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Durham MBA Sample Essays

Durham MBA Application Essays 2023-24

Essay 1:  Explain your motivation to undertake the course and describe your academic interests, strengths, and background relevant to the course.

  • Outline your ambitions and/or research interests
  • Include other relevant information, such as additional reading or research, work or other relevant experiences that have informed your decision to apply for the particular course
  • Highlight areas of specific interest within the course you are applying for

Essay 2: As standard, your personal statement should:

  • Explain your motivation to undertake the course
  • Describe your academic interests, strengths and background relevant to the course
  • Outline your ambitions and/or research interests
  • Include other relevant information, such as additional reading or research, work or other relevant experiences that have informed your decision to apply for the particular course
  • Highlight areas of specific interest within the course you are applying for

Please ensure your personal statement does not exceed 8000 characters.

Durham MBA Sample Essay 1

Essay 1: Explain your motivation to undertake the course and describe your academic interests, strengths and background relevant to the course.

  • Outline your ambitions and/or research interests

  • Include other relevant information, such as additional reading or research, work or other relevant experiences that have informed your decision to apply for the particular course

  • Highlight areas of specific interest within the course you are applying for

I have almost 4 years of experience working as a Quality Assurance Analyst. In the last 4 years, I have gained significant technical expertise working with Tata Consulting Services (TCS) and acquired capabilities to lead the team. 

At TCS, I got to work not just with one particular application, but with six different applications with multiple client engagements, my most prominent client being  Bank of America. I have directly worked with my clients and shared my insights across User interface enhancements and user experience on the client products. 

Simultaneously, I have been working on developing my soft skills. I have been a regular and enthusiastic member of toastmasters for three years. This has helped me to improve my communication skills which I believe are one crucial element of a leader. I have achieved a competent communicator certificate and the improved communication skills has helped me a lot in progressing my career 

Along with improving my communication skills, I had developed my leadership skills through toastmasters. I started as a Vice President of Education and moved up to President. In these years, I led a team of 40 members. This is where I developed my initial set of leadership skills, which my manager later recognized, and I translated into work experience where now I am leading a team of 78 people to work on deliverables.

As a leader of a big team, I faced many challenges that required me to think out of the box and conducted multiple brainstorming sessions with the team to meet client requirements. I believe I have gained a holistic set of expertise as a technical professional and a leader to take the next step in my career.

All this time, I have been  working with product owners on in-depth business-related challenges and customer pain points. This made me develop a keen interest in strategizing a meaningful product roadmap and that is why In the short-term, I desire to move into a Product Manager role. However, during the brainstorming sessions, I realized that there are some critical knowledge gaps, such as how to work on the product roadmap, marketing the product, etc. which are hindering me from transitioning into a Product Managers role, which I believe can be best fulfilled with an MBA. 

After extensive research and consultation with current students and alumni, I am confident that Durham’s MBA program perfectly syncs with my targeted goals and learning requirements. I want to support my reasoning with the following points further: 

  1. Curriculum: I believe Durham’s extensive Curriculum has a good focus on the technology sector with courses such as Strategic Management, Strategic Business Project, and Operation and Technology. Durham also offers intensified electives to choose from and has a robust international immersion program. This Curriculum can help me to bolster the already acquired technical experience and prepare for the transformation I am seeking in my career. 
  2. Pathway-Specific Module: The Technology Pathway, seems to be in an ideal sync with my career goals. It helps to enhance my skills in business-analytics and will provide me insights into technology innovation. The Pathway module can provide me the avenues to implement and test my theoretical knowledge gained in the classroom and  will strengthen my abilities in how to choose suitable techniques in the technology sector while creating a new product.
  3.  International immersion program: I have always worked in India with International clients, but now going and working in International companies with the class of diverse people and visiting the companies will bolster my international exposure. This will help me in the long term to lead a team of diverse people. I am confident that I can use this exposure to strengthen my profile and open potential arenas for me to consider post MBA. 
  4. Experiential and reflective learning: Another critical parameter that attracted me towards Durham’s MBA is the Strategic Business Project and The Boardroom Exercise. Within the short 15-months program with a module like this will facilitate me with live projects. Actionable research will make me gain hands-on experience and makes me a stronger candidate to face the real world once I graduate. 

Therefore, Durham’s MBA gives a unique approach to Curriculum, live projects, and intensified Pathway. I don’t see a better institute than Durham to equip me with the skills required to achieve my objectives in life. Also, Durham will provide me access to the vast network of the Alumni base that will open new areas of opportunities. 

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Durham MBA Sample Essay 2

As standard, your personal statement should:

  • Explain your motivation to undertake the course

  • Describe your academic interests, strengths and background relevant to the course

  • Outline your ambitions and/or research interests

  • Include other relevant information, such as additional reading or research, work or other relevant experiences that have informed your decision to apply for the particular course

  • Highlight areas of specific interest within the course you are applying for

Please ensure your personal statement does not exceed 8000 characters.

I am a commerce graduate with 6 years of experience in Financial Accounting. I started off my professional life as an Accounts executive for the corporate office of Sardar Exports, which is in the business of import, export & manufacturing of textiles and garments. In this role, I was responsible for maintaining the financial books of the company from issuing invoices for customers to maintaining vendor payments. The work was limited to operational book keeping with limited opportunities to grow and learn. Hence when I got an opportunity to work at Genpact as a senior finance analyst, I gladly accepted the offer. In the current role, I am responsible for the maintenance & financial reporting of fixed assets and capital accounting for a crucial client, Pfizer for the Europe & CEER market.  Through this experience I have gained a better insight into accounting principles and business operations. I have grown from an individual contributor to managing a team of 10 analysts. My official promotion has been recently announced (in August 2021). 

Although there has been a learning curve with my movement to Genpact, it is still limited to back office operations and manual book-keeping activities. My team only processes the tickets received by the onshore team as per their requirements and instructions. We create, capitalize and enhance the value of assets, make any mass update changes, charge manual & unplanned depreciation, retire assets and prepare the weekly, monthly and quarterly reports and deliver them to the onshore team for further reviewing & analysis. I feel that the activities that we as a team perform here are a very minor part of the overall financial planning and for me to pursue my interest, I need to have a better understanding of the overall business and not just limit my exposure to this particular domain and industry.

I aspire to move into a managerial role in the Finance & Accounting domain and want to be a part of the Financial Planning and Analysis team responsible for budget planning, hedging, corporate treasury. However, in order to transition into such a role, I need a deeper understanding of Finance operations and more importantly overall business understanding. That is why I wish to pursue an MBA from Durham that would impart me the necessary knowledge and skill set to make this transition. The experiential learning approach, updated curriculum in accordance to the latest market trends and hands-on projects on business & management have captivated me to pursue the full time MBA course from Durham University. While core courses give me an overall business understanding, the curriculum inclusions of Finance are perfectly aligned with my learning goals. Durham provides me with the opportunity to tailor my MBA journey in accordance with my interests. 

The key curriculum attraction for me is “Leadership Skills Development”. The senior lecturer in strategic management, Prof. Peter Allen is one of the most renowned professors in the field. The university has built a distinct rapport for itself internationally by its innovative methods of teaching and research. Being one of the top ranking universities in the UK and given the success rate of past students, being a part of Durham will not only guide me to achieve academic excellence but also provide me with hands-on skills and expertise that I can capitalise on later for my employment. 

Durham also has various students clubs & societies which helds industry conferences, training workshops, webinars and other social events. As someone who is interested in performing arts, the student clubs and activities like theatre, drama & music is the icing on the cake.

The diverse student community of Durham is of great significance to me as it gives the opportunity to lead and learn from my classmates, who will bring diverse perspectives to the table. These learning experiences are critical in achieving my long term goal of leading the Finance Operations of a Fortune 500 company.

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