EssaySnark

Good first drafts aren’t written. They’re assembled.

by EssaySnark - Discusses 1 Comment

Wanna know the longest route to a solid first draft?

Open MS Word and start typing.

That’s guaranteed to end up making this process rocky and difficult.

When you begin the task of answering the question that a particular school is asking, there is NO WAY you will know what you want to say.

Sure, you can start typing, and see what comes out. If you keep typing — and keep referring back to the question, as a reminder of what you’re supposed to be talking about — you may, eventually, come around to something worth saying.

But there will be a lot of useless words spit out onto your screen before you get there.

It’s just how things go.

Any good writer in the world will tell you, first drafts suck. That’s what they’re designed for. You don’t know what you’re saying or how you want to say it. The task of a first draft is to get the ideas captured on the page, and then you can start the real work of figuring out what it means and what actually belongs.

Most good writers don’t even harbor any fantasies that their first drafts will be usable. They KNOW that they’ll need to come back for revision. They EXPECT to do massive rewriting, and then are ready to throw writing away. Whole chunks of it. Sentences. Paragraphs. Sometimes the full draft.

You can do your MBA essays that way if you want.

Or, you can just write out a draft, and run spellcheck, and submit it.

Both methods are pretty much guaranteed to be doomed. If you submit a first draft, then we have a confidence level approaching the value of 0 that the essay will invite an adcom reviewer to look twice at you. That’ll put you on a fast path to rejection. If you start your first draft by just writing-writing-writing, then we also guarantee that that draft will be near-useless as a final document that appropriately answers the question and demonstrates who you are as an applicant. That first draft will need to be rewritten. Probably from scratch. As in, a start-over File->New clean-slate rewrite.

So what other options are there? How else would you do it, if you’re not writing a first draft of your essay?

The other method of building your MBA apps is to construct your essays.

You take the first question you’re answering.

You parse it out to its separate components.

You tackle each one of them individually — through a process of research and discovery and self-reflection.

Take Columbia’s Essay 1 on career goals:

This special nugget of advice is offered to our blahg members. If you’re seeing this message and you have an active blahg membership then please log in to view the Columbia essay question breakdown. Otherwise consider becoming a member!

(end special nugget o’ Columbia essay 1 dissection)
 

Really what we’re saying here, Brave Supplicant, is break down the question, examine each piece individually, and then go off and think about it for awhile.

Taking each prompt apart and answering each element separately is super important. If you don’t do that, then you’re nearly guaranteed to be writing an essay that is half-baked and unfinished.

Each part that you answer needs significant attention, and brainstorming, and planning. It’s not a matter of dividing the page into sections and blah-blah-blahhing for each part of the question for a couple hundreds words, and you’re done.

Crafting out the nuggets from your background, and polishing up each individual item you will be presenting, will let you have these bite-sized chunks of material that you can then ASSEMBLE into a meaningful whole for your reader.

If you do the groundwork and lay the foundation in this manner, you will have significantly more ammunition at your disposal to apply to all the different essay questions that will be thrown at you this season.

(And oh yeah, shameless plug: The Complete Essay Package guides you through this whole process! Start to finish! We help you with the exercises for brainstorming and the techniques for examining your ideas in separate contexts, so that you have the building blocks you need to tackle all of the essays you’re trying to write assemble this season.)

When you have your first drafts assembled, then they will still need some revision. They are not going to be “done” just because you built them up from those nuggets. But they’re much more likely to be much closer to your target than if you’d just freewheeled it with randomness. Then, you’ll have a shot at making that multidimensional presentation to the adcom we’ve been advocating.

 
 
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by EssaySnark

 
“No compulsion in the world is stronger than the urge to edit someone else’s document.”

– H. G. Wells

source — and for further reading: “Friends don’t let friends…”

($) Optional essay for low GPA: “I have proven myself since then by excelling at my job.”

by EssaySnark

We see statements like that quite a bit in optional essays about poor academic performance in college and we had thought we’d done a post explicitly discussing it, but it appears that we have not. This one on “My abilities did not match my performance” touches on it. However it deserves a post of its…

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“An MBA from School X will give me credibility.”

by EssaySnark

“Additionally, I want the clout of the Columbia MBA to establish credibility…”

So ended the first paragraph of a BSer’s career goals essay.

Let’s step back a moment.

Why do three initials after your last name mean you’re credible?

All it means is that you jumped through enough hoops to get an adcom to say yes to you. It says nothing about your merits as an individual or your character. It might say something about your accomplishments in the world and in academics, since that’s what admissions officers value in the process. But all it means is you’ve been rubber-stamped by The System.

The school that you go to matters. Yes. It does.

But it most definitely does not matter nearly as much as you think it does. As MBA holders from Esteemed American Business Schools ourselves, we can tell you: It does not matter.

You want an MBA to go to Silicon Valley and raise some funding for your startup idea?

Did you know that the MBA is seen with scorn among many old-crusty techies? That anyone having an MBA is instantly viewed with skepticism? Especially the young whipper-snapper types?

Guy Kawasaki, UCLA Anderson grad, says that when he’s valuing a startup, he adds $500,000 to the valuation for each engineer on the team, and subtracts $250,000 for each MBA.

Yes, the tech industry is now hiring massive numbers of bschool grads each year. But that’s only because the tech industry is now a behemoth. It’s matured. It’s not the scrappy nimble red-blooded thing that it used to be. If you’re wanting an MBA in order to go into Big Tech, then you are NOT about braving a risky path in life. You’re not asking for others to take a risk on you. You’re playing it safe. What’s the need for getting vouched for? This idea of the MBA from a certain school bestowing credibility is faulty.

No – please do not say this. At least not in your apps. You may secretly believe this to be true of the world, that an MBA from A Certain Important School will pave your way to success later on, but it’s not going to add even a whit of value in your application process. You need to be pitching them on YOUR abilities and how you will do good in the world. The school’s reputation is NOT what you should be pitching back to them.

If you want to go to School #1, or School #10, on whatever system or in the eyes of whichever judge whose opinion you care about, because you feel that you need to impress that person based on your credentials, then fine. Do it. But don’t talk about it in your apps.

And just because it’s a priority for you to go to an Important School does not mean that that school is the right one for you.

How do you know you’re a fit to the place? How do you know you’ll be happy there?

It’s two full years of your life. We can assure you, the school’s reputation and ranking will matter NOT AT ALL when you’re in the experience of going through the process of learning stuff with your bschool peers. All it means is you’ll be surrounded by more, or fewer, people who are fixated more, or less, on these superficial things.

Should this matter in the context of which schools to apply to?

Well sure, you want to go to the best school you can. Anybody wants that. It’s obvious that that’s going to be a key objective for all BSers.

However, whenever this comes up in conversation with someone, it’s almost always because we’ve given them the feedback that we don’t really think that a top-tier brand-name school is going to be feasible for them, based on whatever elements of their profile that they’ve shared with us. We could be wrong – we don’t want you to NOT apply to somewhere you’re in love with just because we don’t think it’ll work out – but if you’re gung-ho on the idea of getting an MBA, then picking only these brand-name schools is not a sound strategy. Especially not if there are gaps and weaknesses and risks in your profile that you’re not facing up to and dealing with. (Especially not if you’re a reapplicant with all these gaps and holes…)

Instead, figuring out WHY YOU WANT AN MBA is super important.

An MBA from a high-rep school on its own is not going to give you success in life.

Yes, in certain circles it’s going to make certain people impressed by you when they hear you graduated from That School.

But then it’s going to be UP TO YOU TO GET THE DEAL DONE.

If you have not brought sufficient “GET THE DEAL DONE”-ness to the equation NOW, in the process of trying to GET IN to one of these schools, then sorry, we hate to be so blunt but we just don’t see it happening down the road, either.

A piece of paper framed on the wall from Important School is not the answer to life. It’s not what’s going to make the biggest difference in how you experience success and happiness in the future.

The MBA is what you make of it.

And: Why we react so negatively to someone focusing on brand or “prestige.”

And: How much does MBA ranking really matter?

Same thing with “the network.”

“The network” is not going to give you diddly squat in life. If you’re already a go-getter who goes and gets stuff, then sure, going to a school with an extensive network can be awesome.

But you HAVE a network today. You’ve gone to some college or another that graduated some quantity of undergrads out into the world around the same time that you graduated. Have you used this network before? No, it’s not an MBA network, but so what? There’s all these people out there with a shared experience, theoretically also motivated to help each other out. Have you reached out to them before? Have you given anything back?

We understand that in certain cultures, more prominently in Asia, the school that you go to matters for quite a bit. We know this.

But that does not change the fact that you might have significant trouble getting into one of those schools if you don’t change the way you’re approaching this.

Just our thought for the day, BSer.

If you’re qualified and capable of getting into a top-tier business school, then that automatically tells us you’re qualified and capable of going off to do all sorts of amazing things in life. You don’t need the “credibility” of a fancy-pants school.

And if you’re qualified and capable but you DON’T manage to get into a top-tier business school, then THAT STILL means you’re qualified and capable of achieving similar success.

The MBA can open doors. But so can the hustle.

($) Word choice matters.

by EssaySnark

We had a BSer send in an essay last season where they were trying to convey how they’re ready to pursue their stated future career goals based on current work experience. They had a statement that said: “My participation nearly from the start of the deployment was very helpful to become acquainted with the business…”…

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Explaining the Essay Ideas App Accelerator

by EssaySnark

We came across an interview on Knowledge @ Wharton with a speechwriter from the Obama White House who had this to say about her writing process:

“A colleague once said to me, ‘You know Sarah, you just kind of spill out a bunch of total nonsense on a page and then spend a week editing it,’ which was harsh but he was right to some extent. I’ll take the transcript that I’ve made of the meeting [with Mrs Obama about what she wanted to say in her speech] and add my own notes and ideas and things to it. That’s just really stream of consciousness notes. Then I’ll start arranging that into an outline, then into specific paragraphs. Then I’ll go through and edit each of those paragraphs. I sometimes get stuck, and when I get stuck I just move on. I don’t allow myself to get writer’s block because sometimes I won’t know what I’m trying to do in paragraph three, but I’ll know what paragraph four is going to say so I can go and write that. There are many times when I’ve written the end of the speech before the beginning. I’m not a super linear writer, but I do stick to an outline that’s very well-structured so I know exactly where I’m going.”

(emphasis added)

Today we’re going to talk to you about outlining, and how super valuable it can be as part of your process of developing strong essays.

The main benefits of outlines before drafts are:

  • It’s more efficient
  • You can test out your ideas before committing to them
  • You can see the structure that you’re trying to put shape to
  • You can more easily step back and evaluate your argument as a whole
  • It’s way less painful to throw away an outline and start over than it is a full draft

It’s much easier to redirect your essay strategy at the earliest stage, when you’re coming up with ideas — rather than discovering that you were off target later on, after you’ve sweated bullets (ha ha see what we did there?) writing out complete drafts that you have to throw away. EssaySnark’s Essay Ideas App Accelerator gives you critical input at the earliest stage of essay development, helping you define a strong scaffolding upon which you can best build out your messaging and theme. Starting with the Essay Ideas App Accelerator is the most efficient way to develop your strongest MBA essays.

The Essay Ideas App Accelerator does not tell you what your ideas should be. This isn’t about dictating your strategy. (Hint: Our school-specific essay guides can be invaluable in figuring out that part!) Instead, the Essay Ideas tutorial gives you insights on how to shape your topics into logical essays that flow. After studying the tutorial, you’ll submit your ideas (one school only, up to 500 words) for a personalized review from EssaySnark.

We always see great value in the Essay Decimator, since we get the (ahem) privilege of reading the first drafts, and then we see where the BSer gets to with revisions – and then we often later hear if they got in! The improvement from draft 1 to draft 2 and beyond is evident. Anecdotally, we’ll also share what one BSer said last season, after getting in to a Top Top School with a massive scholarship with essays that they’d gone through the Essay Decimator with us on, yet either getting an outright rejection or a waitlist from the other apps that they did on their own. So, yeah, the Essay Decimator can affect your outcomes, for sure.

However, just as much value if not more could be gained by a diligent BSer leveraging the Essay Ideas App Accelerator instead. It’s way cheaper, but the idea is the same:

What are you saying in this essay, and how are you saying it?

Today’s post is to introduce you to this App Accelerator — yet even more, it’s to suggest that you take time for outlines, before you start writing.

Outlines are your friend.

Outlines help you figure out what you’re trying to say, the cheap and easy* way.

 
 
 
 

*There is no such thing as “easy” in this business of applying to bschool. But you already knew that.

Special Feature: A Journey with One BSer this Season!

by EssaySnark

We’ve had the honor this season of being trusted to advise and support a number of reapplicants in their renewed attempts at getting into the schools that they are excited about. One such trying-again BSer we’ve known for several years now, and partly because of that long-term relationship and partly because we’ve gotten to know this person, and admire him, and know that he can share something others can benefit from, we extended an invitation for him to share his journey here on the blahg.

We also figured a new format might be a nice change of pace.

So, here is the first installment in our Future Success Story for the 2017 season!

Episode 1: What happened last year, and gearing up as a reapplicant

 

If any of you have questions for him, you’re invited to post in the comments.

We’re looking forward to following along with his journey through Round 1!

Disclaimer: The content produced for this series was provided as a contribution to the EssaySnark blahg in exchange for free EssaySnark consulting services. EssaySnark offered some ideas of what to present, however the BSer created this on his own. All opinion, advice, and ideas are his own (though obviously we believe he has good ones, or we wouldn’t have invited him to share!).