HKUST MBA Essays Analysis 2010-2011

Oct 25, 2010

Categories: MBA Essay Writing Tips 2010-2011

Job responsibilities

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology - MBA essay questions 2010-2011

1. Please tell us your motivations to pursue an MBA program, and why is now the best timing to do one.

All the essays are fairly short – so be concise and pointed about what role the MBA will play in helping you reach your future goals. There is a separate question on goals – so no need to elaborate the goals part itself. Instead focus on what skills/knowledge you have gained so far through your professional experiences and to progress to your chosen career, what further skills/knowledge will the MBA help you add. Also why an MBA now – as opposed to continuing in your present job or doing an MBA at a later stage – write a few lines on this.

2. Please elaborate on your career goals. How will your academic training, professional experience coupled with an MBA education at HKUST help you achieve your goals?

What are your career goals post MBA and in a longer term of say 5-10 years? How has your past experience and academic foundation prepared you in terms of skills/knowledge to reach these goals – e.g you want to become a Financial Analyst in an investment bank – you could write about your strong analytical skills through your engineering degree and your subsequent experience of developing IT applications for financial sector firms like banks, which has given you exposure to this area and made you interested in it. Round off with a couple of lines on the MBA’s role also in taking you to your goals.

3. If you were admitted, how could your participation at HKUST MBA enrich fellow students’ experience inside or outside classroom?

This one tries to find out what sort of diverse skills/experiences you have, because of which you will be able to contribute to classroom learning in the form of case discussions etc and also add to the diversity of the student population at HKUST. Do you have distinctive experiences e.g. you have led product development teams and hence can enrich the knowledge of your peers regarding both leadership aspects and about new product development process and its challenges? Any non-professional experiences such as achievements in sports/hobbies etc could also be mentioned –along with how they have added to your overall personality, because of which you can add to your peers’ experiences.

4. Option1:Describe a situation where your initial attempt to solve a problem failed. Tell us how you get around to finally solve the problem.

Are you a determined person or a quitter – therefore in the face of failure, what was your response. Describe the situation in terms of what you expected to achieve, what went wrong in the process and how you failed to achieve your target. After this, how did you overcome the disappointment and what did you do, including what you did differently this time around, to finally solve the problem?

Option2: Describe a situation where you created opportunities for yourself and led to a favorite outcome.

Good business managers should be able to spot the opportunity and act on it by taking initiative – your answer to this should demonstrate this quality. What was the opportunity you saw and what would have been the benefit to you and to your organization by working on that opportunity? Accordingly, what action did you take to make the most of it? Finally, what were the results?

5. Option1: Tell us a situation when you experienced challenges in team setting, and what you have done to help the team achieve its goals

Describe your role in the team i.e. were you a team member, the leader etc. What was the team expected to deliver as a whole and what kind of problems cropped up along the way, which were mainly due to difficulties in teamworking e.g some members not performing their due responsibilities, or conflicts among the members etc – to get the team back on track, what corrective action did you suggest and how did you implement this?

Option2: Describe a situation when you got frustrated over differences in culture or work style. What have you learnt from that experience

Will you be able to fit into the diverse peer group at HKUST – this answer will give a clue about that. Therefore describe an incident where you had to face difficulties due to cultural differences e.g. you were working in a foreign country and your team members who were both own country and foreign nationals had differences with respect to working on weekends in order to cope with work pressure – how did you tackle the situation and what did you learn from this?

6.Please tell us a situation where you faced an ethical dilemma. How did you handle the situation?

Business schools stress Ethics in Business and Leadership and often rely on discussions around ethical dilemmas that students have faced in their past professional experiences, to explain the different issues involved. Therefore, can you cite an example where you felt torn between following a certain principle or ethic and maybe going against that ethic for immediate results/or based on the orders of a superior/client etc. How did you make the final decision and what did that teach you?

7.What do you want the Admissions Committee to know about you as a person?

An open ended question which lets you highlight some significant non-work related attributes of your personality – you could do this but keep in mind that the attributes themselves should be those that strengthen your case as a prospective student e.g. you can say that you have grown up in unusual circumstances or in a variety of environments – making you sensitive to all kinds of people/situations which normally people don’t encounter in regular life. This in turn has equipped you to deal with uncertainty.

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