Cornell Essay Analysis 2012-13

Cornell is out with its essay questions! This year, a lot of b-schools are changing their essays, quite in line with how the business environment is changing rapidly, the world over.

In Director of Admissions and Financial Aid, Christine Sneva’s words, “We changed the direction of our questions this year to better understand your career choices and of course, who you are”.

So here are the deadlines and essay questions, followed by our analysis.

The 2012-2013 application will go live at the beginning of July. The admissions committee will start reading applications as soon as they are submitted.

The questions are divided into three parts:

Part 1: Career Choice Essay: How would you characterize your career since college? (300 word maximum)

The b-school is definitely looking for some introspection here.  Don’t present a list of job duties in chronological order, rather focus on the highlights and accomplishments. Reveal your reasons and motivations behind your career moves, within the organization and between organizations. Tell them why you took up a particular project or a position or a job, what impact were you able to make on your company and on yourself? How did you grow as a leader and what is your distinctive leadership style?

Summarize with a reflection on what you think of your professional journey so far.

Part II: Career Goal Essay: Tell us about your short and long term career goals.
(400 word maximum)

We are done with the trip down the old roads in part I; the next question in Cornell’s essay line-up is a forward looking one- what are your short term and long term career goals?

This is an important question, and most applicants manage to get this wrong. Reason being, they have simply not worked out the details. Probe into what you would like to do 3 years after the Cornell MBA – which industry will you work with, what company(ies), what responsibilities? How will you grow and how will this experience prepare you for your long term goals (8 years down the line)? And, exactly what are these long term goals? Follow the same guidelines as for short term career description.

The crucial part here is that you establish a connection between your future career goals and your career so far. You have already spent 300 words presenting your skill base and achievements in the previous write-up. Fit those pieces into your career goals essay to sound out a logical career path.

This essay becomes complete when you mention how the Cornell MBA fits into your plan. How will it aid you in achieving your aspirations? The admissions committee will definitely like you to tell them more than the commonly known facts, such as: it is Ivy League  and is close to New York, your dream city (or a financial powerhouse), so do your research well.

 Part III: Character Essay: Please choose one of the following to write about (400 word maximum for chosen question):

a. You are the author for the book of Your Life Story. Please write the table of contents for the book. Note: Approach this essay with your unique style. We value creativity and authenticity.

This question has been a mandatory one for many years, but that has changed this year as it features as a choice questions.

From our experience of working with applicants, we can vouch this is an interesting one! You have been given a blank canvass and can paint any picture you like. It is entirely up to you about which periods of your life you want to put in here – the formative years/ adolescence/ adult life/ life after MBA or all of them. Just remember one thing- this is a b-school essay, so what you tell the adcom should be relevant to your candidacy.

If you have always started reading a book from Chapter One and don’t know what a table of contents looks like, now is the time to browse through them, to get some creative ideas.

b. Describe a situation taken from your personal or professional life where you failed and tell us what you learned.

Self reflection, self awarenessand maturity in dealing with situations: this is what this question attempts to explore. Failure is part of the learning process and all of us fail at one time or another. Often the lessons learned from a failed situation stay with us longer.

What is the one time when you failed? Briefly explain what happened and how you were responsible. Stress upon the reasons why you felt you went wrong. This is where you can demonstrate your maturity levels, by doing a sound analysis of your role in the situation, without passing the buck to your colleague or endlessly moping about things you did wrong.  Equally important is what did you learn from this episode?

A nice ending would be to talk about a similar situation where you were able to implement your learnings from the previous experience.

c. What does diversity mean to you and how will you contribute to the diversity of our community at Johnson?

Cornell has somewhat retained last year’s contribution essay, but in simpler terms (last year they has asked, what legacy will you leave behind at Cornell).

Cornell has small class strengths and add to this, Ithaca is a small school town. This environment fosters a close knit and collaborative community and each student’s contribution assumes a lot of significance.

How will you contribute to this community? What are your strengths that will be valued by your class mates? Your contribution could be in class, or outside it, in clubs, projects and in teams- as a leader or as a team member. Important here is to understand what the Cornell MBA is about and where your contribution will be valued. In the case of essays, “small is more”. Producing a big list of non-impactful claims to contribution will not yield the same results as a 1-2 real and well thought out plans.