Shaking Things Up
Most business schools left their essays alone this year. Stanford GSB is sticking with their two iconic core essays, what matters most and why Stanford, which have not changed in a couple of decades, plus the same four short essays. Harvard Business School is also playing it cool, keeping last year's trifecta of your mission, your leadership style, and how you grow. Columbia Business School made changes only to their short answers, and Wharton made a minor wording tweak.
Kellogg shook things up a bit, which I am not complaining about. Their difficult decision essay wasn't my favorite, as it often pushed applicants into too narrow of a story, though it was a fun challenge to find ways to broaden our aperture. I won't miss it. Instead, they lengthened the first essay and changed the wording of the prompt, giving applicants more space to share their goals and who they can be at Kellogg, and the context to these aspirations. Most interesting is the addition of the extra video questions. They used to have three, and now they have five. This gives Kellogg even more of an opportunity to look into the eyes of an applicant and hear their voice in live form. They can see how they communicate, how they navigate being put on the spot, and even how they react when they might make a mistake. The preparation work clients and I are doing is a fine balance between knowing their key points, yet not being overly rehearsed.
Chicago Booth went the other way and put their application on the chopping block. They moved from two essays with unlimited word counts, to four short answer questions plus a short optional essay. Apparently, they were getting too many AI-generated essays. Instead of leaning into it, they gave up.
I do sympathize with them. Even reading one AI-generated essay is tedious (fortunately, my clients know better). I cannot imagine having to read hundreds. However, it seems they just shot themselves in the foot. I am sure they have a keen enough eye to detect when an essay is perfectly polished yet doesn't seem to actually say anything, and is littered with cliché phrases that AI loves. Why not let applicants put their own judgment on display, good or bad? As AI becomes more prevalent, essays become even more important. The bar in terms of writing quality might be higher, but the ability to truly reflect and showcase oneself is increasingly rare.
Now, the Booth adcom will have very little to go off of when they are trying to determine who to invite to interviews. A resume states the facts, but it doesn't really show your values, why you chose this path, what experiences have shaped you, and how you see the world. Recommendations show what you have done at work and why that's important, but the storytelling is not in the hands of the applicant. Essays are the one opportunity to truly meet a person before that first screening.
Booth has advised that they will have a video exercise for applicants invited to interview. They are still working through the structure and type of questions. But what if they miss out on fantastic applicants before that, simply because they didn't give them space to be themselves? Or what if they bring in applicants that are not the right fit for the Booth community, simply because they have a great resume or test score? My clients all know that my money is on a Booth backpedal for the 2027-2028 cycle, and we will see the return of the ever-important essay.
