Last season we had a slew of Round 2 BSers who were reapplying to bschool. No problem with that, plenty of schools are very open to reapplicants. The problem occurred with the essays.
In multiple cases, these applicants hit us up for help really really late – like, less than a week before their deadline. (The most distressing of all is that ALL of them had signed up for stuff soon enough to make it happen and then frittered off the opportunity.) We got their essays and were like, “No, no, and no.” Then we got the revised essays and still no. All that we could think was, “Dang, how do we say this?”
These people were never going to make it into the schools they were targeting. Across the board, they were making the same mistakes as before.
Now obviously, not all the reapplicants we’ve ever worked with are procrastinators to such a severe degree. Lots and lots of them did just fine last year.
But more than once last season, we had to deliver the news to BSers that not only were their essays really bad, but that we believed they would be changing their fate irrevocably if they proceeded with the app.
That if they applied with essays that shoddy, they were making mistakes that could be un-recoverable-from.
It’s fine to mess up your application one time. Lots of people do, then they fix the mistakes and try again, and they make it.
It’s even possible to get in as a 3-peat. Your first app sucked, your second app sucked less but there was too much competition, your third app finally you get your act together and show IMPROVEMENT and the adcom finds a spot for you.
But some mistakes, you keep trying too many times and you’re just sealing the deal: You’re making it impossible for the adcom to ever accept you.
You’re going to get blacklisted.
It’s not a strong place to be operating from if you’ve already tried two times and failed. You have set the bar VERY high. It’s difficult to turn that momentum around and get an admit on app number 3.
So we told them that. We told them, “Hey, BSer, you’re not ready. It’s Round 2. The stakes are high. The essays are bad. This app is unlikely to succeed.”
We told them to step back from the essays and think about it – and that maybe they should hold off on applying, and wait till Round 1, and try again then. Because if they did that, then they would no longer be a reapplicant. They would be considered a fresh applicant and not be subject to the same challenges that a reapplicant is.
These applicants all came from crowded candidate pool. They were all already “older.”
But they’d already gone through the expense and heartache of applying and getting rejected the previous year. They’d then tried to do things right by enlisting the ‘Snark for assistance. But they had failed to take advantage of that opportunity, and were sitting facing down the same fate as last time.
Sometimes EssaySnark’s crystal ball is crystal clear. Sometimes it’s cloudy. We wish we could say we had some doubt about this, but in all of these cases, we were convinced. There was no way this app with this profile for this person as a reapplicant to this school was going to turn out for them.
Why go through that heartache again?
Unfortunately these BSers flailed ahead, and ended up getting rejected at all those schools that we told them their apps were not ready for.
Today’s post is meant as a cautionary tale.
If you’ve started working with EssaySnark, PLEASE GET BUSY AND DO THE WORK. You need to put in the EFFORT and it has to happen sooner than January.
If we have to tell you this awful opinion later on, we’re not going to be happy about it – not only because it sucks when we can’t be more encouraging, but especially because we’re telling you NOW. That whole “I told you so” feeling is AWFUL. Don’t make us feel that. We want you to succeed!!!
If you’re sitting there thinking, “What can I do to make sure I get in this year?”, well, we’re telling you!
Get your butt in gear and make it happen. We are on your side – we want it to work for you – but YOU need to DO THE WORK if you want it, too. Us wanting it for you is useless.
Please.
We beseech you!
Start now!
One good-news story from last year’s reapplicants: After casting about trying for multiple reach schools when his essays were just not coming together at that level, one of these BSers put a stake in the ground and really WORKED on his application to his last school — and he got in!!! Sometimes it just takes multiple flavors of failure before you decide you’ve had enough and are ready to do what it takes.
Tell us what you think.