Notre Dame / Mendoza Essay Topic Analysis 2025-2026

The following essay topic analysis examines the Notre Dame / Mendoza (Mendoza) MBA essays for the 2025-2026 admissions season. You can also review essay topic analyses for all of the other leading MBA programs as well as general Essay Tips to further aid you in developing your admissions essays.

Notre Dame / Mendoza MBA Essay Topic Analysis 2025-2026

Let’s take a closer look at each prompt.

Essay 1

What are your detailed post-master’s degree career plans?

Illustrate how your background, experiences, interests, and personal attributes, in conjunction with your studies at the University of Notre Dame, will equip you to successfully realize these ambitions. Please share both your short-term and long-term career goals, and be specific about the industry and function you hope to pursue. (500 words maximum)
This prompt is a standard career goals essay that touches on your personal and professional history, career goals, as well as your interest in the Notre Dame MBA. To let the adcom know where you are heading from the start, it would make sense to open with your long-term goal, including your target industry and function. You may then identify the function or job title you plan to pursue immediately after business school, as well as your target industry and perhaps one or two target organizations. This position should be a logical first step toward the longer-term role that you hope to hold 10 or so years after your MBA.

It would then make sense to include a few sentences about how your personal qualitied, education and work experience to date has influenced (and prepared you for) these future roles, as well as the skills and knowledge that you still need to gain in order to move successfully along this path. With this “why MBA” piece established, candidates will then want to offer a detailed treatment of the ways specific elements of the Notre Dame MBA program would help you to bridge the gap between their current skill set and your future plans. We recommend that candidates aim to devote at least 200 words to this section of the essay, if not a full half of their response.

To get as much mileage as possible out of this essay, you should aim to develop a very detailed response that explains how lessons from key classes and participation in certain student organizations will position you to accomplish your professional objectives. The adcom will also be interested in hearing about how you see yourself contributing to the community and enhancing the experience of other students, so naming some events that you would like to help organize or a club you would hope to lead will also bolster your case. Covering all of this ground within a 500-word essay is no easy task, so zeroing in on the aspects of the Notre Dame MBA program that are most closely aligned with your goals will be important to developing an effective response; an in-depth review of the program website, conversations with current students and alumni, or online admissions events, are all viable sources of the information you’ll need here.

Applicant Snapshot

In addition to your resume and transcripts, the Applicant Snapshot offers a chance for candidates to showcase unique qualities and experiences not captured elsewhere in the application. This required component allows you to share personal dimensions of who you are—beyond your academic and professional background—and will be uploaded as part of your submission.

Applicant Snapshot Guidelines:

• Format your Applicant Snapshot as a slide presentation (up to four slides).
• Create slides using any software and save/upload as a PDF.
• Avoid using audio or video files.
• The Admissions Committee will review the applicant snapshot; no presentation is required.
• Share meaningful insights about yourself for the Admissions Committee.
• Use a lighthearted tone that reflects your personality to highlight your uniqueness beyond academic and work achievements.

This speaks to Notre Dame’s interest in a candidate’s passions and personality. An easy way to approach this process is to ask oneself a few simple questions. What new and important information about yourself can you introduce to the adcom through this slide presentation? In terms of organization, are there four separate topics to which you would like to devote a slide each? Or would you prefer to use the four frames to create a sense of progression through a current activity, past experience, “day in the life,” etc.? We’re hesitant to provide too much guidance given the free-form nature of the task; the best advice we can offer is to think about who you are (and how this might be of interest to the Mendoza adcom), consider how you could translate this into words and images, and then give it a try. Showing the initial result to someone who knows you well could be a great way to determine the effectiveness of a working draft.

Optional 

This is an opportunity to share information not covered elsewhere in your application. You can include additional context about your background, gaps in employment, unique experiences, personal challenges you have overcome, or any other insights that may not be fully represented in other sections of your application.
Review the rest of the application first, to ensure you are not repeating material. If you need to address issues such as gaps in employment, a weak academic record or other potential issues, applicants should keep their responses brief and to-the-point, offering explanations without making excuses and humbly bringing mitigating factors to the reader’s attention. That said, it’s possible that there are other elements of one’s background that would be appropriate and not covered elsewhere in one’s application, for example an anticipated promotion or an element of one’s identity not covered in the program’s data forms. While applicants should make an effort to fully represent their candidacies within the required elements of the application, this leaves a bit of room for short exceptions.

Video Assessment

As part of our application process, we require a video assessment. During this assessment, members of our Admissions Committee will ask you a series of questions to better understand you as an individual. This holistic approach allows the Committee to thoroughly review your application beyond what’s on paper.

A link to complete your video assessment will be emailed after you submit your application, and it must be completed to move forward in the application process.
Be sure to review our tips on Video Essays before completing this element of the application. The adcom is just looking to get to know you better in an off-the-cuff, spur of the moment video. The best approach you can take is to relax, stay focused and speak clearly.

Clear Admit Resources

Before you start writing your responses to the Notre / Dame MBA essays, check out some of our Mendoza College of Business resources:

• Notre Dame / Mendoza Profile on the Clear Admit website: up-to-date advice and admissions information
• Clear Admit LiveWire: admissions updates submitted in real time by applicants to Mendoza
• Clear Admit DecisionWire: school selections in real-time by admits to Mendoza