Prompt: Tell us about your post-MBA career goals by describing two concurrent paths you plan to explore while in the Vanderbilt MBA program. What skills have you developed that will help you achieve your career goals? (200 words maximum)
Vanderbilt Owen offers one of the most customizable MBA experiences ever. At the same time, Owen hopes to attract self-driven people who will make the most of that customizable MBA. Keeping those two things in mind, be sure to address every component of the question prompt in your answer.
Vanderbilt Owen offers the following:
Below are a few short examples focused academic paths. You will have up to 200 words to expand upon your career goals, Vanderbilt Owen's academic paths, and the skills that you currently have to bring to this endeavor.
I have been leading project teams to successfully reach ambitious goals in consumer technology, and have learned much from collaborating with product managers. Post-MBA, I want to be a product manager who leads a team to innovate and strategically bring disruptive technologies to the consumer space. At Owen, I plan to pursue a concentration in strategy with an emphasis on entrepreneurship, because I hope to use my MBA to develop more of an entrepreneurial mindset. In addition, I will add a general management concentration to gain a broader view of how designers, technologists, marketing and sales teams, and employees from other functions collaborate on the success of a product.
Building on my experience in commercial initiatives and decision-making with my MBA, I will return to ACME Consulting, with my sights on promotions to Project Leader and Principal. At Owen, I will pursue both the Operations & Analytics and Strategy concentrations. I will also supplement these two concentrations with an emphasis in International Studies (allowing me to take on global work) and Sustainability & Social Impact, because I hope to steer my career into that practice.
The satisfaction I find in taking on a challenge attracts me to consulting and its skills in problem solving and reasoning. I am interested in strategic consulting and plan to pursue this line of work post-MBA at an international firm. With the Operations & Analytics concentration and my background in operations research, I will be prepared for this career pivot. In addition, the International Studies emphasis will provide the necessary grounding for global consulting.
I plan to become the Go-To-Market Strategy Director of a socially responsible technology company, with a voice in the decisions on where and how to invest company resources. My five years in the marketing field, during which time I have taken short courses annually, and Owen’s Marketing concentration with the Brand Management specialization will prepare me to handle all aspects of marketing. However, I believe that the addition of the Sustainability & Social Impact emphasis will allow me to truly make an impact.
The above examples form the core of this essay: at minimum, you should know which academic concentration(s) that you would like to pursue.
Please note that Owen expects you to have concrete career goals - you cannot just state that you're going into "finance," for example, and leave it at that. Watch a video about specific Career Paths for Consuting, Finance, Healthcare, Human & Organization Performance, Marketing, and Operations & Analytics.
To enhance your description of the two academic paths that you will follow, you might also add which professional student organizations you would join at Owen.
Owen is rightfully proud of the strong set of services offered offered by the Career Management Center:
In describing your two paths at Owen, you may include specific career services that you plan to leverage.
Finally, in describing your paths, you may wish to include a point or two from the aspects of the Vanderbilt MBA program of which the school is most proud:
Prompt: Please highlight something about yourself that isn’t already captured in the application. (200 words maximum)
Think about what that they would not know about you from elsewhere in the application.
1) Decide what to write about. It should not be a lot of different things, but just one important thing that demonstrates who you are as a person and a leader.
Your story should reveal additional traits about yourself, such as humor, honesty, or resilience.
Your story might be about success and achievement, or it might be about a failure from which you learned something that brought later success.
Here are some questions for you.
a) Is there something in your life that has always been there - a theme? What very important or interesting background story do you have that they would not know about you?
b) Is there something that you are really passionate about, for example, a cause or a philanthropic endeavor, something that will make the world better?
Many people say that they are really passionate about their work. However, if you choose that as a topic, you cannot just rewrite your resume, because they already have your resume. Instead, write about
What really works is a story that shows how you are different than others and how you have positively influenced your organization.
c) Is there one specific story that really exemplifies who you are?
This would be
Alternately, you can write about
You only have 200 words, so you choose only one topic to write about.
Prompt: You may provide an additional statement to explain anything that you think is important for the Admissions Committee to know about you that is not already addressed elsewhere in your application. Many applicants use this statement to explain significant gaps in full-time employment, lack of recommendation from a current supervisor, or subpar academic performance.
In the past, Owen has asked the following.
Prompt: Share an interesting fact about yourself. (400 characters, optional)
I will be providing practice questions in a separate web page. Try for one minute answers, but if you go a little over, you are still okay.