MBA Admissions Tip: Essay Polishing
The deadline is looming and you’re making one final pass through your application before hitting submit. This isn’t the time for drastic changes – but there might still be an opportunity for small improvements.
Read on for three big picture, “crunch time” tips!
Keep It Professional
It’s true that many schools ask “fun” questions and most urge applicants to be themselves rather than submitting “overly polished” material. But it’s important to remember that this is a graduate school application, and you should approach your essays with a degree of formality.
You do want your unique narrative voice to come through, but even professional writers know to vary their tone based on their audience. Before you submit, scan your materials for slang or overly conversational speech patterns in your writing.
Emphasize Action
Lapsing into the passive voice is a common essay-writing pitfall. This means constructing sentences about how some unseen force or agent acted upon something or someone else (e.g. “we were required to” or “the project was completed”).
Instead, make sure that you’re putting your own thoughts and actions at the fore. By making a conscious effort to write “I/he/she did x” rather than “x was done to y” you can make your comments more informative, dynamic and, often, more concise.
Avoid Repetition
It’s often a good idea to give the reader a sense of an essay’s direction through an introduction, and to sum up the key ideas through a conclusion. Ideally, though, each sentence of an essay will add some new information to the document or build the reader’s understanding of what you’ve already written. And for shorter essays (e.g. 250-300 words), you can probably dive right into the content rather than giving the reader a detailed road map at the outset of your response.
So if a sentence isn’t saying anything new, it’s probably safe to cut it. This rule can be particularly helpful with last-minute edits if your responses are running over the word limit. It also helps to ensure that you’re including as much relevant information about your candidacy as you can within the allotted length.
Good luck with those finishing touches!
MBA Admissions Academy
In addition to the MBA essay tips above, learn more from Clear Admit’s Admissions Academy below.
Episode 12: Essays I: The Basics
MBA Applywire
In addition to my undergraduate degrees in landscape architecture and geography, I also have an MA in geography 3.9 gpa, and a PhD in Architecture. I am currently a VP at my company and a likely candidate for CEO in the near future. I want to continue working while pursuing my MBA to increase my chances of moving into the CEO role. Also, my goal is to start my own ClimateTech firm in the next several years. An MBA will help achieve both of these goals. For each of the selected schools, I would pursue their online MBA program so I can continue working. While I, of course, want to attend a prestigious program, I'm not willing to sacrifice my money or too much of my company's money to spend six figures on an online MBA. That is a part of the driver for the programs I have selected to look at. In the US, it is rare that online programs provide funding; a bit seems to be available at European programs.
- International Male, 26, southeast Asian (non-Chinese/indian)
- BEng, top 15% of the class, the best local uni (but unknown outside of the country)
- (0.5Y) Global LDP program of a F500, left early to join consulting
- (2.5Y) at S&, strategy consulting in the field of fintech/ banking, top tier performance (5% of the cohort in the region, early promotion)
- (1Y) Left S&, started my own fintech for underserved teenagers, got pre-seed funding from a tier 2 Banking VC, closed after a year due to regulations change, small scale with multiple impact rewards (20k+ farmers
Goals: Join a fintech in the US (strategy div), or Financial services consulting (like OW, McK) incase i can't secure a fintech position (internationals), with a long term goal of starting another fintech
- International Male, 26, southeast Asian (non-Chinese/indian)
- BEng, top 15% of the class, the best local uni (but unknown outside of the country)
- (0.5Y) Global LDP program of a F500, left early to join consulting
- (2.5Y) at S&, strategy consulting in the field of fintech/ banking, top tier performance (5% of the cohort in the region, early promotion)
- (1Y) Left S&, started my own fintech for underserved teenagers, got pre-seed funding from a tier 2 Banking VC, closed after a year due to regulations change, small scale with multiple impact rewards (20k+ farmers
Goals: Join a fintech in the US (strategy div), or Financial services consulting (like OW, McK) incase i can't secure a fintech position (internationals), with a long term goal of starting another fintech
Education: B.Tech Information Technology (Tier-2 college)
GPA: 9.16/10 (Converted equivalent: 3.91).
Standardized Testing: 715 GMAT Focus (99th percentile equivalent).
Professional Achievements (Bulge bracket investment Bank)
Role: ML Engineer , ~3 YOE now (will have 5 at the time of matriculation).
High-Impact Innovation: Awarded "Most Innovative Project" for three consecutive years (2024 ,2025 and 2026).
Secured 1st Place in 2025 and 2nd Place in 2024 in the Technology Innovation Program
Revenue Generation: Designed and implemented a scalable recommendation system for wealth management that drove a 45% increase in revenue for the targeted segment.
Operational Efficiency: Engineered an Agentic AI system for automated customer support, significantly reducing overhead and optimizing resource allocation.
System Integrity: Spearheaded a performance audit that resolved critical failure rates in cloud-native microservices, ensuring zero-downtime for high-stakes financial data.
Leadership & Civic Engagement
Youth Parliament: Recognized for leadership in simulated legislative environments; developed high-level skills in policy advocacy, structured debate, and consensus-building. Winner of District level in 2025,2026
Strategic Collaboration: Partnered with senior stakeholders to align technical roadmaps with institutional wealth management goals.
Post-MBA Goal
Short-Term: Transition into Investment Banking (IB), specifically within Technology or FinTech coverage groups, leveraging technical depth to advise on M&A and capital markets activity.
Long-Term: Executive leadership within the global financial services ecosystem.
MBA LiveWire
Waitlisted R3 and accepted in R4 with $! quant was low - completed MBA math, sent 2 updates, talked to current students, sent an additional LoR, showed my genuine interest in Fuqua. Super excited!
Military applicant. Waitlisted in Round 2 with a 317 GRE and I took the EA while on the waitlist.
Recommended to transfer application to EWMBA