The INSEAD MBA channels have been buzzing with discussions about changes since the September intake cycle, and as we gear up for the January Intake cycle, with its first deadline on March 11, there are some big updates to the essay section that candidates need to take note of. In this article, I will break down the key changes, unpack what they reveal about INSEAD�s evolving expectations, and share sharp, actionable tips on the INSEAD Essays.

First, please note the INSEAD January Intake Deadlines

Round 1: 11 March, 2025
Round 2: 22 April, 2025
Round 3: 17 June, 2025
Round 4: 5 August, 2025

A Summary of Major Changes in the Application Essays

The INSEAD admissions team has officially announced the following changes:

Section A. Job Description Section

Previously, this section included four short-answer questions covering the nature of the job, growth potential in the employer organization, career progression history, and the quintessential career goals question. For January Intake applicants, this section has now been condensed into just two questions:

Essay1. Career Progression & Achievements Question: The first question asks you to describe your career progression since graduation, including your current role, responsibilities, and key achievements.

Essay2. Career Goals & INSEAD’s Role Question: The second question asks to outline your short- and long-term career goals and explain how the INSEAD MBA will help you achieve them.

Section B. Personal Section

Several key changes have been made to the personal essays since the August cycle:

Essay1. Candid Description of Yourself � This essay is now more Leadership-Focused

The very popular Candid description of yourself essay has now been updated to a slightly modified version with a focus on Leadership. In the words of Nancy Gabriel, Executive Director of Admissions, �We�ve enhanced this essay to focus on your strengths and weaknesses as a leader, with an emphasis on your self-awareness and development.�

New Prompt: Give a candid description of yourself as a person and a leader, emphasizing the strengths and weaknesses you recognize in yourself. Explain how you are actively working on your development, sharing key experiences that have shaped you, providing specific examples where relevant. (500 words maximum)

Essay 2. Lessons Learned from a Highly Stressful Situation (Updated)

Replacing the previous failure essay (which had earlier replaced the achievements and failure essay), the new prompt focuses on lessons learned from high-pressure experiences which is an essential aspect of leadership growth.

New Prompt: Describe a highly stressful situation you faced and how you managed it. What did this experience teach you about yourself and your interactions with others? (400 words maximum)

For my personal strategies for answering the prompts read the essay debriefs below.

Essay 3. Describe Your Extra-Professional Activities(brought back)

INSEAD has reinstated this section, allowing candidates to elaborate on their extracurricular activities and their role in personal development.

Aiming for a Shot at The Top B-Schools But Confused About Your Strategy? Reach Out to Us

Essay 4. Anything Else You Would Like to Share?

This optional essay remains unchanged.

The Kira video interview continues to be an essential part of the application process, giving candidates the opportunity to showcase their passions and interests beyond the written essays.

You can read strategies on How to score full points on INSEAD(or any) KIRA Video Essay questions? : INSEAD here

Detailed Essay Debriefs and Why These Changes Were Made?

In the words of Nancy Gabriel, Executive Director of Admissions, ” We�ve refined the essay questions to help us better understand your motivations, leadership potential, and the unique value you�ll bring to the INSEAD MBA program. ”

Job Description Essays

Question 1: Career Progression & Achievements

Prompt: Provide a summary of your career since graduating from university, explaining the rationale behind your key decisions and career progression. Include a description of your current (or most recent) role, covering the scope of your work, major responsibilities, employees under your supervision, budget size, clients/products, and any notable results achieved. (500 words maximum)

Key Observations:

INSEAD has merged the previous three short-answer questions into a single, comprehensive essay, giving candidates flexibility in which aspects to emphasize. This update makes the essay slightly more challenging, as the previous 600-word limit across three responses has now been reduced to just 500 words.

The question, �What would be your next step in terms of position if you were to remain in the same company instead of going to business school?� has been removed. However, I strongly recommend that applicants briefly highlight the opportunities their employers have lined up for them, reinforcing their strong standing within the company. If you can demonstrate how much your current employer values you, INSEAD will reciprocate that appreciation.

The first part of the question � Provide a summary of your career since graduating from university, explaining the rationale behind your key decisions and career progression. � is the classic �Career Progression� Essay prompt which is very important to INSEAD�s admissions process.

Expert Tips:
Strong INSEAD candidates typically have two or three career transitions, such as moving from a core engineering or tech role to consulting or shifting within a function (e.g., corporate finance to investment banking, audit advisory to management consulting). This is where you can highlight your career progressions within the same industry or transitions across industries. INSEAD highly values exposure to international cultures and work environments, so applicants without such experience may be less competitive.

While pandemic-related travel restrictions limited global mobility, the admissions team will still assess the international composition of your team to gauge your experience working with diverse backgrounds. If you’ve collaborated remotely with an international team across multiple geographies, this can strengthen your application.

This essay is your opportunity to showcase the career decisions you’ve made and how they have prepared you for the next step. The second part of the prompt��Include a description of your current (or most recent) role, covering the scope of your work, major responsibilities, employees under your supervision, budget size, clients/products, and any notable results achieved��provides the reader with a snapshot of your current career standing.

Connect the dots and highlight only the responsibilities or skills that set you apart. Emphasize team management experience, especially if you’ve led employees. If you’re at a startup, a brief note on company hierarchy can add context. However, limit storytelling to the first half of the essay. Focus on demonstrating how you achieved project goals and the impact you had. Be concise�avoid overexplaining to ensure your unique edge stands out.

INSEAD seeks candidates who have navigated complex environments. Showcasing your ability to handle technical logjams, bureaucratic hurdles, international stakeholders, and other challenges in your day-to-day role will make your essay stand out. Also Try not to get too technical; do not use industry jargon and keep your language simple as your readers may not be familiar with your industry or function.

Question 2: Career Goals & INSEAD’s Role

Prompt: Describe your short- and long-term career aspirations, including your target geography, industry, and function. How do you plan to bridge the gap between your current position and these goals, and how will INSEAD help you achieve them? (300 words maximum)

Key Observations:
The inclusion of target geography, industry, and function signals INSEAD�s emphasis on well-researched career plans.
Historically, INSEAD has been flexible about applicants’ post-MBA goals. However, this updated prompt suggests that applicants must now demonstrate clear intent and planning.

Expert Tips:
INSEAD has included several key words�’target geography, industry, function’�in the new prompt, which show how the school is now thinking about your goals strategy. As an INSEAD alumna, my experience has been that INSEAD is quite flexible when it comes to the goals narrative. There are two types of people at INSEAD: those who already have it all figured out because they have started planting the seeds for their immediate post-MBA goals before the MBA begins, and the wanderers, who remain flexible and continue figuring things out until a year after graduation to find the opportunities they truly like. INSEAD’s flexibility with goal plans became even more apparent when, sometime after 2020, during the post-pandemic boom, INSEAD abruptly reduced the word count for the goals essay to just 100 words. And now, INSEAD has suddenly decided to investigate applicants’ research on their recruitment plans. I think this reflects the job market and serves as a bit of a nudge from the school for candidates to revisit what career needs are driving them to pursue an INSEAD MBA and what proactive and retrospective steps they are taking to achieve their career goals. Those who articulate their goals in detail and convincingly will have an advantage in the INSEAD admissions process.

You can read a detailed write up on goals planning here: �How Winning Candidates Convince Adcoms about Post-MBA Success : INSEAD

Personal Essays

Q1. Updated Essay: A Candid Description of Yourself

“Give a candid description of yourself as a person and a leader, emphasising the strengths and weaknesses you recognise in yourself. Explain how you are actively working on your development, sharing key experiences that have shaped you, providing specific examples where relevant.” (500 words maximum)

Key Observations:
The prompt has been restructured to emphasize leadership, self-awareness, and continuous development.
The earlier essay focused more on personal traits and influences; now, it explicitly asks for strengths and weaknesses as a leader.
INSEAD values a growth mindset�admissions officers will assess how you actively work on your self-improvement.

Expert Tips:
Leadership experience is very important to INSEAD and a well-rounded leader is always one who carries a growth mindset, or in other words someone who is also self-aware. When Nancy Gabriel, Executive Director of Admissions says the new prompt has been changed to focus on an emphasis on your self-awareness and development, we must take that insight seriously.

The key theme of this essay is �self-awareness.�
People or leaders who lack self-awareness have a hard time developing and improving, which makes them stagnant or resistant to change. In contrast, people or leaders who are self-aware are often seen as more authentic, empathetic, and open to learning and growth, which makes them more likable and respected.

With this question, the committee is also trying to understand who you are as a person but also what your leadership style is. Your response to the essay prompt should focus on your values and how you acquired unique personality traits that influenced your leadership signature. Events in childhood, travel, moments of triumph, experiences that reinforced a particular value, or the passing on of values by a mentor or role model are good sources for imbibing values into your personality. A common mistake I have observed is that applicants make their role models the focus of their essays. Instead, move quickly to yourself. Explain how you are actively working on your development while learning from your life experiences.
The part of the question asking about weaknesses should be carefully considered, and it should be something you are aware of. I would suggest you avoid highlighting weaknesses in communication or understanding of international cultures (these are very important to INSEAD) and instead focus on weaknesses in specific skills that may have resulted from your access to opportunities, socio-economic background, etc., but ideally, nothing that you cannot improve over time. When answering the question, stress the personal characteristics you feel are your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors that have influenced your personal development. It should not be an isolated trait, and you should demonstrate how you are currently working to improve or have already overcome it. Remember to carefully read and understand this question.

Q2. Updated Essay: Lessons from a Highly Stressful Situation

“Describe a highly stressful situation you faced and how you managed it. What did this experience teach you about yourself and your interactions with others?” (400 words maximum)

Key Observations:
This replaces the failure essay and shifts the focus from �what went wrong� to what you learned about yourself and your interactions with others.
Leadership in crises is a core INSEAD trait�this essay assesses how you respond to pressure.

Expert Tips:

This essay is a stark shift from the previous “When did you fail, and how did you handle failure?” prompt. In my experience, the failure essay has been one of the toughest for applicants I�ve worked with. The biggest challenge is a lack of understanding among applicants about what business schools actually test. Many fear that admitting a major failure will reflect poorly, so they present a polished image and sidestep setbacks. Reflecting on failure is unfamiliar territory for most applicants�something they�d likely never do if not for business school applications. I suspect this hesitancy may have influenced INSEAD�s shift from an absolute “failure” to “a stressful situation.”

Applicants should approach this question much like a failure essay. Whether your efforts led to success or not isn�t the primary focus. The adcom wants to see how you conduct yourself in a crisis, when the sky is falling.
If you�ve navigated the bureaucracy of large corporations, the agility of startups, or the evolving processes of small to mid-sized businesses, you�ve likely faced challenges in communicating crises to key stakeholders. Regardless of company culture, handling crisis situations demands courage, maturity, and ownership�spotting errors and addressing issues before they escalate.

Through your example, INSEAD wants to see how you responded when communication frameworks, command structures, and escalation protocols were clearly defined. More importantly, how did you act when power dynamics, communication channels, deadlines and the environment weren�t in your favor? What did you learn? Did you see the crisis as an opportunity to persist or a lesson to refine your skills? How did you apply those learnings to your next challenge?

Q3. Reinstated Essay:Additional question on extra-professional activities

“Describe the activities you listed above and explain how they have enriched your life (e.g., skills developed, personal growth, community impact).” (300 words maximum)

With this essay, we see the re-entry of the extraprofessional prompt, likely because it was something INSEAD could not ignore in applicants, so they brought it back.

The purpose of this essay is twofold:

To assess whether you possess a well-rounded personality.
To determine whether you can handle the demanding INSEAD program, which combines a rigorous academic curriculum with extensive networking obligations. INSEAD is seeking individuals who can multitask and juggle a hectic schedule with ease.
Note that extraprofessional activities and volunteering experiences are not the same and INSEAD is asking about both here. While highlighting your volunteer work is admirable, you should also include experiences from clubs, sports, music, arts, and languages, ideally showcasing a time in your life when you invested in developing a skill. This activity does not necessarily have to be a current one or something you recently participated in; it could be an engagement from several years ago that you spent a considerable amount of time on.

Pro tip: This is an excellent opportunity to discuss whether you�ve dedicated time and effort to learning a second or third language. If given a choice, it would be best to choose a recent engagement, as it would demonstrate your ability to manage work with extracurricular activities, and the experience�s intensity would be similar to what you�ll encounter at INSEAD.

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