The Tepper community is dynamic and unique with students who strive to be collaborative, supportive and inclusive. Please provide an example of when you experienced or created an inclusive environment and how you will use that experience to help members of the community reach their full potential. (350-500 words.)
Tepper comes up with a new essay question this year. Like many top MBA programs, Tepper also places significant value on creating a collaborative culture and expects MBA students to add to the community and enhance each other's experience.
There are 2 parts to this question: first you describe an experience and then you show the Tepper admissions team how you'd add value to Tepper by gaining insights from that experience.
For an appropriate example of an "inclusive environment", you could consider a situation at your workplace or in a community setting. Ideally, it would be a situation where you had to interact with or lead a group of individuals coming from diverse backgrounds. The more diverse the group, in terms of ethnicity, perspectives, backgrounds, and agendas, the more challenging the situation and the higher your achievement. Talk about what challenges you faced and how you overcame them.
Whatever the situation you talking about - your focus should be on:
What actions you took
What you learned/gained from this experience
How these learnings or perspectives will help you help your peers at Tepper.
Is there anything additional that you think we should know as we evaluate your application? If you believe your credentials and essays represent you fairly, you should not feel obligated to answer this question. This essay is intended to provide a place for you to add information that you think is important but is not covered elsewhere in the application. This could include clarification of your employment or academic record, choice of recommenders or provide helpful context for the admissions committee in reviewing your application. (maximum 500 words)
Although the adcom gives example of weaknesses, don't be mislead to talk only about the negatives. You could write about certain impressive contributions or qualities that you could not capture in the other essays. If showing certain aspects of your personality, career or life adds to the value to your application, you should write this essay. But do not write this essay if you think quality of rest of your application is suboptimal. If that is the case, improve your other essays first.
Alternately, you could use this essay to explain shortfalls in your application which you feel are truly detrimental to your candidature. Absence of recommendation from current supervisor, areas of underperformance (academic or professional) or events which stick out (gaps in your resumes or second MBA) or application issues (reapplications) can be commented on if you have explanations that are intelligent and credible.
Whether you decide to showcase your strengths or address your weakness, it might be better to not do both in the same space. Pick one aspect that you think will truly enhance your application.
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