FAQ - Essays

I’m ashamed that it has been a month since I promised to write my Essay FAQ. Sorry! Well, you’ll see why it took me so long (it’s a LONG post… BRACE YOURSELF). Part of the reason it is so long is b/c I get so many questions about this -- so don't blame me -- blame those who are frequently asking the questions. ;)

Ah, the essays. The part of the application that we all love to hate…they are a powerful weapon on our side when wielded correctly, but are nonetheless the bane of an MBA applicant’s existence when words are not flowing freely and the deadlines are rapidly approaching. I like to break down the “essaying” process into three parts: preparing, drafting, and editing. As always, I want to add the disclaimer that this is just my advice and I’m sure there are many ways to go about writing essays that are equally successful for other applicants.

Preparing

• Make a list. It is very helpful to create a list of ALL the amazing (and even mundane) things you have done in the past 10 or so years. I would suggesting listing everything you can think of and then crossing off the ones that are least impressive. I’ll warn you that it is somewhat depressing when you realize you can reduce your entire life down to a (seemingly) short list of accomplishments but believe me, you’ll have some good stuff in there and you can use this list to identify your unique selling points and the common themes to thread through your stories.
• Choose your key messages. What do you want to convey in your essays? Ideally, I think you want to be able to marry the description of who you are with what the adcom would like to see in a business school students (focusing on either alone is potentially dangerous as you may find you have a disconnect). For me, I wanted to convey maturity to alleviate any concerns about my young-ish age and I wanted adcom to be able to identify my strengths. This helped me to figure out how to talk to the chosen items from my list. Good stories you can cross off several messages.
• Prep the essay. This is definitely a personal preference. I’m an outliner – looooove the outlines. Creating an outline of the main points for each essay is a good way to start. No matter how you go your preparation, it’s usually a good idea to organize your thoughts before diving in. This is especially important when you have a set of essays – you want to be able to look over the whole package and see if you have any holes (seeing the big picture, if you will).
• Strike a balance. Find a way to weave personal and professional stories into your writing. The former is a great way to give adcom a sense of the person behind the paper and the latter is important b/c, well, this is business school after all…. you want to be able to show an ability to accomplish something in the business world.
  

Drafting

• Show and tell. Make sure you illustrate why you are making your claims. If you are trying to convey that you are a young applicant with great leadership skills, describe an anecdote that bolsters this argument. You may not be able to tell a story for every point you want to make, but you do not want your entire essay to be unfounded generalizations.
• Be detailed. This is somewhat related to the first point. I think the more you are able to convey your passion and rationale for attending School X, the more the adcom at School X will imagine you in their midst (and this is likely a good thing!) Of course, what you write needs to make sense. I wrote about clubs I wanted to join that would support my career or personal development. I felt this was a way to show adcom that I realize this MBA deal is a two-way street – sure, I will come away with a great education but I also plan to give something back to the school community in return.
• Timing. It took me 1-2 weeks to draft an essay and another week to refine it. I mostly worked on the weekends. Figure out how long you will need based on how quickly you work and what your availability will be. I would suggest leaving some additional leeway in your timeline b/c as we all know, life happens. Given the importance of the essays, I would suggest not waiting until the last minute to finish them up.
  

Editing

• Revisit the essays before they go out for review. Before you go out asking people to look at your essays in depth, I would suggest revisiting them yourself. I found that my first essays were miles behind my last essays (practice makes perfect, right?) Which leads me to my next point…
• Don’t be afraid to rewrite your essays. You may find that you need to take those first essays, or any that no longer seem to sparkle, and polish them up a little. At worst, you go back to the original if your re-do doesn’t work out the way you thought it would, and at best, you have another highly-tuned essay.
• Find the right mix of reviewers. You will likely want a few different kinds of reviewers. You want someone who can check your grammar, someone who can tell you if you are appropriately representing your personality, and someone who can do a thorough content review (ideal for the last one is someone who has done an MBA or is in the process of applying as well and therefore knows the system).
• Create a review strategy. This is a highly personal choice but you may want to figure out the best way to field your essays for review (especially if, like me, you are trying to push a lot through the pipeline at once). For instance, I decided to send ALL my reviewers my first decent draft of my HBS core essays (i.e., the main essays that were asking “Why MBA? Why now? Describe your accomplishments, etc.” but not the ones specific to the school like the Ethics essay). I took this feedback and incorporated it into all my other essays as I drafted them. I knew I could not continue sending all my essays to all my reviewers (well, I could, but I have a feeling I would have gotten marginal returns as fatigue set in), so, I sent each set of essays – a set defined as the group of essays for one school – to one or two reviewers and just asked them to do a thorough review on that set. This seemed to work fairly well.
• Follow the directions. Honestly, I was that person who would not even go one word over the limit stipulated by the schools. I hear that most schools go by the rule of +/- 10% on word limits... anything less and they’ll wonder why you don’t have anything to say and any more and you clearly are violating the directions. If the schools asks for 1.5 line spacing with Times New Roman 11 points font, make sure you do that. I highlighted the directions in red and put it at the top of every essay as I started writing as a reminder (I took that off before I submitted them though). Why give the reader any reason to be annoyed with you?

OK – so this was obviously the longest post ever (I feel like I have said this many times in the past... hmm... I really should work on being more succinct). Frightently enough, there are probably quite a few more points that could have been added. However, I refer you to my fellow bloggers for those -- they also have great ideas on this topic! However, I think the length of this post is appropriate b/c the essays really are the keystone of the MBA applicant’s candidacy, in my opinion. This is your best chance to make the adcom remember you and form an emotional attachment to you (at least enough to invite you for an interview to find out more)!

Happy essay-ing to the future MBA applicants out there!