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A datadump vs an essay

August 29, 2017 by EssaySnark - Discusses Kellogg Leave a Comment

Go read this:

Everything You Need to Know About West Hollywood’s “Deputygate” Scandal

You’d think that an article with the word “scandal” in the title would be interesting.

Did you find that interesting?

Did you even get past like the third paragraph?

Surely there is a story somewhere in there. There seems to be all manner of intrigue and deception and drama. Heck, the very first paragraph had all kinds of salacious words. But the way it was written was OMG boring.

There was all sorts of data presented. But it wasn’t information. And it surely wasn’t interesting.

You don’t want your adcom reader to be either a) overwhelmed with all the facts that you’re tossing out, or b) to be so completely nonplussed by all of it that they yawn and walk away.

For those of you who’ve been paying attention, you might recall than not three weeks ago we were exhorting you to be specific.

It is definitely possible to go too far in the opposite direction.

Here’s the first chunk of that article (we’re skipping the first paragraph which was even more meaningless than this):

The ongoing saga on the third floor of West Hollywood City Hall reached a climatic ending last week, after the melodrama moved to a downtown Los Angeles courtroom. There, a jury had to decide whether Michelle Rex, the former assistant to Councilmember John D’Amico, was fired from her job as an act of retaliation.

Lawyers for both sides had spent two weeks catching jurors up on the backstory.

“Michelle Rex was never the problem,” city manager Paul Arevalo testified. “The [council deputy] program was the problem.”

When you’re writing your essays, the first objective is always clear communication.

That means including the information that the reader needs, at the time they need it.

With the very limited space that the adcoms are giving you for your essays, that also means being concise.

In that paragraph above, why is the writer bothering with details like “the third floor” of the courthouse?

Why do we even need to know that the case was transferred from West Hollywood to a downtown location?

How does any of that even matter in the context of the story about why some local politician was fired?

DID YOU EVEN KNOW THAT THAT’S WHAT THE ARTICLE WAS ABOUT?

We frequently get essays that are so convoluted and complicated that we just can’t figure them out.

What you start with at the beginning needs to flow all the way to the end.

There are some exceptions to that, such as with Kellogg essay 2 where they’re asking for two separate things: First, a story about how you changed, and then a story about how you want to change at Kellogg. In that case, the place you begin in the essay is almost definitely not going to be the place you end up. That type of essay has its own set of challenges, since it seems like you need to fit both chunks of content together, when they’re asking for them in one essay. In practice, it may not be workable to connect them explicitly.

But that’s the exception, and that’s not the point of our post today.

Today we want you to use your powers of analysis and discrimination. When you write your draft, set it aside, then come back to it again later. Take a holistic view of it. Starting at the beginning, go through and examine the facts that you’re including. What details are you mentioning? Are they needed for the story?

It’s much more common that a BSer writes an essay with no facts at all. The most frequent issue we see with MBA essays is that they are massive fluffbombs that threaten to float off into the distance and disappear over the horizon. An insubstantial nothingness is at least as bad a problem as an essay that’s been pelted with BBs and buckshot of randonmness, and it’s so weighted down with shrapnel of meaningless offshoot datapoints that it’s barely able to pull its crippled self across the roadway and out of the lane of travel.

(Please don’t write like that either. We’re allowed the indulgence of useless metaphors on the blahg because we’re trying to make a point. Don’t try to do that in your essays. Straightforward writing, that answers the question – that’s always the way to go with your drafts. We’re allowed some indulgence because hey, that’s one way we blow off the steam of frustration from all the hours of reading REALLY BAD ESSAYS.)

Too little detail is certainly a problem.

Too much and you risk turning a good idea into an #essayfail.

Filed Under: writing essays Bschools: Kellogg

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Next: ($) Telling the MBA adcom “I want to start a club when I’m a student there.” »

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Sometimes amused and often appalled by what candidates write in their MBA applications to top bschools, EssaySnark created this little blahg to share common mistakes. Learn from them and avoid making admissions directors laugh (or want to hurl) when they read your essays. If you are hoping to have your essay reviewed anonymously on the blahg for free, submit it for consideration.

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    The 2020 Berkeley-Haas MBA Application Guide - updated for the Class of 2023 application!
SnarkStrategies Guide for Berkeley Haas - refreshed and updated, with brainstorming exercises and structured maps to help you focus your stories!
   
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      The 2020 Stanford MBA Application Guide - for "what matters most" in your MBA application!
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What were we snarking about at this time in past years?

  • 2020: ($) essay critique! Meaningful leadership experiences...
  • 2020: ($) What to consider with your Kellogg (or other school's Rd 3 Flex) app: Recs, timing, optional essay
  • 2019: Avoiding the false positives: Worst case scenario when an admissions consultant steers you wrong
  • 2019: Is your GMAT good enough?
  • 2018: ($) Is a 710 GMAT enough to get in?
  • 2018: ($) If you took the GMAT while you were in college and now X years later you're applying for an MBA
  • 2017: If you get feedback from the adcom about your denied application
  • 2015: What you should NOT be working on at this stage of the process
  • 2015: ($) Continued from yesterday: When will Harvard release their MBA app? And which app should you do first?
  • 2014: Do you even know what an MBA is?
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