by Kelly Wilson
Showing Contribution in MBA Essays: 4 Proven Strategies
Schools are looking for individuals who will engage with and actively contribute not only to their student/alumni communities but also to community and society more broadly.
Many applications include an essay question with some variation of “What would you contribute to your future campus community?” or “How will you contribute to our program?” If you are invited to interview, you’ll likely be asked how you will contribute to the school, so preparing to speak on this topic is vital.
You need to present your best self, yet grandiose, declarative statements and promises to be a superlative do-gooder can be unpersuasive and even off-putting. So, how do you show that you are a candidate with plenty to contribute and will be an asset to your chosen school?
Use the past as a forecast of the future
Most adcoms are firm believers that past behavior reveals one’s abilities and interests and is a good predictor of the person’s future behavior.
Here are four tips for highlighting your impressive past and conveying the message that you plan to make a positive impact by contributing to your school, its community, and the world at large.
1. Share stories of past achievements, and quantify (if possible) the impact you had.
By showing how you’ve already contributed, you demonstrate that you have the initiative, people skills, and organizational talent to make an impact in the future. If you can discuss a contribution that relates to your chosen field or school, that’s even better. Perhaps your past contribution is part of an ongoing project or a recurring event that you intend to continue participating in. This will show the adcom that your achievements are not one-offs; you can demonstrate your commitment while associating your worthy contributions with their school.
2. Discuss skills you’ve developed that will aid future contributions.
You can show the adcom that you have the skills and the tools necessary to give back. Offer evidence to illustrate your skill development by talking about how you’ve taken steps to build your skill set (such as by taking a course or through work experience). Analyze your success, and consider how you can reveal that you are a thoughtful, growing, dynamic individual. And when asked about failures or setbacks, discuss what you learned from the tough times. Demonstrate a growth mindset.
3. Show how your skills are transferable.
To illustrate your plans to contribute to your target school, you’ll need to show how your unique talents and experiences can be shared with your classmates, professors, and/or work colleagues. Talk about how your skills, understanding, and ethics can positively affect those around you. Even seemingly unrelated skills could be transferable to your target program; every past achievement has skill elements that can be highlighted and applied to future contributions.
4. Explain how your target school will help.
The adcom readers now know that you’ve got skills and are ready to share them. Next, you need to reinforce the idea that their school is the place to accelerate your upward trajectory. Highlight any overlaps in the ethos of the school or in the curriculum that will allow you to advance your skills. And this works both ways: point out that just as the school will help further your skills, you, as a future contributing graduate, will become an ambassador for the school.
A good essay on your contributions will cover each of these topics: what you’ve done in the past, how you’ve developed your skills, how you plan on sharing that knowledge, and how your target school will help you effect change. Remember, the past reveals much about the future, so share the story of what you’ve done and how you’ve reached this point, and you’ll be well on your way to proving that you’ve got what it takes to contribute in the future.
As the former executive director of admissions at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School and assistant dean of admissions at Georgetown’s McDonough School and the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz School, Kelly Wilson has 23 years’ experience overseeing admissions committees and has reviewed more than 38,000 applications for the MBA and master’s programs in management of information systems, computational finance, business analytics, and product management. Want Kelly to help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch!
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