Essay 1: Describe how your experiences, both personal and professional, have led you to pursue an MBA at this time. What are your short- and long-term goals and how will a Texas MBA help you achieve them?  (Word Limit: 900 words)

Analysis:
Two questions combined into one is now becoming a common practice across the b-schools admission committees. This question gives the applicant a good chance to explain his / her career goals laced with suitable real life experiences (as examples) and also explain how these experiences have led him / her to take one of the most important career making decisions of life.
The long and short of it is that applicant will have to build a nice story that is consistently logical and addresses all the parts of this question through the essay. So the best approach is to break the question into smaller parts and then all parts should lead to the USPs of the Texas MBA. For this, the applicant would have to do some research on what Texas MBA holds in store for them. Writing that Dr. XYZ’s research area and his work will be a rich source of inspiration for your major might be a bit too far-fetched. Many a times, admission committees comprise of current students who have a good laugh when they read such flowery terms while evaluating these essays because aspirants tend to go overboard in research too. So, in essence, all the research should be indicative and the bullet points of your profile should build up to bullet points of Texas MBA.
So the questions that need to be addressed are:

1. What are the personal and professional examples that have led to take up this important decision of doing an MBA from Texas?
2. Why do you want to do an MBA now? Why not earlier or later?
3. What are your long term and short term goals?
4. How will an MBA from Texas help you achieve the goals mentioned above?

One of the approaches that can be taken is:

1. List down the USPs of the Texas MBA (e.g. entrepreneurship or international marketing) keeping in mind the qualities / traits that fall in line with the USPs (e.g. leadership or ability to sell the idea or ability to look at the big picture).
2. Ensure that the examples picked from real life clearly bring out the desirable traits
3. Ensure that the time of decision associates well with the professional / personal growth sought by an MBA aspirant. This could also very well line up with changes in world order (e.g. economy coming out of recession)
4. Ensure that long and short term goals align with offerings of Texas MBA
5. Ensure that application has indicative and realistic alignment with discussions / interactions that applicant might have had with Texas MBA students or alumni. In essence, it should indicate a well informed decision and should show that applicant has done enough research on Texas MBA before applying.

Essay 2: Discuss a defining experience in your leadership development. What did you learn from this experience about your strengths and weaknesses as a leader? (Word Limit: 650 words)

Analysis:
Leadership development has numerous aspects and equally high number of (mis)interpretations. One of the most common and also the smartest ways to explain leadership is not by writing pages and pages on qualities, but through examples. It is very important for the applicant to present the context and the change brought out as a result of the activity s/he took up. The concept of defining experience runs into risk of being a subjective concept and perhaps even a simple mundane task in an appropriate context could be a defining experience for the applicant, but the very fact that this question has been asked in an essay mandates that applicant should pick up a special situation and context of leadership. The bottomline is, Texas MBA is looking for profiles that have truly demonstrated leadership in real life. The chaff gets separated from wheat during the interview process and also through consistency check on the essays.
Most of the applicants tend to go overboard in explaining how they saved the world in this essay, what they definitely underestimate is what they learnt from the defining experience. A true leader is always expected to learn from the situation particularly regarding his / her traits.
It is important for applicant to analyze about competition. If the applicant is from Indian IT Services Company, then the competition will be very high. It is easy for a “diversity” candidate to address the question through inherent uniqueness of the industry and prevailing situations.
Within a typical MBA essay of this type, the applicant should start with setting up the context of the situation, explain the challenges coherently, highlight the role played by him / her amongst many role-players and then showcase the advantages / consequences of the leadership role. At all the times, the applicant has to remember the role of a leader. Applicants tend to forget that a leader is a human being so even the negative traits are shown in a light that they look feebly negative and somewhat positive. It is not necessary to write negative traits in this manner, even though they make a person superhuman in the light of the situation and positive traits. A negative trait can be a strong one, but the idea of the essay is how the applicant learnt from the situation and overcame his / her negative trait.
In essence, this essay will be used by the admissions committee for consistency with the overall profile and the ability to present the examples of leadership from his / her own life. This essay is used by MBA admissions committee as a way to select the profiles who can take initiatives through the arduous challenges of the corporate world. 

Essay 3: At the McCombs School of Business, you will be part of an active and diverse community. How will you use your personal strengths and unique experiences to enrich the McCombs community during your two years in the program? (Limit: 500 words)

Analysis:
Diversity is one true thing that we all have in common, we should celebrate it everyday.
The admissions committee of any B-School tries to ensure that maximum diversity is achieved from the pool of applicants with the best possible combination of average GMAT, work experience and international exposure. However, with the rising number of applicants from India and China, any B-School class has a maximum number of admitted candidates from these particular countries. It is important for applicant from these countries to remember that competition is high. However, the advantage with Indian IT applicant is – they have worked with different clients and hence working in a diverse environment is not new for them. So is the case with most of the applicants today who have worked in services and have experienced the not-so-new wave of globalization. It might be difficult for a Chinese applicant who has worked in manufacturing industry to explain diversity and the value add to the class.
However, hope is not lost for such an applicant. It is absolutely fine to pick up examples from everyday interactions (e.g. even requesting the noisy marriage procession to calm down for the sake of community can be good example of value added to community). What matters is how the applicant interweaves the personal strengths and experiences within the gamut of everyday interaction within the community.
Remember, last but not the least, alignment of this reply with the overall profile and the answer to the previous questions is of utmost importance. To keep adding multitude of qualities / traits with each question can be disastrous. A smart applicant will always look at the bigger picture, create the profile first and then address the questions with that profile.

OPTIONAL ESSAY
Please provide any additional information to the Admissions Committee that you believe is important and/or will address any areas of concern that will ultimately be beneficial to the committee in considering your application. (Limit: 350 words)
Analysis:
A few things that an applicant should keep in mind while addressing this question are as following:

1. It is absolutely fine NOT to answer this question. There are no negative points if this question is not answered.
2. If all the aspects of the personality have been addressed through the earlier questions, adding more examples to harp on the same traits may not help the application.
3. This is generally a useful question for profiles who are specially-abled (e.g. with a physical handicap) or who do not qualify to apply / meet the expected standards of Texas MBA.
4. Remember, Texas MBA admissions committee has already received enough information it was seeking in the profile through the questions asked before. Adding any information to create a superlative impression may not yield expected results and can harm the chances of admission.

2010 Application Essays

Essay 1
Please define your short- and long-term goals and objectives, your career progression to date, and how an MBA fits in at this time. What makes the Texas MBA the perfect fit for you? Please limit your response to two, double-spaced, typed pages.

While the structure is implied in the response, remember to address adequately each of the following five components:

•  Career Progression: Detail your career progression while keeping an eye on your goals and keep your theme limited to the same.
•  Goals (Short Term & Long Term): Be as specific as possible. Your short term goal shall be tangible and direct. Explore school's website or your  contacts within UT Austin to find out exact positions offered at MBA and stick to the same. Further, avoid putting a blanket statement in  your long term goal. If you came up with "I want to be CEO of XYZ Company" you need to think deeper.
•  Why MBA: If you have done good job in the above two section, you must have created a void by now that only a MBA education can fill in. Bring out the specific things you need from MBA that will bring you closer to your goals and this piece shall further your candidacy.
•  Why Now: It is extremely important to bring a crisp argument about why you think now is the right time for you. Don't make the mistake to leave & a gap for Adcom to think that you need another year or two before coming to UT Austin.
•  Why UT Austin: Goes without saying, this aspect is extremely important and will speak volumes about your passion for UT Austin. An ideal  strategy is to connect school's resources - Academic programs, Clubs, and Special programs to your specific needs. Attempt to write a paragraph  with each sentence containing something unique about UT Austin.

As long as your essay addresses each of the above components and you manage to ties the story in single theme, you shall score well. Also, remember to take care of the overall structure of the essay through a short and crisp opening statement and a coherent ending exclamation statement.

Essay 2
The Texas MBA is built around four key pillars of leadership. Describe an experience that you have had that clearly demonstrates your leadership as it relates to one of our four pillars: 1) Responsibility/Integrity; 2) Knowledge/Understanding; 3) Collaborative/Communication; or 4) Worldview of Business and Society.Please limit each response to one, double-spaced, typed page.

It is an open ended question with a lot of flexibity to facilitate you. What is the predominant style of your leadership? How do you lead- by your knowledge or you have superb communication and motivational skills, or because you take the lead when a problem scene is there, or you are treated as leader because of your wide horizon? Be sure about the charecteristic that you want to highlight and go ahead with it, give examples, give reasons for whatever you did and what you thought and what you felt. Take care to describe the situation in such a way that reader gets a clear view of situation but be breief in describing situation and detailed in describing feelings and reasons for your actions. Again, although question dies not directly ask for, do relate the story to what you learnt out of the process and how you reinforced some of your beliefs.

Essay 3
At the McCombs School of Business, you will be part of an active and diverse community. How will you use your personal strengths and unique experiences to enrich the McCombs community during your two years in the program? Please limit your response to two, double-spaced, typed pages.

What are your strengths? Do you really have any unique experiences? Do not worry if you do not have any unique experience or unique quality as most of candidates don't have so. What is unique is "you". Just focus on your strengths and your background, your value system, the cultural background that you belong to and you will find a unique blend of charecteristics that will reflect you and you only. While you may think of multiple stand alone stories, it will be equally important to apply an overall theme to this prompt and also explain how exactly your accomplishments will turn out to be beneficial for student body at UT Austin.