Stanford MBA Essays

Buenas Noches! Following our exclusive series of top B-school Essays, today we bring you the Stanford Graduate School MBA Application Essays for the admission cycle 2024-25! Recognized as one of the top three, B-schools in the US, Stanford is part of both the famous H-W-S Trio and M7 esteemed B-schools across the United States.   

The Stanford MBA program is recognized for its small size, competitive application process, world-class education, resources, and obviously extravagant packages! Being close to Silicon Valley, the world’s tech hub, Stanford B-school is well known for its strengths in entrepreneurship and the high-tech industry. AS INDICATED BY ITS MOTTO, the Stanford MBA program encourages positive change, “Change lives. Change Organizations. Change the world.” 

With that said, let us first glance at all the relevant dates regarding different rolling application rounds!

Application Round	Submission Deadline	Decision Notification Date
MBA Round 1.	10 Sep 2024	05 Dec 2024
MBA Round 2	08 Jan 2025	03 Apr 2025
MBA Round 3	08 Apr 2025	29 May 2025

With that settled, let’s move on to the Core part of this article, The Stanford MBA Essays!

MBA Essays 2024-25

For B-schools, the essay questions are a way to help them learn about who you are rather than solely what you have done. All the other elements of your application give insight into your academic and professional success involving accolades, accomplishments, and leadership awards; the essays reveal the person behind those achievements, the journey, the hard work, the failures, and all those long nights that collectively which shaped your life and made you the person you are today!

For this admission cycle, Stanford has selected two standardized personal essays. 

Moreover, as per instructions on the Standford B-school official website, both essays combined must not exceed 1,000 words – “We recommend up to 650 words for Essay A and up to 350 words for Essay B.”

Essay A: What matters most to you, and why?

“Why are you so committed to your fitness regime?” I once asked my coworker.

“I want to look good in the mirror,” he responded.

“Why is that important to you?”

 “Looking good boosts my confidence and helps me feel accepted.”

 “Why is that feeling so crucial for you?”

He paused, reflecting. “As a child, I was often bullied for my weight. I exercise for health, yes, but more so to never revisit those painful days.”

This simple context, buried three layers deep in our conversation, gave me a whole new perspective on my coworker. This is what my professors call the “Third Why” in their book, The Unsold Mindset — a concept revealing how much depth can be unpacked from even simple, innocuous statements. 

The revelation of my coworker’s true motivation highlighted an essential truth: the most genuine connections are forged not through surface-level interactions, but through the exploration of our deeper selves. When we uncover the ‘Third Why,’ we delve into the raw, often unguarded aspects of our experiences and emotions. What matters to me most is conversation, because in conversation we forge connection and in connection we forge understanding. 

This desire for connection stems from two seminal moments in my life. First, during the 20XX recession, my father had to work 90-hour weeks just to provide for our family. Even when he wasn’t working, he had no energy left to devote to our relationship, and my loneliness grew into resentment. At thirteen, in an almost cinematic act of adolescent naivety, I took all the cash from my piggy bank and ran away from home. I only made it about 25 minutes in xx before a policeman inquired about the wandering boy near the bus station. 

The second moment arose from a string of bullying incidents in high school. As a young yy student in a predominantly white high school, I was singled out constantly: From proclamations of “picking vegetables on the farm” or calling me a “Border Baby” to blatantly racist social media posts and deliberate social exclusion, my classmates were intent on wearing down me sense of self-worth. I couldn’t understand why they hated me so much, save for the slightly darker shade of my skin.

Looking back, I think my passion for connection stems from the complete lack of connection I experienced both at home and in school.

The concept of the “Third Why” resonates deeply with my personal journey. It’s more than a technique; it’s a lens through which I’ve come to understand my own experiences. Just as my coworker’s fitness regime was about overcoming past trauma, my challenges were rooted in a profound need for connection and acceptance.

These experiences drastically shaped my perspective on human interactions, teaching me that beneath every action lies a deeper, often unspoken narrative. It’s not just about what people say or do, but about understanding the underlying reasons — their “Third Why.” This is what unlocks true mutual understanding and connection between two people. 

As a sales representative at XYZ during the coronavirus pandemic, I uncovered hundreds of Third Whys. I talked to a self-employed woman who needed XYZ so she could continue working while raising her newborn baby. I spoke with a CEO who desperately wanted to avoid laying off even one of his 6,000 employees, his voice weighted with urgency. 

In this sense, my role at XYZ during the pandemic wasn’t just a job; it was a continuation of my personal mission. XYZ became a tool that transcended physical barriers, enabling connections during a period of unprecedented isolation. It allowed me to practice and apply the “Third Why” in the real world, helping others bridge the gaps in their lives caused by isolation and uncertainty.

Whether I’m making a sale or resolving a conflict with a loved one, my approach is the same: I sit down and listen until I understand why.

Essay B: Why Stanford?

Building on the success of my startup ABC, I hope to found another sales-focused AI firm that unlocks new levels of efficiency for entire sales teams as opposed to individual cold-calls. My ultimate goal is to reshape the sales industry using AI-driven innovation: Imagine a world where AI predicts customer needs before they are expressed, allowing sales representatives to develop more meaningful and productive relationships with their clients.  

At ABC, our focus was on developing a product that clearly met a market need, creating significant value for our customers. Recognizing our early-entry advantage in the product domain, yet mindful of the limited defensibility in AI technology and the potential for larger sales technology firms to develop similar tools, we opted to pursue an exit strategy at this juncture. The AI space moves quickly, and a successful startup in this industry needs a leader who can keep pace.

To this end, I’m determined to round out my entrepreneurial toolkit with a multidisciplinary business education from a school that always keeps its sights squarely focused on the future. 

From a product development standpoint, learning to build a technologically defensible product will help establish a moat to ward off competition. Mastering interpersonal dynamics will be crucial for quickly scaling hiring and fundraising, while learning to set clear business objectives will help me drive productivity in order to scale faster and smarter.

Courses like“Startup Garage” and “Managing Growing Enterprises” will teach me how to build startups into market leaders, and I’ll have ample opportunity to augment this knowledge by leveraging the entrepreneurial resources in the Venture Studio, networking with leading design experts at the d.school, and learning best practices from cutting-edge startups during the Entrepreneurial Summer Internship Program. 

I’ve spent the last three years offering pro-bono career coaching for low-income Latin American individuals interested in technology sales careers. I’d like to continue this mentorship through Stanford’s Hispanic Business Student Association, developing a sales bootcamp to teach Bay Area youth universally applicable sales techniques. 

I’m determined to keep pace with the rapidly evolving AI landscape as I seek cutting-edge business solutions that help us sell better, work faster, and build bigger. Stanford is a world-renowned beacon of big ideas, and I’d be honored for the opportunity to throw my own ideas into the mix.

Apart from the two mandatory essays, there is also an Optional Short Answer Question in the application process to provide an opportunity for each candidate to expand on their background by responding to the below-mentioned optional short answer question:

Think about times you’ve created a positive impact, whether in professional, extracurricular, academic, or other settings. What was your impact? What made it significant to you or others?

Stanford B-School MBA Essay Tips 2024-25: Write Essays That Inspires!

Let’s start with the basics – In each essay, we recommend applicants to be “genuine.” Introspect carefully about your ambitions, passion, dreams, goals, and most importantly, personal values. As in the words of Stanford AdCom, there is no “right answer” to these questions — the best answer is the one that “is truest for you.”

The first essay it’s more of a personal question to the core; hence we would like to suggest you reflect deeply upon your journey and write from the heart! Certain experiences, people, insights, or observations may have shaped your perspectives and viewpoint!

Once you’ve identified what matters to you the most, it’s up to you to make the AdCom understand “Why?” To better understand the theme, you might consider answering questions like- What makes this so important to you? Who Inspired you?

What insights or experiences shaped your viewpoint? For your reference, I would like you to refer to our article- Are you ready to apply to Stanford? You will get some beneficial insights.

The second essay is one of the most common B-school essays asked by each school in their application or school essays. To start, describe your goals & aspirations and how your experience at Stanford GSB will help you realize them. Hence you need to understand how to link your goals to your experience, your ECAs, and your skill-set to form a network structure in your essays to make them collinear. To have a better understanding of the topic, I would recommend you go through some of the reference articles like-

Suggested Reading

How to bring collinearity to your post-MBA goals?

How to Frame Practical MBA Goals Essays

How to demonstrate your fit to your target business school?

Optional Short Answer Questions

This additional section allows applicants to discuss some of their contributions more fully. 

“optional” means that it’s totally up to you! No pressure at all.

It’s your choice; If you feel that you’ve already described your contributions sufficiently well in other areas of the application, congratulations, you’re done! If not, feel free to use this space to tell us more about yourself!

As the question clearly states, the emphasis must be on positive change! Stanford loves entrepreneurs who have created positive qualitative differences in people’s lives throughout their journey to become the best amongst the crowd! Try to find examples that would suit these instances perfectly, no matter how small, as it’s not about the magnitude but the impact itself!

First, it’s better to plan everything out in the open. Then, design a brief structure emphasizing leadership, positive change, an appetite for serving the community, and most importantly, a clear vision to help make your plans successful!  

Finally, try not to overlap with examples and materials already listed on other documents sent to the committee. You could definitely take a reference and quote one or two lines but using the same examples more and more showcases the lack of creativity and content! That’s exactly where an expert’s advice could come in handy! 

We follow a unique framework to help applicants dig deep into their work experience, leadership potential, strengths, weaknesses, etc., and structure the stories in a way that can bring the most impact. 

That’s all about the Stanford B-School essay requirements! Begin working on the essays early to give yourself enough time to reflect, write, and edit. Always feel free to ask your friends & family members for genuine feedback. In this case, having a bit of expert advice at every step could really be a Game-Changer!

Hence, if you are looking for more personal and precise advice, feel free to hop on a 1:1 profile evaluation call with our experts, where we’ll dive deep into your profile and help you understand your chances to top B-schools with honest feedback.

To understand how our process helps aspiring MBA candidates see a glimpse of how our Profile evaluations and consulting assistance works! 

For more on B-School essays, you can check the links for our articles below!

Suggested Reading 

• MIT Sloan Essays
• CBS Essays
• Wharton MBA Essays
• HBS MBA Essays

At MBA and Beyond, we are determined to help you develop a unique structure for each essay question providing step-by-step procedures to build a specific answer that would help you stand out; among the crowd! We are a team of expert consultants who follow a unique process to achieve maximum efficiency, quality, and interaction, ensuring a 100% unique and authentic application! 

Good luck!

MBAandBeyond