HBS Class of 2028 Essay Analysis

Today, HBS announced their essay questions for the upcoming application cycle. While the wording of the first two questions changed slightly, they are similar to last year.

2025/26 essay question

Business-Minded Essay: Please reflect on how your choices have influenced your career path and aspirations. (up to 300 words)

Leadership-Focused Essay: What experiences have shaped how you invest in others and how you lead? (up to 250 words)

Growth-Oriented Essay: Curiosity can be seen in many ways. Please share an example of how you have demonstrated curiosity and how that has influenced your growth. (up to 250 words)

2025/26 essay question analysis

HBS offers you three opportunities to share information about yourself through short essays. When you've finished drafting them, remember to return to the essays and ask yourself what will the reader remember in 15 minutes, and hour, or a day? Could anyone else with your background write this essay or are you sharing stories, influences, and experiences that are unique to you?

Business-Minded Essay

This essay is a simplified version of last year's essay, which asked a lot - your background, your choices, and your goals. This year, there is less focus on background, so readers will feel less pressure to detail too much of what happened in their past. However, applicants can still reference their background when providing context to explain the choices they made.

Similar to last year, we recommend applicants start with 50-75 words detailing 1-2 stories that provide context for the choices they subsequently discuss. Then, pivot the remainder of the essay towards explaining one career choice, and one related aspiration that you experience has shaped. Avoid summarizing your resume (you will quickly run out of space). Ideally, you want the reader to understand your motivation for pursuing your chosen goal or path after reading this essay.

Leadership-Focused Essay

Another simplified version of last year's second essay question, we believe this essay is intended to re-emphasize HBS' commitment to shaping the leaders of tomorrow. Consequently, applicants should reflect on 1-2 experiences that have shaped their leadership style, and create strong links between those experiences and the broader leadership characteristics that define applicants' leadership style. In doing so, we suggest using examples to illustrate applicants' leadership skills, rather than just narrating it. Doing so will help separate you from the multitude of other applicants who may have similar leadership experiences.

Growth-Oriented Essay

While this question is fairly straightforward, it will be important for applicants to ensure their curiosity is expressed in a way that makes them a more compelling candidate for HBS. Learning something new/unique is admirable, but does not always translate to making someone appear to be a stronger candidate. Instead, applicants should consider ways that their curiosity has created tangible value within teams, projects, companies, and communities around them. That will make it easier for HBS to extrapolate how applicants will add value to HBS and beyond!

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