*Updated Sep 2024*

Kellogg leaders are primed to tackle challenges everywhere, from the boardroom to their neighborhoods. Describe a specific professional experience where you had to make a difficult decision. Reflecting on this experience, identify the values that guided your decision-making process and how it impacted your leadership style. (450 words)

Clap clap, Kellogg. This is a great question, not that you’re interested in our approval, but still, it’s kind of like our version of the Paul Hollywood handshake.

The real trick to this one is seeing just how much you ‘get’ the concept of what makes a difficult decision… truly difficult. It’s tempting to conflate a situation or task that’s challenging, and onerous, and not simple, and not easy to navigate, versus a ‘decision’ that is difficult. Kellogg is all over this one, and we know this because of what they ask in the second half––allow us to restate it in a way that reveals the ‘code’ underneath it all:

What decision required you to push past your normal problem-solving faculties, and recruit an assist from something more profound and values-based in order to navigate? In other words, what decision required something other than logic and black belt problem-solving skills to handle? It’s more complex than it may seem at first blush. You need to be able to differentiate between decisions that don’t require an ‘escalation’ to the top, top dog (‘values’ center), and those that do. 

Here’s one potentially useful exercise:

Can you imagine a time when, faced with a decision, there were several potential solutions that an outsider might rate as ‘correct’ and/or would successfully ‘solve the problem’ and yet… felt either wrong or incomplete on some other level? That’s a great way to tease it out. “In order to save this project, meet vendor expectations, fulfill the ‘job requirement,’ and be in perfect alignment with my company’s values and general M.O., one obvious solution is X. And in the hands of someone else, Solution X might be a no-brainer. However, it doesn’t sit right with me, because it misses ABC, or it isn’t morally sound, or it might seem to succeed seen in one light, but risks denaturing something much more profound in another…” That’s just a glimpse of how that line of thinking might go. 

Let’s build on that and add another dimension: Imagine a decision you’ve been faced with that 9 out of 10 others (in your shoes) would have handled ONE way. And that way makes absolute, logical sense to you. (This is key. The best example of a ‘tough’ decision here is one where the expected solution makes perfect, logical business sense.) However, you handled it differently, because something else kicked in (your values) which steered you in a slightly different direction.

That’s what Kellogg means here when they’re asking about a ‘difficult’ decision. And that’s one ‘stress test’ to see if your potential examples qualify. Does your example, in the hands of several other leaders, lead to a sensible but different solution? One that you agree has logical merits? But that you chose to handle some other way because of a value?

Now that you’ve identified the *correct* decision type to truly satisfy this question, now you need to be able to tap into the way in which some value of yours factored into your ultimate handling of the issue. Take us through the inner dialogue. Sell us on the merits of the expected solution that another person might have embraced. Truly sell it. Show us why this might have made perfect sense in someone else’s hands. But then explain why that solution/approach wasn’t complete, or giving you pause, or creating some kind of inner conflict in you. Explain the issue and why you needed to source something other than pure logic in order to find a more complete, fuller, and ultimately better solution. Explain what happened, and then show us why your approach was the correct approach (regardless of the outcome, even though presumably it was a success in others’ eyes).

Structure:

1. Bring us into the ‘difficult decision’ by first setting the stage. Explain the situation, convey the stakes, explain the challenge, and finally articulate what an expected, sound solution (in someone else’s hands) MIGHT have looked at, and sell us on the merits. (75-100 words)
2. Now, explain why this alternative approach was lacking. What did it miss? Why was it incomplete or insufficient? What made the decision so much more complex than how it might have appeared on paper? Reveal the inner workings of your business mind here. Show us that you can get inside problems and analyze the hell out of them, and see all the angles. (100-125 words)
3. Now explain what the correct solution *needed* to incorporate, and how this tapped into your values. Take us through your thinking, the weighing of pros and cons, the calculations, the risk/reward, the fear, the irrational aspects (if any). And sell us on why this dimension was critical for you in arriving at a sound decision. (100-125 words)
4. Finally, explained what happened, and prove that your approach (regardless of the outcome) was the ‘correct’ (‘better’) way for you to have approached it, and what that reveals to you about your leadership style. Where else can we see evidence of this? What implications does this have about the type of leader you’re hoping to develop further? (75-100 words) 

That gets you a solid first draft.

We’ve read your essays, we’ve read your resume — now we want you to bring all that to life in a video. Show us the person behind all those carefully crafted words.

The video will be comprised of three questions, each designed to help you showcase your personality and share some of the experiences that brought you here today.

Some things to keep in mind as you prepare to complete this section:

• Video essays are due 96 hours after the application deadline.
• A video essay link will appear on your Application Status Page after you submit your application and payment.
• You will need an internet-connected computer with a webcam and microphone.
• The video should take about 20-25 minutes to complete, which includes time for setup.
• After submitting your application and payment, you will be able to access the video essay through your Application Status Page.

Here are some additional tips:

There are practice questions that you may complete as many times as you like to get comfortable with the format and technology. The practice questions and experience will simulate the actual video essay experience to help you prepare.

We encourage you to practice so you are comfortable with the format once it is time to complete the official questions. You will not have an opportunity to re-do the answer to the official video essay questions.

You will have 20 seconds to think about the question and up to one minute to give your response

The key to preparing for this type of ‘unknown’ prompt is to get to a place where the prompt won’t matter, because you’ve developed the muscle memory to:

1. Understand fundamentally what they’re really hoping to learn, underneath it all, and
2. Tap into your profile, because you’ve engaged with the key pieces of your overall profile and ‘application argument’ such that you know how every facet connects, thus enabling you to quickly source the correct story and angle, to deliver the perfect response efficiently and convincingly.

Simple as that! Sarcasm, yay!

We have a post about this over here.

First things first: what kinds of questions might you get? Well, and we can’t emphasize this enough, the wrong way to go about this is to fixate on specific questions, anticipate what they might be, prepare, and then hope for the best. The risk there is that they might throw you a curveball. And if they sling something your way you haven’t ‘scripted’ in your mind yet, you’re toast. Instead, here are sample questions that have been asked, but just… graze this list with your eyes, as if glancing at the sun during an eclipse, yknow, don’t stare too long. Get a feel:

• Tell us something more about you that we can’t find on your resume.
• Talk about a time that you failed to achieve a goal, what happened, and how did you respond?
• Tell us about someone in your life who has helped you achieve your goals. What did they do and why were they supportive?
• Tell us about a time you made a positive impact in your community, neighborhood, etc.
• Tell us about a time you created professional value by bringing something that was not on the table.
• How did you pivot from an unforeseen ask, last-minute demand, or unexpected situation?
• How did you leverage a connection or relationship to facilitate a goal?
• ⁠Variation: Tell us about a relationship you leveraged to accomplish a goal.
• How long have you considered an MBA? What have you learned about yourself and your goals?
• Tell me about a time when you realized you needed to ask for help to achieve a goal. How did you realize you couldn't do it alone and what did you learn?
• Tell us about a time you improved a process.
• Tell us about a time when you failed, what happened and how did you go about it?

These look familiar? That’s cuz ‘they’re the exact questions you can expect to see on most business school applications or in any standard business school interview.’ And they all hover around the same general core themes:

• Work History
• Fit / Contribution to the School
• Maturity / Emotional Control / Self-Confidence
• Achievement / Goal-Orientation / Behavioral
• Interpersonal Skills
• Why MBA / Why Our School?

(But do yourself a favor and check out this the Video Prompt #2 article because we go into way more detail around what each of these themes truly means to the Adcoms.)

To get to the point where you’re very comfortable answering *any* question thrown your way, you need to develop a root-level understanding of (1) what your most salient profile components are (as it impacts your application argument to business school), and (2) how they interrelate. But then there’s the other consideration which is… what is Kellogg ultimately looking for?

They, like every other elite MBA program, wants to know, who among their over-qualified pool of candidates is:

• Most likely to succeed
• In the biggest and best ways that align with the ‘brand’ interests of Kellogg, and also 
• Who, when introduced to other classmates whom they’ve selected, are likely to add fuel to their fire (and benefit from the same)

Every single answer you issue, must in some way advance Kellogg’s sense of all three of those things. Sometimes it will be based on ‘facts’ you convey. Other times it will be found in the way you approached or thought about something. Other times it will be simply conveyed through your poise, body language, and the confidence you exude through clear thinking, and articulate, coherent responses.

There’s a lot more to say here, but the starting point is:

• Figure out what your application argument is first: Get acquainted with your best stories (your ‘greatest hits’) that touch on all the key issues: leadership examples, overcoming challenges, working with teammates, thinking outside the box, seeking help from others, being intellectually curious and humble, times when you failed and learned something important, times when you succeeded and learned something important, thinking through your goals and why your pursuit of those goals should be of interest to someone else…. the usual suspects.
• Find a repository of likely MBA interview questions (we have some, just ask), and practice the living hell out of answering. But a neat trick is to take the same question, and give yourself different time limits. Start with 3 minutes. Then do it again, but limit it to 1min. Then do it again and try 15 seconds. Notice what happens with each variation, what does the time allotment train you to do in terms of emphasizing or de-emphasizing certain aspects? At the end of that process, you’ll find that you’ve figured out precisely what the most efficient way is to get from Point A to Point B. Rinse and repeat a thousand times with other question types.
• Eventually, something will ‘turn’ and you’ll start to sense a kind of ‘auto-pilot’ muscle kick in, and your ability to (1) locate the right story and (2) home in instantly on the right story points, and then (3) find the right words to efficiently convey those story points will happen… unconsciously. *That* is when you know you’re ready for prime time.

Re-applicants will receive a prompt about their growth since their last application: How have you grown or changed personally and professionally since you previously applied and what steps have you taken to become the strongest candidate you can be? (250 words)

This is a typical re-applicant essay – a nice, specific question about updates on short-term and long-term career goals. It’s important to keep in mind when addressing this piece that it’s not just about the matter-of-fact update itself… we also need to assess the IMPROVEMENT you’ve pulled off.

In other words, one year later, your career plan has to become sharper or more plausible, or more exciting in some way. We need to understand HOW. And WHY. That’s the key: a crystal clear explanation of how your candidacy has improved and what it means given your (new and improved) reasons for getting an MBA. Take a deeper dive into our analysis below:

The Re-applicant Essay