Essays Question for 2011

• Introduce yourself in 100 words or less.
• Describe your career goals. How will the Ross MBA help you to achieve your goals?(500 word maximum)
• Describe a time in your career when you were frustrated or disappointed. What did you learn from that experience? (500 word maximum)
• Select one of the following questions:
  • What are you most passionate about and why? (300 word maximum)
  • We expect that Ross MBAs will not only be effective leaders, but also effective teachers. How will you contribute to the learning experience of your peers at Ross? (300 word maximum)
• Optional question: Is there anything else you think the Admissions Committee should know about you to evaluate your candidacy? (500 word maximum)

Essays Question for 2010

Essay 1
Briefly describe your short-term and long-term career goals. Why is an MBA the best choice at this point in your career? What and/or who influenced your decision to apply to Ross? Please limit your response to two, double-spaced, typed pages.

Three questions embedded into one. Now the art is to have a seam through all of the parts of questions. You should initially go about describing your short term and long term goal, then stressing upon why MBA is the right choice and how you would leverage the experience during. Download the Ross view book and go through it thoroughly to find out what is special about Ross’s MBA program – which will help you to get the answer for the last part of the question. You should go with a certain theme, the leitmotif, which should be constant throughout the three or four paragraphs of the answer.

Essay 2
Describe your most significant professional accomplishment. Elaborate on the leadership skills you displayed, the actions you took and the impact you had on your organization. Please limit your response to two, double-spaced, typed pages.

Leadership and teamwork (collectively) is the quintessential quality which Ross is looking for in response to the question. Try to remember a scenario in which you took charge of the team, yet remained a part of the team and led them by example to success. If you can quantify the impact or the effect on your organization (like $$ monetary benefit or this much % a key indicator increased or something like this) it will be great.

Short Essays

Essay 3
If you were not pursuing the career goals you described in Question 1, what profession would you pursue instead? (for example, teacher, musician, athlete, architect, etc.) How will this alternate interest contribute to your effectiveness in solving multi-disciplinary problems? Please limit your response to two, double-spaced, typed pages.

This is a practical example of having a backup career option and it is pragmatic to have so. This question can also explore the creative side of the applicant. If you are passionate about something and would definitely love to do (and have been doing a bit since childhood – or few years) this is the time to state your passion out on paper. If you had been passionate about some business and wanted to try your hand at it, it is a great opportunity. To tackle the last part of the question, you can emphasize the value brought by diversity in solving the professional and even personal natured problems of yourself and of people around you. A different thinking can lead to innovation or to out of the box solutions of persisting problems of an organization. Hence your variegated interests can contribute on solving multi-disciplinary problems.

Essay 4
Describe your experience during a challenging time in your life. Explain how you grew personally, either despite this challenge or because of it. Please limit your response to two, double-spaced, typed pages.

This is to see how you can come out of adversity or how can you even learn from adversity. It would be good if it can be an example from out side the work because that is what this question is hinting to. This is an example of a deliberate question placed for the personal front as when one approaches the application, one tends to put lot of examples from professional or work life hence the personal front is not exposed and which is very important for a business school to know. In b-school or the life after, it is very important how you interact with people, teams etc. So this question will help Ross know what kind of a person you are. How you bring up your grit and maturity in the adverse situations. Narrate that challenge or difficult situation which brought best out of you and you were a more matured and a different person because of the grill made you lean through the hard way.