Last updated on August 16, 2021
ISB (Indian School of Business) is one of the most coveted MBA programs in India. It offers a 1-year MBA program in Hyderabad and Mohali campuses. Its 2022 intake deadlines and essay questions are as follows:
| Round # | Deadline |
| Round 1 | September 12, 2021 |
| Round 2 | TBD |
| Round 3 | TBD |
Essay Debrief
Essay 1: Describe with examples the most important personal quality that you possess, which significantly enhances your prospects of being successful as a leader? (400 words max)
As always, I like to start any essay by paraphrasing it. What does the above essay question imply?
What leadership qualities do you possess?
Explain with examples when you demonstrated leadership?
Leadership is one of the dominant qualities a person must possess to be successful in their personal or professional life. ISB, like many other world-class business schools, focuses on developing leaders that will lead the organizations of tomorrow. Therefore, ISB has changed its previous essay prompt to a more focused one i.e. Leadership.
Which leadership examples to mention in this essay, will be a good starting point. Note down all your accomplishments and try to analyze if you see a pattern there. Maybe there’s a leadership quality that is pretty apparent in your leadership stories. You may also choose to calculate backward by looking into what makes a leader successful? And then, look for examples when you demonstrated any such quality. While there is no specific mention by ISB that you should talk ONLY about your professional achievements but it is advisable to stick to that. Unless, you have some really notable achievements in your extracurricular domain (Think National Awards, Batman – if you wish to reveal your identity).
Essay 2: What are your short term and long term career goals? How will Post Graduate Program at ISB assist you in achieving your goals? (400 words max)
Let’s paraphrase this essay question as well. What does the above essay question imply?
What are your short-term goals?
What are your long-term goals?
This is a pretty standard question. ISB is asking you about your short-term and long-term goals. While mentioning your short-term goal classify it in Industry, Function and Geography. The long-term goal can be a bit vague and can be audacious too. Mention your post-MBA goals and keep them short as you would want more words for the second part of this essay. The second part can be broken down into:
Why ISB?
Why PGP?
Highlight the unique aspects of ISB’s PGP program that make it the best fit program for you. Try to align your goals with these unique aspects (Think about a particular course, professor or event). Also, touch upon why have you decided to pursue PGP at this point in your career.
Apart from the essays above ISB application requires:
- One Reference
If you’d like to discuss your profile and know whether ISB is the right school for you or not then fill out this form and we can have a FREE call. Check out our tool MBA Matrix, where you can search and compare more than 300 MBA programs. MBA Matrix contains deadlines, essay questions, all rankings, average GMAT scores and a lot more all in one place. You can say nice things to me on What’s App!
Happy Writing.