NYU Stern's MBA Essay

The following is a guest post from Yael Redelman-Sidi, an experienced MBA admissions consultant who provides customized guidance for NYU Stern's application and other programs:

One of the most interesting and challenging MBA essays is NYU Stern's "personal expression" essay.  NYU's requirement is as follows:

"Personal Expression: Please describe yourself to your MBA classmates. You may use almost any method to convey your message (e.g. words, illustrations). Feel free to be creative."

This descriptive is as general as it could be, leaving many prospective applicants in the dark.

What is NYU's Stern really looking to find in this essay? Here are some tips on how to handle this essay / personal statement and ideas on how to tackle this project.   

1. Be personal - make something that represents you in a unique way. You can use the "thumb test" - if you hide your name with your thumb, can you replace it with someone else's name?
2. Don't repeat the other essay content - you can mention your career goals and have something that is special to your fit to Stern, but it should have more than that.
3. Be creative - if you have any special hobby or extracurricular activity that is meaningful to you, try to incorporate it into this personal statement. For example, other languages, travel, arts and crafts, volunteer work etc.
4. Brainstorm - talk with your close friends and family about how they would describe you and get ideas. Write down their description and images and try to create a theme that combines them and represent your personality.
5. Balance - prepare something that has both significant content about yourself and an interesting format. The default version for many people is just an essay or an essay with some images. If you do choose to go with this option, make sure your content is creative, personal and adds to your other essays.
6. Get objective feedback - share it with your admissions consultant or someone at work that doesn't know you in a personal way. Avoid parents and close friends - it's hard for them to give you accurate and objective feedback.
7. Be realistic- it's a business school application, not a portfolio that you are submitting to an Art degree program. It should have some creativity and artistic aspects but NYU's Stern is just looking to see that you have "free spirit" in addition to being a successful analyst/engineer/accountant/marketer.