MBA Essays That Worked At Harvard & Stanford

What does a successful MBA essay look like at Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business? The answers will vary greatly from applicant to applicant, just as the essay prompts for these two schools differ dramatically.

Both prompts are notoriously challenging. Even if these schools had more generous acceptance rates (currently 10% and 6%, respectively), their essay prompts would still vex candidates with both their simplicity and open-ended nature. How do successful applicants respond to these prompts and, more importantly perhaps, how do they adopt their narratives to fit each school’s requirements?

Here are four recent examples from successful MBA applicants who shared their essays with us.

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