Leland+ Content Library

Sample Columbia Business School Essays

Stuck staring at the Columbia essay prompts? See exactly how admitted applicants pulled it off. This collection includes more than twenty complete essay sets covering every recent CBS question. Read across industries, geographies, and career stages to find approaches that resonate with your own story.

How to Get into a Top 10 Medical School

Are you aspiring to secure a spot in a top 10 medical school? This event is your chance to gain insider tips and strategies to make your application shine. Join me as we discuss crafting a standout application that captures the attention of admissions committees. As a current M.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine and a Yale graduate, I bring a wealth of experience in research, healthcare consulting, and entrepreneurship. I have a passion for helping students from diverse backgrounds including non-traditional and international students. I am eager to guide you through the intricacies of the activities section and personal statement, school selection, secondary essays, and overall application strategy.

Review Hard Text Completion & Sentence Equivalence

Here we will review text completion and strategies as well as sentence equivalence and strategies with additional examples and some new vocabulary.

Land a Role as an Tiktok APM - Applications Open Now

Curious what it takes to stand out in TikTok’s Associate Product Manager (APM) program? Join Dessy K., Hiring Manager at TikTok, for a session on how to position yourself for success in one of the most competitive early-career product roles in tech. Drawing on her experience hiring and mentoring PMs, Dessy will share what top candidates do differently—from crafting standout applications to acing interviews and communicating product sense.

Claude Essentials for Engineers [5/19/2026] (Recording)

Most engineers use Claude like a smarter autocomplete. Type a prompt, read the answer, type again. That's not a workflow — that's just waiting. In this 45-minute live session, I'll show you exactly how I've configured Claude to work in the background while I keep shipping. You'll see my real setup: Git worktrees running parallel agents on separate branches, async notifications that ping me when Claude's done, skills that produce production-quality output every time, and a CLAUDE.md that gives Claude deep context on my codebase without me repeating myself. WHAT YOU'LL WALK AWAY WITH → Git worktrees set up so you can run multiple Claude agents simultaneously without branch chaos → An async notification workflow that frees you from watching progress bars → A reusable skill you can use to get consistent, high-quality output on repeat tasks → A CLAUDE.md file structure that makes Claude immediately useful in any project WHO THIS IS FOR This session is built for engineers at all levels — whether you've never heard of CLAUDE.md or you're already using Claude daily and want to go deeper. Non-technical founders who work alongside engineering teams will also find the workflow principles directly applicable. WHAT MAKES THIS DIFFERENT Everything in this session comes from shipping real projects with Claude. No theory, no slides full of bullet points. I'll be live in my actual environment, showing the tools and configs I use every day. You'll leave with things you can set up in under 30 minutes — and that will still be working for you months from now.

Sector Overview: Sustainability & Energy

Learn about the Sustainability and Energy industry and what VCs look for there. Check out key metrics, valuations, and major players in the space.

50 BCG Behavioural Questions That Actually Matter

The exact behavioural questions top candidates prepare for — with insider notes on what interviewers are really testing beneath the surface. This document is Part 2 of a broader 9 Part Consulting Interview Resource Kit. See my page for other related resources.

What McKinsey, BCG, and Bain Look For [5/19/2026] (Recording)

FREE COACHING SESSION GIVEAWAY FOR LIVE ATTENDEES. Breaking into McKinsey, BCG, or Bain is highly competitive, and many candidates aren’t sure what actually sets top applicants apart. This session is for those targeting MBB who want a clearer understanding of how these firms evaluate candidates. You’ll learn what interviewers look for across resumes, case interviews, and behavioral assessments, how to demonstrate structured thinking and impact, and the patterns that consistently show up in successful candidates. Join live to hear from a panel of experts with backgrounds at MBB firms and ask your questions about the recruiting process. The panelists regularly work with candidates and will share what stood out to them when evaluating applicants. Expect practical insights and guidance similar to what’s covered in 1:1 coaching conversations.

Design Beautiful Presentations with Claude [5/19/2026] (Recording)

Build Anything Series · Event 02 · Free · Live Most people use Claude as a writing assistant and stop there. Then they open PowerPoint, fight with templates for two hours, and ship something that looks like every other deck. There's a better way. In this hour, we'll build presentations end-to-end with Claude — from a one-line brief to polished, on-brand slides. No templates, no stock-photo aesthetic, no drag-the-text-box-three-pixels-left. What we'll build live: - Generate a deck from a one-line brief — outline, structure, narrative arc, all in one prompt loop - Iterate without leaving Claude — slide-by-slide refinement using structured prompts (not "make it better") - Export polished, on-brand presentations — color systems, type, layout, rendered cleanly Who it's for: - Coaches, consultants, founders, PMs who present often and hate the deck-building tax - People who've prompted Claude for design work and gotten generic results - Anyone who wants their slides to feel like theirs, not a SaaS template Not a fit if: - You're already a senior visual designer with a tight workflow - You want to learn pure Figma/Keynote craft — this is about directing AI to do most of the work We'll talk about where Claude excels (structure, narrative, copy, layout systems) and where it still needs you (taste, judgment, the final 10% of polish). Bring a real project you'd like to work on — fastest way to learn.

Successful Tuck Essays (with career goals)

Successful Dartmouth Tuck essays with career goals section, consultant, non-traditional application, volunteering, nonprofit, startup, family story, personal story, and thoughtful applicant positioning.

The Mental Habits of High Performers [5/19/2026] (Recording)

Your thoughts, interpretations, and mental patterns have a direct impact on how you perform at work. Many high-performing professionals experience patterns like overthinking, perfectionism, fear of failure, self-doubt, or harsh self-criticism, often without realizing how much these patterns influence decision-making, confidence, communication, and performance. In this session, we’ll explore how the mind works, how thoughts shape performance, and practical tools to build more intentional and supportive mental habits in high-pressure professional environments. We’ll cover: • How thoughts influence emotions, behaviors, and performance outcomes • Common mental patterns experienced by high performers • Why the mind is wired to detect risk, pressure, and potential failure • A practical framework for questioning and reframing unhelpful thoughts • How awareness creates more intentional responses under pressure • Practical mindset shifts and habits that support stronger mental performance over time You’ll leave with practical tools to better manage your internal dialogue, improve resilience and decision-making, and approach your work with greater clarity, confidence, and intentionality. This session is designed for professionals who want to strengthen their mindset, improve performance, and build a healthier relationship with pressure, growth, and high expectations.

Deploy Your Own App

​Vibe coding got you to a working app. Now how do you actually get it on your phone, or anyone else's? ​Join Jon Metz, Principal AI Product Manager at Nike, for a hands-on session covering everything between finished code and a real product. Whether you're trying to launch something to the world, get your app on the App Store for a real user base, or just want that AI personal trainer you built last week actually living on your phone, Jon will walk you through how to get there. You'll cover Apple Developer setup, connecting Claude Code to your Supabase backend, the final production checklist, and how to install an app on your own device without touching the App Store at all. ​Come with your own app or use the example. Either way, you leave with something real on a real device.

New Ways to Use Claude Cowork to Land Your Dream Job [5/14/2026] (Recording)

BOOTCAMP SEAT GIVEAWAY FOR LIVE ATTENDEES ($999 VALUE). In this session, you'll learn how to use Claude's cowork features to actively strengthen your job search, from drafting tailored outreach messages to refining your positioning for specific roles. We'll cover how to prompt Claude effectively for marketing and sales applications, how to use it to pressure-test your personal narrative, and how to build a repeatable workflow that saves time without losing your voice. Attending live means you can describe your actual situation and get a response shaped around it, not a general answer. The coach works with job seekers on this daily and will share the patterns that consistently move candidates forward.

How to Network Effectively for Competitive Finance Roles

Networking is a critical differentiator in competitive finance recruiting, but most candidates approach it inefficiently or inconsistently. This session breaks down how to build genuine relationships, conduct high-impact outreach, and turn conversations into real opportunities across investment banking, private equity, hedge funds, and related roles. You’ll learn how to prepare for networking conversations, follow up strategically, and avoid common mistakes that quietly hurt your chances.

Wanna Make a Difference? Corporate to Social Impact Pathways

If you are considering a move from corporate consulting into social impact, this session will help you identify which of your existing skills transfer directly and which gaps you need to close before making the leap. You will learn how social impact organizations actually evaluate candidates from the private sector, what signals separate strong applicants from ones who stall in the hiring process, and how to position a consulting background for roles in nonprofit strategy, impact investing, or mission-driven advisory work.

Build a Job Search Operating System (JSOS) [5/13/2026] (Recording)

Build Anything Series · Event 01 · Free · Live The job search is the most expensive workflow most people will ever run — and the one they're least equipped for. Spreadsheets, sticky notes, half-tracked outreach, lost interview notes. By the end of this hour, you'll learn how to create a complete Job Search Operating System to help you land your next offer. What we'll walk through live: - A real applicant tracker | every role, company, and contact in one view. Status, last action, next step, follow-up date. - Automated outreach + research | pull company context, drafts personalized outreach, surfaces the right people to message. - Synced notes, prep, offer comparison | interview notes that auto-link to the role, prep doc generation per company, structured offer comparison when it's time to choose. Who it's for: - People actively job searching or about to start - Career switchers, returning-to-work folks, recent grads - Anyone who's run a search before and remembers losing track of half of it Not a fit if: - You enjoy manual data entry and Excel-tab chaos - You'd rather pay $300 for a static prompt template that fails instead of learning the principles yourself - You want a one-click magic button I'll be honest about where AI helps and where it doesn't, and how to keep the system running without me. Bring your laptop and follow along, or lean in, watch, and replicate after.

Where AI Improves Sales Performance - And Where It Doesn’t [5/26/2026] (Recording)

After this session, you will know exactly where AI tools accelerate sales performance and where they tend to create a false sense of productivity. Specifically, you will walk away with a clear framework for evaluating AI in your pipeline, an honest look at which sales tasks AI handles well versus where human judgment still wins, and practical guidance on integrating AI into outreach without losing the personal signals that actually close deals. Attending live means you can bring your specific workflow or stack and hear a direct response to your situation, not a generic answer recorded months ago. The coach works inside sales organizations daily and will share the patterns and failure modes they observe firsthand, giving you a slice of how a practitioner actually thinks through these decisions.

Consortium Example Essays

These essays helped an ally be admitted to Consortium and to UC Berkeley Haas and UCLA Anderson. They stand out due to the clarity in career goals, specific ways the applicant supported unrepresented groups, and multi-faceted plans for involvement and support in the future.

Freeing the People's Data: AI Agents for Legislative Transparency [5/20/2026] (Recording)

Struggling to make sense of fragmented legislative data or build tools that surface it in a usable way? This session is for builders, policy professionals, and researchers who want to use AI agents to unlock and structure public legislative data for real transparency. You’ll learn how to design agents that gather and normalize data across sources, create workflows that turn raw information into searchable insights, and evaluate outputs for accuracy and bias. Attending live gives you the opportunity to ask technical and strategic questions about your own use cases and get clarity in real time. The speaker works closely with practitioners and will share the patterns they see when building systems that actually get used, along with what they look for when evaluating effectiveness and trust. If you’re serious about turning legislative data into something actionable, it’s worth joining live.