How long does an MBA essay critique take?

Grading runs on our servers, so you can close the tab; the result page updates on its own and we email you when it is ready.

What does the critique include?

An overall score out of 100, a verdict (Strong / Borderline / Weak), a five-axis rubric breakdown weighted for your target school, paragraph-level flags on weak passages, and the top three fixes ranked by score impact.

Can I use it for any MBA program?

Yes. These programs have a bespoke rubric — all of the M7 (HBS, Stanford GSB, Wharton, Booth, Kellogg, MIT Sloan, Columbia) plus Tuck, Yale SOM, INSEAD, LBS, and Cornell Johnson. Any other MBA program (Ross, Darden, Haas, Duke, IESE, IMD, etc.) is graded against our general MBA rubric — same critique, same price.

Process

How it works

We do one thing: grade your draft against your target school's actual rubric and tell you exactly what to fix. No positioning consulting, no story-finding, no rewrites of your whole essay. Just the score and the fixes.

Paste your essay

Drop a draft up to 1,500 words into the editor. We auto-count and preserve paragraph breaks. If you have the official prompt, paste it too — the critique gets sharper.

Pick the school

Each school gets its own rubric, written from what that school publishes: its prompts, limits and stated values. Pick your school and the critique scores against that rubric.

AI grades against the school's rubric

The AI scores your essay against the school's rubric criteria and weights, and quotes the passages behind each score. Not generic essay craft.

Iterate

Rewrite, paste again, re-grade. At $79 per critique, that costs less than 30 minutes of a $500/hr coach.

How the rubric works

Published criteria in. Weighted scores out.

01
Each rubric is written from the school's own published evaluation criteria and its 2026–27 essay prompts and length limits.
02
Every critique shows the criteria and weights it used, with the quoted passages behind each score.
03
It is AI. It is fast and consistent, and it makes mistakes — treat it as a sharp second reader, not a verdict.
04
MBA Essay Critic is independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any business school.

Browse the 12 school rubrics

What we score

The five-axis rubric

Every critique scores your essay on these five axes, weighted to match the target school's evaluation criteria.

Leadership impact
What you caused to happen — not what you worked on.
Analytical aptitude
Reasoning under ambiguity. Evidence over assertion.
Self-awareness
Specificity about your own gaps and growth.
Fit with program
School-specific reasons that couldn't be copy-pasted.
Voice and craft
Distinctive, controlled prose. Not over-polished.

Why it isn't just ChatGPT

Generic models grade against generic essay rules and are tuned to flatter you. Our critique loads the target school's rubric into context at grade time and is calibrated against the failure modes that actually get essays rejected. The output is a score against the rubric — not a compliment.

Read the full breakdown

Common questions

Process FAQ

Where to start

If you're picking a target program first, browse our MBA essay rubrics —12 programs have a bespoke rubric page with official prompts, scoring criteria, and common pitfalls. Targeting another MBA program? You still get a full critique against our general MBA rubric. Already drafting? See a real HBS sample critique or compare against human admissions coaches and ChatGPT.

Get my free preview

Free preview: overall score, verdict, prompt fit, the simulated committee read and one rubric criterion. Full critique $79. Account needed, no card.

See a sample critique