New MBA Application Essays & Deadlines
ApplicantLab |
June 17, 2025

In the latest episode of “Business Casual,” hosted by John Byrne alongside Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich-Vila, the spotlight shifts to the latest changes in MBA application essays and deadlines, with a keen eye on Berkeley Haas’s innovative approach. As more schools announce their timelines for the upcoming application cycles, Berkeley Haas stands out by replacing a written essay with a dynamic video format. Applicants tackling the prompt, “what makes you feel alive when you are doing it and why,” now have the opportunity to convey their authenticity and passion through a short video clip, recorded on the school’s platform. This shift not only allows candidates to better express their true selves but also mitigates concerns about the influence of AI on written submissions.

Maria enthusiastically supports this transformation, suggesting that video responses could provide the admissions committee with a more engaging and genuine insight into applicants’ personalities and passions. Meanwhile, the conversation takes an informative turn with Caroline detailing the removal of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) essay, which has been replaced by a new “Distance Traveled” question. This seeks to uncover the rich, contextual backgrounds of applicants, capturing their personal and professional journeys in just 300 words.

For MBA aspirants, these changes represent a pivotal shift in how they should approach their applications. Both the video essay and the “Distance Traveled” prompt encourage self-reflection and creativity, making it imperative for candidates to present their unique narratives vividly. As John, Maria, and Caroline discuss, adapting to these new formats can provide a fresh, albeit challenging, canvas for applicants to showcase what truly makes them tick.

Episode Transcript

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

[00:00:06] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets & Quants. Welcome to business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-host, Caroline DRT Edwards and Maria Wigvilla. More schools are posting their application deadlines for the 2025, 2026 application season, which would allow one person who would be invited to come to actually enroll in the fall of 2026. In addition to the deadlines, we have a few changes to essays. In particular, UC Berkeley us as engineer to change. Caroline, you want to talk a little bit about that?

[00:00:49] – Caroline

Sure. Well, there are a number of changes in the essays this year. The first change is that, well, they’ve kept the same prompt as essay one last year, but instead of a written essay, it is now a video essay. So the prompt is what makes you feel alive when you are doing it and why. Last year, you had 300 words to respond to that. And now you need to record a response on video. So you’ll need to use the Berkley Har’s platform to record it. So it’s not something where you can do a million takes at home and then submit your favorite version. You will have, it says, two attempts, so two possible takes on their platform, and you have one to two minutes, and it says that you may not exceed two minutes for that exercise. It’s interesting, they switched it to video. They did have a video question last year on a different topic, and they have dropped that particular question. So essentially, they have reduced the number of prompts that you need to respond to and turn that written question into a video question. And I think it’s a good choice for a video question because I think in this question, they’re looking to understand who you are beyond the facts and figures of your resume, beyond your achievements.

[00:02:19] – Caroline

What is it that really makes you tick? They’re looking to get to know you as an individual. And I think that someone can really bring that to life in a video. I think in a video, you can probably get a good sense for whether that’s really authentic or not, or whether it’s something that’s very scripted, and that can be harder to pick up in a written essay. It’s easier to read between the lines when you actually see someone on video.

[00:02:47] – John

What do you think about it? I wonder if that’s which was motivated by AI, trying to lessen the reliance on written essays because of the widespread use of artificial intelligence. Maria, do you suspect that?

[00:03:05] – Maria

I absolutely suspect that that’s the case. I mean, who knows? There might be some way for AI to fake a video. If there is, I don’t know, probably, but it’s going to be a lot harder, it’s going to be a lot more difficult. I agree with Caroline. I really love the fact that they have chosen this essay to be their video essay, because if something makes you feel alive when you’re doing it, hopefully you’re going to get a bunch of really videos, which will hopefully be more entertaining for the admissions committee to watch, but will also allow the candidate to really convey their passion and their energy that they put into something in a way that you weren’t able to when you were simply writing about it. I think this is a fantastic change, and I’m really excited for it.

[00:03:52] – John

Yeah. Any other changes you saw there, Caroline? Oh, Caroline, you’re on mute.

[00:03:59] – Caroline

Sorry. The Career Goals question has remained the same, so that’s exactly the same as last year. The old essay 3 has been dropped. That was the DEI question. As we’ve seen with some other schools, such as CBS, schools have had to strip those questions out of their applications this year due to directives from the new government. But they have introduced a new question where I think they are looking to get some of that information or some of that background. They have a question in the supplemental information session called Distance Traveled. It says, At Berkley Harse, we consider distance traveled as the contextual information that helps us understand the unique circumstances, challenges, or influences that have shaped your personal and professional journey. We invite you to share aspects of your background, personal circumstances, or significant experiences that have meaningfully impacted who you are today and how you’ve reached this point. Please tell us how these experiences have influenced your perspectives, decisions, and aspirations, and how they contribute to the person you are becoming. You have 300 words for that. Now, that’s actually quite similar to one of the optional questions that they had last year. They had a couple of optional questions last year.

[00:05:29] – Caroline

They’ve cut things back a bit. I think that the application was a little bit long last year, and it was a little bit complex, the optional essay last year, so they’ve simplified it. But it shows that Haas is really looking to understand where people are coming from, and what challenges they’ve overcome. They want to understand the context of what people have achieved in their lives. I think that’s always been core to what Haas is looking for and the type of community that they’re looking to put together, which is incredibly be diverse and with very diverse perspectives and experiences represented. That’s a really critical part of the learning experience that they’re looking to put together at Haas. But they’ve had to, due to the changes in the law, they’ve had to strip out that old DEI question.

[00:06:17] – John

Yeah. You also wonder if the simplification will be part of a trend because we generally agree that international applicants will shy away from the US, so there’ll be a decline in applicants overall, probably. And even domestic applicants who may have a job are uncertain about the economy and wanting to hold on to the job instead of go to graduate school until there’s a stronger sign that we’re about to enter a recession. And you wonder if schools want to reduce the friction that applicants face in applying. Maria, do you think that we’re going to see some of that this year?

[00:06:56] – Maria

Yeah, I think that that is absolutely something that we’re going to to see, or at least certainly not adding more hoops to jump through. I think we’re going to see either the same amount of hoops or perhaps a reduction in hoops to try to encourage people to apply because applying, it is a massive undertaking. Every little bit, I think every little bit will help. It makes sense that I think Berkeley would simplify their application this way.

[00:07:24] – John

Emre, let me ask you a question. We all know about the most iconic questions that are asked of MBA applicants. The two that most bring to mind for me are obviously the Stanford question, what matters most to you and why, and then the Duke question, Tell me 25 things about you. Why are so few business schools? Why do so few of them have really outstanding essay questions that you can immediately identify and say, Wow, that’s a super question?

[00:07:59] – Maria

Oh, no, I I’ll have to choose my words very carefully here so that I don’t get kicked in the shins at next year’s AGAC conference. Well, so a couple of things. I think the iconic questions, part of what helps make them iconic is not only the distinctive wording or topic at hand. I mean, what matters most to you is certainly a profound, one of the most profound, if not the most profound question I think you could ask anyone in any context, not just applying to business school. Twenty-five Things is just so much It’s been around for a long time. I think it’s that longevity. It’s a combination of it is memorable, but it’s also the longevity. I think what’s happened is that we have seen every few years at some of the other schools, there is turnover in terms of who is running admissions. I think that what used to be an iconic question can all of a sudden no longer be an iconic question. Many years ago, for example, Chicago Booth, they used to give you a series of pictures of things that happened around the Booth campus, and you had to select one of the pictures and say why it resonated with you and why this is proof that Booth is the community you want to join.

[00:09:08] – Maria

That used to be one of Booth’s iconic questions, and now they don’t have it anymore. Even Haas itself, the what makes you feel alive, it has now become their iconic question. But prior to this, their iconic question number one was, tell us a six-word story about something meaningful about yourself or something meaningful that happened in your life. A six-word story, and then you would put the six words, and then you would explain why, what those six words, what that means. I do think that sometimes some of the oldies but goodies might get cycled out when there’s a change in the administration. I think There are some other schools, for example, I think Wharton. In the past, many years ago, I was able to attend a session where Blaire Mannix, who’s the head of admissions there, she is very, at least at this time, this session that I attended, she was very committed to this idea of constancy in terms of data, providing really valuable data. I think for someone like that, if you then say, Well, every year we’re going to change the essay questions, now you’re not going to be able to collect as much meaningful data, at least from a cohort to cohort level, because now we’re now comparing apples and oranges instead of having the same apples to apples to apples to apples year after year, that then we can track the outcomes based on what someone wrote in their essay.

[00:10:25] – Maria

There’s a standardization for data analysis purposes that I think is really interesting. But it also means if that’s what you’re committing to, then that does not allow you to then throw in something random or something fun from one year to the next.

[00:10:42] – John

Right. Caroline, you have a view as to why so few schools have really stand-out essay questions?

[00:10:49] – Caroline

Well, I think some of the ones that we see as stand-out questions are pretty challenging, and that could be off-putting for some candidates. So the question that you mentioned from Stanford, and I think that is very similar to this new question at Haas. It’s not a new question, but now it’s a video question, what makes you feel alive when you’re doing it and why? It’s not something that you can knock out in an afternoon, right? You really need to give it some deep reflection. It takes quite a lot of time and effort, I think, to do that really well. And so some schools may be skittish about asking questions like that because it could be off-putting for candidates. And so it’s easier to ask people more straightforward questions like, What are your career goals? How are you going to leverage our particular MBA program? Those are more classic questions that candidates are going to be thinking about anyway, and they can probably knock out more quickly. I think some of those questions that we really like can be pretty challenging for candidates.

[00:11:56] – John

Yeah. And the most common things are, Okay, why an MBA? Why our school? Which I guess there’s nothing fancy you can do about those two questions, and yet they are pretty essential to determine what a person really wants out of a business school and an MBA. You want to know that. I think that’s one of the reasons why you don’t get really, well, I’ll put it sexy, cool questions. Because there’s a real practical nature to what admissions is asking that admissions really needs to know to successfully admit someone to their program, probably. Well, if you’re out there and you’re looking, because as these essays come out and the deadline When the deadlines come out, you might want to check our Poets and Quants Guide to the latest deadlines that are being posted by one school after another. In that story, we have a link directly to the essays if they’ve already come out. We also tell you whether or not a school is willing to waive a GMAT or GRE test and give you a shot at applying without a standardized test. We give you all the deadlines by dates, by rounds. If you’re an international applicant and you dare to come to the US, we will tell you the final application period at which a US school will admit you.

[00:13:29] – John

Obviously, We have the latest deadline dates for all the top European and Canadian schools as well. So check it out. Meantime, Caroline and Maria, thank you so much. Always a pleasure. I want to tell everyone that we have forthcoming, and I think this is very topical, we’re going to have a special guest, an immigration lawyer, who will be able to give us a skinny on how an international applicant and student should be playing the game in this environment. We know the headlines can be horrifying about what’s going on in the US right now, so it may be really helpful to hear from a top-flight immigration lawyer. So stay tuned for that. You know, we’ve covered this issue quite a bit on our podcast, but it’s really nice to have a legal eagle come on and give the real advice. John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Thanks for listening.

P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
New MBA Application Essays & Deadlines
ApplicantLab |
June 17, 2025

Video transcript, for you skimmers out there: 

I love the fact that they. Report on this metric, right? The salary percentage increase, I think is an incredibly valuable metric because there are so many business schools out there that are great for so many people. And at the end of the day, these programs are in fact able to do what a lot of business school applicants are hoping for.

They are in fact able to provide a real change in the trajectory of someone’s career. They are, in fact, able to help people leapfrog. Into a higher career stratum than they would’ve otherwise been able to be in. So from that perspective, I love the fact that the FT reports on the salary percentage increase.

So valuable. I think it helps, when sometimes I talk to people at the beginning of the business school journey, I will frequently hear something like, well, it’s M seven or bust, you know, it’s Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, or bust.

And I’m often like, look, slow your roll, man. There are so many programs out there that are going to get you. They might not be the first ones that you think [00:01:00] of, but wow, does that even matter? I mean, whew. Look at some of these numbers. $170,000. That is nothing to sneeze at, especially if it’s one and a half times more than what you were making before business school.

I mean, wow. , That is life changing. , And these schools can really change people’s lives. And I think it’s important to have this metric available because I think it helps open people’s eyes. To, To be a little bit more open-minded. , And I think that’s wonderful.

Where my little quibble is. Is that I believe this is an important metric to report upon. However, I do not believe that it is a metric that should have significant amount of weight in the rankings because if we think about what is the purpose of a ranking, it is meant to be some sort of a representation of relative quality.

Now rankings. The entire concept of them is flawed the entire, for me, the entire concept of an ordinal ranking is ridiculous. Like school versus two versus four, versus seven versus six . You know, like, there, there’s sort of [00:02:00] these tiny miniature marginal differences. I think that school rankings should instead be in buckets.

Like, here is the top bucket, and then here is the also very good, but just underneath the top bucket, the next bucket. Um, but no one, no one listens to me. Uh, but so anyway, to the extent that a ranking. Is intended to be some sort of a measure of a program’s quality. I don’t think that this metric is one that should be included in the weighting.

Look, again, . Life-changing levels of improvements in salary. But when I look at, okay, so these were the top five programs by the salary percentage increase, but now when I look at it by the weighted salary, right, the top five US programs, by weighted salary, it’s not entirely accurate to say that.

Well, these programs, you start with people who have lower incoming salaries and they end up in the same place as the other programs. The numbers do not [00:03:00] really, , the numbers would tell a slightly different story. So if you look at the weighted salary a few years out for the top five programs by salary,

we’re talking about a $70,000 a year difference, roughly 240 a year versus 170 a year. That’s about a 40% difference, which I don’t think is a small, you know, if we were talking 5%, even 10%, I’d be like, yeah, 10%, that’s nothing. It’s, you know, nothing but 40% I do think is a pretty, I think it’s a pretty significant difference, uh, that is worth noting.

And so. Your point about like, well, they were letting in the people who were already on a, you know, if you were making, let’s see if we can, if we figure out, okay, so if we take this, these numbers, then we can sort of back into what’s an implied pre MBA salary, you know, that would indicate maybe something in the mid sixties before MBA versus, you know, one 10 something, [00:04:00] 1, 1 10, 1 15, for these other programs.

I get your argument. Your argument is like, look, these people were already clearly high achievers prior to business school, and so, mm-hmm. Is it not true then that the business school, like they would’ve continued to be high achievers And in fact, this is true, some of the most successful, financially successful people I know skipped business school altogether and they didn’t need it.

, However, I think GMAC often does, polls or surveys of MBA graduates, and I think the vast majority of them, at a minimum say that they’re glad that they went to business school, that they do feel that it was worth, their time. So. How much of this is,, nature versus nurture.

We, we will never know. , But I would gently push back on the fact that I, because these numbers essentially to the extent that they’re lower than say these numbers, it effectively penalizes thes e schools in this ranking. And for that reason, I don’t think that it should be part of the ranking because you’re penalizing a school for letting in more successful people.

But there’s a benefit. [00:05:00] To attending. Like, first of all, if you are a more successful person, think of the opportunity cost that you’re giving up. So the fact that these schools are able to lure away people to give up two years of their salary, in order to go to business school in the first place, I think is a pretty good indicator of the desirability or the perceived desirability of those programs.

Also, I do think that there is merit to thinking about like, who are my peers going to be in a business school? and. If a school is attracting people who were more successful prior to business school, I actually think that that is an indicator of the quality of the school, not only because it shows the people that are willing to give up those two years of salary, but also think about who the peer group is once someone is in the school.

Right? That means that if you are attending one of these schools. This percentage isn’t as high, but you’re surrounded by people who, prior to business school, were already achieving on a different level. And also after they graduate, they continue to achieve on a different level. True. The slope is not as sharp.

Right. But the.

[00:06:00] Result is a larger number. So I think that this implies that perhaps at the school itself, you might be surrounded by people who are driven. some people might say more competitive, which might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but people who are more driven and also after they graduate, they continue to be driven.

And so I think that also implies something pretty powerful about the ultimate benefit of the network because business school isn’t just the two years you go there and it’s not just that first job you get out of school or that third job you have five years out of school.

it’s also who’s your network gonna be and, and who are you gonna call 10, 15, 20 years after graduation? To invest in your company or to partner with your company or to start a company with. so I do think that there is value to attending a school and to have your peers during school and after school be people who were, for lack of a better term, high performers.

[00:07:00] I don’t think that this should be punished because I do think that this does yield a better business school. Experience and a better result in the long term. And so my quibble, again, I love this metric. I think this is an amazing metric to provide, but my quibble is that this should not be given honestly, any weight at all, and certainly not the high level of weight that it’s given, because again, you’re punishing the schools that, you know, you’re basically indicating that I, what I would say is an indication of quality.

An indirect indication of quality, but an indication of quality all the same. You’re basically punishing the schools that have sort of higher quality, quote unquote, coming in. And, and that to me is. Counterintuitive and kind of wrong. And so that’s why I continue to think that this should not be, uh, reported upon.

Absolutely. Tell us. It’s important. I think it’s great to know. I love using this information, but I don’t think it should be used in terms of like, let’s figure out which programs are the , [00:08:00] quote unquote highest quality programs. But what do you think? What did I miss? let me know. Thanks.

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