Note: INSEAD has four application rounds that come in March, April, June, and August.
You will need to upload a photograph of yourself (200x200 pixels in JPEG or GIF format).
Prompt: 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 (200 words maximum).
Your resume should also have this information, so why is this essay required? We can assume that the Admissions Committee wants to ensure that you actually provide them with all the information that they seek, including your management experience (people management, budget management, and project management).
With that in mind, I provide these two suggestions:
Prompt: What would be your next step in terms of position if you were to remain in the same company instead of going to business school? (200 words maximum)
This question is a common one in MBA interviews, and the answer can be a tricky balancing act. The answer should be tied to your short-term career goal. On the one hand, you must display your serious intent to pursue that goal, even if you were not to gain admission to INSEAD. On the other hand, you must clearly convey that without the MBA, the path to your goal will be longer and bumpier, and your methods to gain the experience and knowledge that you need will be less robust. In other words, you really need that MBA.
Prompt: 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).
This question is the equivalent of the "Walk me through your resume" that an interviewer might ask during your MBA interview. You would explain the rationale for why you took your first job, and then why you went to each new company and/or position since then, in chronological order. As in a "walk me through your resume" response, for each role and position you should describe 1-2 big things that you learned during that time.
Prompt: Discuss your short- and long-term career aspirations with an MBA from INSEAD (100 words maximum).
The word count of 100 is not very long. When describing your post-MBA short-term goal (usually immediately after graduation), be succinct, but also provide important details such as the following:
Your short-term goal should lead directly to your longer term career. You do not have to provide as many details as you did for the short-term goal, but you should describe what type of positive impact that you want to achieve in the long term.
Prompt: If you are currently not working or if you plan to leave your current employer more than 2 months before the programme starts, please explain your activities and occupations between leaving your job and the start of the programme.
Prompt: Give a candid description of yourself (who are you 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 (500 words maximum).
In this essay, you are introducing yourself to the Admissions Committee. This is a longer essay (up to 500 words), and they ask for examples (meaning, a story or stories), so you know that they want a lot of self-descriiption.
First some general advice that I have found to be helpful: Instead of thinking about how you might introduce yourself to the Admissions Committee (scary), think about how you would introduce yourself to another MBA classmate.
Here is the set-up:
Do not think about this as introducing yourself to a person at a party, where you might chit-chat a little about a lot. Think about this as starting a journey with someone whom you are going to get to know really, really well. In introducing yourself, I recommend that you focus on one or two aspects of yourself that really illuminate who you are.
Ask yourself: If you were sitting down with a person with whom you were about to start a journey, and you needed help and support along the way, what would you tell that person as you started out? What would you reveal about your life and family, and what would you say about yourself? Be open and honest.
Keep the focus on yourself, instead of your company, profession, and/or industry. This is a personal essay. If you do talk about something professional, then tell the reader about what you learned from the experience.
The prompt specifically asks you to describe your strengths and weaknesses. This is similar to a popular MBA interview question, which asks, "What are your greatest strengths? What is your biggest weakness?"
Be strategic. Think about how the introduction fits into your application. Focus on aspects of your life that don't already appear on your resume or in the other essays.
Prompt: Describe the achievement of which you are most proud and explain why. In addition, describe a situation where you failed. How did these experiences impact your relationships with others? Comment on what you learned. (400 words maximum)
Probably the most difficult of all the essays, this essay requires two stories and self-reflection. Note: You can lead with the failure story if what you learned from failure led to your proudest achievement later on.
In choosing which story to showcase as your proudest achievement, you should focus primarily on its impact: impact on organization, a group (professional or personal), another individual, and/or yourself. You may have accomplished many difficult things throughout your life, but the "proudest" accomplishment must have taught you something positive (besides the obvious "success feels good").
Tell your story using a STAR-I format:
In choosing this story, you should choose a time when you failed and learned something important, even though the learning process may have been painful.
Again, tell your story using a STAR-I format:
Writing these two stories will bring you to about 400 words. However, if you can, think about relating the learnings from the two stories. Did what you learn from your failure ultimately lead you to your proudest achievement? Did what you learn from your proudest achievement ironically lead you to failure in a different type of situation? This type of self-reflection can deepen your essay and really make it stand out.
Prompt: Describe all types of extra-professional activities in which you have been or are still involved for a significant amount of time (clubs, sports, music, arts, politics, etc.). How are you enriched by these activities? (300 words maximum)
Be sure to meet all the criteria for this essay! The activity or activities that you write about should be:
Prompt: Is there anything else that was not covered in your application that you would like to share with the Admissions Committee? (300 words maximum)
Most business schools only allow you to use the Optional Essay to explain application weaknesses, but INSEAD allows you to use the essay more broadly.
Use to address:
Use this essay to turn a potential weakness into a strength. Tell the Admissions Committee what happened and why it happened. Be honest in your self-evaluation. Most importantly, tell them what you have learned from the negative experience, and how this learning has influenced future actions.
"The video interviews are a unique opportunity for you to share your passions, your motivations and who you truly are. The MBA Admissions Committee is interested in obtaining an authentic view of you as a person, to see how you think on your feet and how you convey your ideas."
Applicants will be asked to use the video assessment tool to record responses to 4 questions, with each response lasting no more than 60 seconds each. Detailed instructions will be provided with the video assessment invitation so you know what to expect, and applicants will have the opportunity to practice as many times as they wish before completing the final video assessment.
The video assessment will help the admissions committee evaluate your career goals and the following competencies that are crucial for the fit and success of our students within the program and their future careers:
Insead provides the following information:
I provide you with practice questions, and you will practice the One Minute Response.