Deadlines:
- Round 1: September 11, 2024
- Round 2: January 8th , 2025
- Round 3: April 2, 2025
Northwestern Kellogg Application Essay Tips, 2024-2025
This is the year of the MBA application essay revamp, with many top programs changing their essay prompts. Kellogg has jumped in with both feet, as this year marks the most significant changes in Kellogg’s admissions essay questions in recent history. I was fortunate enough to spend some time recently with Steve Thompson, Kellogg’s Senior Director of MBA Admissions, during the annual meeting of AIGAC admissions consultants and top MBA program leaders, hosted by IESE in Barcelona, Spain. Steve mentioned that they would be making some changes, and indeed they have! A new Essay 1 question highlights intentionality and asks applicants to share their goals, and Essay 2 retains some elements of Kellogg’s prior Essay 1 about leadership and prior Essay 2 about values. Steve mentioned that Kellogg’s intention in changing the essays centered on giving applicants the opportunity to be more direct in sharing their goals, highlighting how Kellogg can help them, and explaining how they can add value to the Kellogg MBA community. Buckle up, folks, because that’s a lot to cover in the 450-word limit! Kellogg stays on brand with their second essay question in asking candidates to share a difficult decision they made and how their leadership style and values played into that decision. Let’s dig into these new questions and reflect on a strategy for answering them!
In the related article How to Get into Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, you will find information on a variety of the MBA program’s offerings.
Kellogg Application Question 1 (450 words)
Intentionality is a key aspect of what makes our graduates successful Kellogg leaders. Help us understand your journey by articulating your motivations for pursuing an MBA, the specific goals you aim to achieve, and why you believe now is the right moment. Moreover, share why you feel Kellogg is best suited to serve as a catalyst for your career aspirations and what you will contribute to our community of lifelong learners during your time here.
In terms of sharing advice about how to tackle this question, intentionality is a good place to start, because you will have to be intentional in planning how you will address all aspects of this prompt in the 450-word limit. I count five questions embedded in this question, asking you to share (1) your motivation for pursuing an MBA, (2) the specific goals you aim to achieve, (3) why now is the right time, (4) how Kellogg is “suited… as a catalyst for your career aspirations,” and (5) what you can contribute to Kellogg. If you consider that you have only 450 words to address all these points, you have only about 90 words for each point. You might be able to address point 3 with fewer words, which would give you more room for point 4, which is a key aspect of the overall question.
The word intentionality is generally defined as the fact of being deliberate or purposive. Kellogg students and alumni know who they are and where they want to go, and they have taken purposeful steps to achieve their goals. Start with a brief story about what has inspired your goals, and then share your goals as well as why this is the right time for you to earn an MBA. Next, share how Kellogg can help you reach your goals. You won’t have room to share too many reasons about how Kellogg can help you, so be intentional in synthesizing how a few resources will uniquely help you, rather than listing lots of resources without connecting back to your personal story. Consider closing by sharing one way you can add value to the Kellogg community.
Kellogg Application Question 2 (450 words)
Kellogg leaders are primed to tackle challenges everywhere, from the boardroom to their neighborhoods. Describe a specific professional experience where you had to make a difficult decision. Reflecting on this experience, identify the values that guided your decision-making process and how it impacted your leadership style.
This question feels familiar in that it builds on Kellogg’s prior MBA application essays and gives applicants the opportunity to share something specific from their professional experience. Kellogg is still looking for “the kind of people who elevate the level of everyone in the room without making it all about them,” to loosely quote a former Kellogg admissions staffer who was describing the school’s ideal applicants.
Keep the Kellogg experience in mind as you respond to this Kellogg MBA essay question. Kellogg leaders have a “high-impact, high-empathy perspective,” use creativity and innovation to create opportunity, collaborate with a sense of empathy, value “intentionality with a strong sense of purpose,” and have a pay-it-forward alumni network.
Kellogg asks you to share “a specific professional experience” of a difficult decision you made. That means one example — not an amalgamation of multiple experiences. You don’t have room to tackle more than one example. There is some ambiguity in what “professional” experience means, given that the opening of the prompt notes that Kellogg leaders tackle challenges in their neighborhoods as well as the boardroom. It is likely safest to discuss a work-related example, but if you have considerable experience in a community-based organization and have demonstrated significant leadership in it, this could also be used as your example. A few things to keep in mind in selecting the example to highlight: Did you take a risk in advocating for a position that could improve your company’s/organization’s future? Did you collaborate with others to achieve the goal? If you write about a difficult decision you made that impacted only you, you’ve missed a chance to share how you build strong organizations. Big problems are not solved by just one person, so think about how you have motivated teams, brought varied perspectives into the decision-making process, and inspired others to achieve meaningful results.
You can think about breaking this question into a CAR (Challenge/Action/Result) model, in which the difficult decision is presented along with the actions you took. Reflect on how your values guided your decision-making process and how you gained insight into your leadership style from this experience.
Those applying to or listing a specialty program as their alternative choice will be prompted to complete an additional question.
Re-applicants will receive a prompt about their growth since their last application: How have you grown or changed personally and professionally since you previously applied and what steps have you taken to become the strongest candidate you can be? (250 words)
How are you a stronger applicant than when you last applied? Have you retaken the GMAT or GRE? Completed new courses? Been promoted or faced new challenges at work? Use these 250 words to show growth, change, improvement, and excellence.
Kellogg Video essays
Kellogg values evaluating the whole applicant and provides each candidate the opportunity to answer a series of video essay questions. Kellogg offers tips on its site on how to answer these three questions here, including the following:
- Video essays are due 96 hours after the application deadline.
- A video essay link will appear on your Application Status Page after you submit your application and payment.
- You will need an internet-connected computer with a webcam and microphone.
- The video should take about 20-25 minutes to complete, which includes time for setup.
- You will have 20 seconds to think about the question and up to one minute to give your response.
For more insight into how Stratus can help you in applying to Kellogg and other top MBA programs, reach out to us to schedule a free consultation.