essay 1: what do you hope to gain professionally from the wharton mba? (500 words)

Wharton MBA Essays 2021: Writing Your "Give & Have" Story

If you are reading this article, you lot probably already empathise the absolute necessity of presenting a compelling instance for your candidacy in the prompt for your MBA essay. If yous are pursuing a University of Pennsylvania Wharton MBA, this is a neat opportunity to think most  what you can give back to the business school customs. As part of your 2021 MBA application to Wharton, you lot'll have to answer a couple of questions that become something like this:

• Essay 1: What do yous promise to gain professionally from the Wharton MBA? (500 words max)
• Essay two: Taking into consideration your background – personal, professional, and/or academic – how do you plan to brand specific, meaningful contributions to the Wharton community? (400 words max)

These two current Wharton essay prompts are deeply interlinked and must be tackled together. Below, we'll requite ane perspective on how to remember about these essays during the MBA admissions process, using some wisdom of one of the Wharton School of Business' luminary professors.

Adam Grant on Givers and Takers

Adam Grant is a professor of organizational psychology at the Wharton Schoolhouse of Business and the author of a number of bestselling books. Ane of those books, 2013's Give and Accept: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, deals with the phenomenon of what Adam Grant labels "givers" and "takers." In a nutshell, a giver is someone who approaches interactions hoping to contribute something to someone else; a taker is someone who has the opposite arroyo: every interaction is a chance to get something from someone else. Additionally, Grant identifies a third category which he calls "matchers:" people who residue give and have, living by a sort of de facto quid pro quo.

In brief, his conclusions are as follows: givers account for both the most and least productive people in a work environment. Some givers end up trying also hard to please clients and co-workers and end up either burning out or falling behind. Just other givers are able to contribute to the work environment in modest, vital ways over time, e.g. providing helpful feedback or making an introduction between two people who could benefit from knowing 1 another.

Agreeable and Disagreeable People

Grant also goes on to create a second axis of interaction: amusing and bellicose people. This makes a two-by-two matrix where y'all accept disagreeable and agreeable givers besides as disagreeable and agreeable takers. Grant insists that the most dangerous kind of individual in any work environment is the agreeable taker, who gives naught in render, simply is so friendly and pleasant nigh it that they often go unnoticed. He also makes an important point most the need for disagreeable givers, those individuals who may not have the most tact or personal skills only who, withal, are interested in contributing to their customs. He gives the case of the gruff merely concerned employee whose feedback is harsh only valuable.

You tin can get a more complete understanding of Adam Grant'southward ideas about givers, takers, and matchers past watching his famous TED Talk on the subject.

Grant's ultimate argument is that creating a work environment where givers don't burn out and where people are not afraid to ask for help, lets the giver mindset be more than pervasive, which is to the advantage and success of everyone involved. And then, with that understanding, let's render to the essays you'll take to write for the Wharton MBA plan.

Wharton MBA Essay 1: Takers

If you lot review the language of the first Wharton MBA essay, you lot'll find that it is centered around Grant'south concept of taking:

"What do you lot hope to proceeds professionally from the Wharton MBA?"

While this may be a more benign class of taking (subsequently all, no one pursues an education without the hope that it will benefit them), it is important to remember that it still presents something of a trap for those applicants who accost it in a purely selfish way.

What practise you want to gain from attending Wharton?

At its cadre, Essay i requires y'all to have a firm understanding of your career goals. Y'all should exist familiar with what you want to achieve and likewise exist able to specifically refer to the ways in which Wharton will help you achieve it. Listing a bunch of classes is a terrible fashion to arroyo this as it does not requite the admissions committee sufficient insight into your understanding of the school. Anyone can look upwards a list of courses, and many institutions will have parallel classes that might fulfill your goals just equally hands.

Therein lies the taker trap: The first Wharton essay is really about understanding Wharton in such a mode that your applied knowledge flatters and enhances the admissions committee'due south understanding of what information technology has to offering. What you are doing–to paraphrase Grant–is allowing Wharton to be a giver in such a way that they don't burn down out. You are matching your career goals to what the Wharton MBA has to offer. Y'all are letting them be an amusing giver whose strengths are beingness recognized and rewarded.

Wharton Essay 2: Givers

You lot knew this was coming! If Essay one is a prompt that asks you to consider your condition as taker, so Essay 2 must be one that encourages you lot to think of yourself as a giver. If yous look at the language of the second prompt, this is made articulate:

"Taking into consideration your background – personal, professional, and/or academic – how do you plan to make specific, meaningful contributions to the Wharton customs?"

Those "specific, meaningful contributions" are what you tin give to Wharton. And let's be clear, you need to be able to give back to your MBA plan. Part of an AdCom'due south consideration in reviewing candidates is looking at those who tin provide bully ROI by becoming important members of the alumni network or building innovative clubs.

It is important to consider the perspective of the schoolhouse, the community, and the other students when discussing your contribution. Your contribution might be in joining or creating on campus clubs. It might be something well-nigh your background that contributes positively to your report group or a team-oriented project. Function of being a giver, however, means understanding what the school wants to receive. This requires a decent amount of research into Wharton student life and the existing campus centers. You don't want to suggest creating an existing lodge or organizing a conference that they just had. That kind of misstep will not merely fail to mark you as a candidate with something to contribute, it will also marker y'all as a taker: someone and so concerned with what they are getting out of the bargain that they can't be bothered to effigy out what Wharton actually needs.

What will you give back to the schoolhouse?

So what should you actually advise to requite? Information technology is important to pay attending to skills you possess that are in loftier need for the MBA plan. Without bragging about that skill, you tin demonstrate your value every bit an MBA educatee while also reinforcing that you lot want to put your abilities at the disposal of the program that will undoubtedly be giving y'all a leg upwards. Similarly, you lot may want to propose some kind of collaborative endeavour that brings together ii or more clubs, or involves a number of different available resource. Provided that the proposal is something that makes sense for yous to put out there, this can be a great way to show Wharton that you are interested in working with others and that you want to enrich their already rich experience.

One way to brainstorm nearly what yous have to give to Wharton–and more broadly, the University of Pennsylvania–is to remember well-nigh the help you received in putting together the awarding for the Wharton MBA program in the start place. What individuals or clubs were instrumental in giving y'all a mitt? What did they offer and what did you lot learn from them? How might you pass on something similar to the students, organizations, and general customs of Wharton Business concern Schoolhouse?

In the end, realigning your mindset to that of a giver is a valuable part of writing a Wharton essay that both reinforces what you lot have to offering the institution and besides, subtly, shows your familiarity with its star professor and the philosophy behind the institution.

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Source: https://menlocoaching.com/top-mba-programs/upenn-wharton/wharton-mba-essays/

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