UW Foster School of Business Essay Tips, 2024–2025
The University of Washington’s Foster School of Business attracts MBA candidates who are not just accomplished leaders in both their personal and professional lives but are also individuals who seek a collaborative, innovative culture and possess an innate desire to solve the most challenging problems of our time. Outstanding application essays therefore require deep introspection and a fluid storyline that effectively connects the dots between a candidate’s motivations, accomplishments, trajectory, and why UW is the best launching pad to achieve their goals.
Here are a few tips to tackling each of the program’s application essays. Keep in mind that your personal narrative should flow throughout all components of your application. The admissions committee already has your resume, so the purpose of the essays is to add color and explain how everything in your profile ties together and makes you one of the best MBA candidates they’ve ever seen.
Essay #1
Post-MBA Plans (750 words maximum) – Tell us your ideas about what lies ahead in your career. What are the gaps or deficiencies currently preventing you from pursuing these potential career paths? How do you plan to use your time in the Foster MBA program to fill these gaps and advance your career?
Essay #1 provides the framework by way of the prompt, so most candidates will structure their answers similarly. To stand out, applicants must be as specific as possible, demonstrate introspection, and clearly explain why they want to earn their MBA at Foster and why now.
- Be specific. While changing your mind about your professional aspirations later is okay, it’s important to be clear in your essay about what your short- and long-term goals are, to connect the dots between where you have been and where you want to go immediately post MBA, to explain why you think Foster is the right stepping stone, and to describe where you hope to land in the end. Having visionary/stretch goals is okay, but they should sound achievable. Explain your motivations, including either an anecdote about what inspired you or the story of a critical turning point that put you on your current trajectory. Provide examples where possible, using specific job titles or target companies.
- Demonstrate introspection. MBA programs value candidates who are self-aware, have a growth mind-set, and are in touch with not just their strengths and weaknesses but also their blind spots. Don’t provide generic gap answers like needing “strategy” and “leadership” skills. What specific leadership skill do you need help developing? What do you mean by strategy? Connect your strengths to your long-term goals, and explain how the only thing hindering your progress is needing to fill the gaps you’ve identified.
- Explain why Foster and why now. Demonstrate your in-depth knowledge of specific components of the Foster experience by mentioning classes, clubs, programs, and/or opportunities that only Foster can provide and explaining not only how you will benefit from those experiences but also how you will contribute to their success. Clarify why this is the right time in your life to get your MBA, leveraging your professional accomplishments to date and detailing why the timing is perfect for you personally.
Essay #2
Personal Resilience (500 words maximum) – Resilience is one of the most important values of a successful Foster student. Tell us about what resilience means to you and share some of the ways that you have demonstrated resilience in overcoming personal or professional challenges. How do you anticipate showing resilience during your time as an MBA candidate?
Essay #2 is your chance to dig deep and truly showcase your values and ability to thrive during and after the MBA, no matter what challenges arise.
- Define resilience. Start by responding to the prompt’s opening query about “what resilience means to you” before offering your examples, but try to do so without researching the topic online or asking AI, so you avoid coming up with a cliche answer, given that so many candidates will be responding to the same question. If you have ever been inspired by someone else’s resilience, this is the right place to address why you were so moved by them and now aspire to grow and evolve in a similar direction.
- Dig deep. Depending on your background, there could be several, dozens, or even hundreds of candidates whose resumes overlap with yours. The best way to differentiate yourself is to offer the admissions committee unique stories that showcase your inner strength. This means you should not shy away from sharing personal stories that include a human component, whether from your workplace or your personal life.
- Diversify. Do your best to include multiple stories, offering examples from your personal, professional, and academic sides (with the last one answering the MBA part of the essay question).
- Describe. Explain in detail how you demonstrated resilience, leveraging a simple framework such as SCR (Situation, Complication, Resolution) to set the stage. Then, provide context around how difficult the situation was, and show your ability to assess, pivot, and pursue the best path forward, given the circumstances. To convey your ability to be introspective and emotionally resilient — in addition to tactically so — share how the experience made you feel.
- Detail learnings. Wrap up your essay by explaining what your examples of resilience have taught you and how you’ll use those learnings not just during the MBA program but throughout your life.
Essay #3
Optional essay (500 words maximum) – Include this essay if you have additional information you believe would be helpful to the admissions committee in considering your application.
Keep in mind that this essay truly is optional, so don’t use it to expand on what you have discussed already in essays #1 and #2. Use this essay only if you need to explain extenuating circumstances or clarify any potentially confusing parts of your application.
For example, give the admissions committee insight into any less-than-favorable parts of your application, such as low grades or test scores, why you do not have a referral from your current employer, or a lack of upward mobility after multiple years on the job.
You can also shed light on parts of your application that would benefit from additional explanation, such as frequent job hopping, gap years, or a personal situation that hindered you in some way.
Application readers hate when candidates use this space to highlight more of their accomplishments, so make sure that you actually have a good reason for choosing to write this essay.
Essay #4
Optional Diversity, Equity & Inclusion essay (500 words maximum) – At the Foster School of Business, we embrace diversity as one of the foundations of both successful business strategy and a world-class educational experience. We share the University’s dedication to promoting the understanding and appreciation of human differences, and the constructive expression of ideas. We welcome you to share some of the ways you have practiced inclusion, promoted equity or supported the advancement of underrepresented groups.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision to end affirmative action in college admissions might help explain why this type of essay prompt is increasingly showing up in MBA applications. It is a way for business schools to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within the parameters of acceptable practices by admitting students who value it as much as they do.
It is in your best interest to answer this question if you have a clear, concrete example of how you practiced inclusion, promoted equity, or supported an underrepresented group, keeping in mind that diversity goes beyond ethnicity, race, gender, and sexual orientation. Feel free to share examples within these categories or beyond, such as working with neurodiverse or other individuals whose experience of the world and ways of expressing themselves are simply very different from your own.
Showcase your positive impact and — just as importantly — how you benefited and grew from the two-way dialogue and inclusive efforts. Be mindful that you don’t know who will be reading your application, and be sensitive to how the people who experienced the situation alongside you would feel if they read your essay.
As is true with all essays, anecdotes are easiest to follow when they are presented using a simple framework, such as the aforementioned SCR.
Given that the prompt says “some of the ways,” make sure that you include either multiple anecdotes or a single anecdote that has multiple components to demonstrate the myriad ways in which you have promoted DEI.
This is a great essay to showcase aspects of your personal life, because you might be able to draw more compelling, heartfelt examples from outside of your workplace.
If you don’t have any concrete examples to share, you should probably skip writing this essay. It’s worse to include weak examples than no examples, because weak ones only highlight one’s lack of effort in the space.