Tips for INSEAD’s Career Essay Prompts

Growth is everything at INSEAD. The “Business school for the world” specifically seeks out students who can demonstrate a fearless nature in overcoming challenges and have a strong understanding of how they will reach their goals.

To find these students, INSEAD’s 2021-2022 MBA application asks applicants to answer not one or two essay questions, but seven total short-answer essay prompts that are designed to act similar to job descriptions. The seven essays collectively round out to a 2,000-word limit and are broken into two sections: career questions and motivation questions.

CAREER ESSAY 1

The first essay prompt in the career section asks applicants the following:

Briefly summarise your current (or most recent) job, including the nature of work, major responsibilities, and where relevant, employees under your supervision, size of budget, clients/products and results achieved. (200 words maximum)

Experts say this first question should give admissions officers an idea of where you currently are in your career.

“In this question, be sure to mention your title, organization, location and major responsibilities,” Cassandra Pittman, an MBA admissions coach at Fortuna Admissions and former member of admissions teams at London Business School and INSEAD, writes. “Do feel free to list a couple accomplishments if space allows, though don’t repeat the accomplishment you use in your accomplishment essay later in the application. If relevant, also include leadership and teamwork, and any international projects or work that has an international scope. Quantify as much as possible throughout.”

CAREER ESSAY 2

The second career essay prompt asks applicants:

What would be your next step in terms of position if you were to remain in the same company? (200 words max)

In this essay, Pittman recommends that applicants clearly convey where they are now within their company and industry and where they see their career trajectory going from this point forward.

“It’s best to be as straightforward with your answer as possible,” Pittman writes. “Say what your next promotion or title would be like to be and list any new responsibilities you may have and /or management of others under this new role.”

CAREER ESSAY 3

The third career essay prompt asks applicants:

Please give a full description of your career since graduating from university. Describe your career path with the rationale behind your choices. (300 words maximum)

The best way to approach the third career essay prompt is to see it as an exercise of going deeper into the journey that’s summarized on your resume.

“This is a critical part of your overall narrative as an applicant, so do be sure to give it the attention it deserves,” Pittman writes. “A wonderful feature of this essay is that it allows you to explain the value-add of career choices that may not be obvious from a read of your CV.”

The goal is to lead readers from where you started to where you are now.

“Approach this essay in chronological order, starting with your first role after university until present day,” Pittman writes. “Remember that you will have space to detail your accomplishments in your CV and in a later essay.”

CAREER ESSAY 4

The last required career essay asks applicants to do the following:

Discuss your short and long term career aspirations with an MBA from INSEAD. (100 words max)

With the tightest word limit among the career essay prompts, the fourth career essay is all about clarity and brevity. Pittman recommends that applicants highlight their immediate post-MBA career goal and their goals 10 to 15 years down the line.

“Try to get as specific as possible (even though it’s hard to know) with sample company names and ideas of certain titles of the jobs you seek,” Pittman writes. “You can even include geographic location. Ideally, try to include one or two sentences about why you are passionate about this career trajectory.”

Read tips for the INSEAD motivation essays here.

Sources: Stacy Blackman Consulting, Fortuna Admissions, P&Q

Next Page: Wall Street bumps starting pay.

Wall Street Bank Bumps First-Year Pay By 30% To Attract New Grads

In recent years, Wall Street has seemed to lose its lure among MBA grads.

A decade ago, nearly 20% of MBAs from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School went into banking. In 2020, only 12% of Wharton MBAs pursued full-time investment banking roles. Moreover, data shows that in 2020 only 7% of graduates from the top five U.S. B-schools went into full-time investment banking roles – a roughly two point decrease from the 9% in 2016.

Many MBAs highlight the long hours and poor work life balance as key reasons to stay away from the investment banking industry. Now, banks such as JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are offering pay raises for junior bankers, with some bumps as high as 30%, as a means to attract new grads.

BANKS POACHING FOR NEW TALENT

At JPMorgan, first-year sales, trading, and research analysts will be paid $100,000—an increase from the previous $85,000, Bloomberg reports. The bank will also increase pay for second-year analysts from $90,000 to $105,000 with third-year analysts’ pay increasing from $95,000 to $110,000.

At Goldman Sachs, first-year analysts will get a base pay of $110,000—a nearly 30% increase from the original starting salary of $85,000, according to MarketWatch.

“There’s a lot of poaching going from the banks at the moment,” Jason Kennedy, chief executive officer of recruiting firm Kennedy Group, tells Bloomberg. “Some of the better banks are losing staff to the buy side. So then they’re going to their competitors and poaching from them. It’s becoming a vicious circle.”

Earlier this summer, a number of banking firms, including Morgan Stanley, Barclays Plc, Citigroup Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG, raised first-year pay to $100,000 – a number that experts say will likely be increased even further now through bonuses as a means to stay attractive to new grads, according to Bloomberg.

Still, many MBAs say that the long hours that come with investment banking simply are not worth it.

“You don’t have control of your lifestyle, and you’re working even when you don’t want to,” Ben Chon, a 27-year-old entrepreneur who left his job as a health care banker in JPMorgan Chase’s San Francisco office, tells The New York Times.

Sources: Bloomberg, Financial News, The New York Times, MarketWatch

Next Page: MBA Internships

What You Need To Know About The MBA Internship

Internships are one of the key ways that MBAs land jobs post-grad.

At the New York University Stern School of Business, nearly 60% of the class of 2020 secured job offers as a result of summer internships. For many MBAs, internships can provide an opportunity to explore a career and help lay the foundation for post-grad success. Fortune recently spoke to experts on what MBAs need to know about interning during B-school.

POPULAR MBA INTERNSHIP PATHS

Where you decide to intern at depends largely on what you want to do post-grad. Experts say one big differentiator of the MBA internship experience is whether you choose to intern at a large company versus a smaller startup. Larger organizations will tend to have formal recruiting processes for internships with responsibilities and timelines set in stone.

“Often, [smaller] companies don’t have these big programs,” Emily Anderson, senior director of the Career Management Center at the Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management, tells Fortune. “It would require more networking on the student’s part to uncover some of these.”

While internships at The Big Four have traditionally been common for MBAs, recent years have shown the rise of tech and its popularity among B-school students. At University of Washington Foster School of Business, the placement rate into tech in 2020 was 53%, a nine percent increase from the year before. At Michigan State’s Eli Broad College of Business, tech industry hires were 37.7% in 2020, a whopping 18.4% increase from 2019.

DO YOUR RESEARCH

Once you’ve narrowed down the type of internship experience you want, experts recommend familiarizing yourself with the industry and the company where you’re applying.

“Research what the position is all about,” Jamie Mathews-Mead, senior director of graduate career management at the Ohio State University Fisher College of Business, tells US News. “Know what employers are looking for and how you can add value.”

Additionally, remember that there is always more than one path to success.

“People think that if Goldman Sachs is their long-term goal, they have to intern with Goldman to get there, but there are 100 different ways to get there,” Toni Rhorer, associate director of career coaching and programming at Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business, tells US News. “It could be solid work experience at a company that doesn’t have a big name.”

Sources: Fortune, NYU Stern, P&Q, US News

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