IVEY MBA Application Essays 2020-2021
Essay 1: What are your short-term career plans immediately post-MBA, and why is an Ivey MBA essential to those plans? (250 word limit)
Essay 2: What is the most important issue that you’ve ever changed your mind about? (250 word limit)
Essay 3: The scholarship essay should be no longer than 500 words and should specifically address the questions outlined below. Please feel free to copy and paste from other parts of your Ivey MBA application as this portion is seen by the Financial Aid Office only.
- Paragraph 1: Outline your intended career goal after completing the Ivey MBA program. Be as specific as possible indicating industry as well.
- Paragraph 2: Please provide examples of demonstrated leadership within the community, either now or during your undergrad.
- Paragraph 3: Please outline any additional community involvement you have had.
- Paragraph 4: Please indicate how you plan to finance the Ivey MBA program.
IVEY MBA Winning Sample Essays – 1
IVEY MBA Essay 1: What are your short-term career plans immediately post-MBA, and why is an Ivey MBA essential to those plans? (250-word limit)
I have 3.5 years of professional experience in the tech-consulting domain. Post-MBA, I would like to remain in the consulting domain but would like to broaden my horizons from tech to strategy consulting and aspire to work for the big 3 MBB consulting firms.
I started my professional career with my own startup ‘Fixea360’ where we merged Layout Design & Planning with Virtual Reality. We scaled ‘Fixea360’ to 70+ customers and became profitable within the first 6 months. Later in the year, we received a great offer of acquisition from ‘SpectraVR’ and my partners and I decided to make a successful exit. Post Fixea360, I joined Accenture, where, in the last 2 years, I’ve worked with international clients like Volkswagen and British Telecom which has helped me further enhance my technical and cross-functional business skills.
Now, in order to grow my career as a consultant, I believe, I should upskill myself via a formal business education. After discussions with current MBA students, I think Ivey’s MBA program would be one of the best-suited programs to fulfill my objectives.
At Ivey, I really liked the focus on the case study model, combined with hands-on learning programs like the Capstone module. I believe these can give me holistic exposure to problem-solving and pragmatic decision-making. Also as depicted in the employment report, 28% of the graduating class joined consulting industries, which is a testament in itself that IVEY’s MBA can provide me with the knowledge, network, and employment opportunities to fulfill my short-term goals.
IVEY MBA Essay 2: What is the most important issue that you’ve ever changed your mind about? (250-word limit)
I’ve always been a passionate musician, I was a part of the rock band ‘Incendium’ as the lead vocalist and the rhythm guitarist.
In Feb’17, I was invited to be a part of a unique 100 member band ‘The live 100 experience’. The band had 100 musicians from all over the country performing together in synchrony. We performed in front of Mr Amit Trivedi, a renowned Indian Music director. Our performance gathered 1.4 Million views on youtube and we became a youtube sensation.
Post that performance, the band wanted to take part in India’s Got Talent (IGT). IGT would have been a big commitment with lots of travelling and rehearsals. I had to choose music or a professional career. After long discussions with my family and friends, I decided to opt-out of the band.
The unique idea of the band was very well accepted, the band made it to the Grand Finale of India’s Got Talent Season 8 and became a national sensation overnight. Given the popularity and the fame received by the band I initially started to rethink my decision.
Quitting music and missing out on a lifetime opportunity was one of the biggest & hardest decisions of my life. But now, I have moved on and won multiple recognition for my work at Accenture. These recognitions have more than compensated for the missed opportunities and today I am more resolute and dedicated to my career and dream of becoming a successful consultant.
IVEY MBA Essay 3: The scholarship essay should be no longer than 500 words and should specifically address the questions outlined below. Please feel free to copy and paste from other parts of your Ivey MBA application as this portion is seen by the Financial Aid Office only.
Paragraph 1: Outline your intended career goal after completing the Ivey MBA program. Be as specific as possible indicating industry as well.
Paragraph 2: Please provide examples of demonstrated leadership within the community, either now or during your undergrad.
Paragraph 3: Please outline any additional community involvement you have had.
Paragraph 4: Please indicate how you plan to finance the Ivey MBA program.
I started my professional career with my own startup ‘Fixea360’ where we merged Layout Design & Planning with Virtual Reality. We scaled ‘Fixea360’ to 70+ customers and became profitable within the first 6 months. Later in the year, we received a great offer of acquisition from ‘Spectra VR’ and my partners and I decided to make a successful exit. With my experience at a startup and the fervor for technology, I joined Accenture. For the past 2 years, I’ve been fortunate to serve 2 of the biggest names in the respective industries, Volkswagen, and British Telecom which has helped me reinforce my cross-functional business understanding. Working at my start-up and later at MNC such as Accenture, one thing that’s been common is my affinity towards problem-solving. Analyzing a complex situation to come up with tangible solutions for the same has been something that has always intrigued me. In light of the above reasons, in the short-term, I intend to work as a strategy consultant at a firm like Mckinsey.
Having grown up wanting to contribute to society in some way or the other, I joined the Rotaract-club in the Year 2015. I initially volunteered for various blood donation camps and fund-raising campaigns for the underprivileged. As a recognition of my efforts, I was appointed as the Professional-Director of the Club. I focus on the cause of helping underprivileged youths and I look for ways to positively impact their lives. During this attempt, I found that a huge part of the underprivileged youth in India was unaware of the job prospects out there for them. I personally assessed their profiles and conducted sessions to equip them with the necessary skills, making them job-ready. As a result, I was able to help 91+ young diploma holders acquire a job within the next 6 months
I am also closely related to the Royal-Rose Foundation which is a small child age home in Pune for children affected with HIV. The home hosts around 15 children. I frequent the place to spend time with the kids and to occasionally teach them subjects like mathematics & history. Last year, I organized a fundraising campaign in collaboration with the Rotaract-club and helped raise more than 50,000 INR which was helpful to the foundation in terms of arranging medication for the children.
In terms of funding my MBA, after a brief discussion with current students at Ivey and the figures posted on the Ivey-website, I believe the total cost of the program including tuition, living expenses, supplies, etc would approximately be CAD 140000. My savings along with some financial support from my parents contribute up to CAD 60000. For the rest of the amount, I plan to apply for a loan from a nationalized bank in India or Prodigy-Finance. But the high loan amount along with the high-interest rates on loans in India put a lot of pressure on the student and so a scholarship would help me to a great extent to be focused on the course.
IVEY MBA Winning Sample Essays – 2
IVEY MBA Essay 1: What are your short-term career plans immediately post-MBA, and why is an Ivey MBA essential to those plans? (250-word limit)
I have 7+ years of experience, as an IT consultant, an entrepreneur and a business consultant in a management consulting firm. After an MBA, my short-term goal is to transition to a full-time strategy consulting role in firms like the MBB’s and the Big 4’s.
I started my career in the IT industry as a technical consultant and after 3 years decided to pursue my passion and took to entrepreneurship. After a 2 year stint of running my own cafe, I have now joined another startup in the management consulting domain where I lead the sales and marketing strategy teams.
My consulting and entrepreneurship experiences have transformed me from a team member to a leader and exposed me to the intricacies of working with cross-functional teams. However, to build a successful career as a consultant, I think I need to fulfill knowledge gaps and upskill myself through an MBA. After extensive research & discussions with Ivey alums Matthew Simioni & Arun Bala Pazhayannur, I believe an MBA from Ivey would be a perfect fit for my desired needs and short-term goals.
IVEY’s case study-based methodology and the Field Project will give me the opportunity to hone independent thinking, gain hands-on exposure to end-to-end consulting and learn from the feedback of a diverse peer group. Additionally, after 7 years of exp, I believe the crisp 1 year MBA would allow me to enter the workforce quickly, therefore I am convinced that Ivey’s MBA offers a perfect package to meet my needs and aspirations.
IVEY MBA Essay 2: What is the most important issue that you’ve ever changed your mind about? (250-word limit)
In 2016, I decided to quit my IT consulting job and pursue my dream to open my own cafe. I started a bistro in the heart of Mumbai serving Belgium waffles and crepes and my cafe was the first to introduce waffle sandwiches in Mumbai.
I bootstrapped the business and believed that a good product would speak for itself and make my business grow in leaps and bounds. With that belief, I focused on providing exceptional in-house customer service and menu but skipped on external marketing to keep my overheads low. We continued our focus on good service to generate repeat business but as more competition and waffle houses joined the fray repeat business dwindled.
That’s when I realized that, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Word of mouth works but at a snail’s pace, and a good product speaks for itself but only in a whisper. It is marketing that educates the customer about the “value” of the product and makes the “whisper” audible. 20 months into the business, we had grown nominally, the initial buzz created through publications had been forgotten, & money that remained was sufficient to either foot the bills or market the product.
A few months later, I shut the business – but opened my mind. Lesson learned, and the first thing I did when I joined the management consulting startup was to onboard a digital marketing agency, increase investments overtime in targeted digital campaigns, and launch a bi-annual, mega-networking event with media and sponsors to increase visibility exponentially.
IVEY MBA Essay 3: The scholarship essay should be no longer than 500 words and should specifically address the questions outlined below. Please feel free to copy and paste from other parts of your Ivey MBA application as this portion is seen by the Financial Aid Office only.
Paragraph 1: Outline your intended career goal after completing the Ivey MBA program. Be as specific as possible indicating industry as well.
Paragraph 2: Please provide examples of demonstrated leadership within the community, either now or during your undergrad.
Paragraph 3: Please outline any additional community involvement you have had.
Paragraph 4: Please indicate how you plan to finance the Ivey MBA program.
I have 7+ years of experience as a consultant and an entrepreneur acquiring skills across varied functions & industries. I started as a techno-functional consultant with an IT major working with a cross-functional team (Finance, Sales, IT) across UAE, USA, India on a financial project. As an entrepreneur and a consultant in the hospitality sector, I learned the intricacies of business management & top-line growth strategies. Today, I work as a Business Consultant with a management consulting startup, formulating its marketing & sales strategy. In this role so far, I have worked with seasoned consultants & companies ranging from $1M to $40B across FMCG, Retail, Healthcare, Manufacturing and Renewable Energy, and increased my company’s top-line growth by 40%. My goal after an Ivey MBA is to transition to full-time strategy consulting.
In terms of community engagement, Since October 2017, I have been engaged with a charity named XXX, helping as a pro bono hospitality and fund-raising consultant to build its dream project – a café cum training institute.
After I shut my entrepreneurial venture – a dessert bistro in the heart of Mumbai, I took a spiritual break in Dharamshala, India. Here, by a chance encounter, I met XXXXX co-founder of the American-Tibetan run NGO XXX. He educated me about his work and sought help to build a café cum training institute that can serve as a sustainable revenue source for the NGO’s community service & also as a platform to teach the refugees about barista & patisserie making skills which are highly employable skills in the tourist town of Dharamshala. I have since provided strategic & operational guidance to the NGO, collaborated with professors & students from Tulane University, New Orleans to crowdfund USD 5k, & brought the Macquarie Group onboard to donate USD 17k. The café-institute is under construction today & will be launched by Jul 2019.
Apart from that, I am also an active volunteer with an NGO for cancer treatment & research. The cause is very close to my heart since my mother has been working in this field & educating me about it for nearly 2 decades. Last year I raised USD 8.5K for the charity. The amount covered the chemotherapy, radiation & medical aid for 13 patients for a year. For the last 4 years, I have been helping the charity organize awareness marathons & entertainment programs for children suffering from cancer.
In regards to funding my MBA, with my research on the website & discussion with Ivey alum Bharath Jami, I believe the total expenses including tuition, PKP, international study exchange & living would approximately amount to CAD 150,000. My personal savings of about CAD 23,000 will help cover most of my living expenses and My family (parents, and brother located in the US) have promised to contribute CAD 64,000 towards my education. To cover the remaining cost of CAD 62000, I will avail of an education loan from a private financial institution but 62,000 is a big loan amount and a scholarship would go to a great extent to keep my burden low so that I can focus on my learning and continue my community work as well.