One of the smallest among the top 20 business schools, Carnegie Mellon Tepper boasts a close-knit culture.
With a small class size of 200, Tepper places a high value on creating an inclusive and tight-knit community. The school aims to admit candidates who are committed to making a positive impact on each other, business, and the world. As such, the admissions team is looking for evidence of self-reflection and your ability to appreciate differences as a profound asset to a culture of innovation. These values are woven into Tepper’s single MBA essay question.
As mentioned in my related blog, Applying to Carnegie Mellon Tepper: 3 Essential MBA Tips, the admissions committee seeks students who define community in the broadest sense of the word and have a desire to effect positive change. Previously, the Tepper MBA essay asked you to describe how you’ve overcome adversity, what you learned, and how it shaped you. Now Tepper is interested in how you support others. The Tepper MBA essay now asks you to explain how you help others reach their full potential.
How to Tackle the Tepper MBA Essay
The Tepper School community is committed to helping students reach their full potential. Explain your philosophy on helping others achieve their full potential. How have you implemented this philosophy in your professional life, and what impact has it had on those around you? How will this philosophy influence your approach to leadership at the Tepper School and beyond? (500 words.)
This essay question parallels Tepper’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategic Plan, Tepper Together. Created by a task force of students, staff, and faculty, Tepper Together outlines four core value themes under the acronym CARE:
- Climate, Culture, and Community
- Access and Equity
- Recruitment and Retention
- Education and Scholarship
Ultimately, these themes seek to create a supportive and inclusive culture where community members feel safe and supported and in doing so, creating an environment where innovation and creativity thrive.
To create Tepper Together, the DEI task force analyzed the data, applied Tepper’s values, and defined their approach. This formula could also be applied to your essay response.
Start with reflection
To get started, reflect on these questions:
- What life events thus far have shaped your values and your philosophy in this specific area?
- What has helped you strive to achieve your own potential and what characteristics, traits, or experiences drive that?
- What experiences have you had that shaped your view of leading, managing, supporting, encouraging, and developing the skillss of others around you?
How do you bring others along with you as you work toward a goal? - What impact have you made by helping others reach their potential?
- How will your philosophy towards helping others succeed make you a better teammate, student, and/or Tepper alumnus?
You only have 500 words to deliver a response that’s memorable, meaningful, and articulate. (You upload this essay as a file, so the word count is not a hard stop, but we recommend that you stick close to this limit.) A compelling tactic is to elaborate on one, specific experience that reveals an important part or dimension of who you are. Share specifics with your reader that go deeper into what makes you unique and what you stand to offer. The admissions committee wants both substance and specificity.
Optional Essay
Tepper offers an optional essay to provide additional information about your candidacy that you could not explain elsewhere in the application. Use this essay to convey information that the admissions committee should know. This may include explaining gaps in your resume gaps, providing context for the recommenders you selected or background that explains your grades or test scores.
Video Essay
Many MBA programs require you to explain your career goals in a written essay. Tepper takes a different approach and asks you to describe your post-MBA goals in a video.
Such videos are growing more common. They give the admissions committee a chance to see how you speak and present yourself in a fresh, direct way. They showcase your personality in a way that a carefully written and painstakingly revised essay may not.
Career goals are a great topic for the Tepper MBA video essay. As the school explains, “This is an important component of your decision to attend business school. We take it seriously as well.” Essentially, it’s your “why an MBA? Why now?” answer and your personal elevator pitch.
Your answer should come easily to you by the time you have put in all the necessary research and reflection necessary to submit your MBA applications. Of course, you should prepare and practice until you can deliver a smooth and compelling answer within the two-minute time limit.
Tepper encourages you to be as specific as possible, outlining industries, companies, or future functional roles that interest you. They ask you to tie your immediate post-MBA goals to your long-term career plan. They invite you to share the criteria you’re using to evaluate career opportunities because this information may help them steer you to opportunities during your program.
After a few years of Zoom meetings, you may feel comfortable speaking on camera, but delivering an essay with no audience feels quite different. Practice helps! We have some tips on how to ace your video essay here.
Want more advice?
If you’re working with Fortuna, ask your coach for aTepper MBA essay sample.
You can also view my related blog: Applying to Carnegie Mellon Tepper: 3 Essential MBA Tips
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Catherine Tuttle is a former Associate Director at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where she worked in the Career Management Center and also served as the liaison to admissions.