As MBA application season approaches, applicants should brace themselves for notable shifts in application processes for the 2026-27 cycle. Hosts Pola Lem, Maria Wich-Vila, and Caroline Diarte Edwards dive into the evolving landscape on “Business Casual,” highlighting key changes across top business schools. With a reduction in essay lengths and a pivot toward video questions, these changes signal a move toward more interactive and authentic assessments. Caroline points out that video questions are gaining traction, allowing admissions committees to evaluate candidates’ real-time communication skills—essential for success in dynamic classroom settings.

The episode underscores an emerging focus on behavioral questions and “Plan B” strategies. Caroline explains how schools are increasingly interested in applicants’ past behaviors, considering them indicative of future potential. By asking candidates to articulate experiences with challenges or ethical dilemmas, schools aim to glean deeper insights into applicants’ capabilities. Meanwhile, Maria highlights the growing trend of “Plan B” prompts, reflecting the need for flexibility in uncertain job markets. Business schools aren’t just assessing flexibility—they’re also hinting at potential challenges in achieving initial career goals post-MBA.

Additionally, AI’s influence on business education surfaces as a topical discussion point. Pola discusses how schools are incorporating AI-related questions, such as IESC’s new video essay on AI judgment—a nod to the technology’s growing impact on leadership. Maria surmises that AI’s presence may continue to expand across application materials, emphasizing its significance in future business strategies. As applicants prepare their materials, recognizing these themes will be crucial in crafting standout applications.

Episode Transcript

Note: This transcript was generated by AI and may contain minor inaccuracies.

[00:00:03] – Pola

Hello everyone. I’m Pola Lem with Poets and Quants, and welcome to our weekly podcast, Business Casual. We are back this week with our usual crew. That’s my co-hosts, Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Maria, as you know, is the founder of ApplicantLab, and Caroline was head of admissions at INSEAD and is co-founder at Fortuna Admissions. So our main topic today is all these changes to the application process and specifically essays in the 2026-27 round of applications to business schools. So we will get into the detail of this shortly, but first, Caroline, can you give us an overview of the broader trends that you’re seeing in this year’s application questions?

[00:00:57] – Caroline

Sure. So we have seen some reduction in word counts for essays or elimination of some essays, and we’ve also seen the introduction of more video questions. So I think that is consistent with what we’ve discussed in the past about how the video questions can be really useful for schools to get a live sense of how a candidate communicates, and that is a proxy for how they might communicate in the classroom, right? So the classroom is a very, very interactive experience. And the schools need to be sure that you can not only communicate well on paper, but you can communicate well live as well. And often the interviews are conducted by alumni. So, the admissions team themselves rarely get a chance to observe the candidate directly. So, those videos can be a very useful tool for that. And also, I think that we probably all agree that it’s a trend also driven by AI where the schools have got fed up of seeing too many AI-generated essays that don’t actually tell them very much and don’t help them to distinguish between candidates. And so the schools are using video formats to kind of get candidates off their scripts a little bit.

[00:02:15] – Caroline

And so I, so I think those are 2 of the key trends that we’ve seen. There are also some switches where schools have adopted more behavioural-type questions. So those are questions where you’re asked for an example, a concrete example of something you’ve done in the past. And often the question starts with something like, tell me about a time, right? Tell me about a time that you have worked with a challenging colleague or faced an ethical dilemma. And so it requires you to give a very concrete example of actually what you have done in the past. And admissions committees take the perspective that past performance is the best predictor of future actions. And so, that’s why they like behavioral questions, and they’re often used in admissions interviews, but I think we see them creeping a bit more into the essays as well.

[00:03:09] – Pola

Absolutely, yeah. And Maria, one trend that you mentioned spotting was this one of schools asking for a Plan B. Can you tell us about that? Is that quite reflective of the time we’re in and needing to have backups.

[00:03:24] – Maria

Yes, absolutely. So, I mean, I’ve always advised people to try to put a plan B and to not be too married to just one path because then that risks having you look like you’re going to be inflexible. You’re going to, you know, if I don’t get that one job at that one private equity shop, I’m going to camp out front of your career services office and I’m going to pitch a fit. And so, I think that, you know, now, especially because there have been some challenges with career placements, whether it’s, you know, the employers or getting a work visa, folks are now needing to demonstrate that they have that flexibility and that they’re going into the program. I think that when the schools ask for a Plan B, part of it is they want to see that you are more flexible, but also that, you know, they are also indirectly signaling to you that maybe that Plan A career that you want might not be there. not be as easy to get, or at least maybe not immediately after business school. So I think that adding that more explicitly to the question has sort of a twofold— it’s both trying to get the applicant’s answer, but I think it’s also providing a subtle signaling mechanism.

[00:04:34] – Pola

Yeah, I think so. I should say Caroline’s pulled together a really handy spreadsheet of the various changes the US schools, and we’ll go into that detail later. But first, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the European schools and changes we’re seeing there. So I think the most significant one that I could spot is AI has become something that applicants might be asked to discuss. So specifically at IESC, there’s a new video essay that treats AI judgment as relevant to future business leadership. And since you also brought this one up, Maria, can you tell us a bit more about that question and whether you think possibly AI might feature a bit more in other schools’ application materials?

[00:05:33] – Maria

Yeah, I think it’s really interesting because, you know, historically with ESA, what they’ve done is they’re like, okay, well, here’s, you know, we’re going to give you video questions. And so it’s a standard situation where, well, you can sort of try to guess what those questions are going to be. But this year they’ve signaled pretty explicitly that they are going to ask at least one question in those video questions about what do you think about AI and its role in business. And I think this is actually a very interesting approach because it’s essentially saying, look, AI is inevitable and AI is going to change business. But instead of pretending that maybe it won’t be so bad or that it might not be so dramatic, I think they are upfront asking. To try to get a sense of presumably how applicants are themselves thinking about AI. So I don’t know that I’ve seen a lot of— I think schools, as Caroline pointed out, a lot of these changes are being driven because they’re trying to eliminate AI from, you know, too much— having too much influence on the application itself. But this is one of the first questions I think that I’ve seen that is very explicitly saying, like, tell us what you think about the intersection of AI and business.

[00:06:42] – Maria

And I’m sure this will probably— it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

[00:06:48] – Pola

Yeah. And I’ve incidentally learned a new thing, which is that it’s pronounced ESA rather than I-E-S-E. But that, I guess, is a good thing for US candidates to know too. So, hopefully a learning moment for everybody. A few other things that I kind of generally noticed from the European schools is that there is this kind of shift from enthusiasm about technology to demonstrating kind of more responsible judgment. Schools are looking to test sort of self-awareness, as Caroline already alluded to, and that real-time assessment is gaining importance. And we’ve seen that with the US schools, or we are seeing that, and that’s obviously also happening across the pond. So looking at our spreadsheet, and I’m going to go through these schools one by one, hopefully we’ll get through them all, um, but there are some interesting changes here to dig into. So, uh, Booth.

[00:07:52] – Maria

Booth used to say, here are our essays, we’ve only got 2 of them, and they had a word minimum but no word maximum. However, Booth did not used to publicly trumpet the fact that there were these 2 smaller essays about the short-term and long-term goals hidden elsewhere in the application form, and you only had 250 characters. Now what they’ve done is they’ve pulled those forward. Like, you— they did not publicly make a big deal about these smaller ones before. You would have to stumble upon it in the application. And but so now they’ve pulled it out and they’ve given you a little bit more, 300 characters versus 250 characters. And then what used to be sort of an unlimited essay that would always It would change from year to year, but it was always like, tell us something kind of fun about who you are as a person. Now that’s been broken out into 2 smaller, but yeah, 300 characters. I mean, that’s roughly 50 words or one very, an overly long tweet.

[00:08:46] – Pola

So incidentally, I think it seems this change seems quite similar in terms of, you know, looking at immediate and long-term career goals. to how will the MBA help you achieve that. It’s quite similar to what Haas has done, to my mind. Caroline, is that— would you say that’s true? What do you make of the change?

[00:09:13] – Caroline

Well, I think there’s just an increased emphasis on the career goals, and we see that across a few of the schools, that that is going to be perhaps a more important part of the evaluation process. And I think that just goes back to the fact that it is a challenging job market. And candidates, as Maria said, can’t be too wedded to that Plan A. And also schools just want to be sure that you do have a reasonable plan that is concrete, that you’ve thought through, and that is logical. And so other schools have added just more concrete elements as well into those career goal questions. So the fact that they have just given you a little bit more word count and they have kept those questions while eliminating other questions, I think says a lot about how central those questions are to the evaluation.

[00:10:07] – Pola

Yeah. I mean, the second— so that’s an interesting one. And the second thing that Booth has done, which I really liked, is instead of candidates having to explain what in their values resonates with a picture they’ve been given from Booth, so something like students had a basketball game, now The candidate has to upload an image and explain its significance, which is much more fun, but also potentially opens the door to some problems. So, Maria, I’ve got a fun exercise for you, which is, right, I’ve got a photo of my new puppy. First, is that appropriate? And then what’s appropriate there if not?

[00:10:56] – Maria

Yeah, so I think one of the challenges with applying to any school is you need to think about the entire application as a portfolio, or perhaps another way, another analogy could be a dish that you’re serving at a dinner. So you don’t want the dish to just be Brussels sprouts. You want it to have a whole bunch of information about you as well. So I do think that a picture of your puppy could be appropriate, assuming that you’re using the rest of the application wisely to convey the fact that you are the sort of leader that Booth is looking for. I do say to people, like, yes, they want to get to know your personality, but also keep in mind this is still a business school application. So I think a picture of a puppy could be great. It could show so much about, even indirectly, your value system, right? I have cared for this. I rescued this pup, you know, from a shelter. And so that indirectly tells me that you are an empathetic, caring person. But just then make sure that you’re not forgetting in all of that, that At the end of the day, somewhere, you’re going to have to convey also what some of your professional accomplishments have been.

[00:11:59] – Maria

So it’s a fine, it’s a fine line. But I also, you know, I warn people to not let their freak flag fly too much and be like, here’s a picture of me doing something that may be questionable or a little bit creepy or unpleasant, you know. So it can’t— the answer— so the answer to your question, it’s a definite maybe.

[00:12:20] – Pola

OK, no heavy drinking, no, no red Solo cups in your—

[00:12:26] – Maria

no beer pong. That’s exactly it.

[00:12:29] – Pola

Yeah. So Michigan Ross, the impact and growth section there is slightly different questions, but in a similar vein to what they were before, you choose a prompt. So an example from this year is, think of a time something important didn’t go as planned. what did you do next? Versus, say, last year they said, can you provide a specific example of how you’d overcome a personal challenge? So that’s, that’s a slight tweak. But I’m curious, Caroline, is this admissions readers simply wanting a change? Based on your INSEAD experience, how often do admissions readers kind of shake things up in questions because they just simply can’t bear to read another essay about how an applicant overcame a personal Yeah, definitely the essay questions can get tweaked based on reader feedback because they may find certain questions better than others at actually telling them anything useful about the candidate.

[00:13:31] – Caroline

And so that’s why schools change them, and they’re not just changing it for the sake of shaking it up every year. And some schools change them very little, right? I mean, look at the Stanford application. It has hardly changed at all in In many years. So it often tweaks based on admissions file reader feedback. With the ROSC change, so for that question they give, there are prompts that are optional, so you can choose from one of a number of prompts to respond to. And I think what is interesting there is that all of those prompts for this year are behavioral questions. Whereas last year, they had a question that was, you could choose to respond to the question, what makes you unique? Or what makes you excited to get up each morning? Whereas now it is, share an example of a specific situation where your actions created a positive impact on your community or an individual. So it’s very different, right? It’s really looking at those behavioral questions or behavioral responses where you are giving the situation, you’re explaining what you did, and you’re explaining the outcome rather than just saying something nice about why you, what motivates you every day.

[00:14:49] – Caroline

So, it’s just going back to the schools really wanting some concrete evidence of what you do and how you do it rather than some sort of vague statements about what motivates you and what drives you.

[00:15:03] – Pola

So generally drive for kind of more detail, more concrete stuff there. So some changes— there have been some changes not just to the written content, but also to videos that candidates need to upload. Specifically, I want to talk about MIT Sloan. So Maria, MIT’s introduce yourself video has gone from 60 to 90 seconds. And it’s no longer framed as an introduction to your candidate, or one of these is no longer framed as an introduction to classmates, a second video question, the— in a second video question, the prep time has gone from 10 down to 5 seconds. So what’s behind these changes and how do you feel about them?

[00:15:49] – Maria

Yeah, so I think for the first video, the one that has increased from 60 to 90 seconds, yes, it’s gone up by 30 seconds, but they’ve also eliminated a prior essay question that used to be 250 words around What’s the world— how does the world you come from shape who you are today? They’ve gotten rid of that essay, and yet they’ve adapted or modified the wording for the video question to bring up, take 90 seconds to share your story, who you are, where you come from, and what shaped the person you are today. So I think what they’re doing is they’ve, they’ve given you more time, but to the point that Caroline was making earlier, they are looking, I think, for a more specific Some more concrete examples about how you’ve evolved as a person and what have those big forces in your life been, as opposed to just, hey everyone, I’m Maria and here’s 60 seconds about me. Um, so I do think that they are looking for something a bit more concrete this year. So that’s the, you know, but they, they clearly still want to know that information because, you know, when I first saw this, I’m like, oh my gosh, they got rid of that one essay.

[00:16:52] – Maria

And then I dug in and I saw the new video question. I’m like, oh, they still want to know, but they’re just—

[00:16:56] – Caroline

it’s a different Hmm. On—

[00:16:59] – Pola

as a sidebar, I’d love to see the Hi, I’m Maria video. I think that would be a great video. I—

[00:17:06] – Maria

when they first started this question years ago, I— my, my son was like maybe 8 years old, and I had him— I’m like, you know, and it used to say like, introduce yourself to Rod Garcia, the Director of Admissions. So I was like, hey Alex, how would you introduce yourself to the Director of Admissions? And he like started making fart noises. Um, and I actually— I have that in— I still kept it in ApplicantLab to give people a bit of a laugh.

[00:17:25] – Caroline

But so Yes, that’s great.

[00:17:29] – Pola

Do not do this at home.

[00:17:31] – Maria

Yes, definitely. Maria told me that I— no, I— that is what not to do.

[00:17:37] – Pola

So speaking of video, Caroline, Darden, as you mentioned before, has dropped the community essay and added a video element. Do you think that makes it easier for admissions to evaluate applicants?

[00:17:52] – Caroline

I think that they are just looking to get another data point about you, and the videos are a great medium for seeing how a candidate communicates. So, many of the schools now have video questions. I think it’s interesting that Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton still don’t have video questions. Many of the other schools do. It’ll be interesting to see at what point, if and when they— those— the trio of the top schools do introduce a video element. But the feedback that I’ve heard from the admissions teams is that those videos are just really efficient, right? Because they’re often very short recordings. So, and I’m not sure that we have full details yet of how the UVA Darden questions will work, whether it is, whether they’re using Kira Talent, which is this platform that a lot of schools use for the video questions. And with Kira Talent, it’s a platform where you will, when you log on, you will get some practice questions and then you go into the exercise and you’ll get a prerecorded question, which is given to you from a database of hundreds or thousands of questions. So there’s no way of forecasting what question you’re going to get.

[00:19:08] – Caroline

And the schools can set their own parameters, so they can give you a certain amount of time for preparation and then a certain amount of time to deliver your response, so you will get cut off at that point. So it may be that you get 60 seconds to respond, or maybe you get 90 seconds to respond, and the video will cut you off if you haven’t finished your answer. So time will tell which format UVA Darden is using, but what I’ve heard from the schools is that, so if you imagine a candidate has to answer 3 or 4 questions and it’s 60 seconds each, so then it literally takes 3 or 4 minutes for the file reader to watch those. So, it’s not very long compared to the time it might take to read an essay or, you know, wade through a resume or whatever it may be. So, it’s very time efficient, and they can observe quite a lot in those 3 or 4 minutes. So, they could get a lot about how the candidate thinks, how they communicate. If they’re a non-native English speaker, then they can see, is Is there some coherence between the quality of how they communicate on paper and how they communicate when they speak?

[00:20:22] – Caroline

It’s like a mini video, a mini interview. And so, and of course, as we’ve said, just the ability to think on your feet is so critical to being a good MBA student because so much of the learning experience is about facilitated discussion in the classroom. And so, they do need people who have the ability to be cold calls, essentially, and have something useful to say, to contribute to discussion. So, that’s why they’re— that’s something else they’re looking to gauge from these video questions. So, I’m not sure yet what the format will be for those Darden questions, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re using the Kira Talent platform. form as well as many other schools are.

[00:21:09] – Pola

I mean, as you say, thinking on your feet is a huge skill, but as someone who doesn’t particularly always think well on my feet and likes to hide behind essays and writing, I think this feels a tiny bit cruel to me, you know, as a— not even an MBA student, but as an applicant that you’re expected to just like whiz off brilliant answers right away. That’s quite— I mean, I guess you get that in a face-to-face interview, but Yeah. Yeah, it just really puts the pressure on. And in a way, I mean, especially if you’re not a native English speaker, I could see that being difficult and slightly maybe disadvantaging students there. But hopefully admissions readers have a little bit of pity for, you know, take that with a grain of salt too. So.

[00:22:00] – Caroline

Yeah, they do. And I think that’s an important point to make, that they are not expecting you to deliver a perfectly crafted response in the same way that you might do if you had the question a week before and you had time to prepare and think about your 3 key points that you want to get across. They understand that this is spontaneous and therefore, um, that it will not always be a perfect response. And that’s also why typically they give you a few questions, right? There’s often 3 or 4 or 5 questions that you’ll work through, and so if you mess one up, it’s not the end of the world, right? They just, they understand it’s a difficult exercise, and so they’re not looking for you to be totally perfect in the same way that you might be if you had time to anticipate the question and make notes and so on. And I think also they are, and we saw with MIT that they’ve reduced the prep time from 10 seconds to 5 seconds, which looks insignificant, But I think that is due to the fact that schools are seeing candidates trying to use AI to game these questions.

[00:23:08] – Caroline

So if you have 30 seconds or however long to prepare, then the problem that schools have been having is that candidates are running those questions through AI and then reading off a script, right? And that is not, not at all helpful. That completely is antithetical to the goal of the whole exercise. So that is why I think We’re seeing some schools reducing the prep time because again, they’re trying to get you off the script and have to actually use your brain and respond in real time.

[00:23:40] – Pola

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. 2 changes that we haven’t discussed yet are Stern and Wharton. So just to mention these briefly, Stern has dropped the Change It essay and lengthened their goals essay to include a part about why Stern, and then Wharton’s tweaked their language to make that sort of mid- to long-term goals question a little bit more straightforward. So, Maria, anything else you’d like to mention about either of these?

[00:24:10] – Maria

No, I think these are pretty standard. I do know, you know, I applaud, you know, Stern is one of the more creative schools, right? They look not just for IQ but also EQ. And so they have something fun called like the Pick 6, which is like the Booth one we were talking about earlier, but it’s 6 photos, not just 1. Um, so I think that dropping the change essay was— it felt a little forced in the past. You used to have to write an essay about something, you know, how do you embrace change, or giving examples. So it’s interesting that they— I wonder if they, they are also just trying to streamline the application to make it a little bit easier to fill out.

[00:24:50] – Caroline

Um, But yeah, that’s—

[00:24:52] – Pola

it’s good.

[00:24:53] – Maria

I think it’s, it’s, you know, the Pick 6 is already so much fun. Um, but the change blanket essay was, you know, not, not hugely onerous, but yeah, I’m glad that— I’m happy that it’s gone.

[00:25:08] – Pola

Not ambiguous there. Okay, good. In inverse order today, we have our icebreaker question saved for the very end of our chat. So Today we’ve been talking about the changes to application questions, and that got me thinking that I’ve got a nerdy confession, and that is I really love application essays. Like, reading these, I really wanted to start writing my own answers to them, and that’s probably not a surprise given that I kind of write essays for a living. But when I was applying to universities, I really liked this part of the college application process. So my question to both of you is, and Maria, maybe you can take this first, what’s your nerdy confession? What do you really enjoy doing that strikes dread in the hearts of others?

[00:26:04] – Maria

I don’t know about striking dread in the heart. I mean, I would assume that Caroline and I also very much enjoy essays and writing, and I think that’s something we all, all 3 of us probably share. I, my nerdy hobby is I love going to art museums. And my, you know, I’m excited that my kid recently for his birthday, we’re like, what do you want to do? Like, the day is yours. And one of the things he wanted to do was to go see the Broad Museum in downtown LA, which is a great little modern art museum. And I also love listening to college a cappella, specifically the group that my husband was in many years ago, the Harvard Crocodilos. I never thought before I met him that I’d ever be an a cappella person, and it’s a little embarrassing to admit, but now I listen to all their albums a lot.

[00:26:54] – Pola

The end. Caroline, do you have any super nerdy ones for us? I’m hoping you’ll say something like, I love organizing stuff in Excel.

[00:27:03] – Caroline

Um, well, I, I do love— I mean, the essays things, I, I do love, um, reviewing essays. I’m I probably do more writing and editing than I, for Fortuna, for all of our content production than I should do, just because I enjoy doing it. And that’s probably something that I should hand over to someone else, but I just really enjoy doing that. And then on the personal front, I really enjoy reading recipe books, even if I’m actually just not, I’m not looking at it to pick something out to cook. I just start at the beginning and read it to the end. And when we were, many years ago, my husband would get me the latest Nigella Lawson recipe book when I was about to give birth, because it was the only thing that I could look at when I was going into the hospital and going into labor. I would um, distract myself by reading Nigella’s latest, um, epistle. So, wow.

[00:28:13] – Pola

That, that to me seems just like torture because you can’t eat for a while. At least if you’re getting a C-section, you can’t eat for a while before you give birth.

[00:28:21] – Caroline

So, and then imagining the recipes and then, yeah.

[00:28:26] – Pola

Wowee.

[00:28:27] – Maria

Well, I hope you’re an excellent cook.

[00:28:30] – Pola

Sorry, Maria.

[00:28:31] – Caroline

Sorry.

[00:28:32] – Maria

I was just— Caroline, Caroline is an excellent cook. So, um, that shows you don’t just read the recipe books, you actually put it into action.

[00:28:40] – Caroline

Sometimes I’ll make them too.

[00:28:43] – Maria

That’s great.

[00:28:43] – Pola

Caroline’s revising even while she’s in labor. She’s reading the recipe books, preparing for the next meal.

[00:28:50] – Maria

Great.

[00:28:50] – Pola

I need to get to California and have one of these meals soon.

[00:28:54] – Caroline

You need to go over for sure.

[00:28:58] – Pola

Well, on that note, I am going to go away for dinner, and these 2 are going to resume their, their day and maybe get some lunch. So thanks everyone for listening. If you enjoyed the conversation today, please do check out Business Casual. We have lots of episodes in the archives, and tune in next week for the next episode. Bye.