Kellogg MBA Essays for the Class of 2028


Jun, 17, 2025


Categories: Admissions Consulting | Essay Analysis | Essays | Kellogg

In this post, I analyze Kellogg’s MBA essay and video essays questions for admission to the MBA program for the Class of 2028. I have taken the written essay questions from Kellogg’s website.  The deadlines for Kellogg are Round 1: Sept 10, 2025, Round 2: Jan 7, 2026, and R1: Apr 1, 2026.

PLEASE NOTE: I will update this June 17, 2025 blog post as needed once the Kellogg application opens.

 

 

My clients have been admitted to the Kellogg School of Business  every year since 2002. Since I started my own counseling service in 2007, I have had 88  (2Y, 1Y, MMM, and Deferred)  clients admitted to Kellogg. My clients’ results and testimonials can be found here. In addition to providing comprehensive application consulting on Kellogg, I regularly help additional candidates with Kellogg interview preparation.

 

Kellogg’s Teamwork Culture and its Campus Community
If you go to Kellogg, chances are extremely high that you will live in Evanston. Kellogg is filled with people who are great communicators, friendly, outgoing, and able to thrive in a socially intense environment. If you are not that kind of person, don’t apply there. If you are, it will be heaven.

 

Along With Chicago Booth, Kellogg is the US business school I have visited the most (I did an Executive Masters at INSEAD, so it is the business school I have attended). The reason is very simple, my family moved from Los Angeles to Chicago when I was 18, so I have had many opportunities to visit when go back to the US to see my family. I visited briefly in 2024 and 2025. In fall 2022, when one of my former clients took around and also showed me the MMM student room.  In 2018,  AIGAC, the professional admissions consultants organization I am about to become Past President of, held our conference at the campus. Former Dean Sally Blount left a great impact on the school in many ways but surely the most lasting will be getting the new campus built. Kellogg went from having an overcrowded building that reminded me of a large US high school to one of the best campuses of any MBA program. Kellogg’s campus right on Lake Michigan is a real gem. Sure, it  is freezing walking on campus during the winter but the rest of the year makes up for it.

 

Sometimes when I talk to applicants they don’t quite understand that Evanston is really part of Chicago and not some distant cut-off college town.  The thing that is nice about Evanston is that it is both a college town and part of a major American city.  You can stay in a nice safe college town while simultaneously being able to enjoy one of America’s most diverse cities.  Unlike Booth students who mostly commute to Hyde Park from downtown Chicago (In both locations safety concerns are valid),  Kellogg students typically reside in Evanston, which contributes to Kellogg’s intense community focus.  The community aspect is something one should fully take into account when applying to Kellogg.

 

THE ESSAYS: SHOW THEM YOU ARE LEADER. 

The key word in both Essay 1 and Essay 2 is leader.  Kellogg is looking to admit those who have demonstrated leadership professionally and personally. In particular, Kellogg’s application essays are designed, along with the rest of the application and interview, to help admissions determine whether you demonstrate that you meet the following criteria:

“Qualities we value in Kellogg candidates

Work experience, test scores and GPA are important parts of every application, but they aren’t everything. We take many more things into account, including your values, goals, interpersonal skills, leadership qualities and the impact you’ve had on your organization.

High IQ, high EQ
Business is always changing, and over time hard skills can become a commodity. This is why we value those who approach business challenges with a mix of technical skills and emotional intelligence.
Willingness to grow and adapt
Nothing in business stays the same. Kellogg leaders evolve as the business world shifts by staying curious and innovative.
The power of teams
No one can do it alone. We believe the best leaders rely on compassionate collaboration as a way to strengthen work, perspectives and outcomes.
A different perspective
Understanding the power of varying perspectives is a key part of being a Kellogg leader. We believe diversity in thought and lived-experience leads to the best ideas, solutions and opportunities.”
REMEMBER: THERE IS NOT ONE TYPE OF LEADER THAT KELLOGG IS LOOKING FOR. The common characteristics of emotional and analytical intelligence, a growth/flexible mentality, an ability to work with others, and the ability to provide a distinct viewpoint can all be expressed in many ways. Your job is make these characteristics come out in your application.
I suggest you keep these criteria in mind when writing Essays 1 and 2 and preparing for the three Video Essays. While it could be challenging to provide comprehensive coverage on all four of these points when writing two 450-word essays, I would suggest making sure that each essay is at least fully addressing one of these topics and that you try make sure that your Video Essays are covering the rest of the topics that you don’t have room to cover.

 

Peer Application Review at Kellogg
One of the chief functions of an MBA admissions committee is to select people who will be good classmates and having 2nd year students on that committee is one way for a school to make sure that happens. The director and the rest of the committee have done their job properly if they have selected students who can work well together, learn from each other, and if these students become alum who value the relationships they initially formed at business school. Students members of the committee bring a peer’s perspective to the process. They are also are likely to be the first to read your file and will be looking to determine whether they want you in their community.  When writing essays for Kellogg, keep these student readers in mind.

 

 

Essay 1
“Intentionality is a key aspect of what makes our graduates successful Kellogg leaders. Help us understand your journey by articulating your motivations for pursuing an MBA, the specific goals you aim to achieve, and why you believe now is the right moment. Moreover, share why you feel Kellogg is best suited to serve as a catalyst for your career aspirations and what you will contribute to our community of lifelong learners during your time here.”
WHEN THINKING ABOUT THE ABOVE ESSAY QUESTION, YOU MUST ALSO TAKE THE FOLLOWING 2 APP FORM QUESTIONS IN MIND:

Please tell us about your career goals. You’ll also have the opportunity to expand on this in other parts of the evaluation process.

Share with us the motivations behind your desired industry/function after graduating from Kellogg.
500 characters remaining
What does a successful career look like five years after you graduate from Kellogg?
500 characters remaining”
A MESS IN  4 PARTS
While intentionality is great, this essay combines two main different elements (WHY MBA/GOALS and CONTRIBUTIONS)  and also has a connection to two application form questions: MOTIVATION FOR DESIRED INDUSTRY/FUNCTION and WHAT WOULD CAREER SUCESS LOOK LIKE FOR YOU IN 2033 . So the key is to leverage each piece.
I will not be discussing goals analysis here as that is discussed in detail in other blog posts.  If you are having difficulty formulating goals, please see, amongst others, my CBS Essay Question 1 analysis  or GSB Essay B analysis.

USE Share with us the motivations behind your desired industry/function after graduating from Kellogg. TO explain what motivates your post-MBA short-term plan. Don’t mention WHY MBA or KELLOGG HERE AT ALL. JUST WHAT YOUR MOTIVATION FOR YOUR PLAN  IS.  YOU DON’T NEED TO DISCUSS YOUR SPECIFIC GOALS HERE.INSTEAD FOCUS ON THE ROLE YOU WANT AND THE INDUSTRY.  For example, why you do want to be a product manager in consumer goods?

USE: What does a successful career look like five years after you graduate from Kellogg? AS WAY TO EXPLAIN WHAT YOU WILL HAVE ACHIEVED IN THE 1st 5 YEARS of your post-Kellogg career and possibly to connect to a longer term goal, but that is not necessary. At minimum make a clear statement about what you hope you will have achieved professionally by the summer of 2033.  Think about  the impact you have on others/organizations and what you hope to have achieved in terms of your role. Possibly write about how this puts you on the pathway to your longer-term goals

 

  1. WHY do you want an MBA ?
  2. WHAT are your specific career goals?
  3. WHY apply for an MBA now?
  4.  WHY

I suggest explaining WHY MBA AND WHY KELLOGG IS BEST together as much as possible to save on word count.

“what you will contribute to our community of lifelong learners during your time here”

One of the chief functions of an MBA admissions committee is to select people who will add value to the community.  The director and the rest of the committee have done their job properly if they have selected students who can work well together, learn from each other, and if these students become alumni who value the relationships they initially formed at business school. Your contribution(s) need to clearly connected to the community. Maybe it will be through the way you work with others, the knowledge you share, or the activities you organize but make sure the reader can fully understand how this be a contribution at  Kellogg.  You should know enough about the Kellogg community to show specific ways you might contribute.

Within the context of the Kellogg application, Essay 1 is really one of the important places to show why you will add value to Kellogg based on your personal and professional experiences.  One way, I like to think about contribution questions is to use a table like the following:

CONTRIBUTIONS Is it a personal, professional or academic experience? What skill, value, or unique experience is being showcased? So what will you contribute  to the Wharton community? Is this special? Why?
Story 1:
Story 2:
adammarkus@gmail.com. Free to use, contact me if you republish it.

I use the above table for all types of contribution questions, modifying the categories to fit the question.  What this kind of table does is force you to think about exactly how something from your background is meaningful enough to add value at Kellogg

ADVICE:

  1. Tell your best story or stories that highlight how you will add value at Kellogg.  Help the reader understand what is special about you, about the story you tell, and the contribution you make.
  2. Learn a lot about Kellogg so that you can write about really meaningful contributions.  Talk to alumni and current students, attend online chats, and dig through the website and otherwise.  Google and network your way into Kellogg expertise in order to be able to have really deep contributions.
  3. With respect to the kind of contributions you make, don’t fall into the “Obvious Knowledge Trap.”  What do I mean? Here is an example: “As my work on the Tesla/McDonalds Merger and Acquisition shows, I have deep knowledge of  finance and accounting which I will use to help my classmates without a finance background.” This topic is bad for a number of reasons. First, that you have such knowledge will be obvious from your resume, application form and/or transcripts, so it is better to focus on something that the reader will not already know about you. Second just sharing knowledge is not enough, better to focus on how you would do that. For example, instead of writing about your knowledge of a topic, write about how you helped others learn something and how you will use that to make a contribution at Kellogg. Then specify the Kellogg specific context (Classes, clubs, activities, Learning Teams) where you will make that contribution.
  4. Think strategically. Given Kellogg’s criteria of High IQ, high EQ, Willingness to grow and adapt, The power of teams, and A different perspective, how do your contributions highlight one or more of those criteria?  Moreover consider Essay 2 and the extent to which it is covering these criteria. Hence you want both essays to work together to highlight how you fit all 4 criteria. See more about this issue in my Essay 2 analysis.
Essay 2
A difficult professional decision is one that has more than one possible choice.  You might have good (which one is better)  or bad options (which one is the least worse) to choose from. The range of possible topics here is extremely wide. The one thing that this critical is that the decision involve your values and reflect on your leadership ability and be a professional experience.

 

KEEP IN MIND:  You should be focused on telling a difficult decision story that highlights how you fit Kellogg’s admissions criteria: High IQ, high EQ, Willingness to grow and adapt, The power of teams, and A different perspective.  

The essay might not focus equally or on all of these criteria, but…

..making a difficult decision will involve EQ and/or IQ.  When writing about EQ and IQ consider both actions taken and your own thinking. Hence your ability to reflect on what you did and why you did it can highlight EQ and/or IQ as much as writing about what actions you took. Given that you are writing about values, these values are likely to highlight EQ and/or IQ.

…a difficult decision is likely something that requires growth or adaptation because it would not be a challenge if  it required no alteration in ones actions/ideas/statements.  A real difficult decision is not routine and hence is likely to require the ability to change ones actions/thinking and/or the actions/thinking of others.  It is likely that your values are clashing because the decision is not easy. Hence you are likely required to restate, alter, reflect on, otherwise modify your thinking to handle a situation where there is a real choice to be made and not an easy one.

…is likely to involve teamwork. If the story really does not focus on or include teamwork, you should make sure that Essay 1 contributions highlight that. Teamwork is critical at Kellogg and you want to make sure that the reader can see your strength in that area.  Given the topic of a difficult decision, many team related decisions  such as around firing someone, conflict in a team, other problems in a team, including a bad team leader you need to decide whether to confront are all possible topics. Just make sure it was an actual difficult decision.

My suggestion is that once you have a final or near final version of this essay done, ask yourself what aspects of Kellogg’s criteria need to be better shown in Essay 1 so that the reader of both essays comes away with the impression that you are strong in all four criteria.

 

 

STRUCTURE FOR AN EFFECTIVE ANSWER:

1. State the difficult decision.  What was the challenge/problem you encountered?  What was the situation? What was your responsibility/role?

2.   What  action’s did you take? What value(s) informed your actions?

3. Connect your decision to the result.

4. Reflect on how making this decision impacted your leadership style.

 

The challenge/problem should be complex. A weak answer would focus on a routine problem/challenge and not one that required much effort to solve. The point is to discuss something every challenging because it is complex.

 

Regardless of the the story you tell, just keep in mind that you need to be introspective as well, so write what you thought as well as what you did. Don’t just present “the facts” but actively interpret your actions. There is really nothing overly complicated about this as long as you understand that you need to tell a detailed story. Pure abstractions disconnected from a concrete set of action steps are highly likely to result in a weak answer. Similarly, grand actions not told in any depth are also likely to be weak. Identify specific actions that contributed to the decision  so as to establish a clear link between cause and effect. Help your reader understand your thinking behind the way you made your decision. 

 

When selecting your topic, you should ask yourself “What does this essay reveal about me?” If you can’t answer that clearly, you need to clarify your message. When asking this question, think about both what you intend the reader to think and what you might also be revealing. Control for the possibility of sending out unintended signals. One of the best ways of handling this issue is to have a very careful and intelligent reader review these essays. If you are working with an admissions consultant, they should be able to do this. Getting multiple perspectives on what you wrote will help you better understand your likely impact on an admissions’ reader.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Reapplicants: Since your previous application, what steps have you taken to strengthen your candidacy? (250 words)”
Reapplicants should read my posts on reapplication. Use this space to specifically explain what has improved about you since you last applied. You can certainly mention improved test scores, but I would not use very much of your word count for that. Typical topics include: development of a new skill, promotions that demonstrate your potential for future success, involvement in an extracurricular activity, learning significantly more about Kellogg, and why your goals now are better/different than the ones you presented last time.

 

“All applicants have the opportunity to provide explanations or clarification in Additional Information. Use this section if you think the person reviewing your application might have a few questions about one or more of your responses. This could include:

  • Unexplained gaps in work experience
  • Academic, GMAT or GRE performance
  • Extenuating circumstances that we should be aware of when reviewing your application”
As with other school’s optional questions, do not put an obvious essay for another school here. If you read the above, it should be clear enough that this is the place to explain anything negative or potentially negative in your background. If you have no explanation for something negative, don’t bother writing about it. For example if your GPA is 2.9 and you have no good explanation for why it is 2.9, don’t bother writing something that looks like a lame excuse. This is more likely to hurt than help you. In the same vein, don’t waste the committee’s time telling them that your GMAT is a much better indicator than your GPA (the opposite is also true). They have heard it before and they will look at both scores and can draw their own conclusions without you stating the obvious. That said, if you have a good explanation for a bad GPA, you should most certainly write about it.
In addition to GMAT/GRE, TOEFL, and GPA problems, other possible topics include issues related to recommendations, serious gaps in your resume, concerns related to a near total lack of extracurricular activities, and  major issues in your personal/professional life that you really think the admissions office needs to know about.You can certainly write on something positive here if you think its omission will be negative for you, but before you do, ask yourself these questions:
1. If they did not ask it, do they really need to know it?
2. Will the topic I want to discuss significantly improve my overall essay set?
3. Is the topic one that would not be covered from looking at other parts of my application?
4. Is the essay likely to be read as being a specific answer for Kellogg and not an obvious essay for another school?
If you can answer “Yes!” to all four questions, it might be a good topic to write about.
THE VIDEO ESSAYS: Three One Minute Wonders!
You have 1 minute to answer each of the video questions.

These video essays have a few different purposes:

  1. It is a great way to get an overall first impression of an applicant. It is a way for everyone on the admissions committee to know who the actual person is and not rely only an interviewer’s report.
  2. It is an easy way to gauge someone’s communication skills. This is especially important with respect to non-native English speakers because TOEFL and IELTS test scores don’t always reveal actual English ability.
  3. Explain why Kellogg beyond what is covered in the Essays and application form, specially Question 2 is asking what degree you want at Kellogg and why. This question is not really asked elsewhere in the application.
  4.  Assess how the applicant handles a question that they will not have in advance (Question 3). Can they effectively do that in one minute?  This is a way to gauge how quickly someone thinks and can communicate.  It is a kind of way to gauge how someone might perform in a spontaneous class situation.

 

What all successful videos do:

  1. Help the viewer understand why they would like the applicant as a person.
  2. Highlight something positive about the applicant.
  3.  Show the applicant’s passion for Kellogg .
  4. Show the applicant’s ability to communicate effectively.

How to prepare for the videos

  1. Write scripts.  They will mostly likely be too long. Once you add in breathing, facial expressions, in acting you might do, and speaking a speed to heard effectively, your script should be 90-120 words long most likely.
  2. Have your scripts reviewed by whoever you are sharing it with.
How I help my clients with their video scripts:
1.  I ask them to write scripts for Questions 1 and 2. We refine those scripts through spoken and/or written feedback. In some cases, they make sample videos, which I give feedback on.
2.  For question 3, I ask them to prepare outlines for possible challenge topics that have been covered in the past. (Sorry but I don’t discuss those topics here, only with my clients.) Since  we can’t know for sure what the topic of Question 3 will be, I try to make sure that they have enough possible topics to cover what will be asked.
Question specific comments:
PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT SURE WHETHER KELLOGG WILL BE USING THESE QUESTIONS FOR THE CLASS OF 2026.  ONCE I KNOW I WILL ALTER THIS ACCORDINGLY.
  • Video essay 1: Please introduce yourself to the admissions committee.– Consider this your opportunity to share what you would want your future Kellogg classmates and our admissions committee to know about you. What makes you, you?

This is useful way of  getting rid of social idiots who cannot construct even a one-minute appealing statement about themselves. It is your elevator pitch about you!  While your answer should be consistent with what you have in the rest of your application, this is a chance to showcase your personality. What are 2-3 key things someone should know about you that they can’t find out from just looking at your resume and reading your application?

 

  • Video essay 2: What path are you interested in pursuing, how will you get there, and why is this program right for you?– This is an intentionally broad question so you can answer honestly and meaningfully. We want to know why you’re pursuing an MBA and why you’re choosing a particular Kellogg Full-Time Program.

Kellogg has multiple MBA programs, so specify which one you intend to attend and why.  Link your answer to the goals mentioned in the application form.  Try to mention 2-3 reasons why the program is right for you. Don’t get overwhelmed with mentioning too many Kellogg specific details but keep the focus on explaining your needs and how Kellogg will meet them.

 

  • Video essay 3: This question will be based on a challenge you’ve faced and what you’ve learned from it.
Some possible topics for a challenge include:
  • A time you convinced someone or some group.
  • A time you led others.
  • A time you demonstrated courage.
  • A time you made a difficult decision.
  • A time you were innovative.
  • A time you formulated and executed a strategy or tactics.
  • A time you turned around a situation, overcame an obstacle.
  • A time reformed something.
  • A time you changed something.
  • A time you effectively negotiated with someone.
  • A time you managed up, down, or across an organization.
  • A time you were wrong.
  • A time you failed or had a setback and overcame it.
  • A time you changed your opinion.
  • A time your values were challenged by others.
I provide my own clients with past questions but also encourage them to take a flexible approach to this topic as new questions may arise. Hence the above list is good for brainstorming purposes.

 

 

————————————————————————————————————-

Best of luck with your application to Kellogg Class of 2027!

 



-Adam Markus
I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide. If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form. Please don't email me any essays, other admissions consultant's intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.

See the results my methods deliver for clients applying to the world's top programs.


RESULTS & TESTIMONIALS

Get the process started. Arrange an initial consultation via my intake forms.


INTAKE FORMS

Latest from the Blog