MBA Essay Guidance 2025-26: Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School’s MBA program is a two-year, full-time, STEM-designated degree renowned for its focus on general management and real-world practice. The first year features a core curriculum where all students take the same foundational courses together in sections of about 90, fostering a close-knit learning environment and strong peer connections. A hallmark of the HBS experience is the case method, which immerses students in real business challenges and encourages dynamic, discussion-based learning. The program also incorporates the FIELD (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development) component, providing hands-on leadership training and global immersion opportunities. In the second year, students select from over 100 electives across ten subject areas, allowing for deep specialization or broad exploration, and can cross-register with other Harvard graduate schools. HBS does not offer formal majors, but students can tailor their studies through elective choices and joint degree options with other Harvard schools. The program emphasizes leadership, diversity of thought, and community, supported by a global alumni network of over 90,662 members in 173 countries, offering lifelong career support and connections.

As you consider pursuing Harvard Business School’s transformative MBA experience, one of the most crucial steps in your application journey is crafting compelling essays. These essays offer you a unique opportunity to showcase your personal story, values, and aspirations beyond test scores and transcripts. To help you navigate this important component with confidence, we’ve prepared expert guidance on how to approach and excel in the HBS MBA application essays.

Short Essay #1 – Business-Minded

Please reflect on how your choices have influenced your career path and aspirations. (up to 300 words)

HBS on Short Essay #1: We are looking for individuals who are passionate about using business as a force for good – who strive to improve and transform companies, industries, and the world. We are seeking those who are eager to solve today’s biggest problems and shape the future through creative and integrated thinking. Being business-minded is about the interest to help organizations succeed, whether in the private, public, or non-profit sector. This business inclination can be found in individuals with a variety of professional and educational experiences, not just those who come from traditional business backgrounds.

In Your Application: We will look for evidence of your interpersonal skills, quantitative abilities, and the ways in which you plan to create impact through business in the future.

Admitify Guidance

HBS has revised last year’s ‘Business-Minded’ essay to focus more tightly on the choices/decisions that have shaped your career thus far. They’ve also reduced last year’s wordy verbiage about “impact” and “communities” to a single word: “aspirations.” So this essay is now about your past career choices and your post-MBA goals – the very definition of an MBA goals essay. So no need to read between the lines here; just answer the questions: What choices (professional and/or nonprofessional!) have led you to your current career and how have these choices shaped the professional (and even nonprofessional) goals that bring you to HBS. We recommend focusing most of the essay’s content on these ‘choices’ and of course on the consequences of your choices (these should be accomplishments, which you should detail). The first part of this essay—on your choices—provides a reality-check on the post-MBA aspirations you state: overly bold goals that have little connection to the life and career you’ve lived so far will seem weak. HBS is forcing you to show how your life and/or professional choices have informed/shaped your post-MBA goals. We recommend keeping the statement of ‘aspirations’ minimal here – save the space for your choices→accomplishments, which will affect your admissions chances more than any goals you state (and elsewhere in the application HBS gives you 500 characters to describe your goals – see below).  HBS’s guidance on this prompt makes clear that they do still want applicants whose goals have some socially impactful element. Keep that in mind. If you want to start a company, what will it seek to achieve beyond its own success? If you want to be a partner at a consultancy, what changes would you hope to lead within your firm and your industry (beyond satisfying clients and bottom-line targets)?

Short Essay #2 – Leadership-Focused

What experiences have shaped how you invest in others and how you lead? (up to 250 words)

HBS on Short Essay #2: We are looking for individuals who aspire to lead others toward making a difference in the world, and those who recognize that to build and sustain successful organizations, they must develop and nurture diverse teams. Leadership takes many forms in many contexts – you do not have to have a formal leadership role to make a difference. We deliberately create a class that includes different kinds of leaders, from the front-line manager to the startup founder to the behind-the-scenes thought leader.

In Your Application: Your leadership impact may be most evident in extracurriculars, community initiatives, or your professional work.

Admitify Guidance

As with the first essay prompt, HBS has changed last year’s Leadership-Focused essay prompt to be more concrete and pragmatic. They no longer ask you to meditate on “who you are” or to waste word count on the ‘kind of leader you want to become.’ Again, answer their much more direct questions: What life or career experiences have made you the leader you are today?. Their phrase “how you invest in others” signals clearly the kind of leadership HBS prizes: leadership that is giving and outward-focused.  So lean toward leadership examples that emphasize your empowering leadership traits (mentoring, etc.). This essay is an opportunity to share two or three of your strongest, most formative leadership experiences from any part of your life.

Short Essay #3 – Growth-Oriented

Curiosity can be seen in many ways. Please share an example of how you have demonstrated curiosity and how that has influenced your growth. (up to 250 words)

HBS on Short Essay #3: We are looking for individuals who desire to broaden their perspectives through creative problem solving, active listening, and lively discussion. At HBS you will be surrounded by future leaders from around the world who will make you think more expansively about what impact you might have. Our case and field-based learning methods depend on the active participation of curious students who are excited to listen and learn from faculty and classmates, as well as contribute their own ideas and perspectives.

In Your Application: We will look for the ways in which you have grown, developed, and how you engage with the world around you.

Admitify Guidance

This prompt is the most obviously personal essay of HBS’s set – the one where nonprofessional experiences and your ‘back story’ (life challenges, diversity) are most likely to come into play. The key words in this final prompt are ‘growth’ and ‘curiosity’. ‘Growth’ means your evolution as a person (whose beliefs, values, goals may have changed through experience and adversity). ‘Curiosity’ implies that HBS wants a life example that you instigated: your curiosity about X (and X could be almost anything) led to an experience, choice, setback, and deepened understanding that changed you. This means that applicants whose most differentiating stories are experiences that happened to them (that they did not instigate through their own curiosity) will be harder pressed to share those experiences here. Clearly, this essay signals HBS’s interest in applicants who are intellectually inquisitive but also open and aspirational about learning from life and changing as people. Note that HBS wants only one example here, so you want to choose a very good one.

Family Section / Additional Family Context

Please feel free to share any additional information about your family background. This may include other adults or if you have a context that does not fit in the questions laid out above. (250-character limit)

Admitify Guidance

Clearly and concisely share any unique family circumstances or history not captured in the standard questions that could help you stand out or could help explain your applicant profile. For example, who raised you (e.g., LGBTQ parents), the dynamics or distinctive aspects of your immediate family (e.g., adopted sibling), frequent relocations, etc. – all could be relevant here. If your family has a distinctive background, socioeconomic challenges, or is or was distinct from the majority, this could be shared here. Briefly explain how this family circumstance shaped you. The goal is to provide essential context in a direct, vivid, and concise way.

Post MBA Goals Section

Briefly, tell us more about your career aspirations. (500-character limit)

Admitify Guidance

This short-answer prompt allows you to minimize the word count you devote to describing your goals in the first Business-Minded essay above. Take advantage of this opportunity by keeping your goal statement in that essay to 1-2 sentences. In this response, state your long-term career vision as specifically as you can (naming organizations and job titles as relevant). Devote less space to describing how your short-term goals will help you achieve your long-term goals. Try to provide a concise Plan A and Plan B and the names of potential organizations and job titles to show you’ve done your homework.

Supplemental Information Section / Additional Information

Please share additional information here if you need to clarify any information provided in the other sections of your application. This is not meant to be used as an additional essay. Please limit your additional information to the space in this section.

We know you’ll be tempted, but please don’t send us any additional materials (e.g., additional recommendations, work portfolios). To be fair to all applicants, extra materials won’t be considered. (75-word limit)

Admitify Guidance

Use this section only if you need to clarify something essential that could be misinterpreted or misunderstood, such as GPA issues, choice of recommenders, etc. Be brief, factual, and transparent – think of it as a quick note to the admissions committee on any aspect that could potentially be misconstrued by them. If you have nothing that truly needs clarification, it’s perfectly fine to leave this section blank.

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