NYU Stern

September 16, 2024
October 16, 2024
January 16, 2025

Essays are typed in 12-point font, double spaced.

The "Pick 6" essay uses visuals and captions, and is submitted as a PDF.

Short Answer: Professional Aspirations

Prompt: What are your short-term career goals? (150 words maximum)

What is your immediate career goal, the one that would be the logical outcome of pursuing the MBA? This might be a specific job role or position.

Essay: Personal Tagline

Prompt: In today’s global business environment, the only constant is change.

  1. Using NYU Stern’s brand call to action, we want to know how you view change. Change: _____ it. Fill in the blank with a word of your choice.
  2. Why does this word resonate with you?
  3. How will you embrace your own personal tagline while at Stern?

(350 word maximum)

The examples that NYU Stern provides use up all the popular and rather generic words, so clearly Stern is looking for an answer with some imagination.

Start by thinking about how you will embrace change at Stern. By "change," they do not mean "change of jobs" or "change of industries." You already answered that in the short answer! Instead, you should look at your larger goals, either how you want to change yourself to prepare for your career goals, or how you want to change a certain role or a certain industry through your MBA.

This requires you to answer:

Finally, having written about 350-words to answer those questions, you can then think about the action verb that best summarizes all of your actions as an MBA.

Here are the action verbs that you cannot use (since Stern already used them as examples):

No Dare.

No Dream.

No Drive.

No Empower.

No Manifest.

In other words, nothing over-used. It's a lot easier to be original when you don't start by trying to think of the tagline, but instead end with it.

Essay: Pick 6

Prompt: Describe yourself to the Admissions Committee and to your future classmates using six images and corresponding captions. Your uploaded PDF should contain all of the following elements:

Choose six aspects of your personality, character, interests, family, background, job, and hobbies and interests to showcase, and find those pictures. It's important to consider how to bring your personality to life, and also:

Important: Formatting is important. You are sharing personal details, but keeping it professional.

Don't do this.
Do do this.

Optional Essay

Prompt: Please provide any additional information that you would like to bring to the attention of the Admissions Committee. (250 words maximum)

By address any questions, something that might need further explanation. This may include important aspects of yourself not otherwise apparent in your application, and/or the following:

Clients have also used to explain the following:

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 a negative experience, and how this learning has influenced future actions.