(note: “contributions” is normally spelled with a ‘c’)

Describe how your background, values, academics, activities and/or leadership skills will enhance the experience of other Kellogg students.

That’s good old Question 2 on Kellogg’s MBA application. It’s a simple enough query, but one that stymies many of my clients, leading to several questions:

“Do they want me to talk mostly about work?”

“How do I talk about all of those in detail in two double-spaced pages?”

“Should I tell stories for this one?”

“I don’t have any values. What do I do?”

Luckily I have high-level answers for all of those: “No”; “That’s not the point of the question”; “Yes, short ones,”; “I think Sachin just made this one up” (I did).

The answer to this question is yet another chance to add dimension to your Kellogg application. And in this case you can also be very specific about how your experiences/skills/values will help you contribute to the Kellogg community. I counsel my clients to approach this one as they would all the others: with a solid structure and rich specifics.

Let’s take structure first. The question asks about so many areas that it seems difficult to approach it as you would a simpler “Tell us about a leadership/teamwork experience” question, where you tell a story then focus on lessons learned. But that’s no reason to respond with a hodgepodge of resume material, partial stories, and general statements, as some of my clients do in their first drafts. Instead, pick the areas you want to highlight, then state those clearly in your introduction:

“My cross-cultural background, focus on professional ethics, and deep community service experience will help me contribute to the Kellogg community in several specific ways.”

“But Sachin,” you might say, “that’s hardly a ‘killer’ opening.” True, but this question pulls for less of a story-oriented approach upfront, as you have to cover multiple domains (not that you couldn’t try: you could start with a killer opening, a story that highlights one of the ways you’ll contribute and then move on to other domains, but let’s keep it simple for now). Notice also that the introduction implies that you may not be talking about everything the question mentions. But that’s okay. After all, the question says “and/or” and Kellogg has a whole essay on leadership experience.

After that introduction, you would devote a longish paragraph to each of the domains you mention. In this case: cross-cultural background, ethics, and community service. That brings us to specifics. By now you know I won’t let you get away with rehashing your essay bullets here. Instead, bring out the stories behind the bullets. If you were raised in three different countries and worked in two others, talk briefly about cultural lessons you learned in each or the many cuisines you now cook. If you served on your company’s ethics board, talk about a couple of particularly thorny issues you wrestled with. If you started a tutoring service for underprivileged children talk about the challenges of recruiting fellow volunteers and/or getting through to a particularly resistant child. These specifics will showcase your multi-dimensionality, thoughtfulness, and initiative. As you could imagine, this approach works equally well with domains not discussed here, such as sports and social clubs of any sort.

But you’re not done.

In each section, you should link your past experience/values to how you’ll contribute at Kellogg. If you have great cross-cultural experience, you could use that to lead a GIM trip (see my GIM blog). If you’ve volunteered with multiple community service organizations, then of course you’ll lead/join at least one at Kellogg (e.g., Social Impact Club). If you have a skill/interest that isn’t currently represented by a club or activity at Kellogg (e.g., triathlons), then mention how you’ll start one. They love that, especially if you can back it up with deep experience participating and initiating.

Of course there are other good ways to approach this question, including talking about your experiences chronologically and linking them to Kellogg contributions. Regardless, using a clear, logical structure and rich specifics to answer this question just may put you in a position to make the contributions as an actual Kellogg student. My fellow Accepted editors and I would be happy to help you craft such an essay.

By Dr. Sachin Waikar, Accepted.com Editor. 

Describe your key leadership experiences and evaluate what leadership areas you hope to develop through your MBA experience.

That’s Kellogg’s leadership question for MBA applicants. Simple enough, right? Well, yes and no.

Yes, it’s simple if you take a by-the-numbers approach to the first part of the question, merely restating bullets from your resume in sentence form: “My key leadership experiences include leading a four-person team of engineers to develop a new quality assurance process for a multimillion-dollar client and mentoring three new hires about our policies and practices.”

But taking the “simple” route guarantees a flat essay unlikely to stand out. Instead, you should take a strategic, more story-oriented tack, grabbing them with a concise but rich tale of leadership trials and triumphs: “When I was asked to take over a $1.5 million consulting project for a major new client, I inherited a four-person team of demoralized engineers who were already 50% behind schedule.” Then you’d go on to relate how you led that demoralized team to a positive result, highlighting how you overcame major task-related and interpersonal obstacles along the way with problem-solving creativity, coaching, and persistence.

But that’s just one leadership experience, and the question asks for “experiences,” so I counsel my clients to include two to three such compact stories of leadership, ideally in different domains: professional (usually the easiest one to find examples of), extracurricular (community service, cultural organization, and sports-related experience), and even personal (such as helping to lead your family or a small group of friends to solve a difficult problem or navigate a difficult time).

After presenting the stories you can “sum up” the key leadership skills you’ve gained—developing a vision and rallying others around it; bringing out your team’s strengths and providing development opportunities for them; resolving conflicts; many others—and mention briefly (no room for more stories) how you use these in other roles and contexts such as X and Y.

But that’s only half the question.

The second half is about the “leadership areas you hope to develop through your MBA experience.” “But I just told them how great a leader I am on all these dimensions, so what do I write here?” my clients sometimes say. It’s true that you’ve just related many dimensions of your leadership strength through the stories, but I doubt you’ve addressed everything. A typical area of development involves “soft skills” such as coaching individual teammates and giving feedback, especially of the “constructive” variety. Kellogg is renowned for its people-focus, so these are always worth mentioning. Even if you feel you’ve covered hard and soft skills with your stories, you can always benefit from developing the ability to create/sell higher-level visions (where to take your company, rather than where to take your project), negotiate much higher-stakes deal, and resolve conflicts among groups/units rather than just among individuals. So talk about that stuff. If you have space, even present a real-life scenario from your work where such skills would have been useful.

Now you’ve addressed both parts of the question, so you’re all done, right? Well, no. The key part my clients are most likely to leave out is naturally the part that doesn’t appear in the question: How can Kellogg’s specific offerings help you develop into a stronger leader? Here, in the last part of your essay, you need to map the leadership areas you wish to develop onto Kellogg courses, seminars, workshops, and clubs. Go to Kellogg’s website and find three or four specific ones that relate strongly to your leadership goals, then write about them. Briefly. It also never hurts to mention how much you’ll learn by leading your highly diverse study teams at Kellogg.

Now you’re all done, right? Right.

But remember, if you don't want to go it alone, my fellow Accepted editors and I can help you craft compelling Kellogg essays and those for other programs.

By Dr. Sachin Waikar, Accepted Editor

Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management is a dream school for many of my MBA clients. And why not? The program features a top-notch marketing and general management curriculum, the standard-issue highly accomplished but well-rounded student body, and what’s viewed as the most people-focused culture among top business schools. Today an increasingly popular Kellogg offering is the Global Initiatives in Management program, or GIM. Each year over 500 Kellogg students—from the full-time, part-time, and executive MBA programs—participate in GIM, “an intensive global business leadership course designed by students” (according to the school’s website). For GIM, student teams plan a 10-week curriculum including two full weeks in the country of focus for field study that typically includes company visits and interviews with top managers, industry experts, and government officials.

According to the website, recent GIM topics have included tourism in South Africa, E-commerce in Thailand, and microenterprise in Ghana. Given the value of insights regarding global business practices and specific industries across nations—not to mention the value of spending two weeks in a foreign land with a group of dynamic classmates—GIM is a very appealing program for Kellogg-minded applicants, and one mentioned often in my clients’ essays. But unfortunately that mention frequently goes something like this: “I would love to participate in GIM.” Or maybe, “I would be very interested in a GIM trip to China, given the increasing importance of that country to the global economy.”

Don’t do that.

Instead, make much more clear both the value of the GIM program to you and what you can bring to GIM. For example, are you an aspiring product manager with pharma experience? Then you could talk about the appeal of a healthcare-focused GIM trip to India to understand the challenges of marketing and distributing pharmaceuticals, biotech products, and medical devices in a fast-growing and increasingly de-regulated economy. To the trip you would bring insights from your pharma experience, including knowledge of US-based marketing strategies and how well these might apply overseas. Remember, GIM trips are student-run, so you should portray yourself as someone who could conceptualize and initiate a specific trip/curriculum. Spell that out: “I would love to initiate a GIM trip to country A to study topic B, which would provide great insights into industry X, which I hope to enter.”

My fellow Accepted editors and I can help you incorporate Kellogg’s GIM program into dynamic and engaging essays that show your fit with the school. In general, the more carefully you construct your essays, the more likely you may find yourself studying Japan’s wireless phone market in Osaka, or microfinance in South Africa, or fast food trends in Beijing . . . on your Kellogg GIM trip.

By Sachin Waikar

On June 18th, 2006, I was pronounced dead for just over one minute.

Want to read more? Good. That was the idea: to grab you from the start. Luckily, on June 18th, 2006, I wasn’t dead—to my knowledge. But if I had been, presumably as the result of some kind of horrible and quite possibly heroic injury, that opening line would have been a great way to start a B-school or any other essay, maybe one about overcoming a major challenge (i.e., recovering from the injury with several months of painful physical therapy) or even the tell-us-about-your-goals essay (i.e., starting the essay with the story of my injury, and how it inspired me to pursue career goals fully, including applying to MBA programs).

Imagine a different opening line: “All of us have faced major challenges of many different sorts over the course of our lives.”

Are you yawning yet? You should be: that generic opener tells the reader nothing about the essay’s specific content and gives them no reason to read on. But it does tell the reader a lot about the writer: he or she is merely going through the motions of answering the question, rather than presenting something new, fresh, and “grabby.” Unfortunately, that kind of opening is much more common than not—for almost any type of essay. It’s often just a restatement of the question, one that induces immediate glazing over of the eyes. As they say in Hollywood, and probably elsewhere, “You only get one chance to make a first impression.” Your opening line is that first impression.

So don’t get lulled into writing a generic opening. It’s easy, but lethal. Instead, think through the story you wish to tell and consider opening with a moment at the height of the action. That’s much more likely to grab the reader. For example, if you’re telling a story of a sailing accident, don’t open with “I have always loved sailing very much.” Or even “In June of 2007 my friends and I decided to go sailing in the Gulf of Mexico.” Go with something like “As the first wave crested over our 14-foot sailboat, I knew that we were in trouble.” That’s much more likely to grab them and keep them reading.

But wait, you say, I have to set the context first. You’re right—except for the word “first.” You do have to set the context, but you can do that immediately after the opening: “As the first wave crested over our 14-foot sailboat, I knew that we were in trouble. It was June of 2007, and three friends and I were sailing in the Gulf of Mexico when we hit an unexpected squall.” After that you can say a bit more about the circumstances (e.g., how long you had been sailing, who the friends were, etc.), then dive right into what happened after that first wave hit. Pun intended.

In short, if you want to close the deal on admission, open your essays with the best lines you can.

For more tips on writing the best MBA essays possible, consider signing up for “5 Fatal Flaws,” a 5-day mini-email course from Accepted.com.