Columbia MBA Essays for J-Term Class of 2026 Admission

Here are some common issues that arise when considering J-term:

Is J-term easier to get into than August entry?  I have always thought so.  The lack of Merit Fellowships, an internship, and the nature of who the program is designed for, clearly indicate that it is going to attract fewer applicants, so my assumption is that it is surely easier.  Happy to proven wrong if CBS admissions provides data showing otherwise (They don’t).  All I know for sure is that relatively late application to J-term  never prevented my clients from being admitted. Late application for August is a real problem simply from a seat availability perspective. In one way, J-term is clearly easier: Unlike an August entry applicant, someone applying to Columbia J-term can really be assumed to prefer Columbia over all alternatives. This can make interviews a bit easier in the sense that August entry Columbia alumni interviewers are notorious for being particularly aggressive at determining whether the interviewee’s first choice is really Columbia. Since J-term has no real US rival, this topic can be easily dispensed with in an interview.

Program Alternatives to J-term:   There are no US alternatives to J-term worth mentioning if someone wants a January 2025 start.  Cornell Tech, Kellogg and NYU Stern (Tech and Fashion & Luxury) offer one year MBAs, but none start their programs in January, Cornell Tech and NYU are specialized degrees, and  Kellogg  is an accelerated program in terms of the number of courses taken. Only J-term makes it possible to do two years of courses on such an expedited basis. In addition, the Kellogg program is extremely restrictive, since one has to have taken many core business courses or come from a consulting firm that has established a relationship to apply to it.   There are a number of European programs with a January starts but really only INSEAD could be said to be at a similar rank, at least as perceived by my clients.  I have had clients who apply to J-term and  INSEAD  and, less often, IMD, as both have January entry. Still J-term is an incredibly different program in terms of length and content from either of these top non-US programs. LBS, which does not have a January start, would also be another alternative to CBS in the sense that it can be completed on an accelerated basis, but it has no January start. There are many other programs in the Europe that can be completed in around 16 months or less, such as HEC.

Can an August entry applicant reapply to J-term? Yes! You could be rejected from ED or RD for 2024 entry and reapply for J-term 2025 entry. If you entered in J-term 2025, you would graduate in the Class of 2026 with those who entered in Fall 2024. I have worked with  a number of reapplicants who were admitted to J-term after being dinged from the August entry for the same graduating class. In that situation, the key issues for the reapplicant essay are explaining why J-term is now a better choice and you are a better candidate.  

Short Answer 2

Why do you prefer the January-entry term? (50 characters)

The Phillips Pathway for Inclusive Leadership (PPIL) is a co-curricular program designed to provide students with the skills and strategies needed to develop as inclusive leaders.  Through various resources and programming, students explore and reflect on the following five inclusive leadership skills:  Mitigating Bias and Prejudice; Managing Intercultural Dialogue; Addressing Systemic Inequity; Understanding Identity and Perspective Taking; and Creating an Inclusive Environment.

Describe a time or situation when you had the need to utilize one of these five skills, and tell us the actions you took and the outcome. (250 words)

What is nice about this question is that can be used for a wide variety of answers in a personal, academic, professional, or extracurricular content.  The actual question itself is behavioral and really fits the STAR (Situation, Task, Action(s), Result) approach to such questions.  While CBS does not mention the task (your role), I think it is important that you keep that in mind.  A good answer will efficiently explain the situation (and given the length of the essay, cannot be context heavy), explain your role in the situation, explain what you did, and clearly state the result.  The word breakdown might be:  Situation/Task (~50 words), Action(s) ~150 words consisting of 1-3 actions, Outcome (~50 words).

The essay topic has been modified and the situation where you utilized one of these five skills is very open ended.  You may have succeeded, partially succeeded, or failed  in the situation.  That said, I think it is easier to write about being successful rather than discussing a failure because such an answer requires discussing what you learned and given the overall essay length, this might prove difficult. It might also prove risky to write about failure here if you come across as not fully upholding the values implied by this essay question.  On the other hand a failure utilizing one of these skills could work well if you highlight the insight gained and how that insight  subsequently helped you. I would avoid a situation where your use of one of the five skills was ambiguous as this is unlikely to make for a good essay.

Let’s consider the various thematic options here and how they might be used.  Of course, there are certainly more ways of doing this effectively than will be able to elaborate on here.

For details about the Phillips Pathway for Inclusive Leadership (PPIL), see https://groups.gsb.columbia.edu/ppil/home/. PPIL is a Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) initiative that just had its soft launch in spring 2021 and has subsequently been developed.

The specific language of DEI as well as five categories for possible answers may not be familiar to some applicants, especially those coming for countries, without such practices. Hence I will define/explain the categories and suggest possible ways of writing on them. Unfortunately CBS still has yet to define these categories and the PPIL does not include definitions/explanations either and since these terms are subject to rather different interpretation, I will simply provide my own, which are by no means comprehensive.  Should CBS explain these terms then I will alter this post accordingly. Since the launch in 2021 they still have yet to do that, which I consider to be extremely unhelpful and not inclusive, especially for those coming from outside of the United States.

Mitigating Bias and Prejudice

For some reason, CBS uses both “Bias” and “Prejudice”, which are synonyms and hence can be used to define each other. I will use “bias” here.  Explanation: To mitigate bias ( defined as “inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair”), is to alleviate, lessen,  or weaken a prejudice. Note that mitigating might not actually eliminate a bias outright but would attempt to reduce its impact.  In addition to attempting to control for overt bias (such as an open prejudice against a specific group), another form of bias mitigation involves becoming aware of and controlling for unconscious bias, which is a common idea in the DEI field and is defined as “social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness. Everyone holds unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups, and these biases stem from one’s tendency to organize social worlds by categorizing.”

A typical example of conscious bias would be the outright exclusion of a particular group from leadership roles. For example, a student club that is extremely hierarchical and does not allow junior members to take positions of responsibility. Another example would be a preference in hiring more males over females based on some kind of overtly stated rationale.

A typical example of unconscious bias would be a sexist perception such that a male who is highly vocal and opinionated is described as  “a strong leader/go getter” while a women who exhibits the same behavior is described as “pushy/annoying. ” The person doing the describing  might not be aware they are using completely different language to describe the same behavior.

A good answer here will involve the direct confrontation and attempt to overcome a conscious or unconscious bias(es).

Managing Intercultural Dialogue

Explanation: The idea of “Managing Intercultural Dialogue” could also be called cross cultural communication: “Cross cultural communication thus refers to the communication between people who have differences in any one of the following: styles of working, age, nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Cross cultural communication can also refer to the attempts that are made to exchange, negotiate and mediate cultural differences by means of language, gestures and body language.”

The challenges of communication include fundamental differences in assumptions based on identify differences, use of language (Two people using the same language can easily miscommunicate if they don’t share or understand each other’s definitions),  and misinterpretation based on making assumptions about a behavior that has a different meaning than the observer understands.

An effective answer here will involve handling cross-cultural communication.  Examples might include actions involving negotiating, facilitating, and directly communicating with someone whose identity is very different from your own.

Addressing Systemic Inequality

Systemic inequality is also know as structural inequality. I will use a definition of the latter provided by the United Nations:

“Structural inequality is defined as a condition where one category of people are attributed an unequal status in relation to other categories of people. This relationship is perpetuated and reinforced by a confluence of unequal relations in roles, functions, decisions, rights, and opportunities. As opposed to cultural inequality, which focuses on the individual decisions associated with these imbalances, structural inequality refers specifically to the inequalities that are systemically rooted in the normal operations of dominant social institutions, and can be divided into categories like residential segregation or healthcare, employment and educational discrimination.”

An effective answer here would attempting to overcome organizational discrimination that is systemic against a particular group or groups that is practiced as a matter of outright policy. It could be everything from discriminating against the hiring of LGBT employees to seniority based discrimination that prevents junior players in a sports club from being starting players.

Understanding Identity and Perspective Taking

With respect to “Understanding identity” this would mean understanding the identity of others in relationship to you and “Perspective taking” is the ability to formulate insights based on understanding the other’s identity.  Basically it means thinking outside of your own perspective and looking at a situation from the viewpoint of another. It is a specific form of empathy based on understanding why the other (person, organization, group) looks at a situation differently than you do.

I think there are two aspects to the question:  (1) Why CBS is right for you and (2) Co-creation.