Harvard Business School (HBS) has slightly refined its 2025-2026 MBA application essays, maintaining a focus on business acumen, leadership, and growth, while simplifying prompts to encourage applicants to reveal their values and unique experiences beyond mere accomplishments.
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After absolutely shaking up the MBA
admissions world in 2024 by replacing
its longrunning single application essay
prompt with three new short essays,
Harvard Business School took an entire
year plus to make the most modest tweaks
to its 2025 2026 application essays.
The school is still positioning its
questions as businessminded, leadership
focused, and growth oriented, but it's
cut some of the details. The wording
before was pretty cumbersome and our
guess is that they were trying to
eliminate some confusion. And we also
suspect that in simplifying the
questions themselves, they're trying to
avoid any accusation of an effort to
elicit responses that require a
discussion of diversity because of the
program's ongoing battles with the Trump
administration. That can be a separate
video. As I just noted, HBS states that
it's looking for applicants who are
business-minded, leadership focused, and
growth oriented. And in doing so, they
are rare among MBA programs in that they
directly tie their essay questions to
their stated admissions criteria. Before
you begin to fret about whether you have
acceptable businessminded, leadership
focused, and growthoriented stories, I
would argue that these terms are so
broad and all-encompassing that the vast
vast majority of applicants will have no
trouble generating multiple ideas they
could use for each of their essays. But
simply expressing ideas isn't your
endgame, of course. You need to develop
a suite of essays that accomplishes two
main things. First, your essays have to
do more than just reflect core
experiences or accomplishments. They
must reveal your values. So much of your
application is static or fact-based. If
your GMAT scores, transcript, even your
resume and short answers are to an
extent informational, though your values
should come through subtly in those
latter two elements. You have three
explicit opportunities to really
showcase who you are. So don't flood the
adcom with strict accomplishments.
Really ask yourself whether you're
conveying your spirit and personality.
Second, and anyone who follows our
channel should know exactly what I'm
going to say now because this is just
MBA mission and Jeremy Shinewald
orthodoxy. You must keep the admissions
reader learning about you from one essay
to the next. If you share three
accomplishments in your three HBS
essays, all from the same work project,
the odds are overwhelming that you'll
end up boring or frustrating the reader
with your second and certainly your
third essay. You can draw from the same
environment for the different stories
you choose to tell, but each story needs
to reveal a different skill or value.
So, if you led the overhaul of a core
product and were a very thoughtful
mentor to a junior colleague, you can
certainly tell these two workrelated
stories. But if you just repeat the same
product management story or experience
from one essay to the second to the
third, you'll miss out on a significant
opportunity to inform and impress the
adcom. Be intentional about your suite
of HBS essays to ensure that the adcom
gets multiple windows into your
experience and values. Almost ready to
dig in, but first I want to mention our
new free book of 50 sample application
essays from successful HBS admits. And
these are the new essays, not the old
ones. Of course, you shouldn't attempt
to emulate these essays, but if you need
some inspiration, you'll find plenty in
our book. Use the link below to download
your free copy. Let's discuss the newest
essay questions for now. Let's look at
essay one, businessminded. Please
reflect on how your choices have
influenced your career path and
aspirations. You may be looking at this
prompt and saying to yourself, "Wait,
this is the simplified prompt? I'm
afraid so." Your choices is a very vague
way of eliciting information. Hopefully,
you can identify a pivotal or catalytic
experience that's influenced your career
choices. This experience might have
occurred in your personal life,
extracurricular activities, academic
life, or even an early professional role
that led you to your existing path. The
area from which the story comes isn't as
important as the magnitude of that
formative experience. You need to show
that certain experiences have driven
meaningful choices you've made and are
fueling your sense of purpose. You need
to show that linkage. Then you must
demonstrate an awareness of the impact
you can have when that purpose manifests
and not in a tright way where you
discuss being a change agent. You need
to show that you truly comprehend your
role and that you have a clear and
plausible ambition that flows from your
skills and experience and that you have
a realistic and potentially powerful way
of wielding that potential so you can
create broad benefits going forward.
Please don't try to pander to the adcom
with your choice of goal. A lot of
applicants will do a backflip to ensure
that they present the adcom with some
kind of social mission. Don't fall into
that temptation. You can have a positive
impact on others in many ways by
building organizations with integrity by
reflecting on stakeholders as you manage
your career. If you do have a social
mission, that's great. But if you don't,
you won't be offering a credible linkage
by simply stating that you do. Don't
just write what you think the adcom
wants to hear, please. Let's look at
essay two, the leadership focused essay.
What experiences have shaped how you
invest in others and how you lead? 250
words. Here again, you're asked to
identify a core shaping experience, one
that led you to the perspective you have
today. Go back to your initial
brainstorming and select an experience
that will allow the admissions reader to
learn something new about you. The story
you present in your essay should
undeniably have been a catalyst. There's
that word again, a catalyst for you. It
should be clear to the reader that the
experience was one that obviously
affected you dramatically that shaped
you and altered your perspective on how
you invest in others and commit yourself
to their growth. Of course, showing how
you've invested in others is critical.
You can't just say, and this mentor
inspires me to this day, how you have to
show both cause and effect, and that
effect should have a real example. We
want to learn how you invest and lead. A
word of caution. Many applicants will
see the word leader and assume that they
need to show that they are the
individual who gives that rousing speech
and leads everyone into battle. If that
truly is you, great. But it isn't most
people. And you shouldn't be afraid to
discuss other forms of leadership. For
example, you can lead through
persuasion. You can lead through
example, service to others, conviction,
integrity, and so on. As long as you can
show the root of your leadership style,
show the adcom how you leverage that
leadership perspective to influence
others and pinpoint areas for
development going forward, you'll have
very much answered this essay question.
Now, essay three, growth oriented.
Curiosity can be seen in many ways.
Please share an example of how you've
demonstrated curiosity and how that's
influenced your growth. 250 words.
Theoretically, you could be curious
about an infinite number of things from
something as broad as the unknown shape
of the universe to something as specific
as finding the best dumpling in your
hometown. Know that the object of your
curiosity is not as important as your
pursuit of it. In this essay, you must
reveal a certain kind of doggedness or
spirited dedication to this knowledge or
this experience. The pursuit should be a
metaphor for who you are and should
reveal your personality. And again, you
need to show cause and effect. You need
to show how your curiosity in one area
has influenced your growth in other
spheres. So, for example, maybe your
search for the best dumpling in town has
led you to create a dumpling review
podcast, which in turn helped you
improve your public speaking skills. In
this example, we have a cause and effect
connection that makes sense. Curiosity
about the city's best dumpling led to
the development of strong public
speaking abilities, making what might at
first seem like a trivial pursuit
actually quite meaningful. My point is
that you should look within yourself to
find that moment when you're insatiably
striving to learn something or grow in
some way and then reveal the intensity
of your interest and the way the spirit
of curiosity continues to manifest in
your life. Good luck with your
brainstorming and indeed with your
writing. If you need some inspiration,
don't forget to download our free book
of 50 sample HBS essays linked below.
And stay tuned for our next video while
we share one of those sample essays and
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