ARINGO Note to candidates, due to the above Yale policy: If you are “recycling” an essay from another school to create a Yale essay, use the non-edited first draft that you created for the other school.

Why We’re Asking

We want to know what matters to you. The questions below are designed to help us gain insight into your background, passions, motivations, responsibilities, ideals, identities, challenges, or aspirations, depending on where you take your response.
Choose One Required Essay

Please respond to one (1) of the three essay prompts below. The word limit (though not necessarily the goal!) is 500 words.

1. Describe the biggest commitment you have ever made. Why is this commitment meaningful to you and what actions have you taken to support it?

2. Describe the community that has been most meaningful to you. What is the most valuable thing you have gained from being a part of this community and what is the most important thing you have contributed to this community?

3. Describe the most significant challenge you have faced. How have you confronted this challenge and how has it shaped you as a person?

Other Written Materials

For Re-applicants: If you have applied to the Yale School of Management in the last two years, you must complete both the required essay and the re-applicant essay.

For Everyone: If any aspect of your application requires additional explanation, you may address it in the “Optional Information” section below. This might include context that helps us better understand an element of your academic, professional, or personal history.

Please note, you should use the specific prompts provided in the “Work Experience” section to address gaps in work experience or choice of recommender.

The “Optional Information” section is truly optional. If no aspect of your application requires further explanation, you should leave this section blank.

Your essay must be entirely your own work. Although you may ask others for general feedback, you may not allow anyone to write or edit your essay. Please see our AI Statement for additional guidance.

Required Essay

Please indicate which essay prompt you have chosen:

Choose one (1) of the three prompts above. (500 words maximum) (upload file)

Optional Information

If any aspect of your candidacy needs further explanation, please provide a brief description here. (200 words maximum) (upload file)

Background information

• Supplemental Detail – If you would like to elaborate on any of your responses within this section, or any other aspect of your background, we encourage you to do so here. (textbox, 250 words)

Behavioral Assessment

Take the Behavioral Assessment. After you pay the application fee, a link to the Behavioral Assessment will appear on your status page (Please note that it can take up to 2-4 hours for the link to appear). The assessment requires no advance preparation and will take about 25 minutes to complete.
The Behavioral Assessment is an online exercise administered by ETS, the testing service behind the GRE. But unlike the GMAT or GRE, which are tests of certain cognitive abilities, the Behavioral Assessment is a non-cognitive instrument that measures a set of inter- and intrapersonal competencies that are associated with academic success in business school. The exercise itself should take about 25 minutes to complete. You’ll be given 130 pairs of statements and asked to select the ones that best match your own behaviors.
Yale SOM is committed to exploring innovative ways of evaluating candidates for admission, allowing us to look beyond traditional metrics such as testing and academic performance. While these admissions factors are useful predictors of business school performance, they do not tell us everything we need to know about a candidate. The Behavioral Assessment gives us an additional piece of information to use in assessing who will perform effectively in the curriculum, specifically by helping us predict who will perform better than their academic history might suggest. And much like any other piece of the application, the Behavioral Assessment will never be the deciding factor for admission, but will instead be used in combination with the rest of a candidate’s profile.

Video Questions

Complete the Video Questions. After you pay the application fee, a link to the required video questions will appear on your status page (Please note that it can take up to 2-4 hours for the link to appear). The questions will take about 20 minutes to complete. You will need a laptop or desktop with a webcam and a high-speed internet connection to complete them. If you require accessibility accommodations, please contact mba.admissions@yale.edu.
Like the Behavioral Assessment, you’ll complete the video questions after you submit your application and pay the application fee. The video questions are not a substitute for the interview. Instead, they provide a unique way for us to assess your communication and English language skills, and enable us to create a more dynamic, multi-dimensional portrait of your candidacy.

To complete the video questions, you will receive a set of two previously recorded questions asked by admissions team members. The questions are similar to typical interview questions. There are no “trick questions;” we’re not trying to stump you. For each question, you will have 60 seconds to deliver your response. The responses do not require any specific knowledge or preparation beyond the practice tool you can use before answering the questions, and your responses will be used with a “light touch,” as we say–they won’t make or break your application.
To prepare for the video questions, it’s helpful to familiarize yourself with the 60-second time frame for delivering your response. You don’t want to feel rushed, and you don’t want to run out of time getting to the heart of your answer. Also, be sure you have a good internet connection and are in a quiet, private space. While it is entertaining for the Admissions Committee when the unexpected colleague, partner, or pet joins your session, you will undoubtedly feel better about the exercise if you eliminate any potential for surprises!
And lastly, while it may be tempting, don’t use AI when completing your video questions. We have a statement on AI use in our application, and, in summary, reading from a script or relying heavily on notes defeats the purpose of the video questions and could undermine an otherwise strong candidacy. The video questions are meant to be spontaneous and provide us with an opportunity to get to know you and assess how you communicate. We’ll be disappointed if instead we get to know your AI platform of choice.

Work experience

• Gaps in Work Experience – Have you had any post-undergraduate employment gaps in full-time employment of greater than three months (other than for graduate study), or are you currently unemployed? If yes, please use the space below to provide more information. (textbox, 250 words maximum)
• Choice of Recommenders – Is one of your letters of recommendation from a current supervisor (or your most recent supervisor, if you are not currently employed)? If no, please explain. (textbox, 50 words maximum)
• Entrepreneurial Ventures – Please provide brief responses to the following questions. You are welcome to use bullets or a narrative format. If your response would benefit from a visual reference (such as a product photo), you may also upload a supplemental document of no more than one (1) page in the “Optional Information” section of the application.
  • Describe your customer, the customer’s problem, and your product or solution. (textbox)
  • Describe your role on the founding team. Note the total number of founders. (textbox)
  • Describe the scope of your venture, including full-time employee equivalents, revenue, number of customers, funding raised, or any other metric helpful to understanding your venture. (textbox)
  • Indicate the outcome (acquisition, closing, continuing, published research, patents filed, product launched, etc.) and briefly describe what you learned from the venture. (textbox)
  • If your venture will continue during your MBA studies, what plans are in place to ensure it continues to operate effectively? (textbox)
  • Please include up to five (5) active links to public information or articles about your venture. (Note: the primary website for your venture should be listed in the relevant section above.) (textbox)

Post-MBA Career Interests

• Career Interests – Briefly describe your career interests and how you arrived at them. What have you already done to explore or pursue these interests? What have those efforts helped you understand about the opportunities you are considering and the preparation they will require? (textbox, 200 words maximum)