Even though we warned about this very issue just two weeks ago, we’re still getting essay after essay that says something like: In my experiences while working as a consultant, I have witnessed firsthand how the world of technology has affected business. This is a classic “telling” sentence. In your essays, you need to be…
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levieillard says
“Witnessed firsthand” is like “I saw it with my own two eyes”–it builds the credibility for the truth of whatever follows. That’s great. It can also be entirely irrelevant. There’s lots of true statements that don’t deserve the time of day in an admissions essay, and i sets the writer up an observer, not an actor, in the events that follow.
Maybe it’s possible to fit this into a story* of “I saw X, so I thought/felt Y, and did Z”. But even so, the focus of that sequence should be the Z, and how Z was accomplished, and what Z resulted in. The X and Y might be part of setting the scene, but should be budgeted as few words as possible, and “witnessed firsthand” is redundant. Using “witnessed” by itself is clear and concise, and saves you a word for something else that’s more of a value-add.**
* EssaySnark is probably a better judge of whether or not the X/Y/Z format works for any particular essay than levieillard!
** Did I just use value-add in a sentence? My MBA education must be sinking in! I have mixed feelings.
essaysnark says
Ha – “value-add” – you’ve drunk the bschool Kool-Aid!
You have some good comments here and you’re right, it may be worthwhile to open a story with a statement of what was witnessed – especially if, say, the BSer witnessed fraud, or maybe they witnessed a customer struggling to use the company’s product, or some other element that launches into their own story.
What we perhaps could’ve been more clear on is that these “I witnessed” statements in the drafts seen lately have comprised the entirety of the BSer’s story. Meaning, they say something about their career letting them witness XYZ, and then they move on to talking about their goals – and that’s it. If you’re going to present a story in an essay, it needs to be THE FULL STORY.
How to get there from here? Follow levieillard’s X-Y-Z example. 😀
EssaySnark