ESSEC Business School MiM – Sample Essays & LOR

ESSEC MiM Sample Essays – 1

ESSEC MiM Essay 1: What matters most to you, and why ? Tell us the values and experiences that have shaped the person you are (400 words maximum)

Breaking the taboo around sex education and creating awareness especially among adolescent kids matters the most to me.

When I was twelve, I was sexually assaulted by my math home tutor. He has been my teacher for over 5 years and was the person whom I trusted, whom my parents trusted. At that time, I had no idea what I was going through, and all I could say was that I don’t like this teacher, and I don’t want to study math anymore. When I was 18 and gained knowledge on the subject, I could look back and understand what truly happened.

Sex education is a taboo in India, and this ignorance is also why many kids fall prey to sexual predators. Approximately 5000 girls under 18 years are sexually harassed every year, which only reflects cases reported at the police station. I firmly believe sex education should be taught in the early years, educating children what’s appropriate and what’s not, and training them what to do when they find themselves in uncomfortable situations.
I volunteered at an NGO, School of Life, India, to raise awareness on sex education for three years. During my undergraduate days, I have been very vocal about it, encouraging college students, who have suffered harassment, to come forward and speak about it. Partnering with social welfare organisations, I created support groups and conducted workshops to spread awareness about the legal rights and protection women have in India, with respect to sexual harassment. We teamed up with professional psychologists to conduct seminars on the same. We created spaces where a small group of people can come forward and speak about their experience under professional guidance. This helped create a positive and inclusive environment where the victims can get the necessary emotional and physical support they need.
I would continue to carry on such efforts as part of student activities and clubs and ESSEC. Post MBA I am planning to create/ associate myself with social welfare organisations in efforts to promote sex education among adoloscents and also to create a positive and bias-free environment for any kid who needs support and guidance.

ESSEC MiM Essay 2: Motivation Letter

I am a Computer Science Engineer with a great passion to solve real world problems using technology. When the COVID hit and there was a dearth of testing kits, I developed a Covid detection solution using X-Ray scans. As a part of internships with regional governmental bodies, I have also built intelligent Traffic Lights systems, and algorithms to predict forest fires that operated at 87 percent accuracy. Through these projects, I have honed my analytical and problem solving skills.

For the last 4 years, I have spent a considerable time growing and supporting my family business. I helped in acquiring customers, managing invoices, answering customer queries and complaints. As the business grew, we hired a Chartered Accountant to help with the financial bookkeeping. Assisting our accountant was my first hand formal experience in Finance. Curious to learn more, I self taught the concepts of Finance using Coursera and Linkedin Learning. Reading the Financial Times and debating over stock market and other topics with my father were a common occurrence. My interest in Finance piqued beyond books and applied these learnings into real projects. I built an automatic stock trading algorithm for Reliance with over 10% annualised returns. I also won the best project award in a national competition for developing an effective equity selection model based on business headlines scanning over 5000 new articles in a week to predict trend lines and movements of the stock market.

Being exposed to and interested in Finance, I want to build my long term career in this domain. To achieve my goals, I need the knowledge and understanding of not only Finance but the end-to-end business as a whole. I need to understand different facets of the business world, how financial decisions are made from project level to organisation level, and how strategy influences the operations of an organisation. I strongly believe this particular chair will equip me with necessary knowledge and understanding of the business world. The intensive case based learning will broaden my horizon with real world scenarios and business problems.

After my studies, my goal is to land a role in the finance industry. An ideal role for me would be Financial Analyst either in Private Equity or Investment Banking firms such as JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs. Such a role would give me hands-on experience on different aspects of finance such as how firms manage capital structure, how firms balance risks and return, how financial decisions are made in a company etc. More importantly it gives me exposure to different sectors, and industry best practices that will play a key role in attaining my long term goal of leading the Finance & Treasury function for one of the Fortune 500 companies.