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INSEAD Essay Examples

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INSEAD Essay Samples

INSEAD’s MBA essays reflect a holistic approach. INSEAD is seeking applicants who are on a clear and upward professional trajectory and who have significant international experience, exposure, and aspirations. INSEAD prides itself on being a rigorous program but with the work hard & play hard mentality at its core. INSEAD essays are essential to showcasing fit.

SBC has three INSEAD experts including an INSEAD MBA graduate on our team. They deeply know the nuances of applying to INSEAD successfully. If you’d like to speak with one of our Principals about your candidacy, please request a free analysis here.

In the meantime, see examples of INSEAD MBA essays from our successful admits below.

I moved to Chile in 2006 to support my husband in his advancing career and simultaneously started my own consulting business. This new business was a big change from managing a 100 million organization as in my previous experience; however, it allowed me to leverage my management experience; develop experience as an entrepreneur; and produce earnings of $95,000 USD. My two most important clients are Waldorf Company and Cheen Chile.

At Waldorf, I am creating the company’s first marketing plan, as well as working with the owner to develop a single company vision that will provide the management team a long-term unified goal. Although Waldorf is a multinational company with 90 million USD in sales, the company lacks a strategic view of the future and is very short-term oriented. I am assessing the company’s key issues to recommend action plans and then I will recruit and train five people to implement these plans.

With Cheen, I work directly with the top management team to identify growth opportunities in the region that will help the company double its revenues of $40 million in five years. Over 90% of Cheen’s production is sold inside Chile, thus, to evaluate all growth options, I am learning about the different Latin American markets and Cheen’s competitors’, and will combine these to define an strategy for each country that includes both organic options such as launching an existing product of Cheen’s portfolio and inorganic options like acquiring a competitor.

I have had a 10-year marketing career full of diverse experiences – from large multinational companies, to an international family-owned company, to my latest experience as an entrepreneur.

I started my career at Acme Corporation as Assistant Brand Manager (ABM). I developed a solid foundation in marketing – my data-driven decision style, structured way of working, and leadership skills are all reflections of Acme’s culture. I also started my international career when I was promoted to ABM senior in Canada to manage Widgets brand for the North American region, from Canada to Mexico.

I joined Computer Tech when my former Acme boss asked me to help restructure the Computer Tech Canada’s marketing function. I started as Audience Manager for enterprise accounts, tasked with generating demand in the top 400 enterprises in Canada – a group accountable for 50% of the company’s $300 Million revenues. Later, I was promoted to Marketing & Communications Lead, where I led a group of eight people in charge of generating demand.

My next position at House Goods further strengthened my leadership, analytical thinking, and people development skills. At House Goods, I was accountable for a 75 million USD business, and a group of seven people. My new responsibilities required me to develop new skills, such as negotiation, where I learned how to build win-win relationships when setting the monthly goals, business priorities, and marketing spending with third-party brand owners.

My family and I decided to move to Chile to pursue other goals. In Chile I started my own business. Because the positive worth-of-mouth that the first project generated, now I have two projects in progress and other three in pipeline. The next step will be to recruit professionals to attend all the leads generated and increase the revenue of the start-up.

While at university I studied economics and political science. As part of a junior year fellowship I worked with a microfinance NGO in Thailand, which set me on my career path. After graduating I decided to gain experience in finance by taking a job as an analyst at Goldman Sachs. The experience taught me how to evaluate investments and to perform thorough due diligence. While I enjoyed the challenge presented in my career at Goldman, I felt compelled to help others in the world more directly. After two years I decided to start looking for a position within the non-profit sector. Because of my finance background I decided to start within a finance role, planning to transition to an operational role at some point in the future.

I researched the organizations that managed operations across the world from a NYC headquarters, and ultimately took a job as a manager of finance at ILO, an organization that provides fundraising services for NGOs internationally. I was soon promoted to senior finance manager, overseeing all of the forecasting for our partner organizations. If I were to remain with ILO my next step would be Director of finance, which would be a similar function with more management oversight.

I define myself as a person with strong values, intelligence, passion and perseverance, who is committed to making a difference in her country and her region. These qualities were instilled in me at an early age by my family and my environment.

My father’s death when I was one year old changed my life significantly. To cover her grief, my mother put her focus on my education during my pre-school years. Through her commitment I entered school directly into the second grade and since then, I have succeeded in doing many things earlier in life. Although, at times I was put in situations I was not really prepared for, including entering university as a precocious age of 15 years old, on the whole, I have matured faster than people my age, built a strong character to overcome challenges, and become self-confident. These qualities have helped me achieve success both personally and professionally: I was a top performer in my marketing career in three international companies; I lived and thrived in three different foreign countries; and most recently, I started my own venture.

My mother also instilled in me a strong moral character. That strength, coupled with my problem solving skills, makes me a good leader; I have led teams successfully in diverse situations with different leadership styles, from an intellectual style based on data-driven decision-making and strong analytical thinking, to a more participative style, requesting ideas and fostering teamwork. I am aware of my weaknesses too: I am impatient, it is difficult for me to deal with ambiguity, and sometimes I react quickly and emotionally. To overcome these weaknesses, I keep a log of the situations that trigger them so I will be more careful in the future. I also seek out coaching from people who are strong in these areas, and read relevant self-help materials.

Starting my own venture helped me further develop perseverance and overcome my impatience. Launching my company was very difficult because I lacked a network in Chile, knowledge of the country, and experience starting a business. However, with perseverance and creativity I learned how to make an impact and provide a compelling offer to local companies, I also learned how to absorb negative answers and deal with adversity. After the success of my first project, people learned about my good service and my business is now well positioned.

Perhaps the most important aspects of my upbringing in Canada was seeing the difficulties poor people face first-hand. I am aware of the advantages I have received, and I am passionate and committed to improve the quality of life of all North Americans.

There are many accomplishments I am proud of – finishing university at 19 years old, graduating Cum Laude from my Masters, being transferred to Acme Canada to play a key role in the integration of the North America organization, however, I consider the following my two most substantial accomplishments because both demonstrate my ability to deal with adversity by energizing myself and others to work to achieve an ambitious vision.

The most recent accomplishment took place last year when my family and I moved to Chile to further my husband’s career at Computer Tech. This was the right decision for our family; however, for me it required leaving a successful career with House Goods, and moving without any job opportunities. I thought that with my strong international marketing experience, I would easily find a job with a good multinational company; however, I did not. Economic and political instability affected the job market and companies were not hiring at that time. In order to overcome this situation, I had to rethink my career. After carefully evaluating my options, I decided to start my own consulting business. I started to develop my network of contacts – for two months I studied different Chilean markets, preparing a list of companies to visit, and for each company I prepared a specific sales argument for how I could help improve their business. It was a tough experience – I spoke with seven companies, and in the end I gained three customers, and improved my income generating a $95,000 annual income.

My second significant accomplishment occurred during my second year at House Goods, when the executive team recognized my work with the ‘House Goods Award,’ an award for the individual who made the greatest positive impact on the organization over the previous year. I am very proud, not only for the good business results, but more importantly, how I achieved them.

When I joined the company, my new team was in chaos – the team members lacked confidence, the brands were performing below plan, and strategic partners wanted to end their relationship with us. I reorganized the group to give my direct reports new challenges and a fresh start. I defined clear objectives for each person and each brand, transmitted energy and enthusiasm, supplied people with resources to accomplish their goals, gave support when needed, and provided ongoing feedback. We improved the profitability of the group by 12% compared with previous year, and rebuilt relationships with our partners, but the most important change was that a group of seven young professionals rebuilt its confidence and is still doing great six years later.

As a member of the alumni committee for Mayan College in Los Angeles, I had a personal desire to leverage our 300 members to provide career guidance to new graduates. The other members of the committee had varying goals including building a fundraising base for the college, and just having fun with like-minded alumni. To generate support for my idea I identified several successful alums of Mayan and interviewed them about their career path. In many cases they had used their personal network to accomplish their career goals. I wanted to formalize that network by providing access to current students and recent graduates to those who had blazed a path in different fields in Los Angeles. I rallied a group to help me accomplish this goal, and we brainstormed ideas like social networking, happy hours, lecture series and job shadowing. The team voted and we decided to set up three focused lectures on the entertainment industry, the real estate industry and technology as the three most sought after industries among recent grads. Our lectures were followed by a cocktail hour, and we encouraged the older alumni to reach out to younger members of the club. We were thrilled when we received an email from Jon, a Mayan ’09, who received a job through meeting a helpful alum at our latest lecture series.

My long-term goal is to leverage my international experience, marketing skills and project execution ability to start a consulting firm focused on helping governments realize initiatives for economic and cultural change. I envision my firm to be a key player in bringing challenging social projects to fruition by providing multifunctional project management services, while managing communication to relevant government and non-government stakeholders, including the population at-large.

I have seen the difficulties poor people face first-hand, and know that Latin American governments lack capacity to solve these issues. With my leadership abilities, drive to succeed and ability to deliver a vision, I believe I can change things for the better. I represent a small percentage of the population who had the amazing opportunity to study at university, and believe that, if those of us who had this chance do not do something for our country, nobody will.

To achieve my long-term goal I need to complement my existing skills with a more global perspective, greater breadth of business experience, built a strong network of global business contacts, and improve my entrepreneurial fundamentals. An INSEAD MBA and subsequent business development work experience in Europe are fundamental steps towards reaching my goals.

An MBA from INSEAD is critical for me to transition to my near-term goal, and provide the foundations for my long-term goal of pan-American business leadership. INSEAD’s strong focus on entrepreneurship will help me develop the mindset of an entrepreneur – able to deal with ambiguity, comfortably handle risk and uncertainty, and discover opportunities for innovation. INSEAD’s career services, with counselors experienced in a breadth of sectors, will help me validate the career path I have designed and consider it with a fresh perspective. The one year concentrated study is also a terrific opportunity to gain knowledge, and quickly come back to work and put my experience into practice. Additionally, I am enthusiastic about the opportunity to live and study in France, not only for the cultural and business opportunities, but living in France, will bring my Spanish husband and I closer to his home country, and provide our 2-year-old son with a better education than that currently available in Latin America.

Finally, INSEAD’s location and contacts with European companies will help me transition to a business development career in Europe. I look to complement my MBA experience with real life projects and gain experience in regions outside America; I can do this by working in business development with a focus on brand building and inorganic growth for a company in Europe expanding in emerging markets.

In the long term, INSEAD’s global reach and global perspective will prepare me to work in a diverse workplace and will help me form a talented group of collaborators for my pan-regional development objective. It will also help me develop a strong network of contacts who will eventually be decision-makers in international corporations and governments who can help me make a difference in Latin America.

My work with Flyline Ventures ended on January 15, 2011 when we were turned down for Series A funding, and the start up funding ran out. The team was disappointed that our networking site for Tweens would need to be downsized, yet the founders remained on the project in hopes that they could find financial backing to hire the product development team back.

Since I left Flyline I have been researching my long-term career aspirations. To learn more about the retail industry I have met with professionals working in women’s apparel and shoes. In the process of getting to know the industry I have shadowed a designer at a small clothing line, met with merchandising professionals, networked with retail shop owners, and spoken with web retailers I know through my prior job. This process has helped me understand the retail business model from creation to monetization, and clarified the courses I plan to attend at INSEAD.

Aside from my professional research I have been ramping up my volunteer work at the Toronto Women’s Shelter. With flexibility in my schedule I have been able to design several educational workshops for the homeless women that are the clients of the shelter – from personal finance to art.

I am continuing to search for product development work as I apply to business school. If I do start full time work before business school I plan to continue my research and preparation to use my INSEAD experience to the full extent possible.

It was my first opportunity to run a project as a manager in the business development group at HIP magazine. I was thrilled about the opportunity to launch a microsite for our new sub brand and immediately wrote up the outcome I was seeking and some steps I felt the team needed to take in order to accomplish a successful launch. Though I had little technical experience, I was confident I knew exactly how we could accomplish our goals.

At the first meeting of the ME microsite team I laid out my goals for the team and started assigning people to next steps. While the atmosphere in the room was subdued, I felt good about the proactive direction I was leading the team. In our next meeting I asked for updates and noticed that every member of the team was presenting what I perceived as excuses for their lack of progress. I was upset about the lack of progress, and asked the team why the project was slipping behind schedule. Everyone had a different issue and the meeting ended without resolution.

I was frustrated and upset that my first project management job seemed to be failing already. I met with my boss during our weekly meeting and told him about the issues. His response was to suggest that my job was not to lay out every next step for the technical team, especially with my lack of technical knowledge, but rather to communicate my vision. I realized I had been too focused on the details of execution, and had failed to rally the team behind a bigger picture goal.

At our next meeting I left my spreadsheet of next steps in my office and spent the time communicating three key messages: 1. The microsite needed to engage the consumer and increase time spent for the website, 2. I wanted the microsite to reflect the most user-friendly design possible and 3. The microsite needed to comply with our HIP brand guidelines. I then told the team that I trusted their expertise in the execution and I was available to help them with resources and ideas if needed.

My new approach paid off and our HIP microsite launched at our deadline and under budget. Most importantly, the site accomplished all of my goals and was a key traffic driver for the overall site for the year.

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INSEAD MBA Essays : Sample Essays & Writing Tips

MBA & Beyond Team

22/12/2023 | 11:13 am

If you’re reading this, you’re likely considering or already in the process of applying to INSEAD’s renowned MBA program. It’s no secret that the application essays play a pivotal role in your admission process. They are not just forms to be filled out but canvases for you to paint a vivid picture of who you are, your aspirations, and what you bring to the table.

INSEAD’s MBA program is known for its rigorous academic standards and diverse student body. Crafting essays that stand out is crucial, as they provide a unique opportunity for you to showcase your individuality, experiences, and perspective. Let’s dive into what it takes to write essays that resonate with the admissions committee and increase your chances of getting into one of the world’s top MBA programs.

INSEAD MBA Highlights :

• INSEAD MBA GMAT
• INSEAD MBA Class Profile
• INSEAD MBA Scholarships
• INSEAD MBA Eligibility
• INSEAD MBA Essays
• INSEAD MBA Interview Questions

UNDERSTANDING THE INSEAD MBA ESSAY REQUIREMENTS

Before you start typing away, it’s important to understand what INSEAD is looking for in its MBA essays. The application process for INSEADinvolves several essays, each serving a distinct purpose and requiring a thoughtful approach. Let’s break down these requirements:

• Number of Essays: The INSEADMBA application includes seven mandatory essays, categorized into two types – career/job type essays and motivational essays
• Essay Length and Depth : The essays vary in length but collectively constitute a substantial portion of your application. This allows you to provide in-depth insights into your professional experiences and personal motivations.

CAREER OR JOB TYPE ESSAYS

These essays focus on your professional background and aspirations. They are designed to gauge your career progression, professional achievements, and future goals. Here’s a quick overview:

• Current Job Summary: Describe your current or most recent job, including major responsibilities and achievements (200 words max).
• Next Career Step: Discuss what your next position would be if you continued in your current company (200 words max).
• Career Path Description: Provide a detailed account of your career since university, emphasizing the rationale behind your choices (300 words max).
• Career Aspirations: Elaborate on your short and long-term career goals post-MBA from INSEAD(100 words max).

Each of these essays requires you to reflect on different aspects of your professional journey and articulate them succinctly. It’s not just about what you’ve done but also why you’ve done it and where you plan to go with an INSEADMBA in your toolkit.

MOTIVATION INSEAD MBA ESSAYS

The motivation essays at INSEADare your window to showcase who you are beyond your professional accomplishments. These essays delve into your personal characteristics, life experiences, and the factors that have shaped your journey so far. Let’s break them down:

• Self-Description: Give a candid description of yourself, highlighting your strengths and weaknesses, and the main factors influencing your personal development (500 words max).
• Proudest Achievement and Learning from Failure: Describe your most significant achievement and a situation where you failed. Reflect on how these experiences impacted your relationships and what you learned from them (400 words max).
• Extra-Professional Activities: Discuss your involvement in activities outside your professional life, such as clubs, sports, arts, and how they have enriched you (300 words max).

These essays are your chance to bring out your personality, values, and the unique attributes you will bring to the INSEAD community. They require introspection and honesty, and are an opportunity to reflect on your journey, your growth, and how your experiences have prepared you for the challenges of an MBA at INSEAD.

STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTIVE ESSAY WRITING

Writing compelling essays for INSEADis an art that combines honesty, clarity, and creativity. Here are some strategies to help you create essays that will capture the attention of the admissions committee:

Be Original: Avoid clichés and write in a way that truly reflects your unique experiences and perspectives. Think about what sets you apart from other applicants and how you can bring your individuality to the forefront in your essays

Attention to Language: The clarity of your writing, grammar, and sentence construction says a lot about you. It’s important to write in a way that’s understandable and relatable, avoiding technical jargon and acronyms that might confuse the reader

Detailed Work Experience : Be clear and specific when describing your professional responsibilities and experiences. If you have gaps in your employment, address them honestly rather than omitting them

Remember, your essays are not just answers to questions but stories about who you are. They should flow naturally, engage the reader, and provide a comprehensive picture of your background, aspirations, and personality.

COMMON CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

Embarking on the INSEAD MBA essay writing journey can be daunting, but you’re not alone in this challenge. Here are some common hurdles applicants face and how to overcome them:

• Feeling Overwhelmed by the Essay Length : INSEAD’s essays, collectively reaching around 2,000 words, can seem intimidating. The key is to start early and break down the writing process into manageable parts. Focus on one essay at a time and give each the attention it deserves.
• Striking the Right Balance : It’s challenging to maintain a balance between professional and personal content. While your career achievements are important, INSEAD also values who you are outside of work. Ensure your essays reflect a well-rounded individual.
• Maintaining Originality : With so many applicants, standing out can be tough. Avoid writing what you think the admissions committee wants to hear. Instead, be genuine and share your true self and unique experiences.
• Addressing Gaps or Weaknesses : If there are gaps in your employment or areas of weakness, address them head-on. Use these as opportunities to show your self-awareness and how you’ve grown or plan to grow from these experiences.

Remember, the goal is not just to complete the essays but to create a compelling narrative that provides a window into your life and aspirations.

Concluding Thoughts

As you wrap up your INSEAD MBA essays, remember that these are more than just application requirements; they are a platform for you to share your story, your aspirations, and your potential to contribute to the INSEAD community. Your essays should reflect the depth of your experiences, the clarity of your goals, and the uniqueness of your personality.

Your journey to securing a place in the INSEAD MBA program is a significant step towards your future. With dedication, introspection, and strategic planning, you can craft essays that not only meet the application requirements but also resonate with the admissions committee.

In conclusion, approach your INSEAD MBA essays with honesty, creativity, and self-reflection. This process is not just about getting into a program; it’s about understanding and presenting the best version of yourself. 

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Homepage > MBA Admissions > 2023 – 2024 INSEAD MBA Essay – Analysis and Sample Essay Structure

2023 – 2024 INSEAD MBA Essay – Analysis and Sample Essay Structure

Posted by Suheb Hussain | Mar 10, 2023 | Business Schools , GMAT Focus Edition , MBA Admissions , MBA Application Process

INSEAD is one of the most popular business schools in the world, and among the best 1-year programs globally. With campuses in France, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, and now in San Francisco, it is truly “the business school for the world”. INSEAD is among the few top schools globally with two intakes in a year – September intake and January intake. Candidates, therefore, can plan their application in a manner that instead of applying late to one intake, may apply early to the next intake.

Here are the INSEAD Application Deadlines for the September 2024 intake.

INSEAD MBA Application Deadlines 2023-2024

INSEAD also has one of the most demanding MBA applications out there, with about 7 required essays to be submitted by the applicants. The two types of essays asked in the application are:

Job Description Questions

Job Description Essay 1

Job description essay 2, job description essay 3, job description essay 4.

Motivation Questions

Motivation Essay 1

Motivation essay 2, motivation essay 3.

In this article, we will go deeper to analyze the expectations and the right approach for each of the essays that the INSEAD MBA application requires.

INSEAD MBA essay – Job Description Essays

Briefly summarise your current (or most recent) job, including the nature of work, major responsibilities, and where relevant, employees under your supervision, size of budget, clients/products and results achieved. (200 words maximum)

Schools often ask this question somewhere in their application, not always categorizing it as an essay. INSEAD has dedicated a full essay to it, clearly with the intent of understanding your current role deeper – remember, it’s a one year program and you will start connecting with recruiters even before your program is mid-way through.

Straightforward as it may seem, there are a few imperatives you should stick to while writing this essay:

• Do not lift and drop from your job description. JDs are the worst way to introduce a function to the Ad-Comm. You don’t want to sound like a boring HR officer reaching out to job-seekers.
• Instead, you may want to break your work down into smaller nuggets, simpler pieces. But I won’t stretch this exercise to the level of explaining it to a six-year-old kid. Remember, the Ad-Comm is a group of accomplished individuals, but they may not be accomplished in your field. Hence this is the first test of your MBA application — how easily can you explain a complex value proposition to a client if you were consulting them at McKinsey. The skill to simplify your job but not vehemently play it down is what this essay begets. For example, something like:

“I am the sole contact in the first line of defence for risk portfolio of structured rates derivatives and exotics focused in EMEA region, supporting an HFT desk based out of London. This also requires an examination of market movements in rates, tenor volatilities, curve spreads, and time decay. I am also responsible for issuing dealing authority to designated Volcker sub-desks for effective market making and to curb intuitive punting.”

… can be presented as:

“I serve as the primary analyst for assessing and managing market risk in EMEA portfolio of structured rates derivatives and exotic products worth $20 billion. I support the London desk, which deals in high-frequency trading. I have been working in this role for last 3 years. The role requires on a daily basis, a detailed analysis of factors of market volatility. I am also responsible for issuing guidelines to Volcker desks to ensure legal and risk-appetite boundaries are not breached. I work in a team of eight people, of which two report directly to me. The job requires intense analytical, quick-thinking, and cross-functional skills.”  

• Short, crisp sentences
• Avoid industry acronyms and jargons
• Simple explanation, but not utterly simple
• Clear mention of teamplay (working in a team of () people, working across cross-functional teams, directly work with several lateral teams, etc.)
• Managerial leadership (if any)

One may find it tempting to copy-paste certain points from the resume, but remember, there are no shortcuts to success (certainly not at INSEAD). The adcom has your resume as well, and it may not be exciting to read the same lines again.

What would be your next step in terms of position if you were to remain in the same company? (200 words maximum)

Tricky, but not difficult. Applicants often present how they have hit a glass ceiling and that an MBA will be the solution to all their problems. Bad idea, always! If you can’t show that you are doing awesome at work, you are more likely looking for an exit route and not the path to success. This question seeks to understand how well you are doing.

This essay demands a candidate to lay down a roadmap they have envisaged for themselves — MINUS the MBA. What if you hadn’t thought of doing an MBA? What if you saw multi-fold growth in your current role/organization/sector? What if you loved your job so much that nothing could break you away from it? What if you didn’t have Colin Farrell from Horrible Bosses at work? What if due to a financial constraint, or God forbid a personal issue, you just couldn’t go for an MBA? Well, the reason isn’t important—you ought to think, what if you were going to continue in the same firm?

Here, INSEAD wants you to introspect. The Ad-Comm wants to give you a chance to see if you could convince yourself that you needed an MBA before you wrote it down for them. What are the next steps you should be taking to climb up the professional ladder in your firm? How long before you were going to hit a promotion? Are there any pockets of learning in your current role that you are yet to consider? How would your responsibilities change, evolve, and transform over time? All these questions would give you an ideal springboard to ace this essay!

Towards the end, it would provide a nice footnote if you candidly addressed the gap that an MBA degree would bridge, and that without an MBA, you won’t reach where you want and deserve to be. This should round up a great essay for you!

Please give a full description of your career since graduating from university. Describe your career path with the rationale behind your choices. (300 words maximum)

This essay requires you to rationalize the professional decisions you have made since graduation. From the outside, it looks like a simple task. You could glorify your decisions by painting a nice, ideal picture of your job. You could associate unparalleled benefits with your current role, which prompted you to take up the job in the first place. Learnings, virtues, experiences, ideas, avenues—everything that your career choices brought, you could list them down and submit a flawless essay.

But we all, including the Ad-Comm, are well aware, that most of our choices in the closely enmeshed social structure of the society are externalized. Our choices are governed by external factors such as parental expectations, peer pressure, societal norms, labels of the coloured collars, etc.—unless you were one of those few fortunate ones who heard their calling in the very beginning itself.

Thus, this essay beckons you to accept your decisions as your own. You might have made a rookie mistake of following the herd, but that doesn’t vilify you or question your decision-making abilities.

Accepting those erroneous judgments showcases a strong character. On the other hand, if you were smart enough to make all the right calls, justify that with examples. The key is to stay aware that any or all of your choices must have provided you skillsets, perspectives, insights, and experiences. It’s imperative that you clearly mention what you learned from them, as it shows that you aim to make the most of your decisions, whether right or wrong.

This essay also serves as a nice spindle of your career trajectory, thereby showing how streamlined or wayward your career has been. However, the good part is, that an MBA serves both kinds of audiences. Thus, there are no negatives of an essay that says you need an MBA to help you make an informed career choice/switch; or one that says that you want a launchpad to move further in your pre-MBA discipline.

Discuss your short and long term career aspirations with or without an MBA from INSEAD. (100 words maximum)

This could have been a standard MBA essay, but INSEAD has given it a major twist this year by including a “without an MBA” clause to it.

“With an MBA from INSEAD”

Here, INSEAD wants you to contemplate on your rationale behind wanting to pursue an MBA, and how it helps your cause in achieving your long-term career goals. At the same time, your short-term goal lays down a clear indicator of your thought process in making conscious career decisions. It wouldn’t look too coherent if you aspired to build an ed-tech venture for differently-abled people in the long run but were to seek a finance/banking role straight out of your MBA.

“Without an MBA from INSEAD”

This is tricky because, for most of the candidates, MBA serves as transportation from their current job to their aspirational role. They all rationalize the MBA as the next or the first step towards their long-term goals. In such a situation, to rationalize the same set of goals for the near and long-term without an MBA could be an uphill task, while to furnish a different set of goals could highlight your indecision.

In such a situation, the most astute way of enlisting your goals is to keep them realistic while being ambitious and visionary. You should give it a good amount of thought and come up with more than one way of achieving your targets. For this, surfing LinkedIn to see people with different profiles working for the same organization could be a good starting point. You could also look at several certification courses being offered online, which intend to cover at the least the theoretical MBA curriculum. Be sure to put forward some realistic estimates on the timelines by which you aim to achieve these goals if an MBA didn’t happen. It can act as a marker of clear and resolved thinking.

INSEAD MBA Essay – Motivation Essays

Give a candid description of yourself (who are you as a person), stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary. (500 words max.)

This has been a trademark INSEAD essay for some years now. From the outside, it may give off as a mirage of a professional essay wanting of you to wax a lyrical about your strengths, while passing a few weaknesses off as hidden strengths (read: extreme workaholism, not able to say no, strict ideals, and principles, etc.). No. A big, fat, blunt NO. One shouldn’t make the mistake of treating it as a method to perform a SWOT analysis, or even risk weighing it as a medium to make the Ad-Comm hear what they might be reading in five thousand other applications. The key to ace this essay is simple—EMBRACE AND NARRATE YOUR VIRTUES AND VICES ALIKE.

This essay is more about what makes you…you. Who were you as a child? What was your upbringing like? Those childhood fantasies, parent/sibling relationships, your neighborhood, your school. What drove your first major decisions? Was there a laughable incident during childhood when you exhibited your first business model to the outside world? Or a seminal moment when your sibling or a friend introduced a novel concept? Some personal experiences leading to a fundamental shift in the worldview?

Remember—every applicant in your pool is hard-working, dedicated, honest, meticulous, and so on. The Ad-Comm reads about the same set of qualities over and over again. What truly sticks is the story behind each virtue. You’d never be remembered as a team player. But there is a higher chance of being remembered as a high-performing team player who copped the fall for a collective failure so that the weakest member wasn’t fired. [ example ] STORYTELLING, remember.

Here, do NOT hesitate in laying bare your inadequacies, if there were any [ unless you believe otherwise ]. Remember, this essay is about you the person, not you the achiever. Unfulfilled dreams, inevitable disturbances, any inclination you couldn’t make big in—IT IS OKAY TO BE IMPERFECT. Characters are made during adversities, so recall what you learned off your bad days. Self-awareness makes a person attractive, cover-ups don’t. A balanced mix of your strengths derived from situations resulting from your weaknesses is the cornerstone of this essay.

By this time, you should be 375-400 words into the essay. At this point, your essay is in the weeds, and this is where you exactly want it to be. Now is the time to thread every narrative into a streamlined, cohesive plot and answer some pertinent questions to put a decisive floor to your story:

• How does an MBA add to your personal development? How does an MBA specifically from INSEAD consolidate this point?
• Professional achievements aside, what is it that you really look ahead to achieve? What makes you happy? Does this step bring you any closer to that goal?

Before you set out to write this essay, try this small exercise—think of one word that best describes your whole life as of yet. Just make that the title of the story you are about to narrate!

Describe the achievement of which you are most proud and explain why. In addition, describe a situation where you failed. How did these experiences impact your relationships with others? Comment on what you learned. (maximum 400 words)

Usually, B-schools ask candidates to write one essay on a standout achievement, and another on their lessons from failure. What INSEAD has done here is squeeze a lot of things into one essay—achievement, failure, interpersonal relationships, and impact on them, learnings, etc. Hence, more than descriptive, you ought to be smart here.

In an ideal structure, this essay should follow a 200-100-100 scheme. 200 for the two anecdotes you want to pick up for success and failure. 100 are to be devoted to the impact they might have had on your interpersonal relationships. Final 100 are your insights, learnings, and takeaways.

Selection of events

Many candidates come up with this question—”what should we pick as the biggest achievement of my life?” There are certain markers of an “achievement” being the right fit for this essay:

• Look out if your “achievement” had any major external impact. You could have been a topper throughout, but that’s not the kind of achievement this essay is looking for. You could have helped underprivileged kids with what you learned at school and helped them pass their exams with great marks. Or you could have invented something or discovered a cool scientific fact during college and received a patent. Again, without undermining your achievement AT ALL, it’d have sounded a much better fit FOR THIS ESSAY had you also set up a college patent advisory to make your peers understand the nuances of patent registration and safeguarding their intellectual property.
• See if any of your achievements are global/international in nature. INSEAD is big on global experience and international exposure, and such an achievement could really turn the tide in your favour. For e.g., were you in London on the day of Brexit helping your firm evade losses due to market crash? Or did you initiate a global movement for handicraft artists and raised big funds to help their cottage businesses? Or do you like mountaineering and have managed to scale some or all of the seven major peaks of the world? Measure the international quotient of your achievements.
• Another thing that can really hit a home run is success against an impediment. All humans are susceptible, and all susceptible are humans. Each one of us has struggled with an impediment at least once in their life. They may come in the form of a disability, an addiction, a personal loss, repeated failures, bullying, racism, sexism, conservatism, disturbed surroundings, etc. What really matters is that you or anyone trumped that impediment and came out of it. Such an inspiring story weaves your strong character, tenacity, and resilience into a nice fabric of wholesomeness and makes you a strong candidate in the eyes of Ad-Comm.

When it comes to “failures”, again there are a few markers. The Ad-Comm expects to read about the moments where despite your hard work, efforts, and sincerity, you failed to achieve desired results. Your failures may be attributed to one or several reasons—lack of ability or training, unexpected roadblocks, or any other external factor. Explain the circumstances in which you were stranded in a failed situation. But do understand this—in no way, this narrative is going to make your application any weaker. In fact, a joke goes around the candidate circles that the bigger the failure, the stronger is your essay. Your choice of the event reflects your ability to own up your failures as much as your successes, which in turn speaks volumes about your character. However, more than the selection of event of “failure”, you should focus on HOW you coped with a particular failure. We may have relatively smaller failures which simply called for a correction of course. And then there are some life-altering failures that change your worldview for good. You need to pick those inflection points and translate them into this essay.

Learnings and relationships

The next 200 words represent the fulcrum of this essay. You are required to showcase how efficient and judicious you were in learning from your laurels and your mistakes. It also shows your ability to break the situation down into simpler pieces and segmenting your life-events with rationality and precision. It is equally important that your successes don’t lift you off the ground, and your failures don’t drive you into it. Your successes shouldn’t give you an Imposter Syndrome, you should be able to weigh them absolutely. You ought to mention the key insights you got about your own character, personality, and behavior from this retrospection.

You are also required to reflect upon your interpersonal relationships as your life went through ebbs and flows. What were some key soft lessons you picked up about people? Have your achievements and failures made you appreciate the diversity of thought and humility? Have they made you a better team-player? Do you understand the difference between authority and leadership? Are you now able to delay your judgments about others until they have proven themselves? More such examples about people-relationship should give your essay more colour and an extremely productive ending.

Describe all types of extra-professional activities in which you have been or are still involved for a significant amount of time (clubs, sports, music, arts, politics, etc). How are you enriched by these activities? (maximum 300 words)

INSEAD is highly focused on the extra-curricular achievements and activities a candidate has been a part of throughout their career. The Admissions Committee looks for those who have maintained a parallel hobby/passion while pursuing their mainstream professional goals. In this regard, it helps greatly if a candidate has remained engaged with a particular activity even after college since most of the extra-professional activities are given a platform during that phase. Hence it carries a lot of value to have remained loyal to your hobbies.

At this juncture of your application, the Admissions Officer going through your profile knows very well about your career trajectory and aspirations. While you could have laid down some great points about your professional decisions, MBA demands an all-round personality and not a proverbial bookworm. Thus hobbies like sports, music, visual and performing arts, traveling, quizzing, etc. are valued highly. Any engagement with social impact also finds its space in this essay (unless you have a long-term career goal in this field and have already described it in previous essays). Initiatives and participation in education, environment, gender and sexuality, disaster management, political awareness, etc. are invaluable additions to this essay.

One critical point to AVOID for candidates is to treat this essay lightly. Any mention of leisure activities such as “listening to music, reading books, watching movies” can be hugely detrimental, since these kinds of activities do not project a candidate’s all-round and unique development. However, an extended interest in these areas—such as blogging/vlogging about movie/literature reviews, members of a music club to explore hidden talent, and bring it to limelight through social media pages and distribution channels, etc. are also qualified ingredients for this essay.

For the second part of the prompt, candidates should focus on soft skills they develop apart from hard skills learned for an activity. A solo sports player (ex. Badminton) can narrate about their lessons in self-motivation, self-control, personal regime, and tenacity; while a team-sport player can cite learnings like teamwork, adaptability, compassion, collegiality, responsibility towards others, loyalty, etc.

The same goes for engagements in music, dance, other artforms, social work, traveling. You could pen stories about the kind of people you met during your travels and what all did you learn from them. The romance of roaming around in unfamiliar streets and still finding a charm in doing that, or the beauty of enjoying the process of working towards a common humanitarian cause while it lasts.

This essay should bring out your social and cultural quotient, and basically tell the Admissions Committee how much fun and congenial you can be. Do note that INSEAD categorizes this as “Motivation Essay” for a very strong reason. What you do beyond your work, things that drive you on a daily basis, activities, and interests that you are passionate about, deeply establish your motivations in life and the qualities that define your personality.

Applying to other top schools? You may benefit from the following:

• Kellogg MBA Essay Analysis
• MIT Sloan Essay & Cover Letter
• Wharton MBA Essay Analysis
• Yale SOM Essay Analysis

About the Author

Prashant Tibrewal is the founder of Admit Square Consulting and has mentored 1000+ MBA aspirants to get into top global universities such as Harvard, Stanford, INSEAD, Oxford, HEC, ISB, etc. Prashant has also served on the Board of the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants (AIGAC) and led the AIGAC Conference 2020, attended by admissions officers from 25+ top-ranked MBA programs.

Admit Square Consulting has mentored applicants from diverse backgrounds to apply to top MBA programs. With a proven track record of 10+ years, and admits to universities such as Stanford, MIT, Kellogg, Cambridge, INSEAD, etc., Admit Square was awarded the Most Successful International MBA Consulting Company in India at the India Education Awards, 2019. With a team of Consultants from top business schools such as MIT, Yale, LBS, and Oxford, Admit Square offers 100% Money-back Assurance on its services. You may send your details to [email protected]  for a free profile evaluation.

If you are planning to take the GMAT, we can help you with a personalized study plan and give you access to quality online content to prepare.  Please write to us at [email protected]. We are the most reviewed GMAT prep company on GMAT club  with more than 2500 reviews   and are the only prep company that has delivered more than 700+ scores than any other GMAT club partner .   Why don’t you take a free trial and judge for yourself?

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• INSEAD Essay Tips and Examples

August 29, 2023

Jeremy Shinewald

INSEAD candidates must respond to four short career-focused queries (a fifth one is optional) and provide three motivation essays (with an optional fourth).  Applicants are also tasked with completing a video component for which they answer four questions as four separate video recordings. Given the total number of prompts, tasks, and questions involved, some candidates could find INSEAD’s essay gauntlet a bit intimidating and likely arduous as well. Read on for our full analysis, which we hope will make the process a little easier to manage.

INSEAD 2023–2024 Essay Tips

Job description 1: briefly summarise your current (or most recent) job, including the nature of work, major responsibilities, and where relevant, employees under your supervision, size of budget, clients/products and results achieved. (200 words maximum)  , job description 2: what would be your next step in terms of position if you were to remain in the same company instead of going to business school (200 words maximum)  , job description 3: please give a full description of your career since graduating from university. describe your career path with the rationale behind your choices. (300 words maximum)  , job description 4: discuss your short and long term career aspirations with an mba from insead. (100 words maximum)  .

For the school’s job-related mini essays, we encourage you to start by very carefully parsing exactly what data the school requests for each. Together, these four prompts cover many of the elements seen in a traditional personal statement essay, including info about one’s career to date, interest in the school, and professional goals. However, the topics are clearly separated among individual submissions rather than covered in a cohesive single essay, and INSEAD also asks applicants to comment on their expected progression within their current firm were they to remain there rather than entering business school.

The first prompt requires that you outline roughly six different aspects of your current or most recent position. Be sure that you address each of the elements the school lists, and do not skip any just because you would rather write more about some than others. You might also want to consider providing a very brief description of your company or industry, if the nature of either might not be readily clear to an admissions reader. For the second question, your response should be fairly straightforward. If your firm has a clearly defined management hierarchy in which one position leads directly to a higher one—and you would be interested in adhering to that system—you simply need to explain this and perhaps offer a short description of the new responsibilities your next position would entail. If your company does not have such an arrangement or you would want to move in a different direction, simply explain what your preferred next role would be and the duties involved. 

The third prompt is rather self-explanatory with respect to detailing the various stages of your career to date, but do not be remiss in responding to the “rationale” and “choices” aspects of the query. The school wants to know that your progression has not been passive, with you simply accepting the next good thing to come along, but rather that you have made thoughtful decisions with clear motivations and intentions behind them. For the fourth question, you will need to present your professional goals within the context of an INSEAD MBA education. Do your research on the school to identify specific resources it offers that relate directly to the skills and experiences you need to be successful in your career, thereby illustrating how INSEAD would help you achieve your aims. Above all, be sure to show determination and direction—that you are focused firmly on your intended end points and will not be easily deterred. 

For all your job description responses, avoid using any acronyms or abbreviations that would not be easily recognizable to most people. Using shortcuts (in the form of abbreviations/acronyms) and skipping basic contextual information could make your answers less understandable and therefore less compelling and useful to an admissions reader, so do yourself a favor by depicting your situation as clearly as possible. 

As we have noted, these questions cover many elements of a traditional personal statement, so we encourage you to download a free copy of our  mbaMission Personal Statement Guide . In this complimentary publication, we provide a detailed discussion of how to approach such queries and craft effective responses, along with multiple illustrative examples.

Optional Job Essay: If you are currently not working or if you plan to leave your current employer more than 2 months before the programme starts, please explain your activities and occupations between leaving your job and the start of the programme. 

With this essay, INSEAD hopes to see signs of your interest in ongoing self-improvement, knowledge or experience collection, and/or giving back. Whether you are choosing to leave your job a few months before the beginning of the MBA program or are asked to do so by your employer, simply explain what you expect do and gain in the interim. The admissions committee wants to know that you are the kind of person who takes advantage of opportunities and to understand what kinds of opportunities appeal to you. For example, perhaps you plan to complete a few quantitative courses to be better equipped to hit the ground running in your related MBA classes, or perhaps you want to spend some time with family members or volunteering in your community because you know that your availability to do so will be limited when you are in school, and you want to maintain those important connections. Maybe you want to focus on improving your foreign language ability before coming to INSEAD, given the importance of this skill in the school’s program. Or you might arrange informational interviews, job-shadowing opportunities, and/or unpaid internships, which could help in various ways with recruiting and job selection. Whatever your goals and plans, clearly convey how you anticipate that your experience(s) will add to or change your character, enhance your skill set, and/or increase your understanding of yourself or others—all of which are valuable in business school.

Motivation Essay 1: Give a candid description of yourself (who are you as a person), stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary (maximum 500 words).  

Although INSEAD’s request for “main factors which have influenced your development” comes in the latter half of this essay prompt, we feel you should actually provide this context for your formative experiences before discussing the strengths and weaknesses you derived from them, because showing a clear cause-and-effect relationship between the two is important. The school asks that you offer examples “when necessary,” but your essay will be strongest if you present anecdotes to illustrate and support all your statements. Still, your essay should not end up being a hodgepodge of unconnected anecdotes that reveal strengths. Instead, focus on two or three strengths and one or two weaknesses in the mere 500 words allotted.

As always, be honest about your strengths (do not try to tell the committee what you think it wants to hear; truthfully describe who you legitimately are) and especially about your weaknesses—this is vital. Transparent or disingenuous statements will not fool or convince anyone and will only reveal you as someone incapable of critical self-evaluation.

Motivation Essay 2: Describe the achievement of which you are most proud and explain why. In addition, describe a situation where you failed. How did these experiences impact your relationships with others? Comment on what you learned (maximum 400 words).  

For this essay, you will need to offer two anecdotes that reveal different sides of you as an applicant, describing a high moment from your life and a low moment. Because the school also asks you to address how these incidents subsequently influenced your interactions with others and what lessons they taught you, you must identify stories that not only involve a significant incident but also affected you personally in a meaningful and long-lasting way. These elements of your essay are just as important as the accomplishment and the failure you choose to share; your unique thoughts can differentiate you from other applicants, and showing that you recognize how these incidents changed you and your relations with others demonstrates your self-awareness and capacity for growth. Steer clear of trite and clichéd statements about your takeaways, and really reflect on these situations to uncover your deeper reactions and impressions. For example, everyone gains some level of resiliency from a failure, so you must offer something less common and more compelling and personal.

Be aware that the best failure essays are often those that show reasoned optimism and tremendous momentum toward a goal—a goal that is ultimately derailed. In most cases, you will need to show that you were emotionally invested in your project/experience, which will enable the reader to connect with your story and vicariously experience your disappointment. If you were not invested at all, presenting the experience as a failure or learning experience will be less credible.

Motivation Essay 3: Describe all types of extra-professional activities in which you have been or are still involved for a significant amount of time (clubs, sports, music, arts, etc). How are you enriched by these activities? (maximum 300 words)   

Although stereotypes about the top MBA programs abound—this school wants consultants, that school is for marketing professionals, this other one is for techies and entrepreneurs—the truth is that they all want a diverse incoming class, full of people with various strengths and experiences that they can share with one another for the good of all. Discussing how you choose to spend your free time—explaining why your chosen activities are important to you and what you derive from them—provides the admissions committee with a window into your personality outside the workplace and classroom and an idea of what you could contribute to the student body and INSEAD as a whole.

Optional Motivation Essay: Is there anything else that was not covered in your application that you would like to share with the Admissions Committee? (maximum 300 words) 

We tend to believe that the best use of the optional essay is to explain confusing or problematic issues in your candidacy, and this prompt offers an opportunity to do just that. So, if you need to, this is your chance to address any questions an admissions officer might have about your profile—a poor grade or overall GPA, a low GMAT or GRE score, a gap in your work experience, etc. We suggest downloading your free copy of the mbaMission Optional Essays Guide , in which we offer detailed advice on deciding whether to take advantage of the optional essay and how best to do so (with multiple sample essays), if needed.

INSEAD does not stipulate that you can only discuss a problem area in this essay, however, so you have some leeway to share anything you think might be pivotal or particularly compelling. We caution you against trying to fill this space simply because you fear that not doing so would somehow count against you. Remember, by submitting an additional essay, you are asking the admissions committee to do extra work on your behalf, so you need to make sure that time is warranted. If you are using the essay to emphasize something that if omitted would render your application incomplete, take this opportunity to write a very brief narrative that reveals this key new aspect of your candidacy.

After submitting your INSEAD application, you will need to complete a video interview consisting of four questions. You will be given 45 seconds in which to consider your answer to each one and then 60 seconds in which to deliver it. You have until 48 hours after the deadline for the round in which you apply to complete this element of the process, but we strongly recommend doing so sooner rather than later while your mind is still in application mode and to ensure you do not somehow forget this task or have to rush through it at the end of the allotted time period.

Because all INSEAD admissions interviews are conducted by the school’s alumni, this is a way for members of the admissions committee to virtually “meet” candidates and supplement the information provided in the written portions of the application. This video component gives the committee direct and dynamic insight into applicants’ character and personality, as well as another angle on their language abilities. About the videos, INSEAD says on its site, “The MBA Admissions Committee is interested in obtaining an authentic view of you as a person, to see how you think on your feet and how you convey your ideas.” So when the time comes for you to record your responses, do your best to relax, answer genuinely, and let your true self shine through!

Learn more about INSEAD’s academic program, elective courses, location, facilities, and other key features by downloading your free copy of the mbaMission INSEAD Insider’s Guide .

The Next Step: Mastering Your INSEAD Interview

Many MBA candidates find admissions interviews stressful and intimidating, but mastering this important element of the application process is definitely possible—the key is informed preparation. We therefore offer our free  Interview Guides  to spur you along! Download your  free  copy of the  INSEAD Interview Guide  today.

2023-2024 Business School Essays INSEAD International Business Schools MBA Essay Tips

Tags: business school essay INSEAD international programs MBA application essays optional essay video essay

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Click here to see the complete deadlines

2023–2024 MBA Essay Tips

• Berkeley Haas School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• BU Questrom School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Cambridge Judge Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Chicago Booth School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Columbia Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management Essay and Examples
• Dartmouth Tuck School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Duke Fuqua School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Emory Goizueta Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• Esade Essay Tips and Examples
• Georgetown McDonough School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Harvard Business School 2+2 Deferred MBA Program Essay Analysis 2024
• Harvard Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• HEC Paris Essay Tips and Examples
• HKUST Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• IE Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• IESE Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• International Institute for Management Development (IMD) Essay Tips and Examples
• Ivey Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• London Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• Michigan Ross School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• MIT Sloan School of Management Essay Tips and Examples
• Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Essay Tips and Examples
• Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• NYU Stern School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Ohio Fisher College of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Oxford Saïd Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• SMU Cox School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Stanford Graduate School of Business Application Essay Tips and Examples
• Texas McCombs School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management Essay Tips and Examples
• The Wharton School Essay Tips and Examples
• Toronto Rotman School of Management Essay Tips and Examples
• UCLA Anderson School of Management Essay Tips and Examples
• UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Essay Tips and Examples
• USC Marshall School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• UVA Darden School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• UW Foster School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management Essay Analysis, 2023–2024
• Villanova School of Business Essay Tips and Examples
• Yale School of Management Essay Tips and Examples

Click here for the 2022–2023 MBA Essay Tips

MBA Program Updates

• Berkeley-Haas
• Boston University (Questrom)
• Cambridge Judge Business School
• Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)
• Columbia University (Columbia Business School)
• Consortium for Graduate Study in Management
• Cornell University (Johnson)
• Dartmouth College (Tuck)
• Duke University (Fuqua)
• Emory University (Goizueta)
• George Washington University (GWSB)
• Georgetown University (McDonough)
• Harvard University (Harvard Business School)
• IE Business School
• IESE Business School
• Indian School of Business
• Indiana University (Kelley)
• Ivey Business School
• London Business School
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
• New York University (Stern)
• Northwestern University (Kellogg)
• Notre Dame (Mendoza)
• Ohio State University (Fisher College)
• Oxford University (Saïd Business School)
• Penn State Smeal College of Business
• Rotman School of Management
• Saïd Business School
• Southern Methodist University (Cox School of Business)
• Stanford University (Stanford Graduate School of Business)
• University of California Los Angeles (Anderson)
• University of Cambridge (Judge)
• University of Chicago (Booth)
• University of London (London Business School)
• University of Michigan (Ross)
• University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler)
• University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
• University of Southern California (Marshall)
• University of Texas at Austin (McCombs)
• University of Virginia (Darden)
• Vanderbilt University (Owen)
• Villanova School of Business
• Yale University (School of Management)

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• Testimonials

Testimonial

Examples of successful INSEAD MBA essays

Need some inspiration to help you start your MBA application essays? Below you'll find some essays that helped one of students get admitted into INSEAD

Give a candid description of yourself (600 words max)

My experiences have taught me self-discovery and personal development. Like everyone, I have strengths and weaknesses. But I work hard to identify them, and make changes when needed.  

Examples of my strengths include optimism, enthusiasm, a taste for new experiences, and the dedication to see a project through to completion. These qualities have proved vital to my personal success, and once even led me to the jungles of Costa Rica. 

“ Frank, in life, you should be interested in everything” said Jorre, the Belgium hyperpolyglot as he explained a plan for a Central America banana production business. I had only known him for two days but this motorsport engineering student’s enthusiasm was already winning me over.

Later that same year, Jorre told me about another project - setting up the first wood pellet factory in Central America. I was the only one to believe in his objective and decided to help him realize it. We spent all of our free-time on it, laying down the business-plan, and going to Denmark to check out some equipment. More importantly, we made the project possible by convincing Dutch bankers to raise a million euros. 

After receiving funding I sacrificed my only two weeks of holiday to join Jorre in Costa-Rica. Looking at the muddy field that was to be our factory location, I began to question my utility. I was far away from my own field of expertise, and working in a language I was not comfortable with. But I found a useful role by recruiting workers and helping lay the factory foundation. Today, Jorre’s profitable company is selling 1000 tons of wood pellets per month. The lessons I learned, the new experiences I encountered, and my friend’s success all made our work worth it.

In Costa Rica my optimism and willingness to throw myself into an unknown situation turned out well. However, this is not always the case.

One of my first adventures abroad was a charity road-rally event in Morocco in 2006. We traversed the Sahara in a solar panel powered car that we built. Our car won the innovation prize and delivered kilos of pens, books, and computers to pupils in Ouarazazate. We initially undertook this project to discover a new place, and to establish a long-term partnership between a Moroccan school and a French one. Since then, pupils from the two continents continue exchanging mail and have built a meaningful relationship.

However, this project was made difficult by the fact that I was involved with many projects at the same time: being treasurer of my school career fair and then president of the annual prize-giving ceremony committee.  My optimism and enthusiasm had led me into a situation I wasn’t fully prepared for – exposing the weaknesses of over-committing myself and not sufficiently preparing for negative outcomes.  

 We ended-up with a mountain of work towards the deadline. This increased pressure forced us to rush through some work. After countless hours of working day and night we still respected the deadlines. But the experience taught me to prioritize my commitments, analyze the drawbacks of any new projects, and develop contingency plans for negative eventualities. These are habits that I hope to solidify during my studies, particularly during group assignments.

These two experiences are perfect examples of other trips and projects I’ve been involved in from Bhutan to Congo that have raised my intellectual curiosity and awareness. It is also because of these experiences that I believe I will fit in well at INSEAD. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get other INSEAD students enthusiastic in a project like banana production.

Describe two accomplishments (400 words max)

My greatest professional achievement was helping a Chinese racing partner win their first race. After four years of continued losses, investors threatened to stop funding. But my constant pleading led my boss to give me the green flag to go help them in Japan.

Upon arrival, it took the team and I half-an-hour to understand each other’s names. We practiced pit stops, crucial to any victory, and it took 23 seconds: twice what it takes in Europe.  Improving the team’s results suddenly seemed highly unlikely.

We spent days and nights training and upgrading the car with new performance parts. Being so motivated, I gained the driver’s trust and managed to give them self-confidence.

Starting from such a difficult situation, we triumphed to win the first race in the team’s history later that week-end. I knew I had achieved a great step in my team manager career. This was the first time I was fully responsible for a project, without supervision, and I knew then I could adapt to almost any situation.

My greatest personal achievement was climbing Mount Everest. We had cycled in Sicily, canoed in Canada and trekked through Jordan. However, a month after my racing trip to Japan my brother and I landed in Nepal with a much tougher challenge waiting for us: a ten-day hike up 10,000 vertical meters, with just the two of us and our 15kg backpacks.

We landed in Lukla, the world’s most dangerous airport: a 450-meter long runway, stuck between a cliff and a precipice. We got out of the plane alone and started walking.  Within two hours we started to see the first gravestones for previous hikers around the path.

On the second hiking day, we skipped the safest option and tried to reach the next campsite.  This was a huge mistake. We ended up completely alone at night, frozen, and exhausted with still an hour to walk. If we didn’t make the next campsite we would freeze.  The pressure we had put on ourselves to reach the top so quickly almost literally killed us.

Upon reaching the top we were struck by emotion.  This success was unlike any I had ever felt.  Even though we could have given up we never did.  Before facing Mount Everest I was completely unaware of the mental resources we found to keep going forward, but during that trip I discovered my abilities and my limits.

Describe a failure

My leadership experience has taught me that with the right attitude, failure can be an opportunity for self-discovery and personal development. One example, which highlights this principle was organizing my engineering school’s annual prize giving ceremony: the most prestigious position a student could ask for. I accepted immediately, never imagining the trouble I would find myself in a year later.

As president I presided over a 15 person team for one year, charged with planning and executing the event. Managing a €150,000 budget and dealing with local law enforcement authorities was a new and intimidating challenge. In the end, we managed to throw a very special celebration on the Champs Elysees, pleasing the school’s board and partners. Part of this success was due to the fact that I insisted on a heavy marketing budget. I covered this extra cost by raising an additional €50,000 from sponsors.  With this extra revenue, I projected a positive cash balance when the event was finished.

However, I had overestimated ticket sales. Instead of a surplus, the committee faced a €10,000 deficit. I had not envisioned such a scenario, and was unprepared for its challenges. Soon, letters from the bank and unpaid furnishers urging me to honor the debt were piling up. I somehow found a fraction of the missing cash by selling some furniture and material from the event, but I still had to leave an outstanding debt to the committee’s next president. More importantly, I had lost credibility in the eyes of the team members and the director of studies.

What I learnt from this failure eventually proved to be more powerful than its direct consequences. I realized how being aware of my lack of experience and skills in areas outside my field of expertise is crucial. Had I been less self-reliant and asked for feedback on my budget planning, the catastrophe could have been avoided.

This failure helped develop my ability to prioritize, delegate tasks and see the big picture, all of which have been considerable assets in my evolution from engineer to manager.

I also created a system that helped advise future presidents, something I wished I had access to at the beginning of the year.

Discuss your short term and long term goals

The most important career choice is to pick a job one is passionate about. Since I was a child, it has been my dream to work in the highest levels of the Formula One racing industry. Together with my extensive on-the-job experience in that field,  the management skills gained at INSEAD would help me achieve that goal.

I was only 9 and far away from Brazil when, legendary driver Ayrton Senna died. Despite the distance, as I watched the memorial on television - I felt bereaved. The image of three million mourners in the streets of Sao Paulo was breathtaking. I never missed a Formula1 race - not even the Japanese Grand Prix at 4am. It was my childhood dream to become the leader that congratulates the driver and team after a Grand Prix victory.

I’ve been hard at work making this dream turn into reality. I started 6 years ago as an engineer in Monaco. Since then, I’ve climbed the motorsport business hierarchy, from 2 nd engineer to manager in the best European team.

Two classic career paths are before me: a pure technician in a Formula One Team, or a manager of a low-sized racing team. I’m targeting a much less common trajectory: a wide-scope managing position in a top-level racing company. Ideally, after my MBA I would be a department manager within a F1 Team - heading a technical department, supervising approximately 35 engineers, establishing financial and technical objectives, and managing budget resources.

Enthusiastic feedback from MBA Engineer Alex Burns, today Williams F1 CEO and an internship offer from Lotus F1 CEO Patrick Louis (MBA 84), who was delighted with my project, reinforced my long-term objective of following their paths and realizing my dream of being on the other side of the winning driver’s hug.

Have you ever experienced culture shock? What insights did you gain? (250 words)

I have experienced culture shock and used the experience to develop my intercultural skills.

When living in Malaysia, I was often traveling to Japan to deal with suppliers. Communication with them was sometimes difficult, but this issue was far easier to deal with than their decision making process – which I thought was too slow and cautious. 

On March 11 th 2011 I was in a taxi underneath a bridge in Japan when the Earth started to tremble. The roaring grew louder and I implored the driver to move. We needed to go somewhere safe!  But to my immense surprise, the driver refused. The traffic light was red and even the most powerful earthquake in Japan’s history was not a sufficient reason to by-pass the law. It was then I realised just how deep the respect for order is in Japanese culture.

This event helped me revaluate my feelings towards my Japanese colleagues. I realized that their caution was what made them more reliable suppliers than others I had worked with.  Better awareness of their practices and the commitment that I showed by staying in their country after the quake lead to increased trust and smoother business exchanges.

This dramatic event not only changed my way of approaching the Japanese culture but also others groups of people. I have acquired the ability to distinguish, value, and use the constructive characteristics of those around me and build up a positive working or social atmosphere despite differences in how others think.

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2023-2024 INSEAD MBA Essay Analysis and Tips

Admit expert.

• August 7, 2023

With a total of 2,000 words across seven essays, the INSEAD application essays are among the longest of any top-tier business school. And that doesn’t count the two essays that aren’t required.

When you’re just starting out and looking at a blank page, this can be scary. But after working with many applicants we’ve understood that the INSEAD application gives you the best chance to tell your story and make a strong case for yourself than almost any other business school application out there.

There are 2 types of essays that INSEAD asks all the candidates to submit:

• Career essay
• Motivation essay

In this article, we have shared tips and analyses for all these essays which are a part of the INSEAD MBA application for the 2024 intake:

Career Essay 1

Career essay 2.

• Career Essay 3 

Career Essay 4

Career essay 5 (optional), motivation essay 1 analysis, create lists, rethink strengths and weaknesses, ‘measure’ impact, motivation essay 3 analysis, discuss intention and motivation, re-define enrichment, optional essay, let us help you get into insead, insead mba essay analysis.

Briefly summarize your current (or most recent) job, including the nature of work, major responsibilities, and where relevant, employees under your supervision, size of budget, clients/products and results achieved. (word limit – 200 words)

The goal of this question is to give the reader an idea of where you are in your career right now. Don’t think too much about it, because you’ll have plenty of time in later essays and other parts of your application to go into more detail about your big achievements. 

Make sure to tell us your job title, organization, where you work, and what your main responsibilities are.

Even if you’ve worked at the same company for a long time, it’s best to stay focused on your current role and duties, as directed. Consider that this will serve as the adcom’s introduction to your application, so you may want to give the reader a sense of where you fit in the company’s organizational structure and what you do for a living.

Feel free to list a few accomplishments if there’s room, but don’t list the same one you wrote about in your accomplishments essay again in another part of the application. 

Include leadership and teamwork if they are important, as well as any international projects or work that has an international scope. As much as possible, try to use numbers to convey your impact.

What would be your next step in terms of position if you were to remain in the same company? (200 words max)

The admissions committee seeks to obtain a sense of your present career momentum by focusing on what your next logical move would be in their current firm (i.e. without an MBA). 

You should be able to explain how you plan to take on more responsibility in the future, whether it be in terms of project size and complexity, the number of personnel you manage, or the company’s financial results. 

If applicable, you should also include an idea of when you expect to be promoted to this position. You should be able to provide a thorough response in 100-150 words for this question due to the fact that the information needed is more limited than the other short responses in this section.

But if you don’t have a natural progression in your organization, you may want to take a different method. You’ll have to watch your language and refrain from blaming management for your lack of advancement or sense of stagnation. 

If you don’t think you’ll be able to progress in the same company because of external factors like the company’s size, location requirements if you’d have to switch office headquarters, the skill set required to advance (ideally skills that an MBA would provide), or another existing roadblock, then you should state that you don’t expect that you’ll be able to do so in the future. 

Once you’ve proven that an MBA is a sole key that unlocks the door to the future, you may discuss how an MBA can help you achieve your goals.

Do you want to impress the INSEAD Adcom?

At Admit Expert, we have helped hundreds of students get into top MBA programs around the world. We would be happy to help you too. Schedule a free call with us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you achieve your goals.

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Career Essay 3  

Please give a full description of your career since graduating from university. Describe your career path with the rationale behind your choices. (300 words max)

This essay allows you to go beyond your resume and explain why you made the decisions you did. Make sure to give it the attention it deserves as a part of your broader narrative as an application. 

Writing this essay gives you the opportunity to elaborate on aspects of your professional history that might not be immediately apparent from a cursory glance at your resume. 

Remember, the INSEAD adcom is searching for a candidate who can show that their career has progressed in a logical manner and that they have been on an upward trajectory from the beginning. 

Approach this essay prompt chronologically, beginning with your first job and ending with your current position. 

Keep in mind that your resume and a subsequent essay will provide ample opportunity for you to elaborate on your achievements. Insist on showcasing your rise through the ranks at each company, along with notable achievements you’ve had while working there. 

Even if you have substantial job experience or have held multiple different positions, you should save your word count for the most important section of this essay: explaining why you made the decisions you did.

Discuss your short and long term career aspirations with an MBA from INSEAD. (100 words max)

Because there are just 100 words to deal with, you’ll need to answer this question both efficiently and effectively. When you’re done with your MBA, what is your immediate post-MBA professional ambition, and where do you envision yourself in 10 to 15 years?

The position you hope to occupy after completing an MBA school should be named, along with 1-2 organizations where you would like to work. Sample company names and suggestions for specific job titles will help you get a better sense of what you’re looking for. Geographic location can be included. Ideally, try to include a few phrases describing why you are so enthusiastic about this career path.

Also discuss your long-term goals for the next 10 to 15  years by describing the role you expect to play, as well as the influence you hope to make in that job. If there is enough room, it would be a good idea to discuss how an MBA could help achieve these goals, and why INSEAD is an excellent choice.

If you are currently not working or if you plan to leave your current employer more than 2 months before the programme starts, please explain your activities and occupations between leaving your job and the start of the programme. 

There is no word limit, but we recommend limiting your response to 300 words. INSEAD has added a question that gives people who are unemployed a chance to explain their situation. 

There is also a section for people who plan to take more than two months off between the time they submit their applications and the time they start INSEAD’s program. 

In either case, applicants should show that they are (or will be, if they are taking a leave) actively building skills, making connections, and moving closer to their career goals. 

This essay is a great place to talk about how you plan to make the most of the time between applying to INSEAD and starting the program. 

For example, you could talk about how you plan to do more volunteer work, go to more conferences and professional development workshops, try to get a short-term job before starting the MBA program, or make other plans.

Motivation Essay 1

Give a candid description of yourself, stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary. (500 words max)

INSEAD’s “candid description” essay seeks your authenticity and vulnerability as you delve into the enjoyable facets of your life beyond the formal academic and professional dimensions.

Be mindful not to mention hobbies or sports in this segment, as those will be addressed in a subsequent question. Instead, concentrate on delineating your character through 5-6 distinct qualities.

Utilize these traits as foundational pillars to construct an intricate portrait of your identity, interwoven with life events that molded you into this person.

Infuse vibrancy into your portrayal by intermingling self-assessed attributes with vivid anecdotes.

Moreover, delve into the reasons you believe each quality accurately characterizes you. Strive for a balanced overview by incorporating traits that resonate well on both a resume and in an interview, while also revealing your personality beyond professional realms.

How to write INSEAD’s Motivation Essay 1

Tips to write effectively:.

Craft a list of qualities that aptly define you. Alongside each attribute, create a parallel segment where you can either relate it to an event that highlighted this trait or emphasize its innate nature.

This catalog serves as the foundation upon which to construct your response. For instance, if portraying yourself as outgoing and a people person, expound on your natural affinity for striking up conversations with strangers.

Elaborate on the enrichment you derive from these interactions—learning and sharing insights. Illustrate how this quality intertwines with your community-building pursuits, propelling members to engage in philanthropic local activities, such as cleaning a nearby pond or organizing events for the marginalized.

Embrace the concept of ‘weakness’ as a pathway to personal growth. Uncover the reasons behind your ongoing struggle with this facet, narrating your evolving awareness of its significance in your life. Maintain a candid and transparent tone throughout this exploration.

Shifting to your strengths, illuminate the path that led you to perceive these attributes as valuable assets. Elaborate on specific instances where you harnessed these strengths not just for your own benefit, but also to create positive impacts for those around you. Move beyond mere restatements of well-known traits; instead, craft engaging narratives that lend richness to your descriptions. This approach will infuse your portrayals with depth, offering an insightful glimpse into your character.

• Start with a confident introduction, listing a couple of strengths and weaknesses that best define you.
• Elaborate on why you consider these traits to be the most representative of you.
• Further delve into how these characteristics have impacted your life, either fostering personal growth or presenting challenges.
• Conclude by briefly outlining your strategies to harness your strengths and address your weaknesses.

Motivation Essay 2

Describe the achievement of which you are most proud and explain why. In addition, describe a situation where you failed. How did these experiences impact your relationships with others? Comment on what you learned. (400 words max)

Motivation Essay 2 Analysis

Given the limited word count, focus on briefly summarizing the achievement or failure. Prioritize discussing takeaways and the impact on relationships.

This allows more space to elaborate on your communication and interpersonal skills during highs and lows. Friends and family influence how we perceive and celebrate both successes and setbacks, shaping our growth.

Acknowledge the shared challenges of being part of a larger community, bridging personal and professional spheres. When addressing your takeaways, emphasize your key sources of support and challenges.

Explain how these individuals have uniquely contributed to your growth. Explore how these dynamics have influenced your relationships, not only with them but also with others in your life.

Tips to write effectively

Consider the various types of impact – emotional, financial, and social – when delving into the effects of achievements or failures on your relationships. Categorize these impacts to establish clearer connections to the shifts in your life. Reflect on how each impact, regardless of scale, collectively contributed to reshaping your perspective and personal growth. While identifying these impacts is important, go beyond and explain why they left a significant imprint, why they remain relevant, and how you intend to apply the lessons moving forward.

• Introduce the achievement by setting the scene and context. Then, expand on the specific reasons that make this achievement remarkable and why it holds such importance.
• Shift the focus to how this achievement had an impact on different aspects of your life, particularly your personal and professional relationships. Explore the ripple effects it created in these areas.
• Follow the same structure when discussing a failure. Provide context and details about the failure, and then explain why it holds significance as a learning experience.
• Conclude by emphasizing the main lessons you’ve extracted from both instances. Describe how these insights will shape your future actions and decisions.

Motivation Essay 3

Describe all types of extra-professional activities in which you have been or are still involved for a significant amount of time (clubs, sports, music, arts, politics, etc). How are you enriched by these activities? (300 words max)

Within this question lies an opportunity to build upon your hobbies and philanthropic endeavors, allowing the admissions committee to glimpse the vibrant tapestry of your identity.

It’s crucial to thoughtfully establish connections between your interests and the way they illuminate both your strengths and weaknesses.

Before delving into specifics, provide a brief context about what motivated you to explore these paths. Following this, synthesize your thoughts to reveal how engaging in diverse activities has catalyzed your personal growth.

Convey your intention to sustain this trajectory, emphasizing your openness to embracing challenges and absorbing life’s lessons.

For instance, if your explorations encompass extensive travel, elaborate on the destinations you chose, the transformative encounters you experienced, and the self-discoveries you made.

Finally, illustrate instances where you ventured outside your comfort zone, underlining your readiness to confront challenges and embrace life’s myriad opportunities.

As you discuss your hobbies and interests, delve into the factors that guided your choice. Did a movie, a person, or a natural inclination spark your interest?

Once you began, share whether pursuing this hobby was smooth or challenging, and explain why you continue along this path.

Whether your hobby brings you joy and accomplishment or presents challenges, explore it further. If it brings happiness, expand on those positive aspects.

If it poses difficulties, describe how overcoming them has readied you for tougher challenges ahead.

While highlighting your enthusiasm for your hobby is important, also use this opportunity to lay the foundation for discussing your personal growth and development.

After you’ve elaborated on your motivations and intentions, explore your perspective on enrichment. Go beyond personal development and consider how it contributes to your life. Whether it serves as a stress reliever, a lens to view the world differently, a creative outlet, or a means of finding personal space and rest, discuss what “enrichment” signifies to you. This could encompass anything from integrating gratitude in your life to pushing your boundaries and discovering new horizons.

• Introduce your hobby briefly, sketching a timeline that highlights why you initially ventured into this interest.
• Explore the enduring motivation that keeps you engaged in this hobby regularly.
• Dedicate the most extensive portion of your essay to detailing how this hobby enriches your life. Delve into its role as a stress-reliever, a transformative lens for viewing the world, a medium of creative expression, or a haven of personal solace.
• Conclude by outlining your plans to carry forward this hobby and its enriching impact. Share your vision for deepening your engagement and ensuring that its positive influence continues to shape your journey.

Is there anything else that was not covered in your application that you would like to share with the Admissions Committee? (300 words, maximum)

Applicants are encouraged to contribute any material that they believe is relevant to their application in this openly phrased optional essay (in addition, of course, to explaining extenuating circumstances or acknowledging weaknesses in their applications). Candidates should, however, keep in mind that INSEAD’s essay prompts span a wide range of topics, so it’s a good idea to see if their essay answers any of these questions.

We will help you write essays that portray your unique strengths and experiences in the most favorable light so that your application shines above the rest. We have helped hundreds of students get into top US and European business schools. Let us help you too.

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Essay Writing Tips for Your MBA Application

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Writing essays can be one of the most challenging aspects of the MBA application. Yet, they are a crucial element in the admissions process, giving you a unique opportunity to introduce yourself and your achievements and providing valuable information to the admissions team on your motivations and overall fit for the programme.

As such, to guide you through this important process, we thought you may appreciate a few pointers from our admissions team on how to write strong essays. They recommend the following tips:

Be original

We encourage you to stay away from clichés and to create original content. In other words, we want to get to know the real “you”, so be honest and reflect deeply on what unique experience you can bring to the programme. It may help you to think about what you would say to a friend or a sibling over coffee in response to each of the questions.

INSEAD selects a variety of profiles to complete the class; from people who have taken the more traditional business routes in their careers to others with medical, humanities or military backgrounds. This means that there is no standard template and no perfect mould to which you need to fit.

So try to avoid writing what you think the admissions committee would like to hear and follow your own instincts ; for instance, you can mix in elements from your personal life that can shed light on your passions, pursuits or accomplishments. The best essays we have read always strike a balance between personal and professional details .

You can try to think about stories and anecdotes from your childhood, high school or undergraduate studies. Of course, you should make sure that the stories from personal and professional situations convey something about you and relate to the questions. And one more thing, please bear in mind that original doesn’t mean intimate or inappropriate.

Grammar, sentence construction, words and terms used, clarity of expression

These things reveal a lot about you, even if they seem like small details. We understand that you are juggling your application amidst many other responsibilities and this can be challenging at times.

However, it is important to stay focused, to plan appropriately and to take sufficient time to write, review and edit your essays in order to ensure that the image you are projecting is not skewed by inaccuracies, unclear sentences or technical jargon and acronyms. Respecting the word limit and answering the question are also very important points.

For those of you who are not keen writers, keeping a diary where you capture all the fleeting thoughts you have during the day can prove to be very helpful. Writing in bullet points rather than full sentences at first may also help you to get started.

Eventually, you will have enough material to start writing a first draft of each essay. It can take up to 8–10 weeks to prepare for the essay component of the application and it is common to have to re-write them several times until you are happy with the result.

It can take up to 8–10 weeks to prepare for the essay component of the application.

Detail clearly your work experience

We need to be able to understand your professional responsibilities and experience as this is one of the most important assets you will be bringing into the classroom. To state, for example: “I manage IT projects”, is not enough; instead, you need to describe the nature of your work using concrete and specific examples.

It is also important to provide a description of your organisation, the structure, market and product, especially if you work for a family business or a small- to medium-sized enterprise.

When you talk about your experience, it’s normal to underline your strengths but make sure to focus on your areas of improvement as well. Finally, if you have been unemployed for a period of time or there’s a gap in your job history, it is advisable to give an honest explanation instead of avoiding it.

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9 Successful INSEAD Essays

by Talha Omer, MBA, M.Eng., Harvard & Cornell Grad

In personal statements samples by university.

The following essay examples were written by an applicant who was admitted to INSEAD. These essays are intended to provide examples of successful INSEAD application essays.

In this Article

Essay 1 INSEAD

Essay 2 insead, essay 3 insead, essay 4 insead, essay 5 insead, essay 6 insead, essay 8 insead, essay 9 insead.

Briefly summarise your current (or most recent) job, including the nature of work, major responsibilities, where relevant, employees under your supervision, budget size, clients/products, and results achieved.

I work in Coca-Cola USA’s commercial division as Shopper Marketing Manager. ‘Coca-Cola’ is the world’s most valuable beverage brand, with a turnover of $37 Billion.

My core responsibilities include:

• Developing an annual business plan for Coca-Cola.
• Developing commercial execution plans.
• Leading new variant launches to increase market share within US’s extremely competitive beverage industry.

I have adopted a data-driven approach to gain a competitive advantage and actively pursued key shopper trends to design in-store visibility plans for traditional and modern trade channels.

Taking over the role last year, I designed the full-year marketing calendar, supervised it through one direct report, and influenced an array of cross-functional teams. For example, I judiciously initiated a strategic partnership with Allied Snacks, an upcoming local snacks player, to compete with Pepsi & Lay’s pairing in the market to drive the brand’s volume. The collaboration resulted in a 30% volume increase at activated outlets. Furthermore, I spearheaded partnerships with digital platforms and explored mobile-marketing solutions, which has helped Coca-Cola gain traction in the growing e-retail segment of the US.

To accelerate the trial for Coke Zero, I identified key segments to target the right shopper. As a result, the product reached 30K outlets, the highest for the niche Diet segment.

The top management well received my efforts, and I was recognized as one of the top talents in the recent performance review for delivering unprecedented results for the brand: 25% sales growth and a market share gain of 3.3% over Pepsi strengthening Coca-Cola’s leadership. This resulted in an increase in budget by 30% to $400mn.

I am currently executing a commercial campaign aiming to churn out a share for Coca-Cola within Turkey’s huge tea market. In addition, I have identified new channels across the retail landscape and developed relevant shopper toolkits to facilitate tea-to-Coke conversions.

Furthermore, I mentor work recruiters and have been assigned additional responsibility to champion the implementation of KO Lab – Coca-Cola’s global customer collaboration hub – for which I travel to Dubai and frequently coordinate with my counterparts in Turkey.

What would be your next step in your position if you remained in the same company? (50-150 words)

Suppose I were to keep working at Coca-Cola; I see myself being promoted to Strategy Planning Manager by Q-4 on a fast-track growth within the commercial division, leading a team of three employees.

In this role, I would be responsible for developing the long-term corporate strategy of the organization through a rigorous decision-making process with local and regional leadership. In addition, I would oversee the optimization of the current portfolio concerning sparkling soft drinks and juices worth US$28 billion. Moreover, I would identify sources of growth for the business through portfolio expansion into energy and sports drinks, potentially worth US$12.5 billion, ensuring sustainable value growth in the future.

I believe I would be the right fit for this position as I have experience managing diverse commercial portfolios, which has prepared me to drive the business through a holistic perspective. 

Please give a full description of your career since graduating from university. Describe your career path with the rationale behind your choices. (200-350 words)

With a background in mathematics, I started my career in category operations at Makro, a Dutch retailer. However, I always wanted to work in a bigger organization to develop my business understanding, and I joined Unilever, one of the leading multinationals in the US, as Territory Manager.

At Unilever, it was an enriching experience to deal with a large portfolio of products. As Territory Manager, I focused on sales force management to exceed my monthly volume targets and successfully launched eight new brands in the market. Within 15 months, I was promoted to In-Store Manager of a global key account, Walmart. Here, I learned account-management skills and activated the company’s first-ever Health & Beauty section, helping my account grow at approximately 2x the overall company sales growth.

Based on my solid performance in driving sales and relationships on-ground, I was promoted as Assistant Trade Category Manager in a stretch role to manage three recently launched home care brands. With a wide-angle perspective of trade channels and geographies, I focused on increasing product availability at key outlets, which led to 43% sales growth. My performance caught the leadership’s attention, and I was placed in Unilever’s coveted fast-track leadership program.

To gain a functional knowledge of marketing in consumer goods, I seized the opportunity to work at Coca-Cola, the fastest-growing beverage company. As Trade Marketing Executive, I used my diverse skill set and holistic business understanding to develop the first-ever modern trade activation program, which improved channel profitability by $200mn through reduced-trade discounts and won me the ‘Innovation Award.’

I was promoted to Trade Marketing Manager for traditional trade within a short period. In this role, I designed cost-effective, innovative tools and cascaded customer value propositions to 600 account managers at distribution premises. This helped increase the reach of ‘Share a Coke’ packs to 225K outlets, the highest ever for any beverage brand.

Later, to understand the brand perspective of the business, I opted for the opportunity to work as Shopper Marketing Manager for Coca-Cola, my current role in the organization.

Discuss your short and long-term career aspirations with an MBA from INSEAD. (250-350 words)

In my six-year career, I have performed successfully in two dynamic consumer goods multinationals and have evolved into a mature and confident leader. I am excited to take the next big challenge in my life and feel ready to gain formal business education through an MBA experience.

Yet through my international outlook on the transformation of the retail landscape, I am fascinated by the booming e-commerce growth, which has impacted business strategies in every aspect. Going forward, I want to compete as a global savvy professional in the technology industry to learn modern processes while working in multicultural teams.

Hence, with an MBA from INSEAD, I want to immediately join Amazon in the Consumer Leadership Development program based out of Europe. Leveraging my commercial knowledge of the consumer goods industry, I want to join the technology world to solve complex business problems and lead innovative business development.

I believe INSEAD would provide the ideal resources to achieve my short-term goal. I want to take specialized marketing electives such as ‘B2B Marketing’ to learn the customer-centric approach and use the INDUSTRAT simulation to learn the application of business marketing techniques. In addition, I want to join the TMT Club to attend treks and build my network through interacting with highly approachable INSEAD alumni. Finally, as technology firms frequently hire at INSEAD, I look forward to leveraging the career support, the internship opportunity after P3, and Fontainebleau’s proximity to Amazon Europe’s headquarters to land my intended job.

Also, INSEAD is a lifestyle that I look forward to. One with exposure to multicultural teams, greater cumulative intelligence, meaningful experiences, and lasting friendships. Simultaneously, I am eager to enlighten my peers by sharing stirring stories from my emerging economy experience and also contribute to the ‘desi’ national week.

In the medium-to-long term, I want to keep immersing myself in understanding the latest business practices and data-driven decision-making in the technology industry. In addition, I want to build my expertise while taking on bigger roles and working extensively across geographies. With INSEAD, I feel sure to achieve my short-term and long-term goals.

Give a candid description of yourself (who you are as a person), stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary (approximately 500 words).

If I were to summarize my life in one word, it would be  Kaizen  – continuous improvement.

As the eldest son of a teacher, I inherited a knowledge-sharing environment. At the same time, social gatherings were infrequent. As a result, I grew up as a shy person and lacked the confidence to initiate conversations with strangers.

Yet, I had a strong desire to differentiate myself, not as a rebellious teenager but as a dynamic human being whose knowledge people would seek out.

On a path of self-discovery, I tried to expand my social circles in which I would learn from other’s expertise. Self-directed, I took decisions with high financial and emotional costs. I knew that to conquer my fear of leading a moderate lifestyle, I needed to break the shackles of living in a joint-family system.

To do so, I actively pursued international opportunities at NYU to come out of my comfort zone. First, I applied for a one-year university exchange program in the most multicultural city in the world, Toronto. Being the only Asian in my class, I actively expressed myself and my culture and engaged in an intellectually stimulating exchange of ideas with my peers. This period helped me improve my social intelligence and cross-cultural awareness, an experience I want to foster again.

Later, my efforts in driving the journalism society earned me participation in ‘International Journalism Conference in Hong Kong. I had the opportunity to give a speech on political and social issues in front of influential international journalists, helping me overcome stage fright and boost my self-confidence.

My maturity was again tested when I decided to move to Dubai in my corporate career. My professional role demanded leadership and empathy, as I led a team of 20 merchandisers, all older than me. So, I learned to manage and motivate others around me in harsh environments. 

My transformational journey in life has helped me discover my competitive strengths:  the ability to improve the status quo and adaptability to new environments.

However, my conviction to learn through new experiences also posed challenges. I tend to struggle when I need to multitask. I experienced this when I tried to manage my academics and host social events at my university. Preparing material for meetings at the office, I often skipped my breakfast and exercise routine.

This triggered a deeper introspection and helped me understand my weakness:  lack of prioritization. 

My professional career has allowed me to capitalize on my strengths and pre-empt weak areas. I have consistently flourished in new teams and demonstrated effective thought leadership, making my peers seek my expertise in various strategic matters. In parallel, I constantly adapted to overcome my weakness. I ensured I scheduled my priorities effectively and performed my best in high-pressure situations.

I continue seeking opportunities to help break old boundaries and improve myself, excelling in a progressively balanced lifestyle.

Kaizen. It all makes sense.

Describe the achievement of which you are most proud and explain why. In addition, describe a situation where you failed. How did these experiences impact your relationships with others? Comment on what you learned (approximately 400 words).

Rockn’ Coke is the biggest music asset of Turkey, and my proudest achievement stems from the commercial planning experience of this platform. 

It was a matter of growth and survival as the three-month-long plan covered 50% of the annual marketing budget, and the leadership gave paramount expectations on driving business results.

Quickly realizing the profound impact of my decisions, I segmented the trade channels and devised solutions for specific shopper needs. However, the biggest hurdle was to drive discipline and accountability among cross-functional teams. To streamline the process and promote inclusion, I nominated operational champions across geographies and devised incentive plans for motivation. I shared weekly progress reports with the management and kept my nerves intact when discussions heated up, triggering my tolerance test. 

My segmented shopper solutions at 50K outlets grew sales by 32%, generating $155 mn incremental profit for the company. I was invited to Coca-Cola offices in Dubai to present key learnings based on the tremendous results. I emphasized the value of sturdy coordination, which creates stronger bonds. I still remember it as an experience of true motivational leadership, my joie de vivre.

I had a glaring failure that taught me a harsh yet important lesson. I was tasked to develop a turnaround plan for Unilever’s ailing toilet cleaner brand, Domex, which had lost 8.3% market share over six months to the established competitor Harpic. Taking the job as a gateway for enhanced face value with the leadership, I decided to employ my analytical and problem-solving skills.

I quickly analyzed to identify loss-enduring segments and decided to drive trade incentives around product availability at 35k outlets. Unknowingly using the wrong product-efficacy scores, I planned to achieve share parity in 3 months through an accelerated 20t volume gain. 

In the first month, I was able to achieve the availability targets. After that, however, the volume trend showed a limited upsurge, majorly impacted by the low product off-take. Baffled by the findings, I reviewed consumer metrics with the brand team and discovered a low consumer confidence score. As a result, budgets wore out, and Domex barely achieved 5t incremental volume.

I stood up to my mistake in the business review meeting, mortified that I should have confronted the brand manager before making assumptions. But unfortunately, in professional relationships, information gaps can transpire missed opportunities.

Describe all extra-professional activities in which you have been or are still involved for a significant time (clubs, sports, music, arts, politics, etc.). How do these activities enrich you? (approximately 300 words)

I teach secondary level Science and English to underprivileged students in a local school to impart education to the children of domestic workers of my colony. I feel a strong responsibility to use my knowledge to help my community since education is the basic right of all. I feel privileged through this uplifting experience, and I always look forward to my bright students.

I am a member of the Emergency Response Team of my colony and have helped my local neighborhood organize earthquake relief efforts. I also initiated shoebox drives to collect food and clothes for children. These activities allow me to create a meaningful impact in my community by helping those in need.

Event management has been a passion for me. I realized my passion for managing events when I volunteered for the Annual Drama Festival at NYU. Later, I hosted the flagship journalism event, The NYU FESTIVAL, a 400 delegates event with considerable participation from all over the world. At Coca-Cola, I have been assigned the responsibility of managing corporate conferences due to the management’s confidence in my capabilities. These experiences have taught me to plan meticulously, pre-empt crises and create a collaborative environment to achieve mutual success.

I have also co-founded the first journalism society at NYU, the NYU Daily Student, which started as an on-campus media coverage initiative but later evolved into a legitimate journalism entity. So, taking an idea and then maturing it to a solid level was key learning here.

I am also a sports enthusiast because it keeps me mentally and physically energetic, and thus I play competitive cricket regularly, representing my university and employers at various tournaments. I am also an avid Arabic calligrapher, helping me express keen attention to detail. 

Is there anything else not covered in your application that you would like to share with the Admissions Committee? (approximately 300 words)

Coming from a family where the only criteria for success were strong academic performance, I joined one of the best schools in the US to maintain a balanced life. However, I believed that strong academics needed the support of strong social skills to succeed in life.

At NYU, I tried to stretch my social horizons and maintain a strong academic performance. At first, I enjoyed the intensity of juggling multiple objectives, but later, I stressed out, and my GPA took a hit. 

Although painfully aware of my average academics as an undergraduate, I challenged myself to enter my professional career with a core ethos of hard work and commitment. To this day, I have never doubted my academic aptitude. Instead, I believe I was overwhelmed by the social opportunities and lost focus on academics. Fortunately, this feeling has catalyzed my evolution into a polished professional.

My interest in INSEAD got fueled when I interacted with peers within my professional circle who had successfully joined the INSEAD MBA. Discussing the MBA experience with Carolyn Maurell, Class of 16J, I learned the emphasis INSEAD puts on diversity, academic rigor, and international outlook, which closely match my career aspirations. I have already started learning French to advance my preparation for the third language.

My willingness to join the INSEAD MBA program was firmed up when I visited the serene Fontainebleau campus to better understand my fit. Escorted by Ms. Hélène Destouches, I attended the Managerial Accounting class by David Young and thoroughly enjoyed the dynamic class discussions. In addition, I interacted with current students who promised a buzzing social life. Passing by the Family Room, I imagined my wife and kid in a baby music class and decided that INSEAD was  the  place for my MBA.

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INSEAD MBA Essays: Question Prompts & Successful Sample Essays

By Arvind Kumar

31 July 2023

INSEAD MBA Motivation Essays: Question Prompts

Essay 1: Give a candid description of yourself (who are you as a person), stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary (maximum 500 words).

Essay 2: Describe the achievement of which you are most proud and explain why. In addition, describe a situation where you failed. How did these experiences impact your relationships with others? Comment on what you learned(maximum 400 words).

Essay 3: Describe all types of extra-professional activities in which you have been or are still involved for a significant amount of time (clubs, sports, music, arts, etc). How are you enriched by these activities? (maximum 300 words)

Essay 4 (Optional) : Is there anything else that was not covered in your application that you would like to share with the Admissions Committee? (maximum 300 words)

INSEAD MBA Job Description Questions: Question Prompts

Question 1: Briefly summarise your current (or most recent) job, including the nature of work, major responsibilities, and where relevant, employees under your supervision, size of budget, clients/products and results achieved. (200 words maximum)

Question 2: What would be your next step in terms of position if you were to remain in the same company instead of going to business school? (200 words maximum)

Question 3: Please give a full description of your career since graduating from university. Describe your career path with the rationale behind your choices. (300 words maximum)

Question 4: Discuss your short and long-term career aspirations with an MBA from INSEAD. (100 words maximum)

Question 5 (Optional): If you are currently not working or if you plan to leave your current employer more than 2 months before the programme starts, please explain your activities and occupations between leaving your job and the start of the programme. 

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INSEAD MBA Motivation Essays – Successful Sample Essays

Looking back on my life, I would say my journey so far has been one of using mental resilience and adaptability to overcome adversity. My mental fortitude has helped me deal with the pressures of running a sprawling business and with bouncing back from its eventual failure. I have had to stay strong due to my father’s chronic kidney failure and subsequent transplant, while at the same time managing multi-million client projects in my day job and running a fledgling business on the side. These high-pressure life experiences have helped me develop a strong work ethic, intense focus and a deep appreciation for the value of teamwork.

I become self-reliant and adaptable to change at an early age. My family periodically relocated cities due to my parents’ transferable job, and I had to develop the ability to take in the new circumstances and make friends quickly. This habit served me well later on in life when I was selected for a prestigious undergraduate internship at the University of Bath, UK. I felt invigorated and excited by the exposure to a new culture. Interacting with a diverse group of people imparted a sense of belonging in me after my fragmented childhood social life.

Another trait which has helped me in my professional life is my appetite for competition – I am excited in the face of a challenge and always put my best foot forward. After coming back from the UK I set my sights on securing a consulting analyst role at one of the MBBs. Despite competition from 400 of my fellow students, I was the sole person selected for the top business consulting internship at Microsoft from my college. Through my dedication and with the help of my prestigious internships I finally achieved my goal and secured a placement offer as an analyst at Bain. 

My ambitious and dedicated nature also has its downsides, in that I sometimes take big risks without adequate preparation, and put too much pressure on myself when I am not ready to handle it. This trait is what made me abandon my placement offer at Bain to try and save my newly established family business. Despite my best efforts I was unable to prevent its failure. In hindsight, I can clearly see that I did not have the requisite business experience and skills to take on that challenge, and I should not have taken that risk. 

My resilience and determination helped me to bounce back from this failure. I got back into consulting with an Analyst role at (Confidential), where I achieved 2 promotions in subsequent years through my hard work and dedication. I combined my learnings and utilised my strengths to launch new entrepreneurial ventures in the F&B space, which I have grown to $100K+ in revenue in the first year itself. I feel the INSEAD MBA is the perfect place to work on my areas of improvement and utilise my strengths to take my career forward.

My professional career has been deeply influenced by certain pivotal events and the important learnings I have taken from them. Chief amongst these has been my first entrepreneurial attempt – during my last year of college, my father and I started a dairy farm business with our family’s savings. It quickly became apparent that the business was struggling, and I felt compelled to abandon my placement offer of consulting analyst at Bain to join the start-up in an attempt to safeguard my family’s fortunes. However, due to unfavourable market conditions and our own mismanagement arising from inexperience, we were unable to rescue the business and had to shut down with massive losses.

I learned a very hard lesson—good intentions and hard work are not enough to compensate for a lack of experience and business acumen. Indeed, this pivotal experience has shaped me profoundly and made me value business experience and know-how as critical attributes. I used these learnings and experiences as my bedrock while starting my second business – The Charcuterie Co. Starting and growing this business has been my most significant professional achievement.

I started this company in 2021 to translate my passion for European gourmet food to the Indian palette. However, as soon as I had started this venture along with my day job, my father was diagnosed with kidney failure. I had invested my life’s savings into my business and I could not justify shutting it down; thereby losing my investment and rendering my newly hired staff redundant. 

My family and I continued battling against all odds, and we arranged for a kidney transplant. My father is now on the path to recovery and is doing well. Despite the difficult circumstances, I stayed mentally strong, continued working on my business and built up to monthly £13,000 in sales. Turning the business into a success after the tough start has been even more meaningful to me after my first failed attempt at entrepreneurship. I will aim to translate this mental fortitude as well as my entrepreneurial mindset to my career and life post my MBA.

Having grown up and extensively travelled in underdeveloped parts of India, I have had the chance to see food-poverty and its devastating effects firsthand. Since my college days I have been volunteering with various charities such as the Rotaract club and the Delhi NCR Foodbank to do my part in eradicating food insecurity in India. Using my businesses in the F&B space I play an active role in making and distributing food packets, most recently with the Chattarpur AKSM Trust Foundation. Helping to combat India’s food poverty problem is incredibly fulfilling, and I feel this endeavour has helped me grow into a more empathetic person.

Through my business I have partnered with some of India’s largest art galleries and exhibitions in the past year, and have subsequently developed a passion for art and creative design. I am a member of the Bikaner House Art Collective which has given me the chance to interact with India’s biggest artists, such as Paresh Maity and Jayasri Burman. This exposure to the art scene in India has furthered my own creativity and encouraged out of the box thinking in my business pursuits. 

I also enjoy physical exercise and sports. I am an active member of the Siri Fort Sports Club. I have run half-marathons before the COVID pandemic and am currently in training to run a full marathon before starting my MBA program. Working out has made me more disciplined and mentally strong as a person, and has helped me be more productive throughout my day.

Other than this, I am an active member of my college’s mentorship group. I have recently mentored 2 juniors in business fundamentals and case studies and helped them gain their dream consulting jobs, which has been a personal high point for me in the past year. 

Essay 4 (Optional): Is there anything else that was not covered in your application that you would like to share with the Admissions Committee? (maximum 300 words)

One of the reasons I am attracted to the INSEAD MBA program is its emphasis on diversity, inclusion and international experience. The program also places an emphasis on its cohort having strong international experience and a history of working with diverse team members. I believe I satisfy these criteria and will be a good fit with the dynamic and diverse cohort at INSEAD. 

I have spent most of my professional career working with international clients and teammates. Starting with my 3 month internship at University of Bath, UK, where I worked on a robotics project with a team comprising people from over 20 nationalities. This was an exciting opportunity for me and I found it exhilarating to work alongside people from different backgrounds and nationalities.

During my time at (Confidential) I exclusively worked for international clients in my 3 year stint, during the majority of which all my managers and team were based in either America or Europe. I worked alongside people from the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain and Costa Rica on a daily basis. I was also in line to be internally transferred to the US. This however did not end up happening due to the COVID pandemic and my father’s subsequent medical problems. 

I am intent on joining INSEAD due to its focus on consulting careers, incredibly diverse cohort and the culture of excellence which the school embodies. I have had several conversations with current INSEAD students who have all encouraged my application and given me valuable insight into the school. I look forward to the chance to travel extensively and learn from and alongside a diverse cohort at INSEAD.

Learn from  Adhiraj’s insights on his successful INSEAD admit with scholarships . 

INSEAD MBA Job Description Questions – Successful Sample Essays

I am currently managing 2 companies, both of which I have founded in the last 18 months. The first is a gourmet food delivery and catering company which I started from my home kitchen and have grown to a team of 20 employees with monthly revenues of ~€15,000. In my day to day work I oversee quality control, drive new product ideation, handle high value customers, review marketing and sales performance and manage HR issues.

The second is a hospitality consulting business which I run with my business partner and chef. There are 5 employees, and our average monthly revenue is ~ €4,500. I am directly responsible for new lead generation and conversion through sales platforms and my professional network. I advise my clients on their overall business strategy, build their brand concepts and run PMOs for their projects.

Previously I have worked as an Associate Consultant at a boutique management consultancy where I led a team of 5 analysts and managed client projects with average baselines of ~$30M – $200M. My diverse experiences have helped improve my business acumen and team management skills, and I look forward to contributing my experience to the INSEAD MBA cohort.

My current aim is to continue growing both of my businesses and achieving sustainable profitability while transitioning myself to a hands-off chairman role instead of an executive role. In the short term my aim is to get back into the corporate world and progress my consultancy career. I feel the best way to set my business up for success is to recruit experts in the field, empower them to deliver their ideas and give them the tools for success while I gain further experience, connections and capital through my consultancy career. I feel the INSEAD MBA is the perfect place for me to build these capabilities while simultaneously enhancing my profile in order to better negotiate start-up funding for my businesses.

If I were to not go to business school I would still try to transition back to a consultancy career to build my skills and connections. I would target a Consultant role and aim for a company where I have the possibility of internally transitioning to a strategic consulting role in a European/US geography within 2-3 years. Simultaneously I would also begin exploring angel investment options for one of my businesses instead of waiting for sustained profitability.

At the time of my graduation from college I had secured a placement offer from Bain for a consulting analyst profile. I ultimately chose to not take up this offer and joined my newly started family business in organic and sustainable dairy farming. I became the managing director and had directly oversaw  finances, marketing, sales, product development and quality control. In 1.5 years we grew annual revenue to $180,000 and expanded our distribution network to 5 other cities. Additionally we secured large B2B contracts and negotiated financing in tough COVID market conditions. However, despite our best efforts we could not attain sustainable profitability and had to shut down operations in 2019.

After this setback I joined (Confidential) in 2019 to develop my analytical and consulting skills while gaining direct exposure to client projects. I gained promotions in successive years, advancing from an Analyst profile to an Associate Consultant within 3 years. Towards the end of my tenure was managing a team of 5 analysts while directly handling $30M – $200M categories on billion-dollar projects. I developed a specialisation in logistics and supply chain management with a focus on the North American and European geographies.

In 2021, I launched a gourmet food business while continuing with my day job, with the intention of pursuing my passion as well as giving my entrepreneurial ambitions another chance. In the first year of business, I grew it to $100K+ in revenue and now manage a team of 20 people across different functions and domains. I have also launched a hospitality consulting business where I aim to couple my business skills with my team’s culinary expertise to help young professionals start their own F&B businesses. We have delivered 5 projects in 3 cities in our first 3 months and continue to expand.

Through the INSEAD MBA I am targeting a switch in geography from India to Europe, particularly the UK/Netherlands. I am also planning to switch my profile from an operations/procurement role into a strategy consulting profile at a global consulting firm such as the MBBs, Kearney or Strategy&.

In the long term, I aim to combine the expertise, connections and skills I build in my consulting career with my prior entrepreneurship experience to realise my ambition of becoming an innovation and sustainability focussed entrepreneur. I believe an INSEAD MBA is the perfect path forward to realising this goal.

Question 5: If you are currently not working or if you plan to leave your current employer more than 2 months before the programme starts, please explain your activities and occupations between leaving your job and the start of the programme. (Optional)

If I am successful in my application, I plan to take a 2 month vacation before the start of the programme. In this time I will fulfil one of my big dreams – to backpack solo across south east asia and explore the exciting cultures of Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. 

I also aim to take an active role in the organising of the annual Diwali ‘bhandara’ (communal food distribution) at the Chattarpur AKSM Trust Foundation, which feeds up to 500,000 food insecure people on festival days. Helping alleviate India’s crippling food insecurity is one of my personal ambitions and I have partnered with several institutions across Delhi through my food kitchen for social work. I would like to take this endeavour one step forward and actually help organise the massive logistics behind this mammoth charity event.

Another personal goal I would like to complete in this period is to participate in a full-length marathon, for which I have been training for the past 6 months. Having run half-marathons in the past, it would be a big achievement for me to take the next step and cross off a bucket list item.

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The INSEAD Interview: What to Expect + Sample Questions

Oct 4, 2023

UPDATE : This article was originally posted on March 27, 2019. It has been updated with new information and tips below. 

With business increasingly taking place across borders and popular industries (we’re looking at you, tech) moving at a breakneck speed, INSEAD is a more popular target for business school applicants than ever. 

Though INSEAD offers two intakes each year, the increased attention the school has garnered makes it more competitive than ever to earn a spot at this prestigious business school. 

That’s why we’ve prepared this guide to help you use your INSEAD admissions interview to stand out. We’ve rounded up not only our best tips but have also included sample interview questions to ensure you give your INSEAD application your best shot. 

How the INSEAD interview works 

As one of the most elite business schools in the world, landing an interview with INSEAD is no easy task. 

Thus, if you have passed to the interview phase of the INSEAD application process, congratulations! This is already an exceptional achievement. 

INSEAD interviews, since they are conducted by alumni, tend to be slightly friendlier than interviews conducted by the admissions committee. Nonetheless, the interviewer is still trying to gauge how solid your motivations for wanting to pursue an MBA are, how interested you seem in the INSEAD program, and if you fit well with the program’s global community. 

Interviewers often ask many standard MBA interview questions, as well as questions designed to test how well you handle diversity and conflict. You can also expect numerous follow-up questions. 

Our clients who have interviewed with INSEAD in the past say that the interviewer was very friendly and demonstrated a genuine interest in their answers. For some clients, questions were far more personal in nature, covering topics like their childhood and family upbringing. Other clients reported their interview was strictly professional, so make sure you’re ready for anything when you interview with INSEAD. 

Who will interview you?

INSEAD has a rich tradition of alumni conducting admissions interviews. You will have to complete two interviews, each with a different alumnus or alumna, in order to finish the interview portion of the INSEAD application. 

Will the interviewer have read my application?

Yes. When you are provided with your interviewers’ contact information, you will also be asked to send them your application in PDF format. You are not required to send your motivational essays, but the rest of your application must be sent. As such, your interviewer may ask you about anything included in that PDF. 

Keep in mind, however, that your interviewer will not have seen your video essay responses . 

How long will the INSEAD interview last?

45-60 minutes. 

Who is INSEAD looking for?

“The accelerated full-time MBA programme curriculum develops successful, thoughtful leaders and entrepreneurs who create value for their organisations and their communities, and we are looking for smart, well-rounded candidates who believe that business can be a force for good.” Minh Huy Lai , Managing Director of the INSEAD MBA Program

Beyond the impressive statistics, though, INSEAD is a highly values-driven community that values diversity, adaptability and teamwork — and professionals who are adept at putting these values into practice in their daily lives. 

According to INSEAD’s admissions committee:

 “The MBA Admissions team are looking for people with intellectual curiosity, personal qualities to contribute to the many INSEAD activities and a desire to stretch themselves in a rigorous academic programme. We welcome applications from around the world regardless of race, religion, gender, colour or financial status. Our aim is to build an exciting, dynamic and diverse student body.​”

How can you prepare for your INSEAD interview?

Though no interview is 100% predictable, INSEAD interviews do tend to center around a fairly standard list of MBA interview questions, as well as questions that focus on your international experience and ability to thrive in diverse environments. As such, we have prepared some model questions below that previous candidates have received in their past INSEAD interviews. 

Sample INSEAD Interview Questions

The questions below are drawn from our clients’ interview reports, as well as from sites like clearadmit.com . Though these are not all the potential questions you could possibly receive during your INSEAD interview, preparing for these (and any follow-up questions you think you might be asked) should give you a very solid foundation for your interview. 

• Expect follow-up questions like what made you change careers? Why did you choose ________________ for your career? Why did you choose your university/major?
• What is missing from your resume that you’d like to tell me about?
• Tell me about what’s challenging in your current role.
• What do you do outside of work?
• What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced?
• What accomplishment are you proudest of?

WHY MBA / WHY INSEAD

• What are your goals?
• What will you do if you do not get the job you want after graduation?
• Why do you want an MBA?
• Why INSEAD?
• What other schools did you apply to?
• If you got into all of them, which would you attend?
• How do you envision yourself being involved in the INSEAD community? / What clubs will you participate in?
• How will you enhance the diversity of the INSEAD class?
• Describe a difficult team situation you have had to deal with in the past. How did you overcome/fix the situation?
• Tell me about a time when you had to work with someone who was from a different culture than you. 
• What would you do when a team member wasn’t pulling his own weight?
• Tell me about a time you had to work with a difficult teammate/boss. How did you handle the situation?
• Who do you admire as a leader?
• Have you held leadership positions at work?
• Tell me something about your leadership experience.
• Have you faced any challenges as a leader? How did you deal with them?
• What kind of leader are you?

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

• What are your two main strengths?
• What are your two main weaknesses?
• What do people misperceive about you when first meeting you?
• Is there anything you wish I had asked you?
• What is special about you that should make me recommend you?
• Questions for me?

We have found that answering real interview questions on the spot is a much better means of preparation than reading lists of interview questions for most candidates.

We highly suggest you take a look at mock interview questions and sample interview responses before your interview . 

Our MBA Resource Center has dozens of real interview mocks from INSEAD, as well as detailed guides to help you prepare for questions ranging from “Why our MBA program?” to “Tell us about a time you failed.”

The Ellin Lolis Consulting MBA Resource Center is your one-stop shop to interview success. Click to join !

If you’re still not quite confident with your interview skills, our interview experts can help you craft your answers or prepare you for the INSEAD interview through mock interviews tailored to your profile. 

What to do if you get a question you weren’t prepared for

Despite your most diligent preparation, you will almost always receive a question you had not prepared. 

First, stay calm and take a deep breath. You have already made it this far in the process, and one question will not trip you up!

Second, make sure you directly answer the question the interviewer asked you. For example, if the interviewer asks you about a time you had to deal with a difficult manager, make sure to tell a story about a difficult manager and how you handled the situation. 

If you’re having trouble thinking of an answer or an example to support your answer , however, take a drink of water to give yourself a few more minutes to think. If you really can’t think of an example from your personal or professional experience, you can use a hypothetical answer about how you would act in a certain situation. 

Finally, assume that the interviewer is testing how you think on your feet and respond to questions you didn’t prepare in advance . Though your answer might not be as polished as if you’d had weeks to rehearse it, smile and confidently give your answer to show you can respond to any question they throw at you. 

Effectively Tell Your Story During Your INSEAD Interview

One of the most common mistakes we see in MBA interviews is that candidates fail to tell compelling, well-constructed stories about their profiles while also nailing the basics. 

Striking this balance between sharing STAR-format examples that show off your background while also presenting strong answers to questions like “Why do you want an MBA?” is a challenging task that requires significant thought and preparation. 

Because of this, it’s no surprise that, on average, 50% of interviewed applicants walk away without an offer . 

This is why our interview preparation process here at Ellin Lolis Consulting is known as the best in the industry. We offer customized 1:1 support that ensures you’re able to turn your application’s strengths into compelling answers that show fit and sell your profile in any type of interview. 

Our tailored approach was critical to helping our client Rodolfo secure a spot at INSEAD. In his words:

Forget simulation platforms or long lists of tips – our 1:1 preparation focuses on playing to your strengths and overcoming your weaknesses to turn you into an interview expert . Hire our interview services here. VIP packages that allow you to work directly with Ellin sell out quickly, so make sure you sign up today !

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INSEAD Essay 1 (Strengths & Weaknesses): Tips & Winning Essay/ Sample

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INSEAD MBA Sample Essays

Insead mba application essays 2023-24, insead motivation essay 1: give a candid description of yourself (who are you as a person), stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary. (600 words max.), insead motivation essay 2: describe the achievement of which you are most proud and explain why. in addition, describe a situation where you failed. how did these experiences impact your relationships with others comment on what you learned. (400 words max.).

INSEAD Motivation Essay 3: Describe all types of extra-professional activities in which you have been or are still involved for a significant amount of time (clubs, sports, music, arts, politics, etc). How are you enriched by these activities? (300 words max.)

Job Essay 1: Briefly summarise your current (or most recent) job, including the nature of work, major responsibilities, and where relevant, employees under your supervision, size of the budget, clients/products and results achieved. (short answer)

Job Essay 2: What would be your next step in terms of position if you were to remain in the same company? (short answer)

Job Essay 3: Please give a full description of your career since graduating from university. Describe your career path with the rationale behind your choices. (short answer) *

Job Essay 4: Discuss your short and long term career aspirations with an MBA from INSEAD. (short answer)

INSEAD Winning Sample Essays – 1

Mountains are my one true love. They have helped me come to terms with who I am, making me face my biggest fears and helping me acknowledge latent strengths.

I have found that to reach every summit be it on a mountain or in life, I pursue my goal with an unflinching focus on the next step. As a student, having overcome a paralyzing fear of failure, I learnt early on that grit is as important as ability. Today, I rarely get overawed by the magnitude of the challenge because I keep my attention fixed on the immediate goal.

Whether it was crossing the Rupin Pass at a height of 15500 ft and an incline of 60 degrees or successfully handling a complex project such as BP’s Shah Deniz where the slightest error could have had disastrous consequences, my unwavering focus has always been my forte.

Another strength that has served me well is my ability to solve critical problems while maintaining my composure. When I was trekking solo across the Gadsar Pass I was caught in a sudden snowstorm at 13500 feet. I couldn’t stay outside in the cold risking hypothermia but I couldn’t move blindly either. So I trusted my ears and ran down towards the river in the hope that I would find someone camping near it. An hour later, I noticed someone warming his hands by a fire. My ability to stay calm in a crisis literally saved my life that day but it has also been my saviour in a number of different albeit less critical situations be it leading unpredictable projects, tackling technology failures or working through an unsavoury team dynamic.

Mountains have helped me come face to face with my weaknesses and shown me the path to overcome them. Growing up in a family in which money always fell short of aspirations, economic security subconsciously became a major factor in my decisions. Living in the mountains made me realize that money is similar to the resources in a trekking bag. It is good to have them but the more you carry, the heavier the bag gets and the more onerous the summit climb becomes. I figured out that the true summit can only be excellence, not security. It is in pursuit of this excellence that I jumped at the chance to move to an international work location and that I quit a lucrative job to build a social enterprise.

I have also realized that my idealistic approach to life sometimes comes in the way of adopting a more pragmatic middle path. While trekking on the frozen Zanskar River in Ladakh, the team consensus was that everyone should wear crampons as the entire trek would be on ice. Though I acceded to the team’s opinion, I believed this would dilute the unique challenge of the trek. It was only later I realised that had I held out, I might have risked injuries to those who were equally enthusiastic but perhaps less adept at trekking. Since then, when faced with confrontation, I make a conscious effort to set aside my own beliefs for a little while and walk in the shoes of the other person, be it at work or in my personal life.

I cannot imagine a better way of developing holistically than spending a year at INSEAD. The diversity of culture and backgrounds at INSEAD will help me understand different perspectives much better and reconcile conflicting interests, including my own. Living and working closely with people who exemplify excellence will only strengthen my resolve to pursue it in every sphere of life.

To paraphrase Tolstoy, all success is similar, but each failure shapes life in its own unique way. One such failure which left an indelible mark on my personality occurred after high school when I failed to qualify Indian Institute of Technology Entrance Examination. I decided to take the exam for a second time because I felt that it was my inability to tackle pressure that had led to my failure and not a lack of aptitude or diligence.

Over time, I realised that my success would mean nothing if it was driven by my fear of failure. Upon qualifying the exam, I wanted to feel the ecstasy of accomplishment not the relief of having avoided failure.

This time around I decided to focus on analyzing and solving the questions rather than worrying about the ultimate consequence. I ended up qualifying the examination. The failure helped more in shaping my personality than if I had succeeded the first time. The unstinting support of my family in that one otherwise lonely year improved the very fundamentals of my relationship with them. This experience enabled me to develop a sense of equanimity that has since become an enduring strength.

In 2012, Halliburton started a low cost project to drill 100 wells on 5 rigs. The estimated revenue from operations was relatively low at about $6M annually but the growth potential of the operation was huge. While most of my peers were intimidated by the high risk nature of the project, I was able to focus more on the learning opportunities it presented. I stepped up and asked to be made the Focal point LWD Field Engineer which gave me control of the entire operation. The pressure involved was immense as even slightly sub optimal results would cause a huge dent in revenues. At the end of the year, the Non productive time (NPT) was less than 0.5% which was a Halliburton Asia Pacific record. Despite my limited years of experience I was now seen by my peers and superiors as a natural leader and this in turn gave me the confidence to take even bigger steps in my career. Till today, it is the achievement I am proudest of because it became possible only because I overcame my fear of failure all those years ago, instead of allowing it to overcome me.

INSEAD Motivation Essay 3: Tell us about an experience where you were significantly impacted by cultural diversity, in a positive or negative way. (300 words max.)

Last year, I went on a 5 weeks’ backpacking trip across what is arguably the most neglected part of India, the north eastern states. 70% of the population in these seven states is tribal, with resemblance to mainland Indian, Mongolian, Tibetan and Austro-Asiatic cultures. The trip allowed me to experience the culture of these indigenous tribes from close quarters.

I saw large families living inside a one room house with no lavatory. Homes where the nearest bazaar was a 6 hour mountain hike away. Beautiful women of the Apatani tribe who were made to tattoo their faces to escape the wrath of oppressors who had molested them for years.

I also noticed that centuries of deprivation had not defeated these people but had taught them to channel their anger towards building self sufficient lifestyles. If villages which have the highest rainfall in the world had no iron to build bridges, the villagers built bridges with the roots of trees. If there were no pesticides to protect their paddy crops, they learnt to do pisciculture which not only protected their crops but also provided an additional source of food and income.

Despite the sheer strain of eking out a living, most villagers let me into their homes, their lives and their beautiful mountains without once wondering if they would reap any financial benefit from it.

This experience ended up challenging my entire perspective on top down development approaches. I now understand that the quality of lives can only be improved if there is a better understanding of how good people’s lives already are. I therefore decided to take a break from my job and work in the breathtakingly complex development space in India to help those who are different from me, and enrich myself immeasurably in the process.

INSEAD Motivation Essay 4: Describe all types of extra-professional activities in which you have been or are still involved for a significant amount of time (clubs, sports, music, arts, politics, etc). How are you enriched by these activities? (300 words max.)

As a Mechanical Engineer, building a car from scratch was a long cherished dream. In college, I co-founded the MECHISMU group in which I led a team of 15 members to design and fabricate an All-Terrain Vehicle to participate in BAJA SAE India competition. As the captain, I had to not only raise sponsorships but also ensure that there was a synergy between available resources and performance optimization.

Leading a team in which everyone (including me) was a novice and going through several technical, financial and administrative hurdles to achieve something truly path-breaking taught me the nuances of both leadership and teamwork. The icing on the cake was that we reached second place in the competition. In the subsequent years, I have continued to mentor future teams, providing technical expertise and heading the team selection.

Another love that has enriched me over the years is debating. Picking up a subject and then bringing it down to arguments, rehashing those arguments repeatedly, the thrill of discovering some aspect of the issue you had missed completely, have helped mould my thoughts with crystal clarity. Although I no longer debate competitively, informal discussions continue to keep the debater within me alive.

One of my earliest childhood memories is running to the Badminton court before any of the adults noticed my fractured hand! I went on to play State level Badminton for Uttar Pradesh, India. In college, as the badminton captain, seeing the dismal condition of the sport, I ensured that two new indoor courts were built and that tournaments became a regular fixture. My love for sports constantly pushes me to bring that level of passion into my everyday life. That said one true sporting dream I have is to watch Liverpool play at Anfield. I’m getting goose bumps just writing about it!

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INSEAD Winning Sample Essays – 2

Insead motivation essay 1: give a candid description of yourself (who are you as a person) stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary. (600 words max.).

Looking back, it is amazing how marriage and fatherhood changed me entirely. I was 19 when I found out that my girlfriend was pregnant and I decided to marry her against the wishes of my family. That time I was still serving National Service (Conscription) and had not even started my undergraduate degree. My family was not supportive of the decision to get married so young and be a father. Coming from a middle-class family, public perception was a major challenge apart from a lack of financial resources and internal family conflicts. During my first few years as a father, I was still aimless, living every day as it is and not giving much thought to my family’s future. 

Through the circumstances of being a young parent and hardships of life, reality hit me hard. Seeing how other parents are able to provide a better life to their wives and children, I knew that I had to step up. That grew into a kind of motivation, drive, and ambition to want to achieve success. This mentality that marriage and fatherhood have brought to me is certainly a dictionary definition of Wen Kang and my greatest strength. This motivation pushed me to not only get an undergraduate degree but also graduate as the top of my class. From there on I received back to back promotions in my career and became the youngest Assistant Vice President in the second-largest bank of Southeast Asia.

However, nothing comes without a cost. That transition has been so effective and so drastic that I lost sight of the original intention, which was to give a better standard of living for my family. After repeated arguments with my wife, I came to truly realize that the standard of living is not just solely in its material sense but rather, it is about spending quality time with family. I realized that I was blinded by constantly chasing for financial success that I stopped spending quality time with my family and kids. This realization came to me a lot more strongly after I moved my career from Singapore to Cambodia. I might have earned a lot more salary and got better professional exposure but I had effectively reduced the time I spent with my family, leading to arguments and deterioration in my relationships with my wife. I feel that I still do, at many times, sacrifice family time for my work and that is my greatest Achilles heels which I am trying to improve upon so that I can be a better father and husband. 

Looking at the bright side and looking back, I can see how I grow to become a more mature father and husband, and realized more philosophies in life after each decision I made. These experiences have shaped me into who I am today, being able to look beyond just a few dimensions and weigh things that are truly more important.

INSEAD Motivation Essay 2: Describe a situation taken from your personal or professional life where you failed. Discuss what you learned. (400 words maximum)

The proudest moment of my life is when I graduated top of my cohort and school, along with the honors and limelight. I have been conferred the valedictorian of my school, featured in both national newspapers and magazines. I was asked to be interviewed on national TV shows and invited to a dinner function with the then President of Singapore, Dr. Tony Tan. I still remember standing on the auditorium’s podium and giving my valedictory speech to the cohort of more than a thousand people. The success did not come easy. During my undergraduate days, I struggled with family relations, finances, studies, and some of the harshest public perception of young parents. The moment of success was both bitter and sweet because so many tears, hard work, and hardships were behind it.

Despite standing proud of what I have achieved, I regretted not managing my relationships with my mother and siblings better when I got married. It was a delicate and sensitive period. In the neighborhood of gossip mongers, my mother and siblings were somewhat ashamed of my early parenthood. As a result, they were not welcoming and supportive of my wife. Furthermore, living under the same roof has proved too difficult for perhaps many mothers and daughters-in-law. I had to choose to stand by my wife but quarrels, acts of dominance, and the daily hostilities severely eroded my relationships with my mother and siblings. Eventually, I stopped talking to them, and even until today, after almost a decade, we barely communicate. As much as I still feel much disappointments towards them, I realize I could have done a better job back then in managing communications and facilitating mutual understanding. I did not, at any point, ever try my best to break down these complicated relationships to meeting the basic expectations of both sides.

I learned that everyone despite sharing a common Singaporean-Chinese culture has different stories, motivations, teachings, and reactions, and that it is important to give in or stand firm in different circumstances and at appropriate quantities. Managing relationships’ intricacies is more than just who is right, who is wrong and there is more to life and people than just rationality. These are lessons and learnings which I now carry with myself and can bring to my cohort at INSEAD to share with my peers on how to balance individual professional success with family and personal relationships.

INSEAD Motivation Essay 3: Describe all types of extra-professional activities in which you have been or are still involved for a significant amount of time (clubs, sports, music, arts, politics, etc). How are you enriched by these activities? (approximately 300 words)

I have been a competitive athlete since a young age. I represented my primary school in badminton and my team achieved the national second by winning over more than two hundred primary school teams. I then went on to become the team’s captain in my secondary school. As the top player in the school, I have always been a singles player. Single players compete primarily on techniques, athleticism, and mental endurance while double players compete on reflexes and mutual synergy.

As I have always wanted the camaraderie of a team sport, I joined the dragon boating team at the university. My team won second place in the yearly prestigious Prime Minister’s Cup during two of my three years in the team. During my first year with OCBC Bank, I was even “headhunted” by the HR and had helped to clinch their first corporate category gold medal. In dragon boating, I see a drastically different side. While mental fitness is necessary for all competitive sports, synchronization, and teamwork are far more crucial in team sports.

Even though I stopped regularly playing badminton or competing in dragon boat races because of family commitments, I have shifted my focus to marathons and biathlon, and to date, I have participated in four marathons and biathlon. My ultimate fitness goal is to complete a full marathon in Antarctica and since last year I had started my prep and dietary research. 

I am proud to be a sportsman. These three sports have taught me some of the most important attributes that follow through in my life – having the mental resilience and harnessing the power of teamwork, and these are applicable and beneficial to every aspect of my life.

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INSEAD – MBA Essay Samples

Insead mba essay sample 1.

Please give a detailed description of your job, including major responsibilities; and employees under your supervision, budget, number of clients/products and results.  

Read More of this MBA essay on current tenure

INSEAD MBA Essay Sample 2

Please give us a full description of your career since graduating from university. If you were to remain with your present employer, what would be your next step in terms of position?  

Read More of this MBA essay on career evolution

INSEAD MBA Essay Sample 3

Describe what you believe to be your two most substantial accomplishments to date, explaining why you view them as such.

The above mentioned question brings to memory varied accomplishments at different stages of my career.  The first is where I led a major turnaround at ABC (Small-to-medium enterprise business) and the second was during an international student exchange program in the early stages of my career.

Read More of this MBA essay on accomplishments

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October 30, 2019

INSEAD Master’s in Management (MIM) Essay Questions, Tips & Deadlines [2019 – 2020]

One of the top European business schools has this year joined the MIM market. Enter stage right INSEAD with its new Master in Management . Currently accepting applications for its 2020 intake, INSEAD’s entry into the pre-experience market is a signal that there’s not only a demand for this early career degree, but there’s much traditionally MBA and EMBA focused schools can gain from having the recent graduate student segment on their campuses.

Although the INSEAD MIM offers a different course offering and structure than its more established MBA , as one would expect, they are looking to recruit students who value their values and who have ambitious goals. INSEAD is known as ‘ The Business School for the World ’, and in their MIMs they’re hoping to find business students who have an interest in the world around them, and a desire to contribute to it. As one might expect, they’ve put an emphasis on the internationalism of the programme, which offers “…a truly global experience…with international classmates…[and the chance to] travel across continents…”. They are looking to build a “dynamic and diverse student body” and want to see students who thrive in such an environment. Unsurprisingly, international motivation is one of the key admissions criteria, along with academic performance and ability to contribute.

The application requires three ‘getting to know you’ essays, all of which have a word limit. Do take careful note of the guidance provided about this:

“Respecting this word limit is an important exercise to see how you express your ideas in a concise way…”

Don’t let the limited word count give you a false sense of ease – it’s much trickier to give an overview of your career ambitions in 100 words than it is in 500, so clarity and brevity are key.

INSEAD Master’s in Management application essays

Insead mim essay #1.

How would you introduce yourself? (Maximum 200 words)

This has the potential to be a fun question as it’s your chance to tell the admissions committee what’s unique and interesting about you and to display your personality. This question gives you the opportunity to introduce who you are outside of what’s on your CV, so make sure not to repeat what they already know about you from the application form. Think about approaching this as you might do a speed dating event where you have only a few minutes to convince the person sitting across from you that you’re interesting, well-rounded, and with a lot to contribute to the conversation (no pressure!).

INSEAD MIM essay #2

Tell us what you have been doing since graduating from secondary education and what motivated your choices? (Maximum 200 words)

This is a tricky question as it requires you to reflect on what you’ve been doing since starting your university studies. The admissions committee will want to understand the thought process behind the decisions you’ve made during this time, and the drivers that have propelled you to pursue your path. Make sure not to use this question as a space to rehash your entire CV, but rather an opportunity to explain the reasoning behind pivotal choices. Have your decisions been strategic and part of a bigger plan? Have you been good at taking up opportunities as they come? Your answer will help the admission committee be able to connect the dots and understand you better.

INSEAD MIM essay #3

Share your short and long-term career aspirations with a MIM from INSEAD. (Maximum 100 words)

INSEAD is clear about the type of leader they’re looking for. They want “…leaders who transform business and society” and consider MIMs “the next generation of well-rounded, agile-thinking and innovative individuals who are ready to make a positive impact in today’s society.” When presenting your career goals , think about whether you are or want to be this person, and if so, how you will go about doing that. With only 100 words to use this answer needs to be succinct. Use the space to indicate your target companies/industries and roles, the motivation behind these ambitions, and the impact you hope to have. Make sure to provide thoughts on how specifically the INSEAD MIM will support your goals – this could include specific courses, extracurricular activities, or something around the community/network. But remember, be specific.

INSEAD MIM essay #4 (optional)

Is there anything else that was not covered in your application that you would like to share with the Admissions Committee?

Use this question only if you have vital information about your candidacy that you haven’t been able to include elsewhere in your application. Examples of acceptable material include providing context for low grades/test score or a gap in your education history. Steer clear of using this space to reiterate how passionate you are about the INSEAD MIM or how you’re the perfect fit. If you’ve done your job well through the rest of the application, they’ll already know this.

Programme Director Thibault Seguret and Global Director of Admissions & Financial Aid Virginie Fougea make it clear they want you, the applicant, to “ be yourself ”. So they’re looking for genuine, personal, unmanufactured insights into who you are as a person and what you’ll bring to your MIM class and the INSEAD community. Don’t write what you think the admissions committee wants to hear, write what is truthful – your truth – and give them a taster to who you are, and who you want to be with the help of the INSEAD MIM degree.

Unsure of how to illustrate your narrative or make sure it has the impact you want it to have? Get in touch with one of our admissions consultants to discuss how they can help you tell your story.

For professional guidance with your INSEAD MIM application, check out Accepted’s MIM Application Packages , which include advising, editing, interview coaching, and a resume edit for the INSEAD MIM application.

INSEAD MIM 2019 – 20 application deadlines for September 2020 intake

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with individual programs to verify the essay questions, instructions and deadlines.***

Related Resources:

•  5 Fatal Flaws to Avoid in Your Application Essays , a free guide • Early Career Management and European MBA Programs with Jamie Wright , a podcast episode • INSEAD Announces New 10-Month Master’s in Management (MIM) Program

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