Business School Rankings

Top MBA Programs

One of the most common errors made by MBA applicants is failing to properly research a program, and subsequently failing to write essays tailored to the individual school. At Veritas Prep, we have consultants from all of the top schools to make sure you have the expertise you need. Please learn more by selecting schools of interest below.

Business Schools
Chicago (Booth)	Columbia	Dartmouth (Tuck)
Duke (Fuqua)	Harvard	INSEAD
Michigan (Ross)	MIT (Sloan)	Northwestern (Kellogg)
NYU (Stern)	Penn (Wharton)	Stanford
UC Berkeley (Haas)	UCLA (Anderson)	Yale

Top 20 Business Schools Ranked By...

Each of the popular business school ranking systems below rely on a different set of criteria, including acceptance rates, average GMAT scores, and post-graduation salaries. Some also use more subjective criteria, such as peer ratings by administrators at other business schools, and how each school is rated by its current and former students. As you review the MBA rankings below, always keep in mind the criteria on which each publication bases its ranking system.

Application Round Deadlines

Berkeley (Haas) Admissions Essays

Required Essays

1. If you could choose one song that expresses who you are, what is it and why? (250 words)
2. What is your most significant accomplishment? (250 words)
3. Describe a time when you questioned an established practice or thought within an organization. How did your actions create positive change? (250 words)
4. Describe a time when you were a student of your own failure. What specific insight from this experience has shaped your development? (250 words)
5. Describe a time when you led by inspiring or motivating others toward a shared goal. (250 words)
6. a. What are your post-MBA short-term and long-term career goals? How have your professional experiences prepared you to achieve these goals? b. How will an MBA from Haas help you achieve these goals? (750 word maximum for 5a. and 5b.)

Supplemental Information

1. If you have not provided a letter of recommendation from your current supervisor, please explain; otherwise, enter N/A.
2. List in order of importance all community and professional organizations and extracurricular activities in which you have been involved during or after university studies. Indicate the nature of the activity or organization, size of the organization, dates of involvement, offices held, and average number of hours spent per month.
3. List full-time and part-time jobs held during undergraduate or graduate studies, indicating the employer, job title, employment dates, location, and the number of hours worked per week for each position held prior to the completion of your degree.
4. Please explain all gaps in your employment since earning your university degree.
5. If you have ever been subject to academic discipline, placed on probation, suspended, or required to withdraw from any college or university, please explain. If not, please enter N/A. (An affirmative response to this question does not automatically disqualify you from admission.

Optional Essays

1. Please feel free to provide a statement concerning any information you would like to add to your application that you haven’t addressed elsewhere. (500 word maximum)
2. If not clearly evident, please discuss ways in which you have demonstrated strong quantitative abilities, or plan to strengthen quantitative abilities. You do not need to list courses that appear on your transcript. (250 word maximum)

Chicago (Booth) Admissions Essays

1. Essay: What are your short- and long-term goals, and how will an MBA from Chicago Booth help you reach them? (500 words maximum)
2. Short Answer Essays: (200 words maximum each)
   a) What has been your biggest challenge, and what have you learned from it?
   b) Tell us about something that has fundamentally transformed the way you think.
3. Presentation/Essay: The Chicago experience will take you deeper into issues, force you to challenge assumptions, and broaden your perspective. In a four-slide presentation or an essay of no more than 600 words, broaden our perspective about who you are. Understanding what we currently know about you from the application, what else would you like us to know?

Columbia Admissions Essays

Short Answer Question

1. What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (200 characters maximum)

Essay 1

1. Why are you pursuing an MBA at this point in your career, and how do you plan to achieve your immediate and long term post-MBA professional goals? (Maximum 500 words)
2. Please view this video, entitled Community at Columbia. Diverse, tight-knit clusters and carefully selected learning teams are defining features of the first year at Columbia Business School. Along with more than 100 student organizations and countless events each semester, the cluster system helps to create a supportive and devoted lifelong community. Describe why you are interested in becoming a part of the Columbia community. (Maximum 250 words)

Essay 2

1. Describe a personal experience and how it has influenced who you are today. This essay should have a personal rather than a professional focus. (Maximum 500 words)

Dartmouth (Tuck) Admissions Essays

1. 1. Why is an MBA a critical next step toward your short- and long-term career goals? Why is Tuck the best MBA program for you, and what will you uniquely contribute to the community? (If you are applying for a joint or dual degree, please explain how the additional degree will contribute to those goals.)
2. Discuss your most meaningful leadership experience. What did you learn about your own individual strengths and weaknesses through this experience?
3. Describe a circumstance in your life in which you faced adversity, failure, or setback. What actions did you take as a result and what did you learn from this experience?

Duke (Fuqua) Admissions Essays

Short Answers (250 Characters Each)

1. What are your short-term goals, post-MBA?
2. What are your long-term goals?
3. Life is full of uncertainties, and plans and circumstances can change. As a result, navigating a career requires you to be adaptable. Should the short-term goals that you provided above not materialize what alternative directions have you considered?

Essays

1. Share with us your list of “25 Random Things about YOU.” (2 pages)
2. When asked by your family, friends, and colleagues why you want to go to Duke, what do you tell them? Share the reasons that are most meaningful to you. (2 pages)

Harvard Admissions Essays

Essays

1. Tell us about something you did well. (400 words)
2. Tell us about something you wish you had done better. (400 words)

Joint Degree Applicants

1. How do you expect the joint degree experience to benefit you on both a professional and a personal level? (400 words)

INSEAD Admissions Essays

Job Description Essays

1. Briefly summarize your current (or most recent) job, including the nature of work, major responsibilities, and, where relevant, employees under your supervision, size of budget, clients/ products and results achieved. (250 words maximum)
2. Please give a full description of your career since graduating from university. If you were to remain with your present employer, what would be your next step in terms of position? (250 words)
3. If you are currently not working, what are you doing and what do you plan to do until you start the MBA programme if applicable? (250 words maximum)

Standard Essays

1. Give a candid description of yourself, stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors, which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary. (600 words maximum)
2. Describe what you believe to be your two most substantial accomplishments to date (if possible specify one personal and one professional), explaining why you view them as such. (400 words maximum)
3. Describe a situation taken from your personal or professional life where you failed. Discuss what you learned. (400 words maximum)
4. Discuss your short and long term career goals. (300 words) and b) How will studying at INSEAD help you achieve your vision? (250 words)
5. Please choose one of the following two essay topics:
   a. Have you ever experienced culture shock? What insights did you gain? (250 words), or
   b. Describe the ways in which a foreigner in your country might experience culture shock. (250 words)

Northwestern (Kellogg) Admissions Essays

1. Discuss moments or influences in your personal life that have defined who you are today. (500 word limit)
2. What have been your most significant leadership experiences? What challenges did you face, and what impact did you have? This is your opportunity to explain how you Think Bravely (personally and/or professionally). (500 word limit)
3. Imagine yourself at your Kellogg graduation. What career will you be preparing to enter, and how have the MBA and Kellogg helped you get there? (Please answer in terms of your program choice: One-Year, Two-Year, MMM, JD-MBA) (500 word limit)
4. What one interesting or fun fact would you want your future Kellogg classmates to know about you? (25 words or less)

Michigan (Ross) Admissions Essays

1. Introduce yourself to your future Ross classmates in 100 words or less.
2. Describe your career goals. How will an MBA from Ross help you to achieve those goals? (300 word maximum)
3. Describe a time in your career when you were frustrated or disappointed. What did you learn about yourself from that experience? (500 word maximum)
4. What are you most passionate about and why? How will this passion positively impact Ross? (300 word maximum)

MIT (Sloan) Admissions Essays

Cover Letter

Please prepare a cover letter (up to 500 words) seeking a place in the MIT Sloan MBA program. Your letter should describe your accomplishments, address any extenuating circumstances that may apply to your application, and conform to standard business correspondence. Your letter should be addressed to Mr. Rod Garcia, Senior Director of Admissions.

Essays

We are interested in learning more about how you work, think, and act. For each essay, please provide a brief overview of the situation followed by a detailed description of your response. Please limit the experiences you discuss to those which have occurred in the past three years. In each of the essays, please describe in detail what you thought, felt, said, and did.

1. Please describe a time when you had to convince a person or a group of your idea. (500 words or fewer, limited to one page)
2. Please describe a time when you overcame a personal setback. (500 words or fewer, limited to one page)

NYU (Stern) Admissions Essays

Essay 1: Professional Aspirations (750 words)

(a) Why pursue an MBA (or dual degree) at this point in your life?
(b) What actions have you taken to determine that Stern is the best fit for your MBA experience?
(c) What do you see yourself doing professionally upon graduation?

Essay 2: Your Two Paths (500 words)

The mission of the Stern School of Business is to develop people and ideas that transform the challenges of the 21st century into opportunities to create value for business and society. Given today’s ever-changing global landscape, Stern seeks and develops leaders who thrive in ambiguity, embrace a broad perspective and think creatively about the range of ways they can have impact.
(a) Describe two different and distinct paths you could see your career taking long term. How do you see your two paths unfolding?
(b) How do your paths tie to the mission of NYU Stern?
(c) What factors will most determine which path you will take?

Essay 3: Personal Expression (500 words or 5-minute video)

Please describe yourself to your MBA classmates. You may use almost any method to convey your message (e.g. words, illustrations). Feel free to be creative.
If you submit a non-written piece for Essay 3 (i.e., artwork or multimedia) or if you submit Essay 3 via mail, please upload a brief description of your submission with your online application.

Stanford Admissions Essays

1. What matters most to you, and why?
2. What do you want to do—REALLY—and why Stanford?
3. Answer 1 of the 3 questions below. Tell us not only what you did but also how you did it. What was the outcome? How did people respond? Only describe experiences that have occurred during the last three years.
   a. Tell us about a time in the last 3 years when you built or developed a team whose performance exceeded expectations
   b. Tell us about a time in the last 3 years when you identified and pursued an opportunity to improve an organization
   c. Tell us about a time in the last 3 years when you went beyond what was defined or established.

UCLA (Anderson) Admissions Essays

1. What is your proudest achievement outside the workplace, and how has it impacted you? (700 words maximum)
2. What are your short-term and long-term career goals, and how will an MBA from UCLA Anderson specifically help you achieve these goals? (700 words maximum)

Penn (Wharton) Admissions Essays

Required Question

How will Wharton MBA help you achieve your professional objectives? (400 words)

Respond to 2 of the following 3 questions:

1. Select a Wharton MBA course, co-curricular opportunity or extra-curricular engagement that you are interested in. Tell us why you chose this activity and how it connects to your interests. (500 words)
2. Imagine your work obligations for the afternoon were cancelled and you found yourself “work free” for three hours, what would you do? (500 words)
3. “Knowledge for Action draws upon the great qualities that have always been evident at Wharton: rigorous research, dynamic thinking, and thoughtful leadership.” - Thomas S. Robertson, Dean, The Wharton School.
   Tell us about a time when you put knowledge into action. (500 words)

Yale Admissions Essays

1. What prompted your decision to get an MBA? When did you realize that this was a step you wanted –- or needed -– to take? (150 words)
2. Describe a difficult professional decision you had to make. What were the consequences, and what, if anything, did you learn? Would you make the same decision again? (300 words)
3. The Yale School of Management provides a leadership education characterized by broad-minded and intellectually curious students with diverse backgrounds, a distinctive integrated curriculum, connections to one of the great research universities in the world, and the broad reach of an innovative and expanding global network of top business schools. What will you contribute to the Yale SOM community, and how will being part of it help you extend your professional vision? (300 words)
4. What do you consider to be your most significant accomplishment? Why? (300 words)