Essay Analysis: Yale School of Management 2018-19
June 05, 2018 :: Admissionado Team
This weekend we got Yale School of Management‘s 2018-19 essay topic and… drumroll… it’s exactly the same as last year’s!
That may not be the most exciting choice on the adcom’s part, but we’re delighted because this essay is a lot of fun.
SOM’s application forces applicants to really get personal. There are certainly people whose biggest commitment in life was professional, but they’re not the type of person you’d want to spend two years with at business school.
“My biggest commitment in life was agreeing to get the deliverable done before the deadline…” no thank you!
This prompt forces applicants to connect their deepest personal commitments to their desire for an MBA, and the end result is essays that are more interesting and sincere than most.
In their announcement, Yale says that the prompt came from SOM Professor Amy Wrzesniewski, who had this to say: “Reading about future plans is helpful, but actions speak louder than words. What big commitments have applicants already made in their lives to date, how did they follow through on them, and what does this tell us about who they are? That is what is at the heart of this question.”
Okay, but what does it mean to make a commitment? What makes one commitment cooler or more meaningful or more impressive or more important than another?
Dive into our analysis below, and follow along as we unpack this sucker…
