Impact Investing MBA Essay Story

I would be curious to hear responses to this as well from people who are familiar with the MBA application process. I currently work in impact investing and previously in investment banking, and I'm applying to business school this fall too. But I'm worried / expecting that there will be a lot of traditional finance applicants writing their essays how their volunteer work has sparked their passion for impact investing (because it would give them a better "narrative", even if they are not truly interested or committed to it), which would make my story and essays not as differentiated.

To answer your question about how easy it would be to enter impact investing without prior direct investing experience, unfortunately it's probably significantly more difficult than getting a traditional investing job (which is already hard). This is because there are WAY fewer spots since there are very few firms that do it and their funds are much smaller on average, so impact investing firms can be more selective about who they take. As an example, a LinkedIn search for people with the current title "private equity associate" yields over 3,000 results. If I had to estimate the number of PE impact investing associates in the US, there's probably fewer than 25 people (it's a very small community so many of us have met or at least know of each other). If you broaden your criteria to VC or debt impact investing positions as well, that would definitely widen the pool but it would still be small.