HBS 2026-2027 Essays: What the Three Prompts Reveal

Harvard Business School released its application for the 2026-2027 cycle. You have probably already read it. You have probably already started mapping which story goes where: something for business-mindedness, something for leadership, something for growth.

That instinct is not wrong, but it is incomplete.

This session breaks down what the HBS 2026-2027 essays reveal about how the admissions committee evaluates candidates.

You can spend the next several weeks deciding which experience belongs in which essay, and a lot of candidates will do exactly that. Fewer will stop and ask why Harvard built the application around these three specific dimensions this cycle, or what it means that the committee wants all three from you and not just one.

It would be easy to treat career choices, investment in others, and curiosity as three unrelated writing assignments. But Harvard did not build the application that way, and the committee almost certainly is not reading it that way either. And most candidates will not ask what that person needs to look like until after the drafts are already written.

This session is for the candidate who already knows HBS is the school. You are here because there is a gap between reading the prompts and knowing whether what you have built so far will actually answer what is underneath them.

What we'll cover:

• What HBS's specific choice of business-mindedness, leadership, and growth highlights about what the committee is prioritizing this cycle, and what that means for how you choose your stories.
• Why these three dimensions are designed to work together, and what happens when a candidacy answers each essay well in isolation but fails to add up to one coherent person on the page.
• What separates an applicant who looks impressive from a candidacy that reads as genuinely compelling to an HBS reader, and where most strong profiles lose that distinction.

Susan Berishaj, Founder of Sia Admissions, will walk through what this year's HBS essay structure reveals about how the admissions committee is evaluating candidates, and what it suggests about the kind of person Harvard is trying to identify behind the three prompts.

Register to submit your questions in advance, attend live on Thursday, July 9 at 10:00 a.m. ET, and receive the replay directly in your inbox.

To get support on your Harvard Business School MBA application before the September deadline, book a strategy consultation with Sia Admissions. Learn more about the Sia Method. Request a written profile evaluation.