UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA Essays & Analysis 2025-2026

The following essay topic analysis examines UNC Kenan-Flagler’s MBA admissions essays for the 2025-2026 admissions season. You can also review essay topic analyses for other leading MBA programs as well as general essay tips to further aid you in developing your admissions essays.

UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA Essay Analysis 2025-2026

Let’s take a closer look at each prompt.

Essay 1

We value the different paths and aspirations that each student brings to the UNC Kenan-Flagler community. Please share your goals for pursuing an MBA, or the path you’re considering, and how they reflect your unique background or perspective.  (250 words maximum)
This is a fairly standard career goals essay. Structurally, you will want to begin by describing your professional aspirations, including both the position you hope to obtain immediately following an MBA, as well as your long-term objective. While UNC does give the sense that you may share what you are “considering,” commitment is an important part of vision. You also likely only have room to present one cohesive path, so do not spend more words on options; instead, pare down your ideas to your most likely path.

You will then want to explain why you have chosen to pursue an MBA. Talk about the professional and personal development you seek to undertake at UNC. You can weave in your background here—your past work experience may have transferrable skills for your career plans, while also setting up the gap an MBA will fill. Alternatively, perhaps your background has shaped your perspective on the impact you hope to make in your career. This would be worth noting as well.

Essay 2

Responses to each prompt within this essay should be no longer than 250 words each.

Prompt #1: UNC Kenan-Flagler is guided by four core values that shape who we are: impact, innovation, inclusion, and integrity. Which one of these Core Values resonates most deeply with your professional journey? Please share an example that demonstrates how this value has influenced your actions or decisions. (250 words maximum)
Value-based impact essays are popular in MBA admissions, as the adcom can see past behavior and results as a predictor of future success. Per the prompt, you’ll want to focus on one value.

Regarding the sorts of recent examples that you might cover, the wording of this Kenan-Flagler MBA essay question hones in on professional experience. Rather than gauging the significance of an experience solely in dollar amounts or percentages, we encourage applicants to attend to a core value. Whether the challenge was logistical (like stretching yourself to coordinate across internal teams while managing a client’s expectations) or interpersonal (such as developing a good working relationship with an adversarial colleague), effective responses will highlight a transferable skill that was formed or strengthened during this process.

In terms of structural approach to this short answer, you may consider using the STAR technique to structure your story:

• Situation – Set the stage
• Task – Identify the challenges and tasks ahead of the value-related achievement
• Action – Describe the actions you took to complete the achievement
• Result – Summarize the positive impact and how it relates to the select core value

In a concluding section, you will then want to summarize the lessons you learned in the course of this experience. You should then conclude with how you will bring these lessons to UNC and further develop them there.

Prompt #2: The strength of our community is enriched by the range of personal and professional experiences our students contribute to the Full-Time MBA Program. What aspects of your background would you draw upon to enhance classroom conversations and co-curricular life at UNC Kenan-Flagler? (250 words maximum)
This is a chance to tell the adcom who you are, where you come from, and what you care about. It is also a good place to highlight instances of resourcefulness and persistence, especially discussing how far you’ve come, if you were a bootstrapper or first generation in your family to attend college. You can provide insight into your personal and professional maturity and collaborative nature over the course of a narrative. An effective approach might be to describe the initial experience and its broad implications in a few sentences, followed by a brief illustrative example before concluding with a reflection on how the experience has shaped who you are today.

The adcom also wants to know that you’ll be supportive and collaborative while on campus at UNC and be a good addition to the student community. Applicants should aim to connect their history with potential future contributions to UNC. Whether you choose to draw on your professional, personal or academic life, it’s important to create context before connecting to how you would contribute. As you approach the contributions, specifically, think about how you can translate your experience and related lessons into involvement on the UNC campus. Creating a link between your past and your potential future at the program will enable you to present a consistent and clear picture of your candidacy, as well as your professional and personal interests. The more information you can provide about how exactly you would contribute (playing a certain role in organizing a particular annual event, for example), the more reason you’ll give the adcom to admit you.

Optional Essay

We encourage you to tell us more about who you are so we can get to know you as a person and potential member of the Carolina community. Use this essay to convey information that you may not have otherwise been able to in the application. (200 words maximum)

Optional topics:

• Personal or professional accomplishments
• Interests and passions
• Gaps in work experience or inconsistent academic performance
• Context for recommender selection
• A fun fact about yourself

For those who need to address potential liabilities or inconsistencies in one’s application in this prompt, adopt a humble tone, acknowledge the issue without making excuses, and gently suggest other aspects of his or her candidacy that may help to compensate for this weakness.

We recommend completing this essay and using it as an additional opportunity to reveal more about your candidacy. Though there are myriad potential topics to discuss here, applicants should consider the balance of subjects they have covered across their other essays and choose a topic that provides new insight into their overall candidacy. For example, if the majority of content in your other essays is focused on your professional life and accomplishments, this would be an opportunity to showcase and highlight your extracurricular passions or interests. It also invites something interesting about your background or unusual international experience. You may also consider what matters most to you or what feels like defines you as you decide what may be missing from the other application materials.

Re-Applicant Essay

If you are re-applying to the program, we appreciate your continued interest in UNC Kenan-Flagler. We require a complete application in addition to a brief essay that describes how your application differs from your previous submission and that alerts us to new test scores, a recent promotion, or other areas that demonstrate how you have strengthened your candidacy. (100 words maximum)
Reapplicants should detail the steps they have taken to become a stronger applicant and learn more about the UNC MBA program since their last application. Candidates in this situation should comment on how they have spent the past year, taking particular care to highlight improved quantitative records, new professional skills and responsibilities, progress toward their ultimate career goals, and/or increased community involvement.

Clear Admit Resources

Thanks for reading our analysis of this year’s UNC MBA essay topics! As you work on your Kenan-Flagler MBA essays and application, we encourage you to consider all of Clear Admit’s UNC / Kenan-Flagler offerings:

• UNC / Kenan-Flagler Business School on the Clear Admit website: up-to-date advice and admissions information
• Clear Admit LiveWire: admissions updates submitted in real time by applicants to Kenan-Flagler
• Clear Admit DecisionWire: school selections in real-time by admits to Kenan-Flagler