INSEAD MBA Essays 2019 (for the class of 2020)

INSEAD Business School is one the top global business school with campuses in Europe, Asia and Middle East. It is ranked 2nd in Global Top MBA Rankings 2018 in Financial Times.

In Europe and worldwide INSEAD is the most well known business school and provides the most prestigious MBA program. In the space of five decades, INSEAD has developed from an entrepreneurial venture to an internationally regarded institution.

Around the world and over the decades, INSEAD continues to conduct cutting edge research and to innovate across all our programmes to provide business leaders with the knowledge and sensitivity to operate anywhere.

INSEAD has a rolling admission cycle and has four rounds of MBA application deadlines. Every year number of candidates apply to INSEAD and out of them only 1024 get the admission into INSEAD one year MBA program. As you can easily guess, getting into INSEAD is certainly going to be a challenging process. We provide you with INSEAD interview tips that will help you get better equipped to face the challenge. Our experienced INSEAD admission experts will provide you with practical INSEAD interview tips that will take you one-step closer to your success with your INSEAD application. For preparing below set of essay questions, you may also refer some INSEAD Sample Essay.

Key points for INSEAD:

• INSEAD was founded in 1957, INSEAD has 3 campuses (France, Singapore and Abu Dhabi). It was founded by Harvard professor Georges Doriot
• INSEAD has over 50,000 alumni across more than 170 countries. INSEAD produced many CEOs of Fortune500 companies.
• INSEAD has developed an amazing entrepreneurial atmosphere for its MBA participants, like boot camps, field trips, clubs, venture competitions, entrepreneurs-in-residence and much more.
• INSEAD MBA Program has 75 electives, two intakes across two campuses with the option of exchange with other top global business schools.
• INSEAD has 148 faculty members, and most of the professors are placed among the world’s top 10 global business influences. And INSEAD has 15 Research Centers
• INSEAD is consistently among the top 5 MBA programs in the world by Financial Times.
• 90% candidate’s received at least one job offer 3 months after their graduation.

Know your chances of getting into INSEAD

INSEAD Essays (for class of September 2020-2021)

Essay 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. (short answer)

Just remember this is a get in get out essay. No need to get fancy here.

By short answer, ADCOM is telling you to limit your responses to 200 – 250 words. This is a straight forward question and is asking you to tell more about the current roles and responsibilities. This asks you about how you achieved the achievements that your resume. This is the place where you tell the ADCOM more about what you do, what people did you work with and what did you achieve. It might be tempting to talk about your career progression but don’t.

A good place to start would be to flesh out the most recent job on the resume.

Essay 2: What would be your next step in terms of position if you were to remain in the same company? (short answer)

This question is basically your plan Z. The plan in which you will not be pursuing your MBA. Look at the people around you, especially seniors and see what roles do they perform. Then chart your career trajectory and write about what you will do after you get promoted. Talking to seniors already in that role will surely help.

Even if you are the CEO of your startup, your role will surely evolve. Think how will you take the next step for your company and write about that.

Again, stick to 200- 250 word limit here.

Essay 3: Please give a full description of your career since graduating from university. Describe your career path with the rationale behind your choices. (short answer)

This is the first essay that would need you to apply your brain power and get creative. You cannot afford a bland entry here like the two previous essays. Treat this like a single narrative of your life that starts from your undergrad and continues till the present date. It will be great if you can start off with an overarching goal and then say how you graduated from university and joined X company. Post that you moved on to Y to move closer to your goals. Remember to include what skills you gained at each job and how your goal evolved throughout.

We would recommend 300 – 350 words for this essay and this will tell the ADCOM not only the points in your career but also the reasoning behind them.

Essay 4: Discuss your short and long-term career aspirations with or without an MBA from INSEAD. (short answer)

This essay basically asks you about what you wish to do in the near term.

You can write about your short term goal to start off this essay and tell how you came to that goal through your professional experiences. State that you are firm on achieving your goals WITH or WITHOUT your MBA. Then write about INSEAD as a bridge for you to reach from current state to your goal. Research about the courses and activities that can help you. See if there is a club related to energy industry that you can talk about. Tell how you can achieve your goals FASTER and in a BETTER way by going through the INSEAD experience.

Optional Essay: If you are currently not working or if you plan to leave your current employer more than 2 months before the programme starts, please explain your activities and occupations between leaving your job and the start of the programme.

This is again a get in get out essay.

Be straightforward in saying why you are not currently working or why you plan to leave your job early. The more you try to justify the guiltier you sound. Just state the reason and put a full stop. No suggested word limit here. Try to be as succinct as possible.

Motivation Essays:

Essay 1: Give a candid description of yourself (who are you as a person), 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. (500 words max.)

If we were to put this question in 6 words, it would be “How well do you know yourself!”.

This is all about how self-aware you are and that means both professionally and personally. Do not just limit yourself to listing strengths/weaknesses at work. We are all human beings and need to work on ourselves continually. Introspect in your personal life and see if you can bring something out either as a strength or a weakness.

To write an impactful essay, you need to take the ADCOM on a journey with you. When you are talking about the main factors that have influenced your personal development, write about that particular instance which caused you to rethink life or that particular instance when you were challenged and learnt the most important lessons of your life.

When you are talking about the instance, there you can tell what strengths did you use or what weaknesses did you discover.

Essay 2: Describe the achievement of which you are most proud and explain why. In addition, describe a situation where you failed. How did these experiences impact your relationships with others? Comment on what you learned. (400 words max.)

This essay takes us back to the basics of essay writing and to the exercise that we recommend you to do before writing essays – list down your achievements and failures and rate them. If you have done the exercise, you would have clear winners for this essay.

This is a big essay and you need to allocate the real estate judicially. There are following 5 parts, that means approximately 80 words for each part.

1. Top most achievement (it better be impressive if this is your top most). It should have components like life lessons/touching multiple lives etc.
2. Why does this rank highest
3. Biggest failure (Again remember that all humans fail. Be genuine and explain what it was)
4. How did these experiences impact your relation with others – did you learn something new about yourself? Did you learn something about others? Did you become popular or less popular?
5. LESSONS – this is pretty important. Be sure to talk about this at length.

We would recommend allocating around 200 words for the last 2 points and 200 for the top 3.

Essay 3: Tell us about an experience where you were significantly impacted by cultural diversity, in a positive or negative way. (300 words max.)

This essay might seem to be a daunting task for people who have to travel much. But remember that cultural diversity does not only come from traveling. You can talk about your diverse national/international teams. Your travels to different parts of the country.

It is ok to describe an unpleasant experience here too. Do not be pressurized to think of something positive. Just be sure to stay away from politics if you are talking about a negative experience.

Essay 4: (optional) Is there anything else that was not covered in your application that you would like to share with the Admissions Committee? (300 words max.)

As the name suggests, this is an optional essay and should be written only if you have something to clarify such as low GPA, low GMAT, gap in work experience, un usual choice of recommenders etc.

Just get in get out and drop the mike!

If you need INSEAD Essay Writing Help or INSEAD Interview Preparation, please fill up Quick Inquiry form (on right).

 Recent Successful Admits

Admitted to INSEAD and Judge Business School

Snigdha

Hello General Education team, I have some great news!

Got admit from INSEAD and Cambridge. Anirvan was very much supportive and provided me quality feedback for my application and interview process. I will surely recommend your services to my friends and colleagues who are planning to apply soon. Thank you

Name	Snigdha
GMAT Score	730
Work EXP	48 months
Admitted To	INSEAD and Judge Business School

INSEAD MBA  – Related FAQs:

Does INSEAD accept GRE score?

INSEAD accepts the GRE test for which they advise candidates to aim for a score above 85% for the quantitative and verbal sections of the GRE.

Avg. GRE score for INSEAD is 326.

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What is the ideal GMAT score for INSEAD?

Ideally, GMAT score should be 700+. Avg. GMAT for 2019 intake was 710.

INSEAD strongly encourage candidates to target the 70th – 75th percentile or above for both the verbal and quantitative parts of the test.

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Does INSEAD provide scholarships?

Candidates can only apply to our scholarships once they have been admitted to the programme or have been shortlisted for an interview. INSEAD offers upto 50 different scholarships to all eligible and admitted MBA students, all with differing eligibility criteria.

Here is the link to the list of INSEAD scholarships available for reference.

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What is the minimum/maximum work experience required for INSEAD?

Work experience is a requirement for admission and students usually have 6 years of work experience on an average.

The minimum work experience required is at least 2 years of full-time postgraduate experience. Internships/Trainings/Articleship/Residency are valued, but do not count towards the requirement for full-time postgraduate experience.

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What is the ideal profile for INSEAD?

Avg. GMAT score for INSEAD is 710 and avg. work experience is 6 years.

Other aspects of an application that INSEAD Admission team also places emphasis on are International Outlook, Leadership Potential and Ability to contribute to the INSEAD learning experience.

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What is the length of the INSEAD MBA program?

INSEAD MBA program is of 10 months duration.

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What are the job opportunities and salary after INSEAD?

91% of the INSEAD graduates between 2017-2019 reported having received at least one job offer 3 months after their graduation date. Overall Annual Mean Salary was US$ 110,400 and Overall Median Sign-on Bonus was US$ 27,000.