Free USC Marshall MBA Essay Samples
The USC Marshall School of Business is the business school of the University of Southern California.
The following MBA essays were written by ARINGO MBA candidates who got accepted to USC Marshall School of Business MBA program over the past few years. Read these free Marshall MBA Essay Examples to get a sense of what they are looking for at the Marshall MBA Program. Contact ARINGO MBA Admissions for help with your Marshall MBA essays!
To read more about USC Marshall School of Business visit the Marshall MBA page.
.
See below some USC MBA essay samples from MBA applicants:
Sign Up For a Free Consultation
Upon completion of my MBA, my goal is to continue growing in the entertainment industry as a corporate strategy manager for a leading studio, such as Lionsgate, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, or Sony Pictures. In this position, I will gain a deep understanding of the ins and outs of decision-making, goal attainment, and growth enhancement at a media company. Intertwined with my undergraduate knowledge, professional experience, and MBA degree, working in strategy will allow me to hone the skills needed to become an influencer in the field.
My experience with the community has underlined the importance of teamwork, passion, and community to success, values I plan to incorporate during my time at USC Marshall. My main goal at Marshall is professional growth and opportunity, however, I believe the best way to achieve it is by fostering a united community that supports one another in his or her success.
Aside from academics and recruitment support, I plan to engage with the Business of Entertainment Association, which will offer opportunities such as networking and company treks that are relevant to my field. Additionally, the Graduate Women in Business will contribute to my development as a female leader and promote a supportive female community. Moreover, I intend to become a leader in clubs, a member of the Marshall Graduate Student Association, and a participator in the Challenge for Charity competition. Through these activities, I will become an involved member and a leader in the community.
Having talked to Danielle Dollinsky, a current student, I see USC Marshall and USC in general as a school that encourages its students to collaborate, empower, support, and learn from one another. Per my experiences and values, I will be thrilled to become a member of such a community, create meaningful friendships with my fellow students as we take steps to further our careers, and make Marshall a supportive and inclusive home to all.
I believe that my unique combination of leadership and analytical skills, acquired throughout my professional career and military service, combined with the understanding of human behavior that I developed while studying psychology, will enable me to be a strong contributor to the USC community.
Throughout my life, I have been involved within the community. While I was earning my bachelor’s degree, war broke out in my country. Many civilians found themselves under fire and without adequate protection, some with special needs and others desperate for emotional and mental support. As a psychology student learning about trauma, mental illness, and PTSD, I didn’t hesitate when the Students Union asked for volunteers from the psychology department to initiate various projects. Our mission was to help civilians in the country’s most dangerous areas, where our help was needed most. We were 20 volunteers visiting more than 800 bomb shelters, delivering food and necessities to a total of 3,000 families. The situation calmed down, however not long after, war broke out again – more intensively and for a longer duration. I approached the Student Union and initiated a second project. This time I recruited and led 60 student volunteers, some from other school departments. This time our responsibilities included not only providing psychological support but also acting as substitute teachers in over 20 kindergartens.
Speaking with ______ (MBA 2019), I heard about the strong sense of community on USC’s campus, and the wide variety of extracurricular activities headed by students. I am especially excited about the Graduate Marketing Association (GMA), where I will be able to gain experience and knowledge, as well as contribute from my past experiences to other association members. I also intend to bring my previous experience in initiating volunteer projects and fundraising events to the USC community by joining the Volunteer Center and by becoming an Alternative Break Trip Coordinator in the Alternative Break (AB) program. As such, I will be able to enhance students’ volunteering experience by planning and executing pre-trip marketing, recruitment, and informational meetings. I am also delighted that my love of helping others and volunteering for a good cause will have an outlet in the Challenge 4 Charity weekend. I plan to organize a stellar team and together win the Golden Briefcase, by making a year-round impact through our activities in the AB program, as well as personal volunteering.
Finally, while I was working at ______, as we had no HR department, I took upon myself the aspect of fostering a true team feeling in the office. This included initiating bowling nights, weekly happy hours, and company outings – all to keep the team spirit up, which I felt had a direct impact on the work everyone did and on general employee satisfaction. I plan to bring to Marshall my people skills and my high energy to initiate extracurricular events, meetups, and study groups, which I believe can help unite our class and bring great satisfaction and pride in being a part of the Trojan Family.
Following my MBA, I plan to become a Marketing Manager at a global multi-billion-dollar fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, such as Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, or Procter & Gamble. Having worked in hi-tech marketing, and now as a consultant for FMCG clients, a Marshall MBA will help me fill in the gaps, by teaching me the theories, models, and other analytical tools needed to become a successful Marketing Manager at an FMCG company. There I will need to analyze market trends to position products, develop product marketing strategies and work with various teams to implement those strategies.
As a Product Manager at an innovative, feeless mobile bank, I’ve understood FinTech’s limitless potential for providing value and efficiency to consumers far beyond what traditional finance systems offer.
In the short term, I plan to expand my impact and expertise in FinTech by working as a Product Manager in an Innovation Lab at an international finance group such as Citi. There, I’ll learn more about FinTech’s interface with other financial institutions, banks, creditors, investors, and key regulatory bodies in several markets, and have access to an international customer base, enabling me to develop a nuanced understanding of universal banking needs worldwide.
My short-term post-MBA goal is to work with an international retail company such as Amazon or Nike Inc in a senior management position to learn new retail business models and practices.
To achieve my goals, I need USC Marshall´s MBA program, which will strengthen my business and leadership skills. Specifically, courses like “Management in Organizations” and “Problem Solving and Decision Making” will aid me in having a disruptive profile highly sought in such positions. Also, the “Marshalls Ecommerce and Retail Association” will provide me with insight about changing trends in the sector to successfully implement in my future job.
Dear Admissions Committee,
I am a product of the experiences I have had, people I have met, and adventures I have embarked on. All of these factors combined have been the driving force behind me pursuing my dream.
Growing up I was surrounded by sexism and discrimination as part of my daily life, as they are ingrained in society there. Surrounded by such an environment has always affected me, especially being exposed to stories of sexual violence and femicides. To contextualize the seriousness of the situation, eleven women are killed daily because of their gender; every 2.3 minutes, a woman or girl is raped, and 59.4% of women have suffered violence within their last relationship. I was 20 years old when I came across these statistics and promised myself that I would dedicate my life to helping reduce gender violence within my own country.
Due to my capacities and context, I felt passionate about promoting gender equality in places within my reach, and therefore started volunteering in schools that provided education to girls in marginalized communities. Within this framework, I met a ten-year-old girl who had witnessed gender violence within her home during childhood. She shared with me her desire to escape the cycle of domestic violence and her hopes to have a better education and more opportunities than her mother had.
As soon as I started working, I used my monthly salary to support her studies and help provide a more secure environment for her and her mother. It brings me enormous joy and fulfillment to say that today she is studying at one of the top universities with a 100% scholarship, and her mom has become financially independent to leave behind an abusive husband. To me, she represents only the beginning.
After joining my family business, I knew I could go a step further; I made it my mission for the company to take a stand against gender violence and provide the necessary support to victims.
Eager to ensure a significant long-lasting impact, I look forward to when I will take over as company CEO and further my social footprint by empowering female employees and providing them with the necessary tools to be financially independent so they can escape gender violence within their homes. Ultimately, I hope that my family company will be the blueprint for other companies to follow by granting equal employment opportunity to millions of women so they can live free of gender injustice.
USC Marshall’s program can help me achieve my life and career goal. Through the “Graduate Women in Business,” I can collaborate with my peers to develop my path of furthering my career within the family business. I aspire to set the example of how empowering women can cause a positive ripple effect within the company and the different communities in which we operate. I’m excited to share my story with Marshall’s community and see how being part of a community based on collaboration can help me reduce gender violence within my country.
Post- MBA, my short-term goal is to become an Associate at a leading management consulting firm such as McKinsey, BCG, or Bain. I believe that the skills I have acquired over five years of work experience in Corporate Strategy, Retail Operations Strategy, and Program Management roles make me a desirable candidate. A career in consulting would sharpen my problem-solving and decision-making skills through real-world cases and innovative ways to solve unique business problems. This experience would also set me on a course toward my long-term goal of leading the strategy vertical for an international retail company like Amazon or Walmart.
Dear Admissions Committee,
I believe that my unique combination of analytical and management skills combined with the values of collaborative and inclusive leadership that I have acquired through my life experiences will enable me to contribute immensely to the USC Marshall community.
Through my professional experience, in retail strategy and operations and program management, I have developed an understanding of the retail industry, execution of strategic projects, analytical thinking, and a managerial mindset.
Now, I want to leverage these skills and deepen my understanding of strategy and develop skills to solve large-scale business problems by making a career transition to management consulting. In the roles that I have assumed so far, I have primarily dealt with project execution and management. In future roles, I hope to engage more with the essence of problem-solving – diagnosis, solution, and implementation- and I believe that an MBA now, will help me make this transition in more than one way. A Marshall MBA will provide me with the right exposure through its unique offerings such as experiential learning through the PRIME and ABAC programs that provide the opportunity to work on real-world consulting projects. Also, to be a part of a very strong alumni network, the ‘Trojan Family’ would mean being a part of an international network of current and future business leaders, opening doors for a multitude of opportunities that align with my career goals.
Another aspect of the program that I am really excited about is the concept of Independent Projects for second-year students and the Marshall Leadership Fellows Program (MFLP), which I came to know about during an admissions session conducted by Elaine Padilla, Associate Director of MBA Admissions at USC Marshall. An independent project under the guidance of a supervising faculty would allow me to deep dive into my interest area and MFLP will hone my leadership skills through practical learning.
I have always believed that working together with people representing different backgrounds and communities strengthens the overall process of discovery and helps accomplish each other’s goals. While I was leading the pan-India program management for the roll-out of delivery kitchens in November 2019, I worked with teams comprising individuals that represented different communities and also communicated in different languages and dialects. We were hence struggling to craft a playbook that would help us speed up our expansion activities across all the target cities. Different cities have different rules and regulations about lease agreements, license applications, etc. We needed ground-level inputs to craft city-specific templates and checklists to speed up our efforts and improve the shortlist ratio. The barrier to it was that the on-ground executives who largely speak the local language were hesitant to speak and provide their input in a corporate setup because they are embarrassed about their poor command of English and that they may not be able to communicate their ideas properly. To tackle this issue and put in place a more collaborative and inclusive working environment, I introduced a setup where 2-3 field executives were tagged to a member from the central team who spoke their language. This provided the executives with a familiar environment to work in and also boosted their confidence. As a result, we got a lot of valuable input and with assistance from our legal team and curated city-specific requirements. Through these experiences, I realized the importance of adapting to different cultures and finding solutions that are inclusive of every stakeholder.
Finally, at USC Marshall I intend to bring the learnings from all of my life experiences to further develop a culture that is supportive and inclusive to all.
How can you improve your USC MBA Essays?
ARINGO's experts can help you present yourself best
Will you get in?
Try our admissions chances calculator