Prompt: Lasting impact can happen on large and small scales. Tell us about a time you either
(300 words maximum)
Basically, connect the dots to how you have helped others prepare for their futures. I have noticed that Sloan tends to favor people who have gone above and beyond, for no other reason except it was the right thing to do.
Here's an example from a past client:
"My mentors guided me to a football scholarship – I couldn’t afford to attend college otherwise – and my interest in educating and mentoring underprivileged students stems from those days. My teammates and I mentored kids, and post-graduation, I continued working with pre-adolescent students as Pee-Wee football coach. I saw that motivating youngsters went a long way to their success in school.
In 2004, at the start of my career with ACME Taxi, I designed and developed the Adopt-A-School mentoring program from scratch, helping a once failing inner-city school achieve exemplary status....."
Note: Be strategic. The essay can provide a new information or new context for the Admissions Committee. In the example above, all they knew was that my client had played football during college, that's it. He used the essay to provide more information on his personal background and who he was as a scholar athlete.
Prompt: Please describe a time when you contributed toward making a work environment or organization more welcoming, inclusive, and diverse. (250 words max)
The question is deliberately kept broad, although they are hoping to hear about a service experience of some type. Ideally, the example would involve stepping up, because it's the right thing to do, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Yes, Sloan wishes to promote diversity in management, and obviously the school wishes to recruit students who feel fine interacting with diverse classmates. However, I also believe that Sloan is following a philosophy that the kind of person who stands up for others will also stand up for new ideas, even at the risk of embarassment or attracting ridicule.
Your secondary goal is to provide new information as well as telling them more about your contribution.
Again, Sloan really looks for people who are initiators, rather than just participants.
Two separate Army clients initiated discussion groups while the BLM protests were going on, and one of them single-handedly figured out how to allow soldiers to attend protests without violating Army regulations. Another Army applicant (from a while back) had written public editorials arguing that the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy went against Army values.
In this example, my client asked about and started representing his company at its first HBCU recruitment for engineers.
"This year, I started a book club in Product Planning to raise awareness on the lack of diversity in our department and ACME Engineering as a whole. As a Chinese-American, I’m a minority, yet I’ve always avoided these topics at work because my upbringing taught me to avoid confrontation and adapt to the realities of the world. Race relations is also a difficult subject to bring up – conversations can get heated quickly. Moreover, I had never personally faced discrimination at ACME, so I felt I didn’t have a voice in the conversation. However, the recent events around police brutality made me realize that by not speaking up, I was contributing to systemic racism. To make progress, I need to fight for minorities who don’t have a seat at the table. If ACME Engineer’s hiring practices aren’t discriminatory, yet we still have an entire Planning department with no Black engineers, then we need to find new ways to promote diversity. I'm now working with our HR teams to recruit at HBCUs as one way to bring in new talent, and I look forward to seeing a broader representation of people at ACME Engineering before I depart for my MBA."
BTW, this client truly felt the injustice, and started his book club and recruitment push long before he decided to apply to business school. Please note, however, that he found a way to discuss his own personality and upbringing as part of his essay – it is not just an essay about the actions he took but also his personal growth.
Another attention-getter: Someone who made a major impact as the result of motivating people or contributing unique ideas. In this example, my client put together a diverse team to achieve a worthwhile goal.
"The mission was clear: to design and build a community center for the underprivileged community of San Francisco in Juarez, Nuevo León, México, creating a safe haven for children and their families.
Meeting the challenge, however, was not so clear: how would I bring together the best possible team of volunteers to convert dream into reality?
I began by inviting potential team members to interview, including architects, civil engineers, interior designers, and industrial designers from non-profit design firm KaTO, USA colleges and the University of Monterrey, and my employer, GGP. We worked with the mayor of Juárez, suppliers, and most importantly, the community itself.
I selected volunteers from Canada, the USA, Mexico and Peru. To start, we met in Monterrey, México, for design workshops and to talk with the community; then we worked through videoconferences. I was the orchestra director, probably not the best musician of all but keeping the music synchronized, and in tune and rhythm. I asked for their best, fostered communication and respect, and reminded our team of the children whose lives we would improve."
In this example, my client metaphorically described his management style and how he motivated a sprawling team of volunteers.
This is a very difficult essay, but once you have your story, think about how you will describe yourself as part of this story.
Prompt: Please tell us about a time when you introduced an idea that changed the way in which your organization approached a business challenge or opportunity. What factors did you consider, what barriers or obstacles did you face, and how did you measure success? (500 words max)
First, the breakdown of the story to be told:
All that said, focus on telling a great story about an idea that you are proud of. Don't worry about the word count, just tell the story. I can help trim down or ask for the quantifiable results.
Prompt: Please provide a statement on your personal and professional qualifications. What is motivating you to apply to the MIT Executive MBA at this point in your career? (500 words maximum)
MIT Sloan is looking for both your personal and professional reasons for pursuing an Executive MBA. In addition, you should persuade the reader that you are a good match for Sloan. To do that you have to answer the questions that you know are in the reader's mind, and also present yourself as a person – get them interested in you.
The SOP should not be an expanded version of your resume. Instead, it should work to enhance your resume.
Here are the questions that I think admissions officers have about prospective students – these are the questions that you need to answer:
1) Who are you?
2) Why are you interested in an Executive MBA? What knowledge and skills do you hope to gain from your education?
a. If this is a relevant question: Why now?
b. Make sure that you are also answering the unspoken question "Why not one of MIT Sloan's other programs, for example, the Fellows MBA or the Executive Education non-degree programs?"
3) What do you hope to accomplish with your degree? (This is your motivation.)
a. Describe your professional plans for when you graduate, and then your career goals further in the future. For example, maybe 5-10 years, where do you see yourself?
b. Describe how achieving professional aspirations will fit into your personal goals for yourself.
4) Why is this school the very best place for you to pursue your interests, professional plans, and goals? Here, focus less on general aspects (“collaborative students” or “alumni network”) and more on specific areas that differentiate the program from others.
5) What have you done in the past that will make you a successful MBA student? Examples: a. Special abilities b. Activities that led to awards c. Achievements d. Scholarly publications e. Professional experience
6) What you will contribute to your classmates (related to No. 1).
Examples: a. Relevant or interesting professional experience b. Relevant leadership experience. c. Personal experience in the field or field-adjacent
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You may be wondering how to answer No. 1 - "Who are you?"
As the reader, I am looking for something more than appears on the resume, a brief self-introduction that allows me to understand more about you and your motivations.
For example, if I were to introduce myself & also explain why I became an editor, I might write something like this:
"I am the eldest of seven children, brought up in a rural area near Battle Creek, Michigan, where most people were employed in the cereal factory and few went to college. However, I was different. My mother was a voracious reader, and I grew up surrounded by books, crammed into every corner of our rickety house. Books taught me to dream of the world beyond our little backwoods. I grew to love and understand the authors so well that learning to edit writers' works followed naturally."
One client wove his motivation for graduate studies (master of public accounting) into his self-introduction :
"In past operational roles, I have been limited in my exposure to the financial control side of management. My “A-ha!” moment – the one that sparked my interest in accounting – came during my last management position. I had been promoted and sent as a trouble-shooter to a location that had been losing inventory at an unsustainable “shrink” rate. The previous management team had compiled several years’ worth of data on inventory shrinkage, but not seriously tracked the changes. When I began to investigate, it became clear we were far outside industry norms. The numbers revealed when the changes occurred and a pattern regarding particular personnel. Analysis of daily operational financials uncovered theft of close to a million dollars, previously explained away as “typical shrink.”
Analyzing spreadsheets for hidden meaning gave me insight into what was happening and direction for our investigation. By the end of the first week, the other team members were complaining about the long days of searching Excel reports. I was just the opposite. I found myself wishing that I could do similar work all the time. Although the reason for our work was stressful, the actual work was very enjoyable."
Here is a short example from another client, focusing on his desire for higher education:
"I grew up in Cameroon, West Africa. My parents were not scholars, but they believed that education was crucial for us to find a better path. They sacrificed everything to send my brothers and me to the best schools, and they insisted that I become a doctor, both to gain success and to help others." (He then goes on to explain why he went into the oil & gas industry instead, and subsequently became interested in sustainable power and business.”
And here is an example from a client that describes his career trajectory. He was applying to an MS in Analytics, and his self-introduction focuses on aspects closely related to the program – math, data structures, and logical thinking. He later describes analytical projects that he led.
“One of my most cherished high school memories is when I cracked the mathematics quiz final competition and won first place at the district school level. My love of mathematics led me to develop my first acquaintance with logical thinking through computational programming in C, and over the time, I familiarized myself with data structures and mastered operating systems. I received an immense amount of satisfaction from taking my baby steps into the computer science field, an area that has not only taught me programming skills and the science of logical thinking, but also pushed me to become a lifelong learner.”
In a previous Statement of Purpose for his successful application to a part-time MBA program, however, the very same candidate took a different strategy. In his introduction, he described how he tackled a people management issue at work, and concluded with this statement:
"Oftentimes, those outside the IT industry think that we only code. In fact, as an analyst and senior analyst at multinational firms, I have learned to exercise influence and negotiate with peers, managers, and clients in difficult team environments."
In writing your SOP’s introduction, think about whom you are speaking to, and how you want to persuade them that you will make a great fit for the program.