1. Goals / Why Wharton: Wharton changed the prompt of this essay this year to include their own goal statement to prompt applicants to think creatively about their strategic goals and how it will impact their worlds.
When writing this essay, try to talk through your professional and personal experiences and how your goals came about from these experiences and why you are committed to these goals. Go on then to talk about why an MBA now, and why Wharton. Make a clear linkage between your short term and long term goals and how Wharton's specific components are going to help you achieve the goals.
DON'T: Try to force fit yourself into someone that wants to make a difference in the global community and wants to change the world if your prior experience does not suggest any efforts to do this. They don't want grandiose, they want simple, committed people who know what their goals are.
2. Adapting to people different than yourself: Think creatively here - you don't have to talk about diversity from a geographic, regional or race perspective. Diversity can be from age, professional experiences or even general living environments.
Try not to make up a story about your travels / understanding of various cultures, unless you really have substantive experiences to share. This one is hard, so invest time into it.
3. Failure: This is a critical question and will reveal a lot about you. Be man (or woman) enough to discuss HOW you failed (not just what happened as a result of the failure).
Use as many words to talk about what you did wrong (and re-read it to make sure you are not diverting the blame to others) and what you learned about yourself and what impact it had on you. Again, keep it real - this is the essay that can truly expose your natural personality, for better or worse.
