ISB essays for 2014

ISB essays for 2014 are now available

This is a post on ISB essays for the 2014 application in general. In case you are looking for outstanding ISB application help or admissions consulting services, contact us using the contact form on the sidebar to the right. 

The ISB essays for 2014 are out! The ISB PGP online application for 2014 is now open.  The essay questions for this year’s application are as follows:

Essay 1 Innovation or doing things differently it is said is a key to future success. Could you substantiate or negate this idea based on your experience. Please provide examples from your own experience – either examples of your own innovation or examples of others whom you have worked with. (300 words max)

Essay 2 Applying to and enrolling in a Business School is an important career decision. Critically look at your career to date, the choices you have made, the key influences behind those choices, your goals for the future and how you expect to benefit from the ISB experience in achieving your goals. (300 words max)

Essay 3 One of the following (200 words max):

A) This experience completely changed my way of thinking.

B) An instance when you went out of the ordinary to achieve something significant, but in hind sight feel you could have done better.

C) Tell us about your role in a team that made a significant contribution to the organization.

D) Contribution to peer learning and engagement with the ISB student body are important aspects of the ISB experience. What contribution do you expect to make in this direction during the one year at ISB.

Essay 4 (Optional) Please provide additional information, if any, that will significantly affect the consideration of your application to the ISB. (200 words max)

For a deep analysis of the ISB essays for 2014, click here.

ISB essays from 2013-14

ISB Essay 1: Attitude, skills and knowledge differentiate people. Elaborate with two examples on how you would differentiate yourself. (300 words max)

ISB Essay 2: How does the ISB PGP tie-in with your career goals? (300 words max)

ISB Essay 3: Pick the most significant achievement (professional or personal) you have had and elaborate on the key learning you took away from it. (300 words max)

ISB Essay 4: Please provide additional information, if any, that will significantly affect the consideration of your application to the ISB. (300 words max)

GyanOne’s analysis for this year’s ISB essays reveals that there are quite a few elements that remain the same from previous years.

The ISB application still focuses strongly on differentiation (as evidenced by the first essay) and career goals (as evidenced by the second). These two essays have been fairly staple for ISB over the last decade or so, and so do they remain in this year’s ISB application as well.

Implication: Having a clear career path and being able to clearly show why your application stands out remains as critical with ISB this year as ever

The additional information essay (which previously used to be essay #3) has now become essay 4, with essay 3 being new. A lot of applicants feel that this essay is optional, whereas in fact it is really a blank canvas and opportunity given to you by ISB to put across points that the other essays did not allow you to. Essay 4 too, remains an important part of the ISB application for this year.

Implication: Don’t just remain confined to the structure provided by the first three essays. Bring out stories and elements that you feel matter to your application and try to make the fourth essay as impactful as possible.

What had changed in the ISB essays last year, and what did that mean?

Essay 3, which asks the applicant to discuss an achievement and the learning from it, is new on the ISB application this year. While many applicants incorporated the very perspectives that will go into this essay into other essays in previous years, this year the spotlight is quite firmly on bringing this out in more detail.

Implication: Some applicants miss out the critical word ‘most’ in essays such as these. They are asking you for the most significant achievement of your life. Make sure what you write is impactful. Getting promoted at work or being able to complete a difficult project may be significant achievements for you, but are they the most significant? Similarly, don’t ignore the part on the learning.

The ISB essays are as much about introspection as about impact. Failing to bring out the learning and dwelling on the achievement only can make this essay fall flat. A final caveat: the learning and the achievement are both important. Some applicants make the mistake of assuming that ISB is concerned only with the learning. Not so.

The video essay is now gone! This was a new feature that the ISB application had introduced last year. While ISB states that this has been removed due to technical and logistical issues, we suspect that the reason also has a lot to do with the efficacy of the video essay itself.

Unless it creates a sufficient enough filter for ISB to be able to judge people, the video is just another part of the application. We suspect that ISB found that the video did not really provide enough input to improve the application process.

Implication: With the video gone, the ISB application essays become even more important. With four essays now (instead of the three in past years), the applicant needs to spend even more time and effort on making sure that all elements on his/her profile are well represented through the essays.Give them your best shot!

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