2020 MBA Essay Questions: Columbia Business School

Average GMAT at this school has been 727…and the Class of 2023 has shaped up to once again be seriously competitive at Columbia and elsewhere.

Average GMAT at Columbia had been up to 732, but it’s dipped down again for the Class of 2021 and is now at 727.

The Columbia MBA app had three essays plus a short-answer question.

How do you answer them?

What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (50 characters)

1. Through your resume and recommendations, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals over the next 3-5 years and what, in your imagination, would be your long-term dream job? (500 words)
    
2. Why do you feel Columbia Business School is a good fit for you? (250 words)

   Huzzah!! A straightforward question! Thank you, Columbia! OMG they had been putting applicants through the torture chamber for so many years by asking them to talk about “being at the center of business” and other such nonsense. Whenever a school tries to incorporate its own branding into the essays it forces candidates to write, it always ends badly. That’s the essence of inauthentic (since branding is, by its very nature, marketing — it’s projecting an image — it’s divorced from reality, even if the brand is a genuine one). Very grateful that Columbia has simplified this essay. If you have trouble answering this one then you instantly know: More work to be done! Research Columbia! Figure out why you want to go there! (Pro Tip: This post can help!)

   You still might want to review the marketing spiel that Columbia has put out in past years, such as this (but please don’t limit yourself only to such polished promotional materials!!):

3. Who is a leader you admire, and why? (250 words)
    
   Uh-oh. This is a recipe for disaster. Everybody’s gonna say “Bill Gates for the Gates Foundation” or “Steve Jobs because of his innovation” or maybe some political figure. Or “My dad because he built a company from scratch.”

   We’re not saying not to answer that way. But we are saying this is gonna be a tricky one to do well.

   Pro Tip: Who you name is IRRELEVANT. This essay rides on the “why” and how you tie meaning together into your pitch for admission. See our Columbia guide for more!

   BONUS: In September, we posted this map to writing Columbia essay 3.

Columbia’s Application Information page has been updated to show that the Executive Assessment is one of the tests they accept. Should you take this test instead of the GMAT? Hmmm. This is a complicated situation, grasshopper! For most applicants, the GMAT would probably still be preferred at Columbia, however there are cases where the EA might work fine for you. Your choice of test needs to be an integral part of your overall strategy to apply to a school of this caliber. Want our take on your specific situation? Our Comprehensive Profile Review can walk through all of the details!

 
[end discussion of 2019 questions]

In 2018, Columbia’s MBA app had three essays plus a short-answer question, all of which are mostly in line with what we expected. Also, no impact to your apps, but as we predicted in our Columbia Essay Guide, Dean Hubbard will be stepping down and a search for a new dean is underway.

Short-answer:

What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (50 characters)

Essays:

1. Through your resume and recommendations, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals over the next 3-5 years and what, in your imagination, would be your long-term dream job? (500 words)
    
   This was the same question as the prior year — though we had expected them to drop the “dream job” phrasing since many BSers have tended to go waaaay out there in their “dreaming” aspect, which isn’t necessarily the most solid way to pitch!

   This type of “short-term/long-term goals” prompt is nearly identical to the main career goals question that Columbia has asked for like, dunno, maybe 20 years now. They tend to reward applicants who are grounded and down to earth in what they pitch. You are going to run into trouble, for example, if you say your short-term goal is to become a consultant and your long-term goal is to open a restaurant. You can play that card if you like, but thar be dragons!!! Despite Columbia’s lofty adjectives of “imagination” and “dream” we still advise BSers to be reasonable in what they define as a L/T goal. Also, don’t overlook the importance of restating the short-term goal that you used as your answer for the short-answer question! That should be pretty much the first thing in this essay. Build from there. The entirety of your S/T goal / 3-5 years / L/T dream job should not get you past the year 2027! And it could even be much more compressed of a plan. Our Columbia guide explains.

2. How will you take advantage of being “at the very center of business”? (250 words) [with instructions to ‘click photo’ which as of 5/21/18 takes you to https://www.youtube.com/user/ColumbiaBusiness/ aha we thought that was an error! Now the link on the photo takes you to https://youtu.be/IAsVBg-LIuo which is:
   

    
   With the “center of business” question, Columbia has regurgitated a prompt it used in the past, including as recently as 2016 when it was phrased like this:

   “Columbia Business School’s students participate in industry focused New York immersion seminars; in project based Master Classes; and in school year internships. Most importantly, our students are taught by a combination of distinguished research faculty and accomplished practitioners. How will you take advantage of being ‘at the very center of business’?”

   In this year’s video with Dean Hubbard, they’ve highlighted pretty much the same stuff. But what happened with that prior-year version was, lots and lots of applicants just recited those things that the adcom had in the prompt; they’d talk about the Master Classes and the immersion thingy and an internship. Which is really not what the adcom wants. Don’t just parrot back what they’ve cited themselves. They want to know what YOU plan to do with the opportunity to get your MBA at Columbia Business School. that’s the essence of Dean Hubbard’s angle about entrepreneurship and innovation — not so much that you will be an entrepreneur at Columbia (though you might!) or that you will innovate while there (though you can!), but instead, to tackle this essay question from the perspective of adding value and bringing more to the equation than is already there. That means, DO YOUR RESEARCH!! Reviewing a gazillion of those Columbia YouTube videos is a great place to start, but obviously that’s not the full extent of what you should be focusing on. There are plenty of blahg posts on the “center of business” essays here to dig through — check out the list of titles below and you can use our handy search function on the home page of the site.

3. Please provide an example of a team failure of which you have been a part. If given a second chance, what would you do differently? (250 words)
    
   Great question — one that other schools have used in the past, and one which is not easy to do well!! We’ve got a bunch of posts on the blahg about “failure” essays — here’s a good one to start with from way back in the ‘snarchives. UPDATE 9/10/18: Our post on Columbia MBA essay 3 – “team failure” – invaluable advice! And UPDATE AGAIN! Another post, this one on “lessons learned” in MBA essays which should be extremely useful for the “second chance” part of the question.

   The key things to watch for: There are FOUR QUESTIONS here (first define the team, then explain the failure, then say how you contributed to it, then do the “second chance” part). Important assessment tools to evaluate your ideas: 1) Are you presenting a TEAM story? And 2) Are you presenting a FAILURE story? Many people use a “mistake” story which is just not the same. You also must show how YOU contributed to this failure. Don’t you dare throw anyone under the bus with this story!! You need to show maturity and insight and hopefully some form of leadership, too. This question is how Columbia is going to evaluate fit to their culture.

 
[end discussion of 2018 questions]

Average GMAT at Columbia is up to 724 on the back of another 3% increase in applications. Admit rate also dipped. Because of these factors and due to rolling admissions, applying well before the deadline is recommended! Details on all of these strategies are below on this page, in our Columbia essay guide, and throughout the ‘snarchive of Columbia posts here on the blahg.

The Columbia essay questions were in line with what we expected – and what we have discussed in great detail in our Columbia MBA essay guide!

As has been the case for a very long time, the 2017 Columbia MBA app had three essays plus a short-answer question:

What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (50 characters)

First up, we have to point out that those are characters – not words – which means you have next to nothing in terms of space to work with. This is intended to be literally what you will be recruiting for when you are ready to graduate. Then you can expand upon that in Essays 1 and 2.

1. Through your resume and recommendations, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals over the next 3-5 years and what, in your imagination, would be your long-term dream job? (500 words) This is nearly identical to the main career goals question that Columbia has asked for several cycles now, with a key improvement of specificity on timeframes for the S/T goal, and a new twist where they’re looking for a “dream job” — which could prove tricky for some! You are going to run into trouble, for example, if you say your short-term goal is to become a consultant and your long-term goal is to open a restaurant. You can play that card if you like, but thar be dragons!!! Despite Columbia’s lofty adjectives of “imagination” and “dream” we still advise BSers to be reasonable in what they define as a L/T goal. Our Columbia guide explains.
2. The full time MBA experience includes academics, recruiting, and networking. What are your personal priorities and how do you anticipate allocating your time at Columbia Business School? (250 words) Another simplified version of a Columbia classic! This one is, again, less ambiguous in its phrasing, which is awesome. Have we mentioned recently how important school research is?
3. Please select and answer one of the following essay questions: (250 words)
   a. Please tell us what you feel most passionate about in life.
   
   b. If you were given a free day and could spend it anywhere, in any way you choose, what would you do?

   These two are simply alternatives to the previous seasons’ versions of Essay 3, where they want to get to know you as a person. The most important objective with this question? AUTHENTICITY. Please don’t come up with something you think “sounds good.” Think about what the REAL answer is (yeah, we know, not easy!!) and go with that.

The other good news? Columbia is now back to being super specific on essay length. Last year they tried an experiment with offering applicants a sliding word count, which we predicted they would ditch this time, and boy, are we glad they did! BSers do much better with clear direction and no ambiguity. The essay lengths this year are reasonable: Not so long you don’t know what to do with yourself, but long enough to answer the question sufficiently.

For the record: A 500-word essay should fit on one page; 250 words is two decent-sized paragraphs. Don’t go over. Or at least, not by much.

 
[end discussion of 2017 questions]

Really Columbia?!?? You increased the allowed length for the short-answer question on goals from 50 to 51 CHARACTERS?!!!? We don’t know whether to laugh or cry at that. (We sort of did both in this post.) We had a follow-up post about another change to the essays that we take issue with. Our faith in Columbia has been (once again) somewhat rattled by this.

Three essays plus that oh-so-generous 51-character short-answer question:

1. Through your resume and recommendations, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals going forward, and how will the Columbia MBA help you achieve them?
   This is the same question as they used last year, but now they tell you that you can use from 100 to 750 words to answer it. To do a good job with this, you really need to write a minimum of 500 words. Anyone who does only 100 words is likely cheating themselves out of a clear presentation of their pitch to the adcom. We are doubtful that you can do a good job with anywhere less than 400. That doesn’t mean you need to use the full 750 words – and it definitely doesn’t mean you can go over 750. Tell them why you want an MBA – and why from Columbia. It needs to be clear and direct.
2. Columbia Business School’s students participate in industry focused New York immersion seminars; in project based Master Classes; and in school year internships. Most importantly, our students are taught by a combination of distinguished research faculty and accomplished practitioners. How will you take advantage of being “at the very center of business”?

   [Not to be confused with this place that’s apparently “the center of everything” – ES]

   This is nearly the same as they asked last year except they ditched the reference to “theory and practice” (see our 2016 Columbia guide for a discussion of whether that’s relevant to you or not). The essence of this question is, how will you use the resources that they have available? Please note: You don’t have to tell the adcom about what those resources are; they know them. They just highlighted a bunch in the question itself. Instead, this is an opportunity to further expand your pitch. Essay 1 is, “These goals are the reason why I need an MBA.” Essay 2 is, “This is how I’m going to make the most of my time at Columbia to achieve those goals. The other big change? Again they’re stating an acceptable word count range: 100 to 500 words. In most cases you should aim for 500 words of strong content (writing 500 words of fluff should be avoided).

3. CBS Matters , a key element of the School’s culture, allows the people in your Cluster to learn more about you on a personal level. What will your Clustermates be pleasantly surprised to learn about you? (100-250 words)
   Identical to last year except that they emphasized the word “pleasantly” – which is what we’ve been emphasizing to BSers in our Essay Reviews for Columbia all along! We have reviewed essays for this question in past years and which we discuss in detail in the essay guide – be authentic!! Again, using that full allotment of 250 words is likely wise.

And the STILL SHORT! short-answer question:

What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (51 characters)

This question started out ages ago as a 200-character response. Columbia has been whittling away at it until last year it was down to 50 characters. Which we said was ridiculous. Which we still think in the +1 form is ridiculous. Gee thanks Columbia.

So as you can see, they tweaked the essays a bit, though as we’ve long said, directionally Columbia is still Columbia. We know exactly what they respond best to; we have quite the track record of helping BSers with successful apps to this great school. All of it is fully explained in the 2016 Columbia MBA Application Guide – which has been expanded almost 10 more pages from last year’s edition.

Note: Despite all our kvetching about the lengths of the essays, we do have to point out that Columbia made it to our list of Five Favorite Schools back in 2014.
 

In August we talked about the dangers with choose-your-own-length variable word count thing that Columbia has implemented – 100 to 750 words for Essay 1? What’s not to like? Hmmm. We also cover best practices and guidelines for what makes a good length for each of these questions in that Columbia essay guide.
 

In 2013 and 2014, Columbia began processing Regular Decision applications in mid-November. In years before that, this typically didn’t happen until sometime in December. Now, they state on their Application Process page that Regular Decision apps won’t be reviewed earlier than December 1st. Our application guide tells you the best time to apply for each of the different application options.

 
[end discussion of 2016 questions]

For 2015, Columbia changed things up a bit, though as we’ve been saying, directionally Columbia is still Columbia. We know exactly what they respond best to; we have quite the track record of helping BSers with successful apps to this great school. Information on their updates are below and are also fully explained in the Columbia MBA Application Guide – which has been expanded another 10 pages from last year’s edition.

These essays are nearly identical to what they had in 2014 – our predictions were spot-on! The main difference is there is now ONLY 50 CHARACTERS (down from 75!!!) to say what you want to do after bschool.

Three essays:

1. Through your resume and recommendations, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals going forward, and how will the Columbia MBA help you achieve them? (Maximum 500 words) (This appears to be an interesting borrowing of language from other schools like HBS and Booth – but it’s still a quintessentially Columbia question. They want to know why you want an MBA – and why from their school. Focus on clear and direct post-MBA goals and you’ll be setting yourself up for success.)
2. Columbia Business School’s location enables us to bridge theory and practice in multiple ways: through Master Classes, internships, the New York Immersion Seminars, and, most importantly, through a combination of distinguished research faculty and accomplished practitioners. How will you take advantage of being “at the very center of business”? (Maximum 250 words) (What a relief that they modified the wording of essay 2 this year! We’re betting that people are able to do a better job than last year’s crop of applicants did. The key to this question is to go beyond a recitation of lists. You don’t have to tell the adcom about what resources Columbia has. They already listed those things out! Instead, focus on YOU and why a specific thing matters, and how you’ll put it to use. It’s also interesting that they’ve resuscitated their “theory and practice” theme from many years back. Give that some thought too, Brave Supplicant!)
3. CBS Matters , a key element of the School’s culture, allows the people in your Cluster to learn more about you on a personal level. What will your Clustermates be pleasantly surprised to learn about you? (Maximum 250 words) (Essentially the same as 2014 – which was the same as 2013 – which we reviewed in past years and which we discuss in detail in the essay guide – be authentic in this one!!)

And the SHORT! (!!!!) short-answer question:

What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal?

Only 75 50 characters (!!!!) permitted now. We blahgged about the The 2013 100-character version (“post-MBA professional goal”) – but unfortunately as we posted right when the 2015 app was released, EssaySnark’s opinion is that this question is near-useless at 50 characters.

2015 Essay Reviews

• We love Columbia’s new essay questions (except for…) (April 2015)

 
[end discussion of 2015 questions]

1. Given your individual background and goals, why are you pursuing a Columbia MBA at this time? (Maximum 500 words) (They added the “and goals” part to the question this year to remind you that you’re applying for admission to an MBA program – and Columbia wants to hear about what you plan to do with the MBA. Don’t omit that part in your answer! It’s exactly the advice we gave in last year’s strategy guide too. Glad to see the change in the question.)
2. View video “The Center” then answer this question: How will you take advantage of being “at the very center of business”? (Maximum 250 words) (This is essentially the same as the prior year without the geographically-challenged component that we called out then 😉 ).
3. What will the people in your Cluster be pleasantly surprised to learn about you? (Maximum 250 words) (Identical to last year.)

And the short-answer question:

What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal?

Only 75 characters permitted now. [For the 2015 app it’s 50 characters! eek! -ES] The 2013 100-character version (“post-MBA professional goal”) is discussed here.

2014 Essay Reviews

• essay critique: Columbia essay 1 (background and goals) (November 2014)
• essay critique: Columbia essay 1 (career goals) – critique of a 2013 essay but written in context of changes with the 2014 question, and still relevant for 2015 too (June 2014)
• essay critique: Columbia background and goals essay 1 (Part 2) (June 2014)

As you can see, the essence of what makes for a strong Columbia application remains the same today.

[end discussion of 2014 questions]

Three essays:

1. Given your individual background, why are you pursuing a Columbia MBA at this time? (Maximum 500 words)
2. Columbia Business School is located in the heart of the world’s business capital – Manhattan. How do you anticipate that New York City will impact your experience at Columbia? [includes two videos about the Columbia NYC experience: video 1: New York City – limitless possibilities – titled “New Neighborhood, New Outlook, New York” on the video page; and video 2: New York City – fast paced and adaptable – titled “Columbia MBA Program: New York, New York” on the video page] (Maximum 250 words)
3. What will the people in your Cluster be pleasantly surprised to learn about you? (Maximum 250 words)

Don’t forget the short-answer question! Only 100 characters permitted. Discussed here.

What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal?
 
 

2013 Columbia MBA Essay Reviews

• 2013 Columbia MBA essay analysis – a quick rundown of the questions (and some snark) – 5/17/13
• Columbia’s short-answer question on the “immediate post-MBA goal” – covers the REALLY BIG CHANGE that year – 5/20/13
• essay critique: Columbia’s “Why are you pursuing an MBA?” (July 2013)
• essay critique: Columbia in the heart of NYC (January 2014)

 
[end overview of 2013 questions]

Two essays:

1. A) Why are you pursuing an MBA at this point in your career, and how do you plan to achieve your immediate and long term post-MBA professional goals? (Maximum 500 words)
   B) [View the video on their site, then] Describe why you are interested in becoming a part of the Columbia community. (Maximum 250 words)
2. Describe a personal experience and how it has influenced who you are today. This essay should have a personal rather than a professional focus. (Maximum 500 words)

The short-answer question was a lot longer then – 200 characters allowed

What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal?

[end overview of 2012 questions]

2012 Essay Reviews

• essay critique: another Columbia essay 1: “immediate and long-term post-MBA goals” (December 2012)
• essay critique: Columbia essay 1: “Why are you pursuing an MBA…?” (November 2012)
• More on Columbia’s “life experience” essay (July 2012)
• Columbia essay 1 (2012 version) (July 2012)

If you want to dig even deeper into the archives, there’s these – yes, still relevant, we promise!

2011 Columbia Essay Reviews

• Discussion of Columbia’s 2011 essays
• essay critique: Columbia essay 2 “life experience” (October 2011)
• Columbia’s outrageous business plan question (July 2011)

Even this ancient post from way back in 2010 still has some life left in it!

2010 Columbia Essay Reviews

• very sad… (Columbia’s 2010-11 essay questions)