HEC Paris MBA Essays: Question Prompts & Successful Sample Essays

HEC Paris MBA Essays: Question Prompts

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 maximum)

Essay 2: What do you consider your most significant life achievement? (250 words)

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)

Essay 4: Imagine a life entirely different from the one you now lead, what would it be? (250 words)

Essay 5: What figure do you most admire and why? You may choose from any field (arts, literature, politics, business, etc).

HEC Paris MBA Essays: Successful Sample 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 maximum)

Having gained substantial professional experience at one of the world’s leading consulting firms – EY, I have developed a knack for resolving client issues. Indeed, my experience and predilection to solve problems through analytical and methodical approaches has helped ascertain that my skills would be most effectively utilized in the field of management consulting.

As a student, I enjoyed solving problems, and embraced challenging situations as opportunities to apply and enhance my skills. Moreover, during our college’s annual tech-fest, I managed the popular Droido (Android-programming) event. I handled multiple responsibilities, including ideating the event to marketing it, getting sponsors and conducting the event on campus with about 40 participating teams. Subsequently, soon after joining Goldman Sachs, I traveled to New York for a two month project to build a stock trading application. I was among the 400 invitees selected from across the globe, and was placed in a team comprising another Indian analyst and team members from the Americas, London, Korea and Africa. On many levels, this experience set the stage for the next two years of my career at Goldman Sachs. By amalgamating my acquired analytical skills with my technical knowledge, I built cutting-edge tools and automated business tasks for global teams. 

At EY, I’ve not only demonstrated exemplary client-centric methodologies to establish myself as the ‘go-to’ person for a newly formed and startup-like team, but also leveraged my programming skills to address a variety of issues ranging from information security to efficiency of development cycles. I played an instrumental role in building/ developing the team’s services, marketing them and subsequently in several client engagements. In short, at this stage, with a fair amount of experiential knowledge of working on client issues, I wish to bolster my knowhow with the latest management concepts before I start my new professional journey. Hence, I’ve made the choice to pursue an MBA at HEC. 

Post the HEC MBA, I wish to work as a management consultant for a reputed consulting firm such as Deloitte or BCG in Europe or the Middle East. In this position, I will not only be involved in cultivating methodological solutions for business problems, but will also learn strategic management from leading experts in the industry. Having worked in the consulting arena for about 5-6 years, I hope to eventually start my own venture, preferably in the area of education or film-making. 

HEC’s combination of core and elective courses including marketing and strategic management, and vibrant career clubs make it an ideal institution to pursue my learning goals. The institution’s approach of building a strong theoretical foundation embellished with key leadership skills, and providing avenues for hands-on learning such as “The Executive Committee” and “Annual MBA Tournament” will ensure that I’m able to hone my management and soft skills to my fullest potential. Beyond academics, I look forward to being an active participant of HEC’s student clubs and pursuing my interests in film-making/ travel in the midst of a diverse yet cohesive cohort at HEC.

Essay 2: What do you consider your most significant life achievement? (250 words)

The decision to quit Goldman Sachs in order to move to my hometown Chennai to pursue my passions of consulting and film-making proved to be a pivotal turning point in my life and career. Having worked in a purely technical role as a software developer, my new role in EY was fraught with challenges- I had to interact with clients and market the team’s services, and learn about information security concepts to work on client engagements that involved preventing cyber attacks. Through my sustained efforts, I was instrumental in helping E&Y to convert two clients from the Proof-of-Concept stage to full-time engagements, and was promoted to Consultant.

After the hectic weekdays, I devoted my weekends to practicing the various aspects of film-making: script-writing, story-boarding and other pre-production work. I leveraged social media to find like-minded crew members. We then met regularly to brainstorm creative ideas and audition actors for short films that I funded. Although we faced last-minute mishaps such as actors not showing up and unfavorable weather conditions, I eventually succeeded in releasing my first short film, ‘What’s Her Number?’. Today, the film garnered more than 90,000 YouTube views and was selected for distribution by the prestigious online platform – Benchflix.

I consider this experience my most significant life achievement as it pushed me beyond my comfort zone and made me tackle challenging problems by adopting a diligent, methodical approach. It also enhanced my ability to manage time/finance, and taught me to devise implementable management strategies.

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)

In early-2016, I took up the responsibility of leading a critical engagement for E&Y in lieu of a senior colleague, who was caught up with another engagement. Although I was still relatively new at E&Y, the management gave me this task in sight of my experience in working with Linux and my strong client-demo marketing skills.

After my initial meetings with the client’s team in Delhi, I worked with our analysts and interns to on-board the client’s software infrastructure onto our facility in Chennai. Due to some technical glitches and a lack of technical personnel, we were delayed in reporting the results to our client by three weeks. Our senior team members prepared a report which suggested that the client’s team was to blame for the delay, owing to their lack of technical expertise and slow responses.

Although blaming the client’s team was the easier way out, I was uncomfortable about doing so since I knew this would only further escalate the scenario. I prepared a new report that detailed our shortcomings as well as those of the client’s team, and listed things we could have done to address these. This initiated dialogue and the ensuing discussion was productive, focusing more on solutions than faults. The client appreciated my approach and agreed to extend our deadlines. The engagement is still on-going and is our team’s biggest contract to-date. This experience reinforced my belief in seeking solutions instead of blaming others, and choosing dialogue over accusations. 

Essay 4: Imagine a life entirely different from the one you now lead, what would it be? (250 words)

I strongly believe that people connect with movies more intimately than with any other art forms or even other people. In another life, I would be making a living out of making movies. 

I’d read a lot of books and travel to various places to widen my worldview, and interact with people from different walks of life to understand their culture and traditions. I’d also take acting classes to understand the finer nuances of emotion and expression. I would then attend film school to get a formal education in the technical aspects of film-making and to learn how to effectively translate concepts for the screen. Developing the right crew is essential for a film-maker, and to achieve this, I would interact and associate with budding cinematographers, editors and sound-designers. 

By making short films and music videos, I would learn to coordinate the various departments involved in production- camera, music and editing crew. This would give me the necessary experience to develop my own feature films that have a strong emotional message and top-notch technical execution. I would try to emulate the precedent set by movies such as The Dark Knight, The Shawshank Redemption and Rush.

I would also be involved in developing solutions to curb piracy, which is the biggest threat faced by the film industry today. I’d also explore multiple platforms such as DTH promotions and participate in festival screenings to develop a wider audience for my films as well as for the Indian film industry.

Essay 5: What figure do you most admire and why? You may choose from any field (arts, literature, politics, business, etc).

I truly admire Steve Jobs, who has changed the way the world experiences digital content. As an aspiring entrepreneur, I find Jobs’ accomplishments and attributes very inspiring. The story of how he founded Apple with a friend in his parents’ garage proves to me that anyone can achieve anything if they have the drive. I admire his ability to build a company with a vision and people that believe in what they do. I’ve watched videos of his brainstorming sessions for ‘Next’ – the standards he set for his team and his marketing strategies were astounding. His ability to push people beyond their comfort zones and to never accept excuses has helped them achieve admirable targets within short time-frames. From Jobs, I’ve learned how to engage and inspire teams.

His ability to seek out opportunities to make a better world is extraordinary – whether in using calligraphy to build a keyboard for the Mac, or in designing a device that redefines the way we listen to music (iPod). He has taught me to think from the customer’s perspective and deliver the best possible experience/product. I believe that these attributes will help me when I eventually create my own start-up or venture into film-making. 

In his 2005 speech at Stanford, Jobs said “the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle”. I haven’t settled.