EssaySnark

2020 MBA Essay Questions: Stanford GSB

Oh hey look here! You can view all EssaySnark blahg posts tagged for Stanford in one place!

 

Stanford needs to know you as a unique individual — but don’t overthink it!

The 2020 Stanford MBA essay questions have been confirmed as staying the same again this year (except they reduced the word count — eek!). Our Stanford MBA Application Guide will be going through our annual refresh soon, however the current version is absolutely relevant and ready for you to get rolling in considering your strategy! Your presentation across all components of your GSB application will need to be authentic, personal, and real. Stanford’s essays always require significant effort in introspection. It’s almost guaranteed that the first drafts you try won’t be very good. The perennial Stanford essay question has been “what matters most” and it’s again part of their requirements this year. Here’s another good starting point: REFLECTION AND INTROSPECTION AS MANDATORY FIRST STEPS!

2020 Stanford MBA Essay Questions & Recommendations
Class of 2023 GSB MBA Application

Stanford Round 1 is in 2 months, 1 week (September 15).

This is right in the middle of the craziness that will be Round 1 for you. Wharton, Yale, MIT and others are also in the same vicinity.

 
 



 
The Class of 2023 application essay prompts will be staying the same again this year:

Two essays, 1,050 words total, allocated any way you wish:

  1. What matters most to you, and why? (650 words suggested)
  2. Why Stanford? (400 words suggested)

 

Jump down this page to a list of EssaySnark posts on these Stanford essay questions! Includes real essays we’ve reviewed for actual real-life BSers!

Optional (but of course you will include this too right?!!): Up to three examples of impact, up to 1500 characters each.

Think about times you’ve created a positive impact, whether in professional, extracurricular, academic, or other settings. What was your impact? What made it significant to you or to others? You are welcome to share up to three examples.

 

How do you answer them?

Take a cue from the way that they’ve phrased these questions and focus on personal content for Essay A — truly, make your main GSB essay show who you are. (This is where all that advice about “authenticity” comes in.) The advantage of this year’s application to the GSB is that they’ve carved out “impact” as a separate question, which signals completely to you that they really truly want personal content in the main essay. (PS: This is exactly the advice we’ve been offering to Brave Supplicants trying for Stanford for, like, a generation, and there are successful BSers wandering the breezeways at the GSB every year who follow this advice.)

Essay B is all about how you’re a fit to Stanford, slanted towards your appreciation for what they can do for you and showcasing why the MBA is the mandatory next step, given your interest in doing something new and important with your career — and explicitly why you feel that you MUST go to Stanford to make your dreams a reality.

Then for the short-answer questions, Stanford is inviting you to back up your claims about the big things you’re setting out as goals for yourself in Essay B, by sharing more details than you could elsewhere in the app on your achievements and the important ways you’ve added value in other contexts of your life. Pro Tip: Focus on the last three years. There might be exceptions to this (but they would be rare). The best way to advocate for a spot in the Stanford Class of 2022 is to show how you’ve made big stuff happen in the recent past. (Here’s a secret: The items you carve out in these three short examples could work awesomely great in a Harvard essay! And Wharton as well. Lots of opportunity for repurposing your big stories across these three schools.)

Our Accomplishments & Achievements App Accelerator can help you identify your best stories and learn the right structure to present them — you’ll end up with five polished nuggets of goodness that you can potentially use in all of these apps!!!

 

 



EssaySnark's Strategies for the 2019 Stanford MBA Application
Our Stanford MBA essay guide has lots of insights around this school and the thinking that needs to go into this application.


 

2020 Stanford MBA recommendations (or “Letters of Reference” in their lingo)

Stanford has been using mostly the same recommenders’ questions as other schools ask. In recent years, how they required the info be entered in their system was not exactly the same as other schools.

The Stanford info is here — the basics are:

  • Two Letters of Reference
  • Both from a direct supervisor; current manager strongly preferred, plus another one from the past or some other person who’s had access to your work product. They both can be from one company or from different companies.
  • Two main questions plus one optional for your recommenders to answer; note that Question 1 is not identical to the phrasing used by other schools, and they’ve designated different word limits:
    1. How does the applicant’s performance compare to that of other well-qualified individuals in similar roles? Please provide specific examples. (E.g. what are the applicant’s principal strengths?) (500 words)
    2. Describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant’s response. (500 words)

Definitely get a recommendation from your actual boss if you can — and if you think you can’t, reconsider. The recommender’s title does not matter to the adcom; it adds no value to have your CEO write about you if the first time he met you was when you asked him to write your recommendation. You want someone who knows you well and can speak in detail about the questions they’re asking. You have a lot of leeway in who to choose for both of these but it’s definitely quite easy to make a strategic misstep. Pro Tip: Coach them to be DETAILED yet CONCISE. Longer recommendation letters are not better!

There are lots of resources for choosing your recommenders available through posts on the blahg; if you want more help, our Letters of Recommendation App Accelerator walks through the specifics of various scenarios and tricky situations and lets you submit your recommenders’ strategy for feedback from EssaySnark.


 

Stanford 2020-2021 Dates and Deadlines for the MBA Class of 2023

See Stanford MBA Admissions Deadlines

  • Rd 1 2020: September 15

    INTERVIEWS: The general pattern at Stanford has been that interview invites will go out for a one-month period from about the end of October through end of November, when they have Round 1 release day and set the no-luck applicants free into the wild. You can expect a similar sequence this year. Final decision is mid-December.

  • Rd 2 2021: January 6

    INTERVIEWS: Round 2 interview invites are typically released in a one-month window, expected to begin somewhere around the first of February. In early March, they usually have a “release”, at which time anyone not moving forward says bye-bye. Final decision is end of March.

 

The best help for the Stanford app?
Our SnarkStrategies MBA Guide for Stanford GSB,
available in an easy access online version.

 

EssaySnark Stanford MBA Essay Reviews and Advice!

Study these – but please don’t try to copy what someone else wrote about in a ‘matters most’ essay! We hope the reason for this caution is obvious. The reviews we post on the blahg for essays are much more limited than what you get with the full (and private!) Essay Decimator!
 
A selection from the ‘snarchive…

You might also want to check out:

 

For Reference: Stanford’s Past-Season Questions

Included for historical purposes, in case you want to study what they’ve asked in the past – which has been largely the same for many years, though there have been some changes and tweaks each season. Be sure to check what this year’s requirements are before proceeding!

Click to view last year's questions


[The essay questions for the Class of 2022 were the same as they were for the Classes of 2021, 2020 and 2019 — so not much info to capture in this section, unless we’re just going to repeat on the tried-and-true strategies we’ve long expounded. Please review the information at the top of this page for the 2020 application to the Stanford Class of 2023.]
 
Recent Years’ Stanford MBA Essay Questions
If you’re thinking of trying for Stanford, please keep in mind that the average GMAT score for the GSB Class of 2019 held steady at – gulp! – 737. We’re nervous to see if it went even higher for the Class of 2020, as has happened at many other places. Stanford doesn’t admit based on GMAT score, however a high GMAT is correlated with other qualities that they care about.

Two essays, 1,150 words total, allocated any way you wish:

  1. What matters most to you, and why? (750 words suggested)
  2. Why Stanford? (400 words suggested)

 
The word count suggestions were slightly different for candidates doing the simultaneous MBA + MSx app (1200 words total).

In 2019, they also offered an opportunity to write on an optional (not optional!) question: Give them three soundbite statements of impact! Which, frankly, is essentially the advice we’ve been providing for applicants to Stanford for a generation, as laid out in our Stanford Essay Guide from its very first edition.

The main advice for Stanford then, and now, is BE AUTHENTIC.

[End recent years’ questions section.]


Click to view 2017 questions


 
2017 Stanford MBA Essay Questions
(look familiar? 😉 )

Two essays, 1,150 words total, allocated any way you wish:

  1. What matters most to you, and why? (750 words suggested – you will need this much space to tell your story)
  2. Why Stanford? (400 words suggested – which is really not much! but you’ll be able to work with it)

 

New this year: No peer recommendations anymore for Stanford.

[End 2017 questions section.]


Click to view 2016 questions

2016 Stanford MBA Essay Questions

  1. What matters most to you, and why?
  2. Why Stanford?

 

[End 2016 questions section.]


Click to view 2015 questions


 
2015 Stanford MBA Essay Questions & Recommendations for the Class of 2018
Stanford has made some applicant-positive changes this year AND WE HOPE OTHER SCHOOLS WILL FOLLOW SUIT. (Oh look! MIT has done so!)

Our 2015 predictions for the GSB were on target:

  • Essays: Stanford is – mostly – maintaining status quo from last year, keeping the same two questions (see below).
  • However GOOD NEWS! They’ve expanded the length limit!!! And, Stanford allows you to allocate the word count any way you like (this is not new, we’re just pointing it out since it’s very unique among all the bschools and their essays). Your total allocation is now 1,150 words for these two essays, which is up 50 words from last year – that is not a lot, but any little bit will help. This is positive.
  • Another plus? They’ve adjusted their deadlines in a way that is HUGELY BENEFICIAL TO ALL OF YOU. It’s almost like the Stanford adcom read our recent post with suggestions on that – or maybe we’re just oddly prescient these days. 😉
  • They’ve also – sort of – kept the two standard recommenders’ questions but they’ve added one more! Another big ‘yay!’ This is an optional “anything else you want to say?” question. It may sound trivial but honestly, it lets your recommenders talk in greater detail about you – so they can make a stronger case for your admission. This is a plus.
  • The one downside? They actually changed the wording of the first “standardized” question – don’t these schools realize that CHANGING THEM means they’re NO LONGER STANDARDIZED?? Sheesh.

 

The Stanford 2015-’16 Essay Questions

Same prompts as they’ve had for awhile – and you have plenty of resources available to tackle these on this site.

EssaySnark **knows** what makes for a strong app, and (finally!!) the Stanford admissions peeps are openly saying the same things. It’s all covered in this guide. Get a head start on what to expect with this very challenging application. You’ll want to give yourself as much time as possible to work on these essays (but please don’t start writing until after you’ve figured out what to say!!! this guide explains how).

Our Stanford essay guide has been expanded for 2015 to cover more tactical angles (previous editions of this guide have been largely strategic).

And yet another plug for these guides: Stanford has recently tweaked the instructions on its website for this season, being more direct and clear with what they’re looking for in terms of essays and recommenders. Every one of these angles was already covered in our Stanford guide.

[End 2015 questions section.]



Click to view 2014 questions


2014 questions – these are OLD

There was no behavioral question in 2014, as there had been for many many years. They announced the Class of 2017 app changes on their blog on May 15, 2014.

In 2014, also Stanford streamlined the number of letters of reference that they need, down to just two, from the three that they had asked for before. They require one from your current direct supervisor (there are certain situations where it’s acceptable not to get one from your current manager, but you should do so if you possible can). The second you have flexibility with; can be a former supervisor, or a peer, though we suggest a former supervisor as typically the best option. Choose wisely, Brave Supplicant!

The Stanford MBA Admissions Blog was closed down in late 2014. Why a school would shutter its blog, we do not know. It used to be at http://www.stanford.edu/group/mba/blog/ (anyway, it was updated infrequently, even when it was live).

[End 2014 questions section.]



Click to view 2013 questions


2013 questions – these are VERY OLD

The essays are exactly the same as last year, with one teensy tiny change:

Three essays:

  1. What matters most to you, and why?
  2. What do you want to do—REALLY—and why Stanford?
  3. Choose one:
    • Tell us about a time in the last three years when you built or developed a team whose performance exceeded expectations.
    • Tell us about a time in the last three years when you identified and pursued an opportunity to improve an organization.
    • Tell us about a time in the last three years when you went beyond what was defined or established.

Essay length limits: 1600 words, divided up among the essays as you see fit. (EssaySnark recommends you stick with their suggestions, though: 750 / 450 / 400.)

The teensy-tiny change is, there’s a few “Just for Fun” questions within the application about your favorite place; last year, they asked about your favorite food.

[End 2013 questions section.]

 


The EssaySnark Stanford MBA guide will be updated for the 2020 application as soon as details are confirmed by the school. But you can pick the 2019 version up now and gain a true head start! Stanford is Stanford, even if their essay questions change, and we cover what’s required to put forth a compelling set of essays in this comprehensive guide. It’s packed with useful insights and actionable tips for how (and how NOT!) to approach your task. Brave Supplicants this year have even more help in understanding how to build a compelling set of essays and impact statements for the GSB!
 

[Index of essay questions by business school]