1010— EXECUTIVE SUMMARY —
Examine your past and present (and goals for the future), and develop the information that you will need to write persuasive essays.
—See Chapter 8 and Appendix IV.
Sift through the material to establish your most effective themes.
Outline, then draft, a complete set of essays before finalizing any one of them.
There is no excuse for basic mistakes: misspellings, grammatical errors, or inserting the wrong school’s name into an essay.
Follow this chapter’s advice to maximize the impact of your essays.
Allot substantial time to reorganizing and redrafting. Remember, “There is no such thing as good writing, just good rewriting.”
As Stanford put it: “In other parts of the application we learn about your academic and professional accomplishments (i.e., what you have done). It is through your essays that we learn more about the person behind the grades, test scores, job titles, and leadership positions (i.e., who you are). Our goal is to gain insight into the person behind the résumé…. [W]e encourage you to share with us—through your essays—your passions, values, interests, and goals. While there are no ‘right’ answers here, we have found that the most effective essays emphasize the ‘who’ as well as the ‘what.’ Each candidate for admission has a set of unique experiences and perspectives to bring to the GSB community. This is your opportunity to ‘talk’ to us and to emphasize what you consider to be most important. Tell us your story, and tell it in a natural and honest way.”
If you intend to rely on your “numbers” to get you admitted, you will be missing the opportunity to dramatically improve your chances. In fact, the better the school, the more likely it is that the objective data in your application will not determine your fate and that the essays in particular will weigh heavily in the decision.
Admissions officers will judge you on the basis of what your essays reveal about your writing ability (including your ability to persuade, structure and maintain a well-reasoned argument, and communicate in an interesting and professional manner); honesty and maturity; understanding of what the program offers and requires, and how well you would contribute to it; and clear (and believable) ideas about where you are headed. They will want to learn what you have accomplished, who you are as a person, and how well you can communicate. Admissions officers never take the approach of teachers who said, “I’ll grade this on the basis of the content, not your writing style.”
This chapter is designed to help you actually write your essays. You have learned from prior chapters the types of thing you are likely to want to say, but not how to say it; this chapter addresses that need. In addition to reading this chapter, however, learn about successful essay writing by examining some of the many examples contained in this book.
Before you start to write, let us review what we know about your audience and its decision criteria.
Your audience is the set of admissions officers who will read your application. Chapter 6 described them as conscientious but overwhelmed by the volume of material they read. They are highly familiar with the determinants of business school and career success. Thus, they will examine your application for convincing evidence of your intellectual ability, managerial and leadership potential, personal characteristics, and career plan. Being in the education business, they want applicants who clearly value learning and education. They will also like evidence that a person makes the most of opportunities, whether they be great or small.
By communicating effectively—showing that you understand what they are looking for, presenting your material in an organized and concise fashion, and not exaggerating or lying—you will gain credibility as a reliable source of information about yourself and as an appropriate candidate. Remember that as important as it is to be sure you are addressing the committee’s concerns, your essays should reveal yourself and convey a true sense of who you are as a person. After all, this may be your only chance to do so.
What top business schools are looking for. The four principal criteria mentioned earlier—your intellectual ability, managerial and leadership potential, personal characteristics, and career plan—are common to all of the top schools. (For more detailed information, reread Chapters 7 and 8.)
What does a particular school look for? All schools look for certain traits, such as leadership ability. Yet not every school is looking for exactly the same sort of candidate. Some will concentrate on finding very internationally focused applicants, for example, whereas others want those who are technologically oriented. If you are aware of what a given school seeks, you can emphasize those aspects of your candidacy that are most suited to their needs. The starting point for learning about a school’s specific interests, as discussed in Chapter 3, is to read its website and speak with its current students and recent graduates.
This chapter focuses on writing individual essays successfully, but bear in mind that each essay is part of a whole application package, consisting of multiple essays, résumé data, recommendations, and interview evaluation. To make sure you keep your eye on the need to provide a well-integrated, consistent application, do not try to finish any one essay until you have done at least a rough draft of all the essays for a given school.
It is important to plan your writing. Planning forces you to think about what you will write before you get tied up in the actual writing. Too many people take the opposite approach, writing random paragraphs, hoping to be able to glue them together later, or trying to write the whole of an essay before thinking about it. The results of these approaches are all too predictable. The material included is a haphazard selection of what might be presented, and the writing is not necessarily organized and coherent. No amount of editing will cure this problem, which is not merely a problem of word choice or transitions. The greatest problem with the write-before-thinking approach is that after expending great efforts, writers are disappointed with the results and must go back to what should have been the starting point—thinking about what they should say.
All too many essays sound the same. The poor admissions officer who has to read 5,000 essays, or many more, gains no understanding of an applicant who writes half a dozen essays that could have been written by any of another 500 applicants to the same school. Few applicants take the time to ask what makes them unusual or unique (or valuable). Your goal is to develop materials that will help you to write stories unique to you, which no one but you could tell.
Failing to develop your material or examine yourself thoroughly will lead to dull generalities and mark your application with a deathly sense of unsophistication. You will not do yourself any favors by writing “My travels broadened my horizons by exposing me to different cultures” or “The experience taught me that with hard work and determination I can reach my goals.” Statements like these do not merit space in your essays if you want to dazzle the admissions committee.
Pulling together the relevant material for your application essays will take substantial effort, especially if you have been working for a number of years at different jobs. The material that might be relevant to the essays could come from virtually any time in your life, and be from any episode or experience.
The best way to start the process of generating material is to fill out the Personal Organizer in the appendix to Chapter 8. As you can see at a glance, there are numerous things to note. Try to fill this out over a period of time, because you will be unlikely to remember everything this calls for in one sitting. Referring to your résumé should be helpful. In fact, you might find it helpful to refer back to earlier versions of your résumé, if you still have them. You may also want to look at your school and university transcripts to refresh your memory.
Consider keeping a notebook handy for jotting down ideas, stories, or details about your past or your goals for the future. Reading this book and the many examples in it may also spur your memory. I encourage you to take personal notes in the margins regarding your own experiences.
When you have completed the Personal Organizer, you should have far too much material to use in your essays. This is as it should be. You should feel you have a wealth of material from which you can pick the most appropriate items.
Once you have generated your raw material, what will you actually say? If you have already read Chapter 8 and filled out the Personal Organizer, you may have determined what your main themes will be. Now is a good time to recheck that they still make sense in light of the information you have available. Do you have good stories that illustrate your brilliance as an analyst? Do you have the right grades in the most closely related courses to claim this? If not, now is the right time to reconsider your positioning. Think in terms of what would be appropriate organizing themes given the information you do have.
After you have generated your information, you must organize it. There are many methods for doing so. One good way is to try to see what the core of your message is. In other words, what key points are you trying to make? If you can state these, the next step is to group your supporting material according to the appropriate points.
To organize your thinking effectively, it is generally a good idea to outline your essay. This will save you time because the outline will make it clear whether you have too much or too little material, and provides a logical means of organizing your material. It will also allow you to make changes early in the process rather than work on something that does not belong, only to eliminate it after squandering time on it. In other words, the outline is a check on your thinking.
It does not particularly matter which outlining method you use. It only matters that it can perform the important functions needed: pulling together related material, showing how idea groups relate to one another, and showing which ideas are primary and in what ways supporting ideas are to be subordinated.
There are several outlining methods commonly used. All follow the same general rule, listing primary organizing ideas against the left-hand margin, with supporting materials indented to indicate their subordination to a larger idea.
I. Primary idea
A. Subordinate idea
B. Subordinate idea
1. Sub-subordinate idea
2. Sub-subordinate idea
a. Sub-sub-subordinate idea
3. Sub-subordinate idea
II. Primary idea
A. Subordinate idea
It is usually a good idea, especially for those who are not accustomed to writing anything more than short memos, to review the element of good writing style. I suggest perusing the latest edition of The Economist Style Guide, William Safire’s Fumble Rules, or George Orwell’s Why I Write. It is also a good idea to have such a book on hand as you write and rewrite, in case you need to check up on your grammar or word usage.
The fourth step in the writing process is a rough draft. Be sure you are not too demanding of yourself at this point. Even though you want to do a good job, here “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” If you are unwilling to write down anything that is less than final-draft quality, you are highly likely to be unable to write anything at all. Rather than take this perfectionist approach, be sure to limit your goal to that of producing a rough draft that incorporates most of the basic points you want to make. Do not be concerned if the order you had planned to follow no longer seems to work well, or if you cannot quite express your exact thought, or if your word choice is awkward. Get something reasonable down on paper as a starting point.
Writers use any number of different strategies when they start writing. No one method is to be recommended above others. This is very much a matter of personal preference. You can use any of the following methods. Choose the one (or invent one of your own) that gets you started on the road to producing a reasonably complete draft.
Writers who use this method feel they cannot write the body of the essay until they know what they are leading up to.
When an introduction lays out clearly what will follow, it in effect controls the body of the paper. Some writers like to start with the introduction in order to make sure they have a grip on the body of the paper before trying to write it.
Some writers like to pick any self-contained part of the body of the paper and write it up, then move on to another part, and then another. These writers like to build the substantive parts of the paper first, and then provide an introduction and conclusion based on this substance.
This approach involves taking one perspective or starting point for writing a draft, then plowing through the entirety. Then the writer does the same thing from another perspective or starting point. Later, the writer can choose one draft or another, or cut and paste using pieces of each.
A majority of people use the third method—writing paragraphs of the body of the paper. They typically write them individually, then place them together in their predetermined order, and only then develop an introduction and conclusion. They take this approach because they know certain aspects of the subject well and can write about them easily, but require more thought to fill in the remaining pieces, such as the introduction and conclusion.
Remember that “the only good writing is rewriting.” When you start to edit your rough draft, you are doing your first part of this rewriting.
One of the most important aspects of the editing stage is its timing. Editing without a break between the drafting and the editing stages will limit your insight into the flaws of your draft. You will not see where you skipped a needed transition or explanation because you are too close to the original writing. If you can take a break—at least a night or, better yet, a week—you will be better able to read your draft from the perspective of an outsider.
TWO WAYS TO AVOID WRITER’S BLOCK
Many people find themselves “blocked” when they try to write. They sit and stare at the paper or computer, and it stares back at them. To avoid this, do not put pressure on yourself to do too much at once. When you are in the early part of the writing process, try simply to get the basic elements of your thinking about each subtopic down on paper. Do not worry about the quality of what you are writing until you are editing.
Technique one. After you have thought about an essay, try to write down on index cards phrases that convey your various ideas. (Or, of course, use a computer to do the same thing.) Don’t plan for too long; just write down the phrases as they occur to you. Then organize the cards into related groups of ideas. Write paragraphs expressing these ideas, perhaps trying to link the related ones together. Then, see if you can place these paragraphs into a reasonably logical order. Next, put this structure into a proper outline, to see if it makes sense. If it does, link the paragraphs with appropriate transitions. If it doesn’t, try reordering the paragraphs.
Technique two. If it is still too difficult to get rolling with the first method, involve a friend in the process. Explain to your pal what you are trying to convey. Have her take notes on what you are saying. Organize those notes into a logical order, with her help, and then explain yourself to her again, being sure to follow your notes to keep things in order. If you record this and transcribe your recording, you will have a solid rough draft, which you can start to edit.
Make sure you have edited your draft for substance—for what points will remain and what points will be eliminated—before you start editing the language. Otherwise you will devote time and effort to improving the wording of material that should be discarded. (Even worse, you are likely to keep it in your draft if you have gone to the trouble of making it sound good.) This section assumes you will revise your essay three times. In fact, if you are a good writer and have taken the time to think through an essay before doing your first draft, you might well need to edit it only once or, more likely, twice. By the same token, if you are struggling with an essay, it might require more than three revisions to sort out the problems.
One warning: Do not view editing as taking the life out of your essay. In fact, editing’s role is to clear out the dead wood, making your points stand out as clearly as possible.
The initial revision should focus on the essay as a whole.
Does your essay directly answer the question? Is your main idea clear?
The typical rough draft may have too little and too much material, all at the same time. It will have just touched the surface of some portions of the essay, without providing explanation or convincing detail. At the same time, it may have discussed things that do not contribute significantly to your major points.
A good essay eliminates extraneous material while including all the information necessary to make your point. Your reader needs sufficient evidence to accept what you are saying, so be sure you have adequately developed and supported your main idea. Material that does this belongs, but material that is unrelated to the main idea should be eliminated.
Finally, avoid belaboring the obvious (admissions directors know what an audit is), but do not assume an inappropriate amount of technical knowledge (admissions directors may not know the difficulties in writing a certain type of code).
A well-organized essay will group similar ideas together and put them in the proper order. To be sure that your draft is in an appropriate order, try to outline it. If it is easy to produce an outline from the draft, and there is a clear logic to the flow of the material, you can be reasonably certain that you have a well ordered essay. Otherwise, reorder your material.
Is your essay approximately the right length? If it is substantially longer than the stated word limit, consider how to reduce the supporting material. If it is shorter than allowed, consider whether to leave it at that length (which is a good thing if the essay successfully communicates what should be your main points) or to expand it by making additional points or providing additional supporting material. If the essay is significantly shorter than the suggested length, you probably need more depth. If you feel you have nothing more to say, you might consider rethinking your choice of topic.
Assuming you have successfully revised the first draft of the essay and the content is as you wish it to be, turn your attention to the components of the essay: the paragraphs, sentences, and individual words.
A proper paragraph should make only one major point. The easiest way to organize a paragraph is to start with a topic sentence—one that makes the major point of the paragraph—and then to explain or illustrate that point in following sentences. For business writing, starting most or all paragraphs with a topic sentence is often appropriate, particularly for inexperienced writers.
Look next at the length of your paragraphs. Most writers tend to one extreme or the other: Either all their paragraphs are very short or all are very long. A mixture of lengths is a good idea. Having most of your paragraphs between 30 and 150 words is also wise. The occasional paragraph that is substantially shorter or longer is fine, but they should be the exception rather than the rule. The reasons for this are simple: Too many short paragraphs make you look simple-minded—unable to put together a complex idea or group related ideas together—whereas long paragraphs will discourage reading by any but the most conscientious reader. Use short paragraphs for emphasis; use long paragraphs for discussion of complicated points or examples.
The three methods you can use to develop your main idea are to provide examples, explanation, or details. Reading an essay that lacks these three components tends to be unsatisfying and unconvincing. Generalities (“I am a very determined fellow”) are unconvincing unless supported with specific examples and explanations.
Even when you have well-written paragraphs placed in the right order, your writing may still be difficult to read because it lacks suitable transitions between ideas or any other means of showing how the ideas relate. For our purposes, the most important method of relating ideas will be using transition words and phrases. Some typical transitions include:
One other easy way to connect paragraphs is to have the beginning of one paragraph follow directly from the end of the prior paragraph. For example, if you have just said “I needed the chance to show what I could do without overbearing supervision” at the end of one paragraph, the next one could start out with “My opportunity to prove myself came with the founding of a new office in Toronto.” In this example the relationship between the two paragraphs is ensured by having the second grow organically from the end of the first.
Be sure each sentence follows logically from the prior sentence.
Make sure it not only introduces your subject but also grabs the audience whenever possible. (If you are writing seven essays for a given school, for example, at least two or three of them should have attention-getting introductions.) A good introduction is interesting as well as successful at conveying your main points. It should appeal to the reader and set the tone for the whole essay. There are many effective openings. You can state an important and interesting fact, refer to something currently in the news, refer to a personal experience, ask a question that you will answer in your essay, or simply state your general point of view. Do not restate the question; it wastes valuable space and is a weak, plodding way to begin.
A good conclusion does one or more of the following:
It should not make a new point that belongs in the body rather than the conclusion, nor should it sound tacked on. The concluding paragraph should develop organically from the material that preceded it.
Most essay writers pile on one long sentence after another. Avoid this by breaking up some of the longer sentences to provide variety. Use short sentences to make important points, long sentences to explain complex ideas or develop examples. Also, use a variety of sentence structures to maintain reader interest. Do not, for example, use a “not only…but also…” structure in every other sentence. Eliminate sentences that sound awkward or choppy when read aloud.
Edit your sentences to eliminate imprecise or wordy language. For example, use “although” instead of “despite the fact that.” Add vigor to your writing by eliminating clichés, using fresh and interesting descriptions, and trying to write as much as possible with nouns and verbs, rather than primarily with adjectives (which slow the pace and reduce impact). Similarly, write in the active voice. (Say “I kicked the ball” rather than “the ball was kicked by me.”)
Your tone can be assertive without being arrogant. Your essays should sound confident, enthusiastic, and friendly. Be sure to avoid pleading (“I’d give anything if you would just let me in”) and whining (“I never do well on those awful standardized tests; it’s so unfair that schools even look at the results”).
One way to check the tone of your essay is to read it aloud. Read it first to yourself and then, once it sounds appropriate to you, try reading it to a friend. Get his suggestions regarding what the strong and weak points are, whether there are any mistakes in it, and whether it sounds like you. Does it reflect your personal style? The ideal essay should sound just like your voice, but without repetitious and awkward phrasings and use of such filler as “you know” and “like” (if you speak like that). It should sound relaxed rather than formal, but still flow smoothly.
Some applicants, remembering a high school textbook, try to avoid writing in the first person. In fact, it is not only appropriate to use “I” when writing your essays but essential that you do so. You are being asked to give personal statements, so do not write in the distant and aloof third person.
See the comments above.
The way to spot grammatical mistakes and faulty punctuation is to read your essays over slowly, preferably after having put them aside for some time. Reading them aloud can also help this process. Even if your sense of grammar is keen, however, consider having a friend whose grasp of grammar is extremely good read over each essay. Spell-check the final product; do so yourself, as well as by computer, to catch words that exist but are not what you intended (for example, “manger” instead of “manager”).
One of the key factors affecting most of the essays you will write is that the business schools generally prescribe their maximum length. Failing to observe this constraint raises questions about your willingness to pay attention to the rules that will apply in other situations, so avoid going over the limits. Most schools do not mind your slightly exceeding the limits on one or two essays, but a pattern of exceeding the limits strikes even these schools as unfair. They have established these limits to provide a level playing field for the applicants; someone who exceeds the limits is seen as trying to assert an unfair advantage.
Three revisions is not a magic number, but will be a minimum for most people. There is nothing wrong with putting your work through more revisions.
After you have edited the essays to your own satisfaction, or gotten stuck, hand them to several people whose views on writing you respect. They can provide you with an objective view that you may not be able to bring to the essays yourself. Pay attention to their opinions, but do not give up control of what are, after all, your essays, not theirs. Do not let them remove the life from your essays.
Why proofread your paper if you have been careful in composing the final draft? No matter how careful you have been, errors are still likely to crop up. Taking a last look at the essay is a sensible precaution.
What are you looking for? Basically, the task at this point is no longer to make sure the structure is correct; it is to spot any errors or omissions in your sentences and individual words. Errors tend to show up most often where prior changes were made. Combining two paragraphs into one, for example, may have resulted in the loss of a necessary transition phrase. Grammatical mistakes can also live on.
As with any task that is essentially a matter of editing, your timing is of the essence. Wait until you have already finished what you consider to be your final draft. If you can then put this draft down for a few days, you will be able to give it an effective last look. If not, you risk being unable to see mistakes because you are still too close to the writing. Another useful precaution is to have a friend proofread your essays.
Do:
Do Not:
Business schools want to learn similar things about their applicants, so they tend to ask many of the same (or similar) questions. This is good for you to the extent that you can reuse your essays and cut down on the amount of work you have to devote to additional applications. On the other hand, few things annoy admissions officers more than to receive essays that were obviously written for another school, particularly if the other school’s name was left in them.
THE ADMISSIONS DIRECTORS DISCUSS HOW TO WRITE THE ESSAYS
The essays provide a test of succinctness: how well you write them in a short space and still stand out. Business writing is typically short. On the practical side, the essays are meant to be kept short because there is a limit to how much we as an admissions office can get through. JUDITH GOODMAN, MICHIGAN
Essays are a way for us to get a fuller sense of a candidate than just their grades, test scores, recommendations, and résumé would allow. It’s a chance for the candidate to speak directly to us in their own voice, which definitely helps a two-dimensional application look more like a three-dimensional person. That said, we’re mindful of the fact that we’re not an English program, so even though clear, compelling written communication is an important skill for MBA students and graduates, we work hard to make sure we’re focused on the content of the essays rather than simply the artfulness of the writing. BRUCE DELMONICO, YALE
We have all the data points (where they worked, their GPA, etc.), but ultimately we’re admitting an individual. That’s why our process is so individualized: we really get to know an individual who will, after all, be a member of the Stern family. You want to express who you are, where you’re headed, and why this is important to you—the context behind that data. The essays are where we learn who people really are and what they have to offer. ISSER GALLOGLY, STERN (NYU)
If you fail to write your essays seriously, we will assume that you don’t care enough about getting into our school to warrant our taking your application seriously. ANN W. RICHARDS, JOHNSON (CORNELL)
You need to market your brand. The essays need to differentiate you from other applicants and provide the glue that pulls together all the other elements of your application. The essays are your best opportunity to tell your unique story, to describe where you have been, what you hope to achieve at Duke, and where you hope to go after business school. Only the essays can do this. DAN MCCLEARY, FUQUA (DUKE)
There are a number of reasons…. Firstly, they provide evidence (albeit not conclusive) of an ability to write clearly and marshal thoughts and arguments in a coherent and logical manner. Secondly, the vast majority of our assessments involve writing so we want evidence that applicants are comfortable with expressing themselves through this medium, and, thirdly, essays are evidence of effort. If candidates are unwilling to put effort into their application this suggests to us they are unlikely to put effort into their studies. SÉAN RICKARD, CRANFIELD (UK)
We don’t count the number of words, but what is not appropriate is greatly exceeding the limits. Good writing is concise. Rambling on does not make something important. SALLY JAEGER, TUCK
While I hate to sound rigid about this, we wouldn’t have these limits if we didn’t think they were important. Dee LEOPOLD, HARVARD
No. But it’s also not a good idea to turn in 250 words for a thousand-word essay. THOMAS CALEEL, WHARTON
No. They’re hard coded into the application, but some people hack the program to be able to write more. Unfortunately for them, this definitely does not help their chances. DR. SIMON LEARMOUNT, JUDGE (CAMBRIDGE)
We value candidates who can express their message with the amount of space given, which shows a good capacity of synthesis. Should the candidate really think that more space is needed to express other contents, he or she can do so. The school will evaluate if it really was the case or if, instead, it was a mere repetition. ROSSANA CAMERA, BOCCONI (ITALY)
One should never exceed essay word limits, nor should one ever submit extra essays. Students who refuse to acknowledge word counts, and who assume that if they give you a long-winded essay, particularly when describing their career, figure this is going to be impressive, but it’s actually the biggest turnoff ever. It means they’ve not read the application form or they’re not able to express themselves concisely; if they can’t do that, they’ll have problems on the program. STEPHEN CHADWICK, LONDON
Put simply, the person who does thoroughly research his or her MBA options will in most cases write more effective essays. LINDA BALDWIN, UCLA
They have to be readable. People should use a decent size font and language people can understand. JAMES MILLAR, HARVARD
A lot of people should review a good book about writing before tackling the essays. SALLY JAEGER, TUCK
Some are very personal; these are often the ones that hit me. When I read one that whines about undergraduate grades, I can’t help but think, “Let’s get on with it.” LINDA MEEHAN, COLUMBIA
Follow the directions. If we say we want essays double-spaced and single-sided, that’s what we mean. Similarly, answer the question we ask, not one you might prefer to answer. SALLY JAEGER, TUCK
The first step in writing your essays is to assess yourself. Next, read and understand the questions; then answer them. Determine the themes you want to convey, and sort them by question. Figure out what you want to put where. In other words, scope out your presentation before you even begin. Figure out where you can show your strengths, what weaknesses you need to explain—and where you can do so. Outline the whole set of essays. The biggest mistake applicants make is looking at each piece of an application on its own instead of seeing the whole application as one piece. ROSE MARTINELLI, BOOTH (CHICAGO)
Good writing is focused: It goes to the heart of the question and answers it directly. It is also interesting, using interwoven personal examples to good effect. An element of personality showing through helps makes me want to keep reading. JAMES HAYES, MICHIGAN
Effective writing shows who the applicant is and conveys a real spark. Of course, it is also grammatically correct. PETER JOHNSON, HAAS
The essays I enjoy most are those offering a good glimpse of who the person is, not just what they’ve achieved. Some essays are excellent because they’re creative, others because of their humor, and still others because of the vivid vignettes that illustrate the applicant’s experiences. Let your personality show through essays. People too often try to anticipate what we want to hear. Instead, make sure they sound like you. DAWNA CLARKE, TUCK
A lot of candidates are hurt by trying to imitate another person’s essays, which are inappropriate for them and certainly lack the ring of authenticity. Plus, we’re likely to have read the original essays (and perhaps dozens of attempts to imitate them!), which makes the imitation immediately apparent to us. MICHELE ROGERS, KELLOGG
Applicants routinely do a poor job (or no job) of proofreading. It’s remarkable how often we run across spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and so on. SALLY JAEGER, TUCK
The simplest mistake—which is also far too common a mistake—is not answering the question we’re asking. That’s a simple one to avoid. We also often read essays from candidates who write about things that are not appropriate for a business school application. We call our essays “personal statements,” but that does not mean they should be so personal that they have no bearing or relevance to business school. Finally, we often read essays that seem to contradict or are at least inconsistent with other aspects of the application. We’re looking for the various elements of an application to line up in certain ways, so it’s not beneficial to the applicant to try to present themselves as someone other than who they are. BRUCE DELMONICO, YALE
Plenty of essays reflect having too many cooks in the kitchen: we get no idea of who the applicant really is. Not answering the question. Trying to be overly elegant and fancy. Being overly creative: we don’t need a rhyming couplet. THOMAS CALEEL, WHARTON
Each school has questions specific to it that show what the school is about. So you can’t just plug the same answers into different essays for different schools. It doesn’t work. You may have some core ideas, themes, or content that work across the board, but you can’t just take an essay and put it into everybody’s application. So be sure you answer the question asked. ISSER GALLOGLY, STERN (NYU)
Failure to spell-check and leaving in the name of a different school than the one you’re now applying to. Running on and boring the people who are reading the applications. Remember that we read over five thousand applications, so if you keep repeating the same thing, you aren’t helping yourself. LINDA MEEHAN, COLUMBIA
Trying too hard to stand out. It’s not an essay writing contest. Nor does the person with the most exhausting schedule win. Plenty of people at HBS have done a reasonable number of ordinary things exceptionally well. DEE LEOPOLD, HARVARD
There are no right or wrong essays; our essay topics are very open because we want to give candidates the opportunity to express themselves. However, they need to remember that they are applying to a business school, so there is no need to be too emotional. ANNA FARRÚS, SAÏD (OXFORD)
You’d be surprised how many people cut and paste essays from books. There’s nothing worse than that. (Also,) it is crucial to show that they know our program well. If we get the feeling that the application could just as readily be sent to another school, the candidate won’t make it past the first stage of our process. KATTY OOMS SUTER, IMD (SWITZERLAND)
The worst essays may be those that fail to answer the question, or those that make statements that can’t be supported by the person’s history. STEPHEN CHADWICK, LONDON
There are two frequent problems: The essays are far too long or they are filled with charts and graphs, which are inappropriate for essays. ALISON OWEN, SAÏD (OXFORD)
It is possible to recycle your essays as long as you do so intelligently. The reason for doing so—to save time and effort—is compelling enough that almost everyone will try to use the best essays in more than one application.
There are several situations that require you to make more of a change to a previously used essay than just to switch school names:
—To lengthen an essay, you may wish to include more examples, elaborate the examples you have already used, or even add additional main points.
—To shorten an essay, keep your major points but reduce your elaboration of them.