The MBA application form for the September 2019 intake of INSEAD’s MBA is now live. The essay questions (job description questions & motivation essays), as well as the video essay component, remain the same.
MBA Application Deadlines for the September 2019 Intake:
Round 1
Application due: September 19, 2018
Interview notification: October 19, 2018
Decision released: November 23, 2018
Round 2
Application due: November 14, 2018
Interview notification: December 14, 2018
Decision released: January 25, 2019
Round 3
Application due: January 9, 2019
Interview notification: February 8, 2019
Decision released: March 15, 2019
Round 4
Application due: March 6, 2019
Interview notification: April 5, 2019
Decision released: May 10, 2019
INSEAD's Admission’s Criteria
- Academic capacity
- Leadership potential
- International Motivation
- Ability to contribute
For more information on application requirements and advice on video essays, please visit the INSEAD MBA admissions
INSEAD’s job description questions and motivation essays allow candidates to discuss a variety of topics related to their interests and experiences, thus providing them ample opportunity to present each aspect of their candidacy. The “job questions” ask for a factual account of one’s current position and career progression, as well as short-term and long-term career goals with an MBA from INSEAD. There is no prescribed word limit for job questions, so you can use 150-200 words. The three “motivation essays” call for short reflections and discussion of a variety of topics e.g. strengths and weaknesses, failures, accomplishments, extra-professional activities, etc. With careful thought and planning, you can use these essays to present your well-rounded personality.
According to INSEAD Admission Team:
“This is a critical part of our evaluation process. As such, we advise you to spend a significant amount of time on your application essays. Your responses provide the best opportunity to be creative and tell us about yourself. We would like to get to know you and to find out what motivates you. The essay questions are not meant to be academic articles or business memos, but rather your personal stories. You can fill in the essay questions online or copy/paste your answers in the text boxes directly within your application.”
Job description Questions
1. Briefly summarize 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. (short answer)
This question requests a snapshot of the applicant’s current or most recent job. Keeping in mind that this will be the admission committee's introduction to your candidacy, you should also provide information to help the reader understand your place within the organization and the work that occupies your days. Please stay focused on the details of your present job, nature of work, major responsibilities, supervision, size of the budget, number of clients/products, and most importantly, “results achieved.” While detailing out your current job, you should also focus on the impact you have made on your organization. But please avoid elaborating your greatest achievement as you will get an opportunity to do that in the second motivation essay.
2. What would be your next step in terms of position if you were to remain in the same company? (short answer)
For this question, you need to show that your next position should be more challenging than your current one. But if the MBA at INSEAD is your next step, you probably don’t need your next promotion. Through this question, the admission committee wants to determine whether you have a clear sense of your career trajectory. You may outline a next step that would entail increased responsibility in terms of project size or complexity or number of employees managed. You may also mention an estimated timeline for promotion into this position, if applicable.
3. Please give us a full description of your career since graduating from university. Describe your career path with the rationale behind your choices. (short answer)
This question can be considered as a walk-through of a resume in the essay format. The purpose of this question is to get an understanding of how you have progressed along your career path. Your best bet is to focus on each full-time position you’ve held, the reasons behind each move, increases, and changes in responsibility and the lessons/ skills learned. It is important to show progress at each stage of your career, which is straightforward if you have worked for the same company and received regular promotions. If you have changed companies, make sure to explain the reason how and why you made your career choice.
4. Discuss your short-term and long-term career aspirations with an MBA from INSEAD. (short answer)
This is a fairly straightforward career goals essay asking you to explain your short-term and long-term goals. After detailing out your career history, explain where you stand now, why you believe that an MBA is the next logical step in your career path NOW? What are those skills that you still lack, which you hope to acquire by an MBA? How will an MBA fill the gaps in your career?
Then explain your short-term (3-5 years after MBA) and long-term goals (5 - 10 years after MBA). Please identify the position that you hope to hold immediately after the MBA program, specifying both a job title and 1-2 organizations/companies for which you would like to work. Then you will discuss your long-term 5-10-year plan, explaining not just what role you hope to occupy but also the broader impact you hope to have in this position. Please make sure to demonstrate a logical connection between your short-term and long-term goals. In other words, explain how you will move from step 1 to step 2 and so on. Make sure that your goals are realistic as well as ambitious. That is, if you aim for a technology or a consulting role, you’ll need to demonstrate that you already possess some skills/experience in that area and are now aiming to enhance those skills. Likewise, if you are a career changer, you should provide evidence as to how your current skill set would facilitate this transition. (Approximately 150-200 words)
5. If you are currently not working or if you plan to leave your current employer more than two months before the program starts, please explain your activities and occupation between leaving your job and the start of the program. (optional)
This is the sixth year that INSEAD has included a question providing unemployed applicants the space to explain their situation. This shows that INSEAD is not excluding unemployed candidates from admission if they are utilizing their time productively. So, it provides them an opportunity to advocate their case and discuss the new skills they are learning, the volunteer work they are involved in, and any conferences and professional development workshops they are attending, and other efforts they are making to secure short-term employment before MBA. This would validate their growth even during the time they are unemployed.
This question also includes applicants who are planning to take a break of more than two months between the time they submit their applications and the time they would join INSEAD’s program. In this case, also, they need to evidence how they are actively developing skills, making productive use of their time, and progressing toward their career goals. This essay is also a place for the applicants who are leaving their current employer to join another one, two months before entering the program. They should use this essay to discuss their new employment. This essay is also an opportunity to discuss the actions you plan to take in preparation for MBA, such as getting involved in voluntary activities, attending conferences, and engaging in any other activities for professional development before beginning the INSEAD MBA program.
Motivation Essay #1: Give a candid description of yourself (who you are as a person), stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary. (approximately 500 words)
Through this open-ended question, the Ad Com wants to gain insights into your personality and values. Therefore, you will need to do a lot of self-reflection into your life experience that has shaped your personality and has made you who you are. While it is important to address all parts of the prompt: strengths, weaknesses, and main factors responsible for your personal development, it’s important to focus as much as possible on the positive traits. Given this, you may want to begin with two or three positive qualities and then comment on one or two weaknesses, and then substantiate your traits with real-life examples. This question gives applicants the freedom to select examples from your personal, professional, or extracurricular life, so try to select your examples with a view to presenting a balanced picture of personality.
What two methods can you use to draft this essay?
You may select either of the following two methods for discussing strengths or weaknesses:
a. Make statements about your character and back them up with an example as ‘evidence’ of your statements.
b. Find a single story (from your personal or professional life) that will illustrate all of your strengths, and, if possible, weaknesses.
When discussing your weaknesses, make sure to explain how they have affected you and what you have done or are doing now to rectify them. If relevant, mention which B-school resources can help you get over these weaknesses.
How can you discuss factors that have influenced your personal development?
Remember that for each personal characteristic introduced, you should reflect on the factors that have influenced your personality. It is up to you if you want to discuss these influential factors while discussing your strengths and weaknesses or after having discussed them.
Roughly, you may aim at allotting 200-250 words to strengths, 100 words to weakness/weaknesses, and 150-200 words to the main factors that have shaped your character/personality.
Motivation Essay #2: Describe the achievement of which you are most proud of and explain why? In addition, describe a situation where you failed. How did these experiences impact your relationship with others? Comment on what you learned. (approximately 400 words)
Through this question, INSEAD now expects you to discuss both your accomplishments and failure in one single essay. You need to dig deeper and explain how these experiences have impacted your relationship with others.
Since you can use only 400 words, it is in your best interest to allot approximately 200 words to each of your stories.
Also, this accomplishment and failure should tie into your “strengths and weaknesses” essay. That is, your experiences of achievement and failure should illustrate the “strengths” and “weaknesses” you have already discussed in your first essay.
Your accomplishment story should have four components: the challenge, the achievement, the outcome/result, and the significance. That is, you should explain why this accomplishment is meaningful to you both in terms of the challenges you overcame, the results you produced, and the lessons you learned.
To explain your failure story, you’ll need to reflect on life experience when you could not live up to your expectations. You should describe how the situation went wrong and why. Like accomplishment story, your failure story should also have the four components: the challenge, the action, the outcome/result, and the significance or effect. That is, you should explain how that failure taught you important lessons that you later used in your life to better yourself. The failure story may be presented in such a way that it presents you in a positive light, revealing your strengths.
Make sure to address the second part of this question and discuss in what ways these experiences have impacted your relationship with others at work or in community and what learnings you have gleaned from your experiences. Discussing two stories in only 400 words is indeed challenging. (Click here to learn some useful techniques to help you say ‘more’ in ‘less’).
Motivation Essay #3: Describe all types of extra-professional activities in which you have been or are still involved for significant amount of time (clubs, sports, music, arts, politics, etc.). How are you enriched by these activities? (approximately 300 words)
The extra-curricular is an important element of how INSEAD evaluates the candidate on one of its four key admissions criteria: ‘ability to contribute’. They want to know if you are an applicant who will not only contribute to the classroom but also the life of the community outside the classroom as a student, and later, as a member of the alumni network. Candidates who have other interests/hobbies that they are passionate about, and who perhaps have some achievement in sports, music, arts, etc. will go on to become students who will take the lead in student clubs and will be actively involved in the alumni network. When describing your extracurricular activities, please make sure to focus on social or community-based activities instead of solo involvements, such as reading, working out in the gym, or watching movies, as admission committee is seeking applicants who can contribute to the INSEAD community by collaborating and engaging with their peers through various clubs.
Motivation Essay #4: Is there anything that was not covered in your application that you would like to share with the Admissions Committee? (approximately 300 words)
An optional essay is an opportunity for you to give the Ad Com relevant information that you could not give in other essays or other parts of your application. This question is also meant to shine a spotlight on experience or side of your personality that has not been revealed in the other parts of your application: essays, recommendation letters, and resume.
Even though INSEAD has provided you enough ground to cover about your candidacy, you may still use this essay in a variety of ways to further strengthen your candidacy. More importantly, you should also use the optional essay to address a weakness in your profile, such as a low GPA or GMAT, a gap in your job history, or your inability to get a recommendation from your current supervisor.
To further help you in developing your application essays, you may review the general Essay Tips.
Click here for INSEAD admit, Mansi's interview.
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