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Georgetown McDonough MBA Sample Essays

Georgetown McDonough MBA Sample Essays

The goal at Georgetown McDonough is to craft a diverse class with people who have had varying personal and professional life experiences. As such, they want to give their applicants the opportunity to select one essay (from a list of three) that allows them the ability to best highlight their experiences, characteristics, and values that showcase the value proposition that they can bring to the McDonough community.  

  1. Please select one of the following three essays to complete in 500 words or less.
  2. Please include the essay option prompt and your first/last name at the top of your submission.

Essay Option 1 – Principled Leadership

Georgetown McDonough places a strong emphasis on principled leadership, providing both curricular and co-curricular opportunities to strengthen your leadership skills. Describe a time when you’ve led a team in a professional environment to implement a new idea or process. What leadership characteristics did you utilize? What could you have done to be more effective? And most importantly, what skills will you be able to bring to the teams you lead at McDonough? 

Essay Option 2 – Hoyas Helping Hoyas

Hoyas Helping Hoyas. Georgetown McDonough embodies the ethos that people and organizations can and should contribute to the greater good. The admissions committee would like to better understand how you’ve demonstrated these values during uniquely challenging times. Describe a time where you’ve put the needs of others ahead of your own, or ahead of the bottom line. We look forward to learning more about the challenge you faced, what unique characteristics you brought to that scenario, and what you learned from it. 

Essay Option 3 – Personal Brand

Think of a business leader or role model you admire or aspire to be. What are the defining characteristics of his or her personal brand that you see in yourself? Give an example of how you have been able to emulate these characteristics in your professional career and how your personal brand will enrich the McDonough community.

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McDonough MBA Sample Essay 1

Essay Option 1: Hoyas Helping Hoyas-Georgetown McDonough embodies the ethos that people and organizations can and should contribute to the greater good. The admissions committee would like to better understand how you’ve demonstrated these values during uniquely challenging times. Describe a time where you’ve put the needs of others ahead of your own, or ahead of the bottom line. We look forward to learning more about the challenge you faced, what unique characteristics you brought to that scenario, and what you learned from it. 

Georgetown McDonough embodies the ethos that people and organizations can and should contribute to the greater good. The admissions committee would like to better understand how you’ve demonstrated these values during uniquely challenging times. Describe a time where you’ve put the needs of others ahead of your own, or ahead of the bottom line. We look forward to learning more about the challenge you faced, what unique characteristics you brought to that scenario, and what you learned from it. 

As a person, I’ve always defined myself as someone who loves making things better – be it processes, organizations, or the lives of the people around me. Early in my life, I got exposed to a youth-run organization called AIESEC, which laid the foundation of my core values of a democratic and impact-oriented professional. 

I devoted almost three and a half years of service to AIESEC, where I’ve headed social projects and awareness campaigns at the grass-root level impacting 40000+ individuals. I have been dedicated to the cause of doing meaningful work at the grass-root level, so much so that, after graduation, and took a gap year to continue my work with AIESEC for another year as I believed I had more to learn, contribute and grow.  

 Through AIESEC, I came to know and chose to join an early-stage start-up – “InMotion”,

because I was thoroughly motivated by social impact potential. InMotion worked with financially underserved communities of manual day labourers, cart pullers, and drivers. On the Job, the travel between cities wasn’t comfortable, and the salary wasn’t much, but the team never cared about any of those things as we were all about helping people. In the 19 months when I worked there, we were able to help approximately 5,000 families of drivers by assisting them to get bank accounts, primary financial education and help them save ~$3.5m. My stint with InMotion reaffirmed my faith in the ideology of measuring achievements by the impact.

 As I grew vertically in my career, I ensured that the hunger to create a positive impact stayed alive within me. In 2017, I left an established career to join an organization – “Credenc” as their 2nd employee because I genuinely believed the problem Credenc was trying to solve – Student Financing for international aspirants. Credenc seemed like the right place to put my heart and soul into creating a change-driven organization. I even ended up taking a pay cut to join them because of budget constraints. We worked day-night and grew the team from 4 to 35, and in the end, managed to raise $2.5m in Series A funding, which was a testament to the work we were doing there. Today, the start-up can help even more students every day, and the work I accomplished remains one of my proudest contributions and most satisfying jobs. Credenc left such an impact on my career aspirations that I have continued working in the student finance domain and currently leading partnership and business development at MPOWER. 

I consider myself fortunate and happy to merge my profession and my passion for social work into one through the opportunities AIESEC, InMotion and Credenc gave me. These experiences have defined my career and imbibed in me the belief that today I can relate to McDonough’s core principle of Hoyas helping Hoyas. I have always enjoyed the difference I managed to create in the environment around me and look forward to continuing the spirit at Mcdonough with my fellow MBA peers.

McDonough MBA Sample Essay 2

Essay Option: Personal Brand-Think of a business leader or role model you admire or aspire to be. What are the defining characteristics of his or her personal brand that you see in yourself? Give an example of how you have been able to emulate these characteristics in your professional career and how your personal brand will enrich the McDonough community.

As a person, I’ve always defined myself as someone who loves making things better – be it processes, organisations or the lives of the people around me. I have always enjoyed the difference I managed to create in the environment around me. Early in my life, I got exposed to a youth-run organisation called AIESEC which laid the foundation of everything I am today. Something about the organisation’s way of providing complete autonomy to 20 years olds to decide what kind of impact to create spoke to me at a core level. The zeal to create impact every single day inculcated a constant thought process of weighing impact before any other gain and a habit of discerning such opportunities which changed the way I saw the world. I’ve headed and been a part of social projects and awareness campaigns at the grass root level impacting 40000+ individuals both young & old. While creating this impact, I’ve dealt with stakeholders coming from diverse backgrounds including the underprivileged sector, Educational institutions, residential societies and got an opportunity to experience all of them working towards the greater good. The 42 months I spent here shaped up my core values and gave me a democratic and impact-oriented outlook.  It was because of this that I decided to move away from the campus placement I received and continued in AIESEC for another year as I believed I had more to learn, contribute and grow. The same perspective has been since then, carried to all the best opportunities in my career, and over the last 8 years, I’ve always tried to define my career by the problems I’ve worked on and the impact my actions have created. 

One of the proofs of this is the first job I chose for myself. Despite being an early stage start-up, I was thoroughly motivated by the vision and impact potential InMotion had. We worked with one of the most financially underserved communities in the country – the autorickshaw drivers. My mission was to work with financial institutions to deploy programs specifically created for these drivers, thus inculcating the habit of daily spending through proper means and reducing the expenses on tobacco. The travel between cities wasn’t comfortable and the salary wasn’t much but the team never cared about any of those things as we were all about helping people. In the 19 months when I worked there, we were able to help approximately 5,000 families of these drivers and help them save ~$3.5m. My stint with InMotion reaffirmed my faith in the ideology of measuring achievements by impact.

As I grew vertically in my career, I ensured that the hunger to create a positive impact stayed alive within me. 3.5 years back, I came across the student financing industry where I discovered that despite looking like it has ample options, most students remain underserved and the ones who can be helped don’t even know where and how to begin. My passion for helping students had always been tremendous and Credenc seemed like the right place to put my heart and soul into creating a change-driven organisation.   I left an established career to join the organisation as their 2nd employee because I truly believed the problem they were trying to solve – Student Financing for international aspirants. I even ended up taking a pay cut to join them because of budget constraints.

We worked day-night and grew the team from 4 to 35, and in the end, managed to raise $2.5m in Series A funding which was a testament to the work we were doing there. Today the start-up is able to help even more students everyday and the work I accomplished still remains one of my proudest contributions and most satisfying jobs. 

Upholding the organisation’s vision and values has always been paramount to me, something I strive towards everyday in my current role at MPOWER. As an organisation, we want to set students up for educational and financial success, even if it means we don’t “make the sale”. There have been instances when I’ve happily encouraged prospective borrowers to go to a peer in the industry to secure funding because their profile suits that organisation much better. Helping students is much more important than achieving numbers and a culture like this helps me get the best version of myself to work everyday.

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