I always tell clients that the two most important components of their application are the essays and the letters of recommendation (LOR). Of course, everything you submit carries some weight, but the essays and LOR allow you to differentiate yourself from all the other superb candidates who have strong GMATs, impressive work experience, a solid academic record, and more than a few hints of leadership potential.
Although there’s no single way to approach essay writing, I advise clients to start fresh with each school. Sometimes you can recycle parts of an essay, but it’s rare that two schools phrase a prompt the same exact way, with the same word limits. For example, one of my clients tried to shoehorn Wharton’s “What do you hope to gain professionally from the Wharton MBA?” into Columbia’s “What are your career goals over the next 3-5 years and what, in your imagination, would be your long-term dream job?” Although the questions are similar, both addressing goals, they are framed differently, and the resulting essays require different approaches.
Too, a skilled admissions reader can often tell when an essay has been recycled. When I worked at the GSB, where the signature prompt for decades has been “What matters most?”, HBS was asking applicants to write a “three things” essay. Maybe some people successfully converted their HBS essay into a GSB essay, but a lot of people failed.
Once you’ve picked your schools, you may want to write down the prompts on a piece of paper or mobile notepad that you keep with you. Random ideas may pop into your head at odd moments, and you want to make sure to capture those thoughts, as they may prove valuable.
Now you’re sitting down staring at the screen, or maybe you prefer to draft using paper and pen. How do you begin writing? I usually start by highlighting key words in the prompt. Believe me, every word is there for a reason, and in many cases the entire admissions team spent hours debating whether to include or exclude a single word. And some years, the prompts that resulted from these meetings aren’t very good. For example, HBS tried an “introduce yourself to your classmates” prompt that probably produced a host of “my name is X/I grew up in Y/I went to college/now I work as a Z” essays that did not give admissions many insights into the individual applicants. Usually those prompts only stick around for a year, but if that happens to be the year you are applying, that’s the prompt you have to deal with. So first and foremost:
Answer the question
And if I could put that in flashing lights, I would. Even if you hate the prompt, even if everyone hates the prompt, it’s the hand you are dealt, and your only option is to respond or to decide not to apply to the school.
Next, don’t censor or self-edit as you write. Try to keep your tone conversational, as if you were writing a letter to a friend, and include whatever pops into your head. This technique often results in phrases or ideas that make your essay seem fresh and compelling, whereas if you keep asking yourself “is this what admissions wants to hear?” your essay will tend to sound flat and monotonous. Editing the essay to word count is never a problem; it’s much more important to get the words down so that you’ve got material to work with.
Some of the schools have essay prompts that often stymie people, and I’ll address those prompts in separate blog posts. HBS, the GSB WMM, and MIT Sloan’s letter are the most problematic in my experience; I’ll get to those first.
