25 MIT Sloan Cover Letter Essay Examples

Looking for help writing your MIT Sloan MBA, LGO, or Sloan Fellows cover letter? This article contains 2 successful cover letters (just scroll past the cover letter analysis below). Looking for MORE inspiration, check out the mbaSTORY.builders eBook, 25 Successful MIT Sloan Cover Letters, available for immediate download for $20 USD.

MIT Sloan Essay Analysis

If you're considering applying to MIT Sloan, then you're probably aware of the importance of the essay portion of the application. The essay, also known as the cover letter, is a chance for you to showcase your experiences, personality, and understanding of the school's values. MIT Sloan values independence, authenticity, and creativity, and they are interested in both your path to success and the results you have achieved.

The admissions committee wants to know how you influence the people around you and how you impact the world. At MIT, they believe that actions speak louder than words, and they are interested in understanding your past behavior to see how you frame the world around you.

The cover letter is also an opportunity to showcase how you have overcome challenges in your professional life, how you have defied norms, convinced others, made decisions with imperfect information, and stepped outside your comfort zone. However, with a tight word limit, you need to be creative in how you convey these aspects of yourself and your work to the admissions committee.

Here are some tips to help you get started: save the cover letter for last, don't waste words with unnecessary pleasantries, and don't just list your accomplishments - provide some insight into what inspired you and how others reacted. Don't feel like you have to address every single point in the prompt either - focus on what's most important and organize your thoughts carefully.

Remember, the cover letter is an opportunity to showcase your communication skills, so make sure to write it in the most succinct way possible. You got this!

2 Cover Letter Examples for the MIT Sloan MBA, LGO, Sloan Fellow Programs

I Banking Director, MIT Sloan Fellows Cover Letter Example

This cover letter was written for Andriy, an applicant to MIT Sloan’s Sloan Fellows EMBA program. At the time Andriy worked as a department director at Sense Bank in Kyiv. This cover letter is part of the book, 25 Successful MIT Sloan Cover Letters.

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Andriy Melnyk

Khreschatyk St, 27,

Kyiv, Ukraine, 01001

December 1st, 20XX

MBA Admissions Committee

MIT Sloan School of Management

100 Main Street

Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142

Dear MIT Sloan MBA Admissions Committee Members,

A few years after Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union, Dad turned down a plush job with the NHS in the U.K. to instead help rebuild our country’s health system. As a doctor in a Ukrainian state research institute, he got paid at the end of the month, except when he didn’t…which was a regular occurrence. Engulfed in my own adolescent yearning for a new video game console, I couldn’t understand his choice to raise my sisters and me in Kyiv rather than London. Today, as a father myself, I marvel at his conviction. Resilience, a sense of agency…not destiny, and a desire to serve despite personal sacrifice. These were the values I was raised with.

During my career’s first phase, those values translated into acting as a change agent. At Oschadbank, I redesigned the bank’s mobile app increasing online sales by 25% and led the rollout of a new airline miles credit card which is now a leader in its segment.

“We’ve been catering to small and medium enterprise clients too long. Senior leadership wants to broaden our reach”, the head of Sense Bank’s strategy team explained over the phone. The bank was long on ideas and short on resources. This suited me perfectly because I’d always been the sort of person who preferred the challenge of fixing up a rusted vintage car to the easy (but ultimately boring) luxury of a BMW. I accepted the job at Sense Bank and began leading a team of 35 to develop a chatbot that enabled clients to bank via Facebook and other social media platforms – all on a shoestring budget. Next, I spearheaded a new online platform that digitalized the bank’s product offering, including two-hour loan applications (a feature that had initially met with pushback from loan officers).

Technology is great, but organizations are people places with people problems. My team’s changes caused tellers to fear being made redundant. We responded by creating virtual teller roles. Loan officers claimed two hours would never be time enough for the necessary approvals. Bureaucracy had ballooned over time. We slayed it – empowering loan officers, for the first time, to use their sole discretion in extending up to $5,000 in credit.

I’m currently the employee of the year and the youngest department director in the bank’s history. My senior director says I have a bright future there, but I don’t plan to return to Sense Bank post-MBA. Instead, the second phase of my career will find me following in my father’s footsteps, serving people. I want to launch the first Ukranian bank to serve under or unbanked citizens – eventually expanding to Central Asia. Where Oschadbank and Sense Bank better serve the affluent, this new bank will serve the poor: cab drivers who deal in cash, people without collateral who require microloans, or unbanked villagers in the distant countryside.

The holistic and world-class business education at MIT Sloan will be a source of inspiration, wisdom and an opportunity for mutual aid among classmates. I will bring my unique cultural perspective from the Eurasian region, my experience in digital transformation, and most importantly, my desire to think and do in the MIT tradition of mens et manus.

Sincerely,

Andriy Melnyk

II Investment Banking Analyst, MIT Sloan MBA Cover Letter Example

This cover letter was written for Reyna, an applicant to MIT Sloan’s 2-year MBA program. At the time Reyna worked as an analyst at Citibank in Singapore. This is a supplemental cover letter, available online only, and not part of the book, 25 Successful MIT Sloan Cover Letters.

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Reyna dela Cruz

9 Sea Avenue, Apartment 5A

Singapore 424226

October 17th, 20XX

MBA Admissions Committee

MIT Sloan School of Management

100 Main Street

Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142

Dear MIT Sloan MBA Admissions Committee Members,

During my formative years, accountability was a value that my parents emphasized. My father never framed a bad grade as an accident (something my 8-year-old self would have liked) but as the result of one’s actions (or inaction). My parents’ logic produced the intended effect: instilling in me a sense of agency over my life outcomes. I put this to good use when, in junior college, I became class president simply because I’d?set my mind to it. This was a real?coup?considering I’d been the quietest student throughout secondary school.

During my final year at the National University of Singapore, that same sense of agency inspired me to build my own startup. It was a unique situation because my co-founder and I had set our sights on being entrepreneurs?before?we had a specific business idea in mind. Working backward, we defined some baseline criteria for our future business: a no-frills product with transparent pricing that leveraged digital interaction. Next, we created dummy websites and monitored traffic for our top ten ideas. The winning business was a home renovation service with an online cost estimate feature. Being an entrepreneur was great, but I was in my early 20s and wanted to work in a larger, more international environment where I could benefit from mentoring from seasoned professionals.

At Citibank, I’ve taken a similarly intrapreneurial approach to my work – spearheading stock coverage of the Philippine banking sector, which won praise for its thoroughness and unique methodology. That helped me build a name for myself in the Asian stock analyst community. I’ve also been heavily involved in the community as co-chair of Citibank’s wide-reaching Inclusion Day (attended by 4,000 employees) and as a mentor to teams of young community-minded entrepreneurs since 20XX.

Sloan’s Enterprise Management Track appeals to me because, through its EM Lab, students apply in-classroom instruction to projects sourced from real companies – experiences that would apply to a future consulting career. At Sloan, I’ll take on a leadership role in student organizations like the Water Sports Club (I’m a windsurfer and canoe polo player) and the Investment Management Club (where I can share my experience with interested students). Connecting with Sloan community members has only reinforced my feeling that Sloan’s tradition of creating questions from what others see as the status quo and then persevering to create a concrete answer aligns with my desire to combine mind and hand in my future work.

Sincerely,

Reyna dela Cruz