments & Achievements App Accelerator might be worth checking out.
We have a lot of other essay critiques, and a lot of content about Kellogg’s essays, so dig into those ‘snarchives by clicky-clicky on the links and see what goodness you might find to point you in some productive directions on these essays.
Happy essay writing, BSer! It’ll be a big weekend for you. Get crankin’!
Tell us what you think.