Today we would like to offer a handful of essay pointers in brief in order to help applicants avoid common pitfalls as they gear up for the Round Two deadlines. While we should caution that every applicant is unique and that some of these tips may not apply to everyone, we wanted our readers to have an introduction to some of the basic strategies they should be employing. As always, contact Clear Admit directly for more tailored advice to your candidacy.
1. Remember your reader. In application essays and resumes, applicants often get caught in the technicalities of their work, losing their reader in jargon. Keep it simple in order to make your discussion easy for your non-specialist audience to understand. Such clarity will help the reader to appreciate the nature and significance of your work.
3. Focus on fully realized successes. In approaching essays about an accomplishment or achievement, applicants should focus on stories and projects in which a positive outcome has been accomplished or is ensured, as potential successes are not actual ones. Talking about a project that is ongoing or that is just starting to come together will not be as meaningful as one in which an applicant has already displayed leadership, initiative and creativity in accomplishing a goal. Though ultimate impact may have not yet been observed (an example being that increased profit has yet to be realized), one’s goals in the project should already have been attained (meaning, for example, that an applicant already built and motivated a team to achieve the desired end).
4. Think strategically when delving into anecdotes that are highly personal. While breaking up with your college sweatheart may have had some impact on who you are today, you’ll want to be careful about using personal matters as the basis for an essay. While there are certainly exceptions, we find that examples from the professional sphere or from extracurriculars typically make for stronger, and more compelling, essays, as they speak to the things that the admissions committee cares the most about, including qualities and skills that relate to professional success.
5. Keep it current. In considering which examples to explore in an application essay, one should choose college and post-college experiences to elaborate on, as these experiences will appear to have the most relevance for your application and provide the greatest insight into the person you will be on the campus of the MBA program. In other words, if your essays prominently feature stories from high school, you are likely making a strategic mistake. Younger applicants may find examples from college their strongest, as they may not have accrued the same leadership and teamwork experiences that older applicants with more work experience have. All applicants, though, should include at least one recent story in their set of essays.
6. Put yourself at the center. In talking about your future goals or in elaborating on your work experience to date, you will want to put yourself in the picture, indicating what you would like to do in the short and long term or what role you specifically played in the various projects or assignments at work. Your application essays are meant as an opportunity to provide the adcom with greater insight into your candidacy and what sort of business person you are and will be in the future. Thus, elaborating on what others have done or talking generally about the state of your industry of choice will not appear a meaningful discussion unless you can demonstrate how the material relates to you and pertains to your goals and interests.
7. Follow the guidelines. Many times applicants attempt to tweak the font size, spacing, or margins in their application essays in an attempt to stay within the various schools’ page limits. The admissions committee, however, will not be fooled. Rather than playing with the formatting, focus on making your discussion clear and concise.
Best of luck to everyone working on their R2 applications! For personalized advice and counseling, send your resume to info@clearadmit.com and set up a free initial chat with one of our admissions counselors.
*Some programs, like Harvard Business School do not explicitly ask applicants to explain their fit with/interest in HBS itself. As such, when it comes to Harvard our comments about ‘specifics’ apply to the stories the applicant describes, but not to a ‘why HBS’ argument.
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