HEC is often ranked amongst the top five schools for training future Fortune Global 500 CEOs. It is therefore no surprise that its high-ranking MBA program is one of the most sought-after in the world.
If you are planning on applying, keep in mind that while HEC offers rolling admissions, its classes have been known to fill up given the amount of strong applicants that the school draws. What does that mean for you? Don’t wait too long to submit your own application, and reach out to our admissions experts for advice on how to put your best application together.
ESSAYS
Essay 1. Why are you applying to the HEC MBA Program now? What is the professional objective that will guide your career choice after your MBA, and how will the HEC MBA contribute to the achievement of this objective? (500 words max.)
Understanding what HEC can offer applicants is a necessity for successfully applying to its MBA program.With this first essay, HEC wants to understand how you link your professional objectives with a need for a coveted HEC MBA degree.
Start by thoroughly researching HEC and its program, and connecting with its staff, its delegate and its alumni through campus or virtual events. You must understand how your objectives and your current professional and personal situation make applying to HEC at this moment ideal for you. First, identify your core professional objective, while being as specific as possible. Even if you are hoping to begin a new career, or move to a new geography, don’t fret; 70% of HEC’s class tend to reorient their professions through the program. With this target in mind, link it to your previous experiences to show how your past, HEC’s MBA and your future objective fall into a logical order of growth.
Lastly, you should explain how your professional objectives connect to HEC’s teachings. Once you truly understand the areas you aspire to improve, start to link those needs with relevant aspects of HEC’s program that can support them. Focus on depth over breadth in your research on the school so that you can clearly show how enrolling at HEC now will be clearly useful for your future.
Essay 2. What do you consider your most significant life achievement? (250 words max.)
In this second essay, identify your most impactful achievements in either your private or work life. Whichever one you then choose to respond with, your choice should ideally display a clear capacity for leadership, teamwork and creativity. While this essay is only 250 words, try your best to bring the achievement you share to life so that the reader can clearly feel the hurdles you surmounted, and genuinely understand the value of the particular outcome that you achieved.
Essay 3. Leadership and ethics are inevitably intertwined in the business world. Describe a situation in which you have dealt with these issues and how they have influenced you. (250 words max.)
Most applicants feel uneasy sharing any occurrences that reflect the negative side of ethics, incorrectly assuming that the mere fact of facing an ethical dilemma is in someway a source of guilt. Yes, in business as in life, ethical dilemmas are in fact very common. While few scenarios truly occur at the sensational levels of theft or fraud, common ethical problems nevertheless unfold at event the lowest level of dealings. What information do you choose to share or not with a client? How do you act when closing a deal? Do you honor a verbal agreement with an employee, or do only written agreements need to be respected? All of these instances require you to pause and think about what the ethical decision might be.
When sharing an ethical dilemma you have faced, sharing the mental aspect can help bring your story to life. How did you process the situation? The way you then acted can be crucial to your answer. HEC also wants to know how you grew through this experience. Did it have a change on your thinking about particular relationships, or how you handle certain workflows? Be sure to guide your reader through the process, from the heart of the scenario to its lasting impact on your actions.
Essay 4. Imagine a life entirely different from the one you now lead, what would it be? (250 words max.)
This essay offers a place to share another side of yourself with the admissions committee. As you craft your response, imagine how your personal and professional life could both have developed in different directions. Has your work life ever taken an unexpected detour? Is there a passion that you fill your time off work with? One can assume that your ambition and key traits would have motivated you to be just as driven along this other path; the important thing is to describe what path those qualities could have driven you down.
Essay 5. Please choose from one of the following essays, 250 words max.:
a) What monument or site would you advise a first-time visitor to your country or city to discover, and why?
b) Certain books, movies, or plays have had an international success that you believe to be undeserved. Choose an example and analyze it.
c) What figure do you most admire and why? You may choose from any field (arts, literature, politics, business, etc.
Regardless of whether you elect to write about your city, a success you find unfounded, or an individual who you deeply admire, be sure to chose a response that will be both personal and uncommon. As a starting point, you might want to list potential answers for all three questions, then choose the one that best balances something that you can write passionately about, and something that will be more unusual for the admissions team to read. When writing up your answer, try share your opinion in an engaging fashion by presenting it narratively, if appropriate for the topic.
Essay 6. Optional: Is there any additional information you would like to share with us? (900 words max.)
In this optional essay, you can either add information that would be beneficial to your application, or choose to explain away an issue your candidacy might present. If you feel you have already shared everything beneficial amidst the applications many essay questions, and there is no negative issue that needs to be attended to, you may want to leave this essay blank.
In the case, however, that you do have a particular problem to address — such as missing a recommendation from your manager, poor grades during a period of your studies, or a job gap — then you must take the opportunity to clarify it through this essay. If you do not, HEC’s admissions team may assume the worst explanations possible, which could be even more to the detriment of your application.
When addressing any problem, it’s important to share how you have taken concrete actions to permanently rectify the issue at hand. For example, low scores in quantitative classes can be ignored if you later pursued extra quant courses in which you showed you can excel. Remember, your goal is to reassure HEC that the problem will not arise again during their program.
For help navigating HEC’s multifaceted application, reach out to our admissions consultants for advice. Additional information on HEC’s application logistics can be found directly on the school’s website.
