Georgetown McDonough MBA Sample Essays
Our goal at Georgetown McDonough is to craft a diverse class with people who have had varying personal and professional life experiences. As such, we want to give our applicants the opportunity to select one essay (from a list of three) that allows them the ability to best highlight their experiences, characteristics, and values that showcase the value proposition that they can bring to the McDonough community. To view the essay options, please click essays in the dropdown and the full essay prompt will appear.
- Please select one of the following three essays to complete in 500 words or less.
- Please include the essay option prompt and your first/last name at the top of your submission.
Essay Option 1 – Principled Leadership
Georgetown McDonough places a strong emphasis on principled leadership, providing both curricular and co-curricular opportunities to strengthen your leadership skills. Describe a time when you’ve led a team in a professional environment to implement a new idea or process. What leadership characteristics did you utilize? What could you have done to be more effective? And most importantly, what skills will you be able to bring to the teams you lead at McDonough?
Essay Option 2 – Hoyas Helping Hoyas
Hoyas Helping Hoyas. Georgetown McDonough embodies the ethos that people and organizations can and should contribute to the greater good. The admissions committee would like to better understand how you’ve demonstrated these values during uniquely challenging times. Describe a time where you’ve put the needs of others ahead of your own, or ahead of the bottom line. We look forward to learning more about the challenge you faced, what unique characteristics you brought to that scenario, and what you learned from it.
Essay Option 3 – Personal Brand
Think of a business leader or role model you admire or aspire to be. What are the defining characteristics of his or her personal brand that you see in yourself? Give an example of how you have been able to emulate these characteristics in your professional career and how your personal brand will enrich the McDonough community.
McDonough MBA Sample Essay 1
Hoyas Helping Hoyas
Georgetown McDonough embodies the ethos that people and organizations can and should contribute to the greater good. The admissions committee would like to better understand how you’ve demonstrated these values during uniquely challenging times. Describe a time where you’ve put the needs of others ahead of your own, or ahead of the bottom line. We look forward to learning more about the challenge you faced, what unique characteristics you brought to that scenario, and what you learned from it.
As a person, I’ve always defined myself as someone who loves making things better – be it processes, organizations, or the lives of the people around me. Early in my life, I got exposed to a youth-run organization called AIESEC, which laid the foundation of my core values of a democratic and impact-oriented professional.
I devoted almost three and a half years of service to AIESEC, where I’ve headed social projects and awareness campaigns at the grass-root level impacting 40000+ individuals. I have been dedicated to the cause of doing meaningful work at the grass-root level, so much so that, after graduation, and took a gap year to continue my work with AIESEC for another year as I believed I had more to learn, contribute and grow.
Through AIESEC, I came to know and chose to join an early-stage start-up – “InMotion”,
because I was thoroughly motivated by social impact potential. InMotion worked with financially underserved communities of manual day labourers, cart pullers, and drivers. On the Job, the travel between cities wasn’t comfortable, and the salary wasn’t much, but the team never cared about any of those things as we were all about helping people. In the 19 months when I worked there, we were able to help approximately 5,000 families of drivers by assisting them to get bank accounts, primary financial education and help them save ~$3.5m. My stint with InMotion reaffirmed my faith in the ideology of measuring achievements by the impact.
As I grew vertically in my career, I ensured that the hunger to create a positive impact stayed alive within me. In 2017, I left an established career to join an organization – “Credenc” as their 2nd employee because I genuinely believed the problem Credenc was trying to solve – Student Financing for international aspirants. Credenc seemed like the right place to put my heart and soul into creating a change-driven organization. I even ended up taking a pay cut to join them because of budget constraints. We worked day-night and grew the team from 4 to 35, and in the end, managed to raise $2.5m in Series A funding, which was a testament to the work we were doing there. Today, the start-up can help even more students every day, and the work I accomplished remains one of my proudest contributions and most satisfying jobs. Credenc left such an impact on my career aspirations that I have continued working in the student finance domain and currently leading partnership and business development at MPOWER.
I consider myself fortunate and happy to merge my profession and my passion for social work into one through the opportunities AIESEC, InMotion and Credenc gave me. These experiences have defined my career and imbibed in me the belief that today I can relate to McDonough’s core principle of Hoyas helping Hoyas. I have always enjoyed the difference I managed to create in the environment around me and look forward to continuing the spirit at Mcdonough with my fellow MBA peers.