You have to look at this question from two contexts:

1) The industry trends
2) Reality of placements into PE firms with an MBA program

In 2025, PE entered the "$1 trillion club". This marked the end of a multi-year period of relative hibernation.

US dealmaking shifted into high gear during the second half of 2025, fueled by renewed market confidence and a clearer macroeconomic outlook.

Full-year PE deal value reached an estimated $1.2 trillion, marking only the second time in the industry's history that it has surpassed the trillion-dollar threshold.

The other being the record-shattering outlier of 2021.

Like 2021, when there was a boom in investments around vaccination, and buying distressed assets affected by the pandemic, the latest fund deployments are all around AI, healthcare, and sustainable infrastructure.

Unlike 2021, now PE firms can reasonably predict the interest rate changes. This has given them the confidence to deploy a record $1.1 trillion in dry powder, with the combined private equity and venture capital deal value rising 42.57% year-on-year in 2025 to reach $468.51 billion.

For a professional targeting a top MBA, this trend is a "green light" for the sector's talent needs.

The transition from "defensive asset management" to "aggressive capital deployment" means that firms are no longer just focused on keeping current portfolio companies afloat. They are now in a heavy investment phase that demands sophisticated operational and integration talent. You are likely to join an industry that is actively building and requires Associates who can navigate complex "platform" acquisitions and the integration of massive, billion-dollar assets into existing fund strategies.

See also: PE Q4 2025 Trends

But just because the industry is doing well doesn't mean all top MBA programs can place you into PE firms. While I was editing F1GMAT's salary and employment analysis, I could see a few trends.

One insight I want to share is to rely on schools with a reputation for placing candidates into PE firms. The reputation takes time.

That is why we have a 5-year placement trend in F1GMAT Premium.

You may subscribe and access the in-depth analysis at premium.f1gmat.com/subscribe.

The heartbreaking insight from the analysis is that even though some schools have high Finance placements, the school is likely to facilitate more candidates in Investment Banking over Private Equity.

Getting admitted to Harvard or Stanford is worth your effort.

Any school outside these two doesn't have a strong and consistent reputation for attracting PE firms.

It could change this year with the Career Service team taking on a more proactive role.

But analyze the placement trends at F1GMAT Premium.

When you write captions for the NYU Stern MBA Pick Six essay, two things must align:

1) The Authenticity of the emotions
2) The Scale of the Expressions

If you write a caption on a photo that is self-explanatory or at least the admissions person can guess it, the value of the photo diminishes quickly.

You are not rewarding the viewer with a dopamine hit.

Related Reading

• F1GMAT's NYU Stern MBA Sample Essays
• F1GMAT's NYU Stern MBA Curriculum Analysis
• F1GMAT's NYU Stern MBA Essay Tips

You are just informing the admissions team about an event, your background, or your upbringing.

The biggest difference between a written essay and any visual essay or Video is the additional creativity that you can include in them.

With Video, you can bring voice over, music, and even interesting timelines to hook the viewer.

With photos, capturing an authentic emotion or a state of a person where a viewer immediately connects emotionally or feels awe should be the goal.

One shortcut applicants use is to include photos of mountains, lakes, ships, boats oceans, sailing, and fishing. These are all awe-inducing backgrounds. It is the safest photo where captions work perfectly.

The second kind of photos is all about commitment.

You are asking the viewer to relate to your story. It can only be achieved if you show commitment.

One Person shared a charity run, which showed him exhausted at the end of the race, with a background of the beneficiary for whom he was running the race.

The commitment towards the beneficiary was confirmed with the caption.

Even a cliched marathon experience can be transformed into a memorable visual experience because of the commitment shown by the applicant.

If you need help in choosing the photos and editing your captions, subscribe to F1GMAT’s One Essay Editing Service

I don’t know if it is the modesty of the applicant or if culturally it is looked down on to show ambition, but I have seen quite a large number of international applicants hesitating to quote an ambitious post-MBA goal, at least a long-term goal.

One reason is that they feel the goals are not believable. The fundraising in their country is not spectacular compared to the US.

Frankly, no other country is even close to the US when it comes to risk capital.

So that thought should not bother an applicant. Also, you are not comparing yourself to entrepreneurs and their world-changing goals, unless you are applying to Stanford or Harvard as an entrepreneurial applicant. Then it makes sense to research and dig deep into your start-up idea.

But if you are a typical applicant targeting Columbia, MIT, Chicago Booth, or Kellogg, your long-term goal can be entrepreneurial in nature or as an investor.

The themes for the post-MBA goals essay need not be all about changing the world.

I read essays more closely when the applicant introduced a personal motivation into the narrative – from losing a farm to parents not being able to complete education due to forced migration from war/famine to building an organization that values democracy after the horrors of violence in a dictatorial country.

So, such personal motivations capture the attention of the reader.

The ambition shifts from scale to a personal incentive.

We are incredible social animals.

Our inseparable need to connect with another person, their thinking and mindset, forces us to empathize.

The more personal the goal, the better the believability of achieving it.

Another factor you have to consider before defining the scale of your goal is how relevant the goal is for the school’s community.

If the school is struggling to attract some of the best Generative AI talent, and you have experience in Generative AI and are planning to enter consulting, you could help the school design a curriculum around AI.

Think about all the ways in which your personal experience would be valuable for the school and the community around it.

The more personal the motivation, the more likely you are to pursue it.

The more persistent you are, the more likely you are to achieve a milestone.

The more frequently you achieve a milestone, the more likely you are to succeed.

The more successful you are, the more the schools can promote that you are the Alum that they trusted, and only because you attended the MBA program, you could achieve all that you had planned to achieve.

Schools are desperate to build their alumni pool with entrepreneurial candidates.

They don’t want just career-oriented candidates.

So even if you are a career-oriented applicant, cite ambitious goals within your industry or post-MBA function.

For help defining the scale of your ambition in your MBA goals Essay, contact me, Atul Jose, with F1GMAT’s Contact form