Tips on How to Write Your ISB PGP Essays for 2021 – 2022 Intake (Released in July 2021) [Specific Frameworks and Tactics Inside]

2021 proved to be a great year for ISB. And here are the new ISB essay tips for you.

While other business schools struggled to place their MBA students, the Indian School of Business (ISB) experienced an increase of 8.32% in the average accepted CTC, at an all-time high of INR 28.29 lakhs.

The top hiring industries were Consulting, IT/ITES/Technology, BFSI, FMCG/Retail, and Pharma/Healthcare.

ISB’s robust placement stats continue to reinforce its position as the preferred choice for consulting firms.

With a unique faculty portfolio model, ISB is the only business school in India that brings the best of global faculty and curriculum to its students.

Who’s ISB looking for?

ISB seeks those with strong leadership potential and values.

Given its rigorous academic program, ISB places a lot of emphasis on academic performance and GMAT scores.

However, you can compensate for a poor academic record with a high GMAT score. This can considerably improve your application’s chances of being favorably assessed by ISB.

ISB PGP essays for 2021 – 2022 (Class of 2023)

ISB has retained the same essay prompts as last year. The short word limits for all the essays require you to strike a fine balance between conciseness and clarity.

ISB Essay 1 – Describe with examples the most important personal quality that you possess that significantly enhances your prospects of being successful as a leader. (400 words max)

 
ISB Essay 2 – What are your short-term and long-term career goals? How will Post Graduate Program at ISB assist you in achieving your goals? (400 words max)

 
ISB Reapplicant Essay – Please use this space to explain significant improvements in your profile since your last application to the ISB PGP (200 words max)

Tips for Writing ISB PGP Essay 1

ISB Essay 1 – Describe with examples the most important personal quality that you possess that significantly enhances your prospects of being successful as a leader. (400 words max)

First, let’s decode the part “the most important personal quality that will make you a successful leader”.

Simply stating that your leadership is your most important personal quality won’t be an effective response.

Instead, you need to specify your most important leadership attribute.

For instance, some of the prominent leadership attributes or skills are –

1. Strategic and Critical Thinking
2. Taking Initiative
3. Risk Taking
4. Communication
5. Authenticity
6. Planning and Delivery
7. Patience
8. Persuasion and Influence
9. Change Management and Innovation

Given this context, there are two ways you can approach this essay – choose the one that works best for you.

Approach 1 –

Start by listing out all your major accomplishments — this could be from your personal, professional, and/or academic life — where you demonstrated leadership.

Then identify the leadership attributes that appear prominently in each of your shortlisted achievements. There’ll be 1 or 2 attributes that will be more pronounced than the others. By this point, it’ll be easy for you to zero in on that ONE leadership attribute that’s clearly persistent in all your significant achievements.

Achievements —> One Leadership Attribute Common to All Those Achievements

Approach 2 –

You can first start by identifying an attribute that resonates with you the most and then choose the achievements where you demonstrated the particular leadership attribute.

One Leadership Attribute –> All the Achievements Where This Attribute Is Distinctly Visible

Once you’ve identified the leadership trait you want to elaborate in your essay, the next crucial step is to choose the number of achievements you want to showcase.

1. Some applicants like to choose at most 2 examples. With a limit of 400 words at your disposal, were you to take this approach, then you must include at least one professional achievement. Your second example could be an achievement either from your personal or your academic life.
   1. Elaborate on each achievement by explaining the context, highlighting the challenges, outlining the actions you took, and emphasizing the results you’d achieved.
2. If you are keen to include more than 2 achievements, then summarize the achievements at a high level without delving deep into the specifics of each case.

Finally, conclude this essay with

1. Your key takeaways from your experiences; how you have been transformed as a result.
2. And how you plan to further reinforce your particular leadership attribute at ISB.

Tips for Writing ISB PGP Essay 2

ISB Essay 2 – What are your short-term and long-term career goals? How will Post Graduate Program at ISB assist you in achieving your goals? (400 words max)

You can start by indicating the strengths and skills you’ve gained in your career so far. You can even include your motivation behind taking up specific roles.

Next, talk about the opportunities that you want to pursue.

Then specify your post-MBA goals – this will help you establish a logical connection between your current profile and your future role.

Here’s a quick framework to help you think more clearly about approaching your post-MBA goals essay, easily the toughest essay to write.

Here you can take two approaches –

1. Specify your short-term goals and then outline your long-term goals. Or,
2. Talk about your long-term goals first and then mention your short-term goals.

Make sure you highlight the weaknesses or limitations that you need to overcome in order to transition to your post-MBA goals, connecting those with the resources (such as courses, clubs, faculty, alumni network, and so on) at ISB.

This way you are clearly articulating to ISB why you want to do an MBA and why ISB and its resources are crucial to help you achieve your goals.

Specificity Rules

It’s important to be as specific about your post-MBA goals, especially your short-term goal.

Consider the following examples of post-MBA goals that can be construed as vague –

 “I want to be part of corporate strategy.”

 “I want to join management consulting.”

Now most MBA applicants want to get into consulting or strategy roles because that’s what business schools are well-known for.

However, when you state your goals without elaborating on why you chose those as your post MBA goals, the Admissions Committee is unable to clearly understand why you want to be in corporate strategy or management consulting.

An example of an effective goals statement would look something like this (assuming you have a background in healthcare or a related industry)

I aim to join as a strategy consultant with a leading management consulting firm like McKinsey or BCG, focusing on the healthcare sector, and help them set up operations in North India.

See how the statement clearly calls out your target role, industry, and company before outlining how you intend to leverage your experience in your post-MBA role.

Tips for Writing ISB’s PGP Reapplicant Essay

ISB Reapplicant Essay – Please use this space to explain significant improvements in your profile since your last application to the ISB PGP (200 words max)

This is the place where you talk about the steps you have taken to improve your profile such as getting a higher score in your GMAT or GRE, taking up bigger responsibilities at work, contributing to a social cause, working on a side project, and more. Again, it’s important to talk about the impact that you’ve created and how you have evolved, personally, professionally, or both, since you last applied to ISB.

ISB PGP Application Deadlines

Application Phase	Deadline for Round 1*
PGP Application Submission	12 September 2021
Interviews	October – December 2021
Results	December 2021

*Round 2 timelines are yet to be released.

Round 1 or Round 2

ISB explicitly mentions that “applying in any round does not impact your chances of securing an admission offer”.

However, applying to round 1 has advantages for those seeking scholarships – this is clarified by ISB as well on its website –

1) Full tuition fee waivers will be offered only to Round 1 applicants.

2) Up to 75% tuition fee waivers will be offered to Round 2 applicants.

Need help with your ISB Essays?

Struggling to write powerful yet succinct essays?

Finding it difficult to know which stories to include?

Unsure about your post-MBA goals?

To make it to ISB is no mean task. You have built a strong career and worked hard to get a good GMAT score.

It’s time to take your efforts to the next level and the first thing you need is to prepare a strong application to ISB.

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This is what our client Mayank Arora (ISB Class of 2021) shares about his experience working with MBAEssayNation

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Mayank Arora

Another client Dimple Jain (ISB Class of 2020) says this about her experience –

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I worked with Deepthi on my ISB business school application and though I reached out to her with just a week before the submission deadlines, she was extremely patient in coaching me with my essays and was always available for a quick call. In fact without her help, I couldn’t have come up with strong post MBA goals. She has a strong industry background which she used to help me to gain more clarity about how my post MBA goals should be structured. All my essays looked brilliant thanks to her and MBAEssayNation. MBAEssayNation is the ONLY reason why I got admits from ISB, Michigan Ross and INSEAD. Highly recommended!
Dimple Jain

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