Owen MBA Sample Essays
Essay 1: What are your short-term career goals after obtaining your MBA and what functional area do you plan to study while in the MBA program? What are some specific skills that you want to develop during your time in business school that will help you achieve your career goals? 150 words
Essay 2: Please highlight something about yourself that isn’t already captured in the application. 150 words
Essay 3: At Vanderbilt, we are committed to building an equitable, diverse and inclusive community to foster an environment where you will learn from people who offer a variety of perspectives. The leadership, faculty, staff, and students of Owen commit to the following:
- To cultivate a diverse, inclusive, and equitable community that challenges us to embrace lifelong personal and professional growth;
- To welcome a wide variety of viewpoints and engage thoughtfully and respectfully, even when doing so is uncomfortable;
- To value differences in race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, mental or physical ability, and other such personal characteristics; and
- To work towards removing systemic barriers to fulfilling our commitment.
Your statement should focus on: How Owen’s commitment statement intersects with your own personal journey and/or how you plan to advance equity, diversity and inclusion at Owen.
Please limit your statement to 300 words.
Vanderbilt Owen MBA Sample Essays 2020-21
- What is your specific, immediate short-term career goal upon completion of your MBA? Please include an intended position, function, and industry in your response. (word limit: 100)
- Please draft a letter that begins with “Dear Admissions Committee” (word limit: 600) This letter is meant to be your personal statement that provides the Admissions Committee with an understanding of your candidacy for Marshall beyond what is evident in other parts of your application. This essay is purposely open-ended. You are free to express yourself in whatever way you see fit. Our goal is to have an appreciation for and an understanding of each candidate in ways that are not captured by test scores, grades, and resumes.
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Vanderbilt Owen MBA Sample Essays
Owen MBA Sample Essay 1: What are your short-term career goals after obtaining your MBA and what functional area do you plan to study while in the MBA program? What are some specific skills that you want to develop during your time in business school that will help you achieve your career goals? 150 words
I am a human capital professional with more than 4 years of experience in workforce transformation and talent strategy. I’m currently working as a consulting analyst in the change management practice at Accenture on projects across various industries such as oil and gas, IT/ITeS etc.
In the short term, post-MBA, I wish to delve deeper into the field of human capital consulting at firms such as Deloitte and Accenture in their human capital and change offerings. I aspire to gradually climb up the ranks to become a Strategy leader with expertise in organizational design, future of work and human-centred change.
To achieve my goals, I intend to specialize in Human & Organizational Performance and Strategy at Owen and leverage the immersive leadership development program to develop holistic business acumen and unlock my true leadership potential. Acquiring these skills will provide the ideal launchpad for the next phase of my career.
Owen MBA Sample Essay 2: Please highlight something about yourself that isn’t already captured in the application. 150 words
From a young age, I had a deep affinity for dance and trained in the Indian classical forms of Bharatnatyam and Kathak as well as salsa. After an eventful summer break, during which an echocardiogram revealed a hole in my heart, I could not partake in physical activities. I was regularly bullied because of the imminent weight gain and my confidence plummeted. Dance presented me with an escape to a different world and helped me regain my sense of self.
This affinity towards performing arts sowed the seed which blossomed into my passion for utilizing theatre as a means of highlighting important social issues such as juvenile delinquency and violence against women. During my tenure as the President of my college’s theatre club, our group gave our maiden performance at the prestigious National School of Drama where I was awarded a token of appreciation by a prominent Indian thespian.
Owen MBA Sample Essay 3: At Vanderbilt, we are committed to building an equitable, diverse and inclusive community to foster an environment where you will learn from people who offer a variety of perspectives. The leadership, faculty, staff, and students of Owen commit to the following:
To cultivate a diverse, inclusive, and equitable community that challenges us to embrace lifelong personal and professional growth;
To welcome a wide variety of viewpoints and engage thoughtfully and respectfully, even when doing so is uncomfortable;
To value differences in race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, mental or physical ability, and other such personal characteristics; and
To work towards removing systemic barriers to fulfilling our commitment.
Your statement should focus on: How Owen’s commitment statement intersects with your own personal journey and/or how you plan to advance equity, diversity and inclusion at Owen.
Please limit your statement to 300 words.
I had a rather unconventional start to my journey towards advocating for overlooked communities which came when I was researching juvenile delinquency as a potential topic for our annual play in college. Speaking to multiple individuals who had been through the system opened my eyes to the reality of our society’s dark underbelly
As a theatre group, we poured our heart and soul into telling their story of emotional and often physical struggle, to as many people as we possibly could. We gave over 50 performances to expand our reach and received various awards and recognition from prominent theatre personalities for the production. This recognition helped us partner with various reputable charities and NGOs to spread awareness and help these children integrate effectively back into society. We also donated all the proceeds from those events and the monetary awards to our partner NGOs to help further the cause.
Continuing further on this path, I enrolled as a Mental Wellness Advocate at Accenture. During the second wave of the pandemic, I assisted in implementing group counselling sessions for selected internal teams. I encountered people’s struggles dealing with uncertainty and loss and realized that these facilities need to be available to the public. With the help of my network from college, I teamed with practising psychologists and counsellors and extended this as a crises support group for the general public.
I was extremely excited when Kim Killingsworth informed me during our conversation about the International Student Care Group which was established as a mental health check-in for students. It is the perfect platform for me to continue my work as an advocate and I aim to team up with the Net Impact Club and the Student Centre for Society Justice and Identity to drive awareness about mental health in the wider community.
Vanderbilt Owen MBA Winning Sample Essays – 2
Owen MBA Essay 1: What are your short-term career goals after obtaining your MBA and what functional area do you plan to study while in the MBA program? What are some specific skills that you want to develop during your time in business school that will help you achieve your career goals? 150 words
As an experienced consultant in project management within the SAP domain, I would seek to work in an operations consulting role with a top consulting firm immediately after my MBA. In this role, I would like to work on projects such as demand planning, cost optimization, enhancing throughput, etc., using a structured data-driven approach, which is at the core of what I do today.
However, to be successful in the role, I would need a deep understanding of business strategy, operations management, supply chain management, with a high-level view of other business functions such as Finance & Accounting, Marketing, etc. Additionally, I would like to develop latent skills such as Organizational Behaviour and Negotiations. I see the MBA at Vanderbilt as a place where I can develop all the skills I believe I need right now and gather other skills necessary for success in the long term during my MBA.
Owen MBA Essay 2: Please highlight something about yourself that isn’t already captured in the application. 150 words
In my mother’s words – “Share knowledge and you will receive more wisdom”.
As a child, growing up in the farmlands of Telangana, I had to walk 5 kilometres to go to school in the heat and the cold. I have been amongst the few fortunate ones among my peers in the village to go to a university, but the journey has given me the resolve to uplift the education for poor children.
Therefore, with my mother’s words in mind, upon graduation, I started working with an NGO called “Sunshine” to improve the education standards for poor children. Over three years, I have raised ~USD 12K to provide books, community computers, and mobile-based internet connections for students to get educated remotely. Teachers at NGOs work free of charge, and I am proud to say that we saw 27 kids go to university this year from our NGO.
Owen MBA Optional Essay: You may provide an additional statement to explain anything that you think is important for the Admissions Committee to know about you that is not already addressed elsewhere in your application. Many applicants use this statement to explain significant gaps in full-time employment, lack of recommendation from a current supervisor, or subpar academic performance.
My journey from a small, unknown village of India to a global IT city working in a multinational company is, if I may put humbly, that of rising against adversity. Coming from a middle-class family and growing up in a village, I found a lot of courage to pursue my dreams. My father runs a restaurant, and my mom is a homemaker. Since I was born, my father has worked hard day and night to earn money and pay my school tuition fees. I completed high school in my village, securing good grades. As a result, the state government offered me a full scholarship for my undergraduate education in Engineering. It made my father enormously proud and helped relieve some financial burden on my father. I got placed in Accenture immediately after my undergrad and then shared his responsibility towards my family. I started supporting my family financially while earning and slowly cleared my father’s debt. When my father suffered an injury, there was no one to look after our restaurant. Then, I helped in managing our restaurant while doing my job, and was strongly raised from this adversity. Through learning from my entrepreneurship experience, I always supported a cause without any personal benefit, which helped me give back to society. It couldn’t be possible without a congregation.
Leading teams came naturally to me from my formative years – from being appointed the General Secretary of a club at my university to coordinating various events at the university and office. Collaborating with an NGO named sunshine, I even led initiatives to uplift the education standards at my village for school children. Also, I taught fitness and designed diets for people. I worked with others consistently, exploring how to develop strength and endurance. This experience helped me build a community in my personal life, who work together to achieve a goal and make some difference.
