Kellogg MBA Essays

“Kellogg MBA Essays”, these essays are a vital component of the application process, allowing applicants to highlight their leadership qualities, career goals, and personal values. The Kellogg admissions team uses these essays to assess how well prospective students align with the school’s community and its emphasis on collaboration, innovation, and global leadership.

For the application cycle, Kellogg has outlined its deadlines for the Full-Time MBA program. It’s essential to be mindful of these deadlines to ensure your application is considered in your desired round. Kellogg offers three rounds for application submission, providing flexibility based on your preparedness and strategy.

Kellogg MBA Application Deadlines

Application Round	Deadline	Decision Release
Round 1	September 11, 2024	December 13, 2024
Round 2	January 8, 2025	March 27, 2025
Round 3	April 2, 2025	May 15, 2025

Tips for Writing Effective Essays

• Be Authentic: Let your true personality shine through in your writing.
• Show, Don’t Tell: Use vivid examples and anecdotes to illustrate your points.
• Proofread Carefully: Ensure your essays are free of grammatical errors and typos.
• Seek Feedback: Ask friends, family, or mentors to review your essays and provide constructive criticism.

Essay Example

Variation 1

Kellogg Leaders are primed to tackle today’s pressing concerns everywhere, from the boardroom to their neighborhoods. Tell us about a time in your life where you’ve needed a combination of skills to solve a problem or overcome a challenge. Which skills did you use? What did you accomplish? (450 words)

In early 20XX, my team was hired by a retail banking client to help grow their deposit accounts, the foundation of the bank’s capital. The client wanted to take action to combat the uncertainty caused by COVID.

My team and I started this partnership with our clients using the XYZ Design Thinking method, a framework used to identify a target customer, their needs and motivators, and ideas for potential solutions. I led a series of workshops to drive this process. The team landed on a seemingly counterintuitive plan to build features that reduced account overdraft fees, which constituted more than $500 million in annual revenue for the bank. But why cannibalize reliable, profitable fees? Citing research on customers’ frustration with such fees, we convinced senior management that a model focused on customer care would establish trust and long-term loyalty, ultimately driving further account growth and lending/investment revenue.

Once we identified the features customers would value, we assembled a team of designers, IT architects, and developers. In this phase, I managed the product’s end-to-end delivery, communicating customer needs and managing project timelines. At times, coordinating a team with different working styles and priorities from different geographies and time zones proved challenging. Initially, the team worked in silos with minimal communication between those with different skills. Utilizing experience from a prior client, I advised the client to allow us to re-organize the program so that each feature was being developed by a small, agile, cross-functional team with one designer, one architect, and four developers, leading to much clearer communication and greater continuity of context among team members.

Upon completion of the build, we began to slowly roll out the new features to customers and gain feedback, which allowed me to leverage my math background to analyze how real customers were using the product and make data-driven decisions on how to improve the product before releasing to a broader set of users. By the end of this pilot, we successfully reduced overdraft fees for our trial customers by roughly 60%. Ultimately, when the product was in full production, the bank’s deposits grew by more than 55% compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Having grown up in a financially stressed household, I recognize the value that every dollar holds for those struggling with their finances. This project resonated with me because of the benefit it provided families like mine while still being a good business decision for the bank. I’m glad to have had the opportunity to use my innovation, executive messaging, project management, and, most importantly, teamwork skills to play a part in delivering such an outcome. I hope to significantly enhance these skills and others at Kellogg to achieve my long-term goals.

At Kellogg, our values are based on research that concludes organizations comprised of leaders with varied backgrounds and perspectives outperform homogeneous ones. How do you believe your personal and professional experiences to date will help to enrich the Kellogg community? (450 words)

I love being part of a team, not only for the camaraderie and what I can learn from others, but also for what I can contribute to help others. I love the process of learning and growing in a “teammate” role to contributing and teaching in a “coach” role, as I have in gymnastics, swimming, and cheerleading. For me, the value of team sports is that they are about learning together, refining skills, and working as one to achieve your best as a team. I believe the Kellogg community is exactly that kind of environment: talented team members with vibrant and varied experiences coming together to achieve their best. I thrive in that kind of environment, and I believe I can contribute as a part of the Kellogg team just much as I hope to learn from it.

I have always loved math – both the theory and the problem-solving. In school, I would even save my math homework for last as a reward for completing my work in other subjects. This passion gave me the foundation I needed for problem-solving roles in my early career at XYZ and Amazon. These firms have given me considerable growth experiences in the rapidly evolving areas of digital transformation, enterprise-level cloud computing, and generative AI. They’ve also taught me how to think and work as a team in a professional environment, learning about frameworks for innovation and optimal organizational models for effective teams. At Kellogg, I hope to share what I’ve learned about these industries and techniques with my fellow students and, in turn, to learn everything I can from them about their unique skills and experiences.

I’m also eager to be active in extracurriculars at Kellogg. At Amazon, I have been actively engaged in our XYZ Male Ally community because I believe in building an environment where everyone feels that they are welcome and that their contributions are valued. I want to continue my involvement in promoting equality in the workplace by joining the Gender Equity Network. I also aspire to build relationships with those who have similar professional interests as a part of the Fintech@Kellogg club.

I feel that Kellogg reflects my values and what I’m looking for, not only in my MBA experience, but also in the communities I am a part of. I am excited to be considered for the opportunity to contribute to Kellogg’s value-driven, team-based environment – learning from each other to become the best leaders we can be.

Additional Information:

We know that life is full of extenuating circumstances. Whether you want to explain gaps in work experience, your choice of recommenders, inconsistent or questionable academic performance or something else, you can use this section to briefly tell us anything we need to know about your application. (Optional)

I did not select my current supervisor as a recommender because I have been at XYZ for fewer than two years and am currently on my 6th supervisor in that time due to leadership changes and reorganizations. With that, I don’t believe my current supervisor has had sufficient experience working with me to descriptively represent my traits and skills to the admissions committee as effectively as my selected recommenders.

I would like to call the admissions committee’s attention to the fact that my low GPA – relative to the average admitted applicant – will not be predictive of my performance in the program. As my upper-level mathematics and statistics courses became more demanding, my other grades began to slip as well, as I was spending a disproportionate amount of time trying to get my head around some of the more abstract mathematical concepts. However, those setbacks did not discourage me. I continued on to achieve a dual degree in Mathematics and Statistics and followed my mission, led by intellectual curiosity. With that said, I hope that my love for numbers, my strong performance through calculus, and my strong GMAT score provide the admissions committee with the confidence that I can meet the rigorous quantitative demands of the Kellogg MBA program.

Variation 2

ESSAY 1

Kellogg’s purpose is to educate, equip and inspire brave leaders who create lasting value. Provide a recent example where you have demonstrated leadership and created value. What challenges did you face and what did you learn? (450 words)

As an account manager at ABC, I was responsible for crafting and executing the company’s go-to-market strategy for the X market and ensuring synergies amongst multiple teams, such as sales, marketing, product, etc. This project was pivotal as it would help the organization foray into the Xmarket.

 I leveraged a team of nine to deliver a sustainable, scalable XY strategy. Multiple stakeholders and teams needed to work together for the project to succeed. While most of the group was faring well, three members struggled to cope. The management wanted to lay them off, but I negotiated a two-month timeframe to improve their performance. The challenge was to bring the underperforming members up to speed in an already fast-paced project.

I had discussions with my underperforming teammates to understand their challenges. I realized that one colleague who had just returned from maternity leave was finding it difficult to manage her time. The other two were from a minority background and felt they weren’t getting equal opportunities to showcase their skills. After deliberation, I broke down the challenge into smaller, manageable tasks.

For the colleague who just got back from maternity leave, her role involved calling and emailing the clients, and calling required her to work at specific times, which was a challenge. We identified and prioritized her tasks using the 80/20 rule, and I asked her to focus on email reachouts instead, as she could do that whenever time permits. Running email campaigns turned out to be her strength, and her performance improved.

For the two colleagues from the minority background, I restructured the team into pods of diverse backgrounds to foster collaboration, thereby ensuring equal opportunity and inclusivity. The members were assigned to different X countries, and since every country had a different market potential, the opportunities weren’t equal. To address this, I estimated the market potential of different countries and assigned new sub-markets (like A, B and C) having similar market potential, consequently creating a level playing field. Also, accountability was missing due to a lack of a defined process. So, I brainstormed with different teams and defined processes, establishing accountability and eliminating biases.

As I helped the team members unlock their potential and gave them ownership, I gained their trust, and the whole team rallied to conquer the project. The productivity of the underperforming colleagues and the entire team improved. I realized that true leadership lies in creating more leaders. My female colleague who was about to be laid off got promoted after a year. We were able to create a XY function that generated a revenue of $ 200,000 and onboarded 18 clients within the first ten months.

 (444 words) 

Essay 2 

At Kellogg, our values are based on research that concludes organizations of leaders with varied backgrounds and perspectives outperform homogeneous ones. How do you believe your personal and professional experiences to date will help to enrich the Kellogg community? (450 words) 

I grew up in a small Z town with a population of a few thousand people. Everyone knew each other, and people stuck together through thick and thin. My father worked as the General Manager at a manufacturing plant in this town for 35 years. I have seen him stand by his team and lead them to achieve ambitious goals. Growing up in such a setting instilled inclusivity, empathy, community service, and perseverance as my core values. 

I excelled in academics throughout school and pursued engineering from an institute of national importance. Driven by inclusivity and equity, I started teaching underprivileged children during engineering. By the time I finished engineering, I had taught 44 children and managed 12 volunteers. The initiative that I started 13 years ago is still thriving. However, I failed to balance academics alongside extracurriculars and graduated with a low GPA.

I stood my ground and persevered to rebound. I did certifications from Y, published two research papers, and excelled at my job. Three years later, I got into a top-ranked Indian B-School to pursue an MBA. The school was located in a rural area with widespread poverty. Eager to bring a change, I collaborated with a local bank on a financial inclusion project. I enrolled 1400 villagers from 13 villages into the banking system, enabling them to avail of government loans and subsidies. This time, I balanced academics with extracurriculars and graduated third in my batch.

I believe my personal and professional growth is tied to the growth of my alma mater’s community. I’ve exhibited this commitment by starting student clubs, spearheading initiatives, and mentoring my juniors.

These values also steer my professional life. I’ve consistently surpassed functional objectives by delivering innovative solutions. I’ve nurtured teams to create leaders by facilitating healthy discussions and giving ownership. Engaging with multinational teams and clients daily, I accept diverse opinions with an open mind and understand differences that entail business practices worldwide. In my five years of experience leading teams, four of my teammates got promoted, and none got laid off.

I am already driven and shaped by the values that define a Kellogg Leader, who is anything but business as usual. Leveraging my business acumen and leadership experience, I’ll bring fresh perspectives to classroom discussions and projects. Sharing learnings from my professional experience, I’ll add value to the Marketing Club. Community service has been imbibed in me since childhood. I’ll contribute towards positive social impact by joining the Social Impact Club. 

My interactions with DE (MBA’24) reinforced my belief that I’ll be a right fit and add value to the Kellogg community. I look forward to meeting the Kellogg community in Evanston and growing together!  

(466 words)

ESSAY 3

Essay 3 Why is the Kellogg One-Year Program the right fit to help you reach your post-MBA career goals? And what unique academic, personal or professional experience do you bring into this specific program? (250 words) 

I have 5+ years of experience leading sales teams at technology companies. Now, I want to move beyond sales and make a larger impact on the broader X function (Sales + Marketing + Product) by becoming a product marketing manager at technology companies such as A, B and C.

To achieve this post-MBA goal, I need to gain skills in marketing, leadership, and strategy. Kellogg’s marketing department is the best in the world to gain the skills I seek, and the Technology Management pathway aligns perfectly with my post-MBA goals.

The diversity and community-driven culture at Kellogg would help me learn from the diverse perspectives of a truly international cohort and become a better, more inclusive leader. The San Francisco immersion program would also allow me to apply classroom learning to real-world challenges.

My inclination towards Kellogg’s one-year MBA stems from a personal reason too. As a father of a one-year-old daughter, I’m motivated to accelerate my MBA journey. Since I come from a business background, Kellogg’s one-year MBA would allow me to gain the desired skills and return to the market quickly.

A fair understanding of management principles from my first MBA will help me enrich the classroom discussions and the peer-learning experience. I’ve consulted multiple startups on building their sales and channel strategies from scratch. This will help me share learnings from real-world scenarios as well. Leading teams and engaging with clients from 16 different countries, I’ll bring leadership lessons and fresh perspectives to Kellogg.  

(245 words)

Essay 4 (Optional) We know that life is full of extenuating circumstances. Whether you want to explain gaps in work experience, your choice of recommenders, inconsistent or questionable academic performance or something else, you can use this section to briefly tell us anything we need to know about your application. (250 words) 

I want to share my reasoning for a second MBA.

I excelled in academics throughout school and pursued engineering from a top-ranked college. Post-engineering, I worked as an XY Developer for two years. This role helped me sharpen my technical skills, but my impact was limited, and I didn’t get a chance to develop my management skills. Eager to make a larger impact, I pursued my MBA from a prestigious Indian B-school and graduated amongst the top 3 in my batch.

My first MBA helped me transition into sales. For 5+ years since then, I’ve consistently progressed in my career and led sales teams successfully. Confident of my potential to impact the whole organization, I’m looking to manage larger cross-functional X teams involving Sales, Marketing, and Product.

Without clear career goals during my first MBA, I grasped management basics but couldn’t focus on gaining skills in a specific domain. This has created a glass ceiling for me. I need to gain new skills and perspectives to make the career transition I seek.

A second MBA from a top B-school such as Kellogg would help me augment my current skills and gain new ones by taking leadership, strategy, and marketing courses. It would also provide me international exposure, peer-learning opportunities, and a global network, aspects I missed during my first MBA. I want to pursue a second MBA to catapult my career, foster lifelong relationships, and increase my contribution to the community.

 (241 words)

Conclusion

Crafting compelling Kellogg MBA essays requires careful thought, planning, and self-reflection. By understanding Kellogg’s focus, addressing the key essay components, and following the tips provided, you can increase your chances of gaining admission to this prestigious program. Remember, the goal is to present a well-rounded picture of yourself that showcases your potential as a future leader.