With multiple essay questions totaling 2,000 words, the INSEAD MBA application is one of the most comprehensive among top business schools. And that’s not including the optional “anything else?” question. 

If you’re feeling a little daunted, you’re not alone. But here’s the good news: this level of depth actually works in your favor. As INSEAD’s former Admissions Director, I’ve seen firsthand how INSEAD’s essay questions provide an unparalleled opportunity to tell a complete, authentic story—one that showcases not just your career achievements, but also your leadership style, personal growth, and global perspective.

Unlike schools that limit you to just a few short prompts, INSEAD’s admission essay structure lets you connect the dots across your professional and personal journey, giving the admissions team a full picture of who you are and where you’re headed. The key is to approach these essays strategically—highlighting not only what you’ve done, but also the why behind your choices and how INSEAD fits into your future vision.

For 2025-26 applicants, INSEAD introduced some important updates to the school’s MBA application requirements. Let’s dive into what these changes mean.

Need expert guidance? Crafting standout INSEAD MBA application essays requires deep reflection and strategic storytelling. Book a free consultation with Fortuna Admissions for personalized insights from our team of INSEAD experts.

What’s Changed in the INSEAD MBA Application Essays?

The MBA application process is constantly evolving, and INSEAD’s 2025 essay updates reflect a subtle shift in how the school evaluates candidates. The changes focus on:

• A More Integrated Career Narrative → Previously, INSEAD had four separate career related questions (plus an optional one). These have now been consolidated into two, giving applicants more room for cohesive storytelling.
• A Stronger Leadership Focus → The “Candid Description” essay now explicitly asks applicants to discuss themselves as a person and a leader; previously this essay focused on personal narratives. 
• Resilience & Stress Management Over Failure → The old failure/achievement essay has been replaced with a question on handling stressful situations. This change indicates INSEAD is prioritizing applicants who can navigate ambiguity and high-pressure environments.
• Extracurriculars Are Back → After being removed last year, the extracurriculars essay question has returned, reinforcing the importance of community engagement and leadership outside of work.

These refinements ensure that INSEAD continues to assess candidates holistically, emphasizing self-awareness, global impact, and leadership development. For a deeper dive into INSEAD’s admissions essay process, check out: 

• INSEAD MBA Video Interview Questions for insights into the video essay format
• INSEAD Interview: Questions, Tips, and Acceptance Rates to prepare for the admissions interview
• How to Get Into INSEAD: Advice for 6 Common MBA Profiles for key applicant strategies

Now, let’s get into some INSEAD essay tips and how to craft compelling responses.

Career Essays

Career Essay 1: Summarize Your Career Progression

Question: Provide a summary of your career since graduating from university, explaining the rationale behind your key decisions and career progression. Include a description of your current (or most recent) role, covering the scope of your work, major responsibilities, employees under your supervision, budget size, clients/products, and any notable results achieved. (500 words, hard cut-off)

How to Approach It:

This essay question is an invitation to take the admissions team on a journey through your career—the decisions you’ve made, why you made them, and how they’ve shaped you. Instead of simply listing your resume, think of this as a story about your professional evolution.

• Start with your first job out of university. What drew you to that role? What skills did you gain?
• As you move through your career, explain the ‘why’ behind each move. Did you switch industries? Take on a leadership role? Move to a new country? Show that there was intent behind your choices and how your scope has grown over time. 
• End with a strong description of your current role. Admissions officers want to understand your day-to-day responsibilities and impact—who or what you manage, the scale of your projects, and the results you’ve driven. Use quantifiable achievements where possible.
• Make international experience explicit. INSEAD places high value on cross-cultural awareness and global exposure, so be sure to highlight any roles, projects, or responsibilities that involved working across borders, with international teams, or in different cultural contexts.

Keep in mind that INSEAD isn’t just assessing your career history — they’re also considering what you’ll bring to the classroom. This is your chance to highlight the breadth and depth of your experience and how it can enrich the collaborative learning environment. Focus on aspects that reflect your leadership potential, cross-cultural exposure, and strategic thinking.

Key Tips:

• Avoid jargon or overly technical language — make your impact clear to a broad audience.
• Emphasize transferable skills and insights others can learn from.
• Show not only what you’ve done, but how you’ve grown — professionally and personally — along the way.

Career Essay 2: Defining Your Career Goals & INSEAD’s Role

Question: Describe your short and long-term career aspirations, including your target geography, industry, and function. How do you plan to bridge the gap between your current position and these goals, and how will INSEAD help you achieve them? (300 words, hard cut-off)

How to Approach It:

This question might seem straightforward, but a strong response requires thoughtfulness, clarity, and specificity. The admissions team wants to understand where you’re headed — and, just as importantly, why — as well as how INSEAD fits into that journey. Avoid vague answers like “I want to work in consulting” or “I want to be a leader.” Instead, show that you’ve taken the time to reflect on your goals and that you’re pursuing the MBA with purpose.

Begin by articulating your short-term post-MBA goal. Be specific — what industry, what function, and the types of companies or geographies you are targeting. For example, rather than saying “consulting,” say “strategy consulting in Southeast Asia with a firm like BCG or Bain, focusing on digital transformation projects.”

Then, describe your long-term career aspirations. Where do you see yourself in 10–15 years? What kind of leadership role do you hope to take on, and what broader impact do you want to make in your industry, organization, or community? This is your chance to show ambition, but keep it grounded in your interests and experiences.

Next, explain the gap between where you are now and where you want to go. What specific skills, experiences, or networks do you need to develop to reach your goals? This could include things like leadership development, international business exposure, strategic thinking, or industry-specific knowledge.

Finally, connect the dots with how INSEAD will help you bridge that gap. Mention particular aspects of the program that align with your needs—such as:

• Specific courses or electives
• The global alumni network
• Career services support in your target industry
• INSEAD’s international footprint and multicultural classroom

A well-crafted response demonstrates that your MBA application process isn’t just about getting a degree — you have a clear plan, and INSEAD is an intentional and essential step in achieving it.

 

Activities & Interests Essay

Question: Describe the activities you listed above [in a table of your activities which is embedded in the INSEAD application form] and explain how they have enriched your life (e.g., skills developed, personal growth, community impact). 300 words max. 

How to Approach It:

I was pleased to see the return of the extracurriculars essay for this season, which had been dropped last year. The new framing more explicitly invites candidates to reflect on personal growth, skills developed, and community impact—reinforcing how important these dimensions are in the admissions process.

This essay offers a valuable glimpse into what applicants bring to INSEAD beyond their professional and academic achievements—an essential part of the story. A candidate’s contributions to the school community often come as much from their passions and pursuits as from their career experience. INSEAD is looking for individuals who will actively engage with student life, contribute to clubs and initiatives, and enrich the collaborative culture of the program.

Highlight 2–3 meaningful activities from your list—whether they reflect community involvement, creative or athletic pursuits, long-term hobbies, or leadership in volunteer organizations. Don’t just describe what you’ve done—reflect on how these activities have shaped you and the impact you’ve had through them.

Consider the following:

• What have you learned or developed through these activities?
  Think about personal growth, resilience, creativity, teamwork, leadership, empathy, or global perspective.
• What impact have you had on others or your community?
  Have you mentored others, led a team or initiative, raised awareness, or contributed to a cause?
• How do these interests connect to your values or identity?
  Help the admissions team understand what drives you and how you engage with the world beyond your career.

Key Tip: Prioritize depth over breadth. It’s far more effective to write meaningfully about a couple activities than to list many superficially. Choose experiences that reveal something distinctive about you and help admissions imagine the kind of classmate and contributor you’ll be at INSEAD.

Motivational Essays

Motivational Essay 1: Your Candid Description

Question: Give a candid description of yourself as a person and a leader, emphasizing the strengths and weaknesses you recognize in yourself. Explain how you are actively working on your development, sharing key experiences that have shaped you, providing specific examples where relevant.

How to Approach It:

The ‘candid description’ essay has always been one of the most personal, revealing, and human parts of the INSEAD application. Historically, it invited applicants to share formative experiences and personal stories—moments that shaped their values, identity, and worldview. The essay offered powerful insight into what made someone tick, and gave the admissions team a glimpse of the person behind the CV. It often brought the application to life in a way no resume ever could.

This year, INSEAD has made a notable change to the prompt. Applicants are now asked to describe themselves “as a person and a leader”, explicitly bringing leadership into focus. While previous versions leaned more toward personal storytelling, this new framing signals a stronger emphasis on leadership style, self-awareness, and professional development. 

However, don’t let the revised wording pull you too far into professional anecdotes alone. Integrate both dimensions—who you are as a person and how you show up as a leader. The two are connected, and the best essays will blend personal reflection with leadership insight.

Consider the following:

• What are your core strengths—and how do they show up in both personal and professional contexts? 
• Where do you recognize areas for growth? Be honest and thoughtful—this is not the place for “humblebrag” weaknesses. Admissions values authentic self-awareness far more than perfection.
• How are you working on your development? Use specific examples to illustrate how you’ve grown—through feedback, setbacks, mentorship, or conscious effort.
• What experiences have shaped you most deeply? Whether personal or professional, include anecdotes that reveal how you’ve evolved as a person and a leader.

Key Tip: A compelling response will balance vulnerability with maturity. Show that you know yourself—not just your accomplishments, but your blind spots too. That kind of reflection is what INSEAD values most, and it’s what will help you stand out as both a strong applicant and a future contributor to the school’s vibrant community.

Motivational Essay 2: Managing Stress & High-Stakes Situations

Question: Describe a highly stressful situation you faced and how you managed it. What did this experience teach you about yourself and your interactions with others?

How to Approach It:

New for 2025 applicants: This essay replaces INSEAD’s previous “failure” question and signals a subtle but meaningful shift in focus. Rather than reflecting on success versus failure, this new prompt emphasizes resilience, emotional intelligence, and leadership under pressure—all critical traits for navigating INSEAD’s fast-paced program and thriving in complex, high-stakes global environments.

INSEAD wants to understand how you behave when things get tough—not just what you achieved, but how you responded, led, and grew under pressure.

Here’s how to tackle this question: 

• Choose a high-stakes situation.
  Select a moment—whether professional, personal, or extracurricular—where the pressure was real and the outcome truly mattered. Look for a situation that tested your leadership, adaptability, or ability to support others through uncertainty.

• Describe how you managed it.
  Focus on your response, not just the challenge itself. What steps did you take? How did you problem-solve, stay composed, manage your emotions, or help others through the situation?

• Show humility and honest reflection.
  You don’t need to pretend you handled everything perfectly. In fact, showing vulnerability and acknowledging what you could have done better often makes for a more powerful, authentic essay. Reflect on what you did well and what you’ve learned from the experience. Demonstrating this kind of maturity and self-awareness is key.

• Include your interactions with others.
  The prompt specifically asks about how you engaged with others under stress. Highlight teamwork, communication, empathy, or conflict management—how you supported (or were supported by) those around you.

• Reflect on your personal growth.
  What did the experience teach you about yourself—your strengths, your blind spots, your leadership style? How has it shaped how you handle challenges today?

Key Tip: Choose a story with clear tension and resolution—admissions wants to see how you operate when the stakes are high and how you evolve from adversity. A strong response will demonstrate not just competence, but character.

Optional Essay

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

How to Approach It:

This essay is truly optional, and for most candidates it is not necessary. Think of it as a space to address anything important that doesn’t naturally fit elsewhere, not as an overflow for content you couldn’t squeeze into other essays.

Use this section if you need to:

• Address gaps or concerns in your profile — for example, an employment break, a low GMAT or GPA. A brief, clear explanation can help pre-empt questions from the admissions committee.
• Highlight a truly unique personal achievement or experience — something distinctive that didn’t have a natural home elsewhere but adds depth to your profile.

Key Tip: Don’t feel pressured to write something here. It is completely acceptable to leave this blank if you have nothing essential to add. In fact, it’s better to leave it empty than to include filler content that adds little value or repeats what you’ve already said. The admissions file reader will thank you for keeping your application focused and concise.

In short, use this essay only if it strengthens your application or clarifies potential concerns. If it doesn’t serve a clear purpose, it’s wise to skip it.

 

Need More Advice?

INSEAD’s essays are among the most demanding in any top-tier MBA application—but that’s exactly what makes them such a powerful opportunity. Unlike schools with shorter word limits, INSEAD MBA application essays allow you to tell a complete, well-rounded story that showcases both your career trajectory and personal growth.

By approaching these essays strategically, you can present a cohesive narrative that highlights your leadership potential, resilience, and global mindset—qualities that define successful INSEAD candidates. 

Key Takeaways:

• Be introspective. Self-awareness and authenticity set strong applicants apart.
• Show intentionality. Your career story should reflect well-thought-out decisions and progression.
• Demonstrate impact. Quantify achievements and highlight leadership moments.
• Think globally. INSEAD values international experience and cross-cultural adaptability.

Need expert guidance? The INSEAD application requires deep reflection and a clear strategic approach—but you don’t have to do it alone. Book a free consultation with Fortuna Admissions to get personalized feedback from former INSEAD admissions professionals.

Most importantly, good luck—and make sure to enjoy the process! Thanks to the deep introspection that this application invites, many of our clients say writing their INSEAD essays was the most rewarding part of their MBA application journey.