EssaySnark

  • about
  • contact
  • help
  • sign up
  • login
CLICK FOR MORE!
  • Essay Questions
    • Harvard
    • Stanford
    • Wharton
    • Chicago Booth
    • Kellogg
    • MIT Sloan
    • Tuck
    • NYU Stern
    • Columbia
    • Yale SOM
    • Berkeley Haas
    • UVA Darden
    • Duke Fuqua
    • Michigan Ross
    • UCLA Anderson
    • Cornell
  • Strategy Guides
    • MBA Career Goals in Entrepreneurship
    • School-Specific MBA Application Guides
      • Harvard 2020 MBA Strategy Guide
      • Stanford 2020 MBA Strategy Guide
      • Wharton 2020 MBA Strategy Guide
      • Kellogg 2020 MBA Strategy Guide
      • MIT Sloan 2020 MBA Strategy Guide
      • Columbia 2020 MBA Strategy Guide
      • Chicago Booth 2020 MBA Strategy Guide
      • *MORE SCHOOL-SPECIFIC GUIDES HERE*
  • MBA Consulting
    • Free essay reviews
    • What stage are you in?
    • Military MBA
    • BIPOC Program
    • Testimonials & Reviews
    • Guest Posts
  • My SnarkCenter
    • My Strategy Guides
    • My Favorite Posts
    • Discounts & Offers

($) “My work is sensitive. How do I talk about it without divulging confidential information?”

November 27, 2018 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

This question comes up from Brave Supplicants in a variety of industries. Many candidates transitioning from the military have been on assignments that cannot be disclosed publicly due to the nature of the operation, the geographies involved, and/or the technologies being deployed. Consultants working on projects for big clients have access to proprietary details and corporate secrets and are subject to non-disclosure agreements. How do you share what you do with the adcom if you can’t talk about the projects you’re on?

This may even seem like a showstopper issue. We cajole the Brave Supplicants that we work with to present their biggest accomplishments and achievements (hint: our Accomplishments & Achievements App Accelerator is designed especially for this!!) and when your very best work has been on such a top-secret or NDA-gag-ordered project, what do you do? This can create such a helpless feeling when you’re just trying to come up with the best way to present to the adcom.

So here’s some advice if you find yourself in this situation when you’re looking at your material for essays in Round 2:

1. Remember what matters. What you did is ALWAYS more important than the project or where it occurred. Projects are not accomplishments. Being on a plum assignment or working for a big-name client is not what the adcoms care about. What you contributed — what you did in this situation — is far and away what counts in any situation.

(By the way, this is why it doesn’t matter if you don’t have brand-name companies on your resume or if you didn’t go to an elite institution for college. The adcoms care about what you have done with the opportunities you’ve been given — not that you are already in the club and have rubbed elbows with important muck-a-mucks in the past.)

When approached thoughtfully, we typically see BSers we work with come up with ways to capture the value that they brought to a project or assignment without the need to reveal identifying details.

However, this leads to a second bit of advice:

2. The adcoms can be trusted. In many cases, applicants do in fact choose to reveal certain information in their applications that they would never dream of revealing publicly, such as on social media. But that’s because this is a confidential process and the admissions reviewers understand that what people write in their apps is personal. While we’ve never seen any explicit language in the instructions for an MBA app that said that everything will be held in confidence, the nature of the process is such that admissions personnel know that things are sensitive. When an applicant talks about the experience of sexual assault that they lived through, or their family’s struggles with drug addiction, or other highly personal topics, they do so because they know that this information is not going to go outside of the admissions team. The same is true for revealing facts of your job. Obviously if something is really sensitive to a government or corporation, then you shouldn’t reveal it — but given #1 above, you also shouldn’t need to.

And finally, we’ll end with one additional point:

3. If you’re too cagey or coy it can interfere with communication. A really powerful essay is an intimate experience — intimate for you in writing it, and intimate for the reader in experiencing what you have written. If you get all cutesie in how you’re trying not to reveal the name of a company, for example — and yet that company is quite obvious based on what you’re saying about it — then that’s only going to interfere with the reading experience that the adcom has when they go through what you’ve written. As an example, if you worked on a presidential campaign in 2016, but for some reason you think you shouldn’t mention whose it was because you don’t want to alienate a reader who’s in the opposite party, and yet the outcome of that election is key to the story…. Then it would sound strange for you not to mention that you worked for Hilary Clinton. If you’re trying too hard to not name the name, then it just seems silly, and it calls way too much attention to the whole gimmick of not naming it. When the reader can totally figure out what you’re talking about — like in a story about a military operation where you were tasked with infiltrating the compound of a key enemy leader in 2011, but you don’t actually state who this leader was… This just ends up calling way more attention to it than necessary. Either the name of the company or the nature of the mission isn’t the most important part of the story, or it is in fact a key part, and the reader will already know the story or the company just because it was a big story that everyone knows, so you may as well be upfront and name it because otherwise it’ll look odd and the reader will wonder.

And the first rule of essays is you don’t want the reader to wonder.

The adcoms take privacy and confidentiality seriously and we’ve never heard of any type of breach of trust. That being said, if you choose to not name the client, it would be fairly easy – just pare back the details (“a leading consumer products company facing an unprecedented crisis” or whatever). The main issue with that is your reader would be left guessing at just how severe the situation was, so you wouldn’t have quite the “oomph” in being able to show the environment you had to work in or how important it was for your team to do something extreme to help them.

But either can work, and there’s no risk to naming, it’s not violating some expectation that the reader would have for you to keep things un-named, and it’s also totally fine if you feel it’s important to not be specific. Just make the story clear and keep the focus on what value you provided, and we’re sure you’ll get your key points across.

Filed Under: writing essays

« Previous: Success Story! A post-MBA retrospective (part 3)
Next: ($) Embroider it on a pillow. »

So who the heck is EssaySnark, anyway?!

We're the snarky experts in MBA admissions!

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.

Want EssaySnark's personal assistance with your MBA applications? Start with our menu of consulting services and please read the Help FAQ to learn how we operate. Still have questions after doing all that? Email Team EssaySnark at gethelpnow at essaysnark dot com.

Good luck on your apps, Brave Supplicant!

Tell us what you think. Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Sign up for the 'Snark via email

Enter your address to get weekday blahg posts by email.

UPCOMING MBA APP DEADLINES

  • INSEAD Round 4
    in 1 month, 0 weeks, 0 days, 8 hours
  • INSEAD Jan '22 intake Rd 1
    in 1 month, 1 week, 3 days, 8 hours
  • INSEAD Jan '22 Intake Rd 2
    in 2 months, 4 weeks, 0 days, 8 hours
  • (expected) HBS Class of 2024 app requirements released
    in 3 months, 1 week, 4 days, 9 hours
  • (expected) Columbia J-Term/ED app to open
    in 4 months, 1 week, 2 days, 9 hours
   
From a BSer January 2020:
"love the guide books!"


CLASS OF 2023 MBA APPLICATION STRATEGY GUIDES

     
    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!
   
    The 2020-2021 NYU Stern MBA Application Guide that covers the main essay, the EQ Endorsement and Pick Six!
SnarkStrategies Guide for NYU - discusses your requirements for the Class of 2023 essays!
   
    The 2020-2021 Columbia MBA Application Guide
SnarkStrategies Guide for Columbia Business School for 2020-2021 applications
   
    The 2020 Harvard MBA Application Guide - completely overhauled and updated for the coronavirus era!
SnarkStrategies Guide for Harvard Business School!
   
    The 2020-2021 Duke Essay Guide - covers the 25 Random Things essay and all the rest too!
SnarkStrategies Guide for Duke Fuqua - up to date for the current season!
   
    The 2020-2021 MIT Essay Guide covers the org chart, the contacts for two references, and additional tips for the cover letter and 'introduce yourself' video -- and everything else you need to know!
SnarkStrategies Guide for MIT Sloan MBA - totally revised for the Class of 2023!
   
    The 2020-2021 Tuck Essay Guide has been refreshed with latest insights and advice for your essays about "investing generously" and "why Tuck"!
SnarkStrategies Guide for the Dartmouth Tuck MBA - completely overhauled for 2020, to help you demonstrate how you are nice, aware, etc stuff!
   
    The Yale SOM MBA Application Guide for Class of 2023 candidates!
SnarkStrategies Guide for Yale SOM - updated for 2020-2021
   
    The 2020-2021 Chicago Booth MBA Application Guide - ready to go to support your Class of 2023 essay strategy!
SnarkStrategies Guide for Chicago Booth for this year's MBA app!
   
    The 2020 Wharton MBA Application Guide - even more advice on how to get to a win with those essays!
SnarkStrategies Guide for The Wharton School - with new tips for 2020!
   
    The 2020 Kellogg Essay Guide - with a full methodology to identify your 'lasting impact' and your 'values' -- plus tips on 2020 world events and applicability to your essays!
SnarkStrategies Guide for Kellogg MBA - updated and revised for the new realities of 2020!    
      The 2020 Stanford MBA Application Guide - for "what matters most" in your MBA application!
SnarkStrategies Guide for Stanford GSB for the Class of 2023
   
    The 2020-2021 UCLA Anderson MBA Application Guide - updated for Class of 2023 on "impact"!
SnarkStrategies Guide for 
UCLA
   
   

Brave Supplicants' latest reviews on The 'Snark


Apr 10, 2020
by George on EssaySnark
Great Starting Point

I thought getting over the GRE/GMAT hurdle was fairly straightforward--disciplined study then test execution... Read more

Apr 10, 2020
by George on Single Shot Express MBA Essay Review
Worth Every Penny

I used the Single Shot Express to decimate essay #1 at my first-choice school. Paired with the school... Read more

Feb 9, 2020
by KA on Waitlist Assist
Committed

You continue to blow me away with your commitment to us BSers! Thanks again for everything. It's been... Read more






Not sure where to begin with EssaySnark?
Our Snark Selector
will tell you!



What were we snarking about at this time in past years?

  • 2020: ($) What about Round 3?
  • 2018: Good luck today if you're hoping for Harvard!
  • 2017: ($) You got the interview!! So what are you going to wear???
  • 2017: ($) How will Round 2 go for international MBA applicants to U.S. bschools? [UPDATED]
  • 2016: ($) The other school that may still be viable for an app this season.
  • 2016: ($) Applying to bschool right now is foolish. Unless you're thinking of ...
  • 2015: A reminder of what to expect with Harvard interview invites tomorrow
  • 2015: Does it matter who the dean is?
  • 2014: Entrepreneurship at Columbia: One student's report
My Tweets

See the Top U.S. Business Schools on a Map!


EssaySnark is currently available! We're accepting new clients! Standard turnarounds apply. If you're in a hurry, Speedy Review is available!

EssaySnark® is a registered trademark. All content copyright © 2010–2021 Snarkolicious Press · Privacy Policy

Where should you start with EssaySnark?

Which EssaySnark service is right for you? Answer a few questions to find out!

This field must be set to Everyone - then in the Settings -> HTML -> After Fields screen there's JavaScript to hide it.
Sending