We don’t publish sample essays for your own benefit, and now we have science to back that policy up

We have never published sample essays on the blahg.

We also encourage you not to read others’ essays even if they make them available to you.

As we have cautioned umpteen times before, reading other people’s essays will not make it any easier for you to write yours.

And, there’s never any guarantee that someone who got in to a top school was admitted because of their essays.

It’s possible (not common but possible) to have craptastic essays and still make it in.

And, the importance of quality essays is widely variable by school. Some schools can be fairly easily swayed by an excellent essay, even in overcoming some significant flaws in a profile.

Some schools are so GMAT-rabid that they won’t really care if the essays are only mediocre.

(Truly craptastic essays won’t make it in anywhere. We were being flippant a few sentences above with such an assertion.)

Anyway, every now and then, someone does come along, usually a newcomer to Snarkville, and they ask, “Can I please see an example?”

We’re here to tell you once again a vehement “No.”

It won’t help you.

And now we have science to back it up.

Behold, from researchers at Harvard Kennedy and UC-Berkeley:

Discouraged by Peer Excellence: Exposure to Exemplary Peer Performance Causes Quitting

Also saved on our servers in case that link ever breaks

Some notable quotes:

“Exposure to other peoples’ excellent essays undermined people’s sense that they were capable of producing essays that were as good as those to which they had been exposed” (p. 7)

“Reading and assessing excellent essays, relative to poor essays, caused discouragement by peer excellence. “(p. 6)

“Being exposed to peers’ excellent performance makes people feel less capable of performing at the level of those peers. This changed belief appears to decrease student performance.” (p. 7)

What we do offer are actually reviewed essays — drafts submitted for the purpose of public snarking. By definition, we only publish those that need help. There have been one or two submissions over the years that were so good, we chose not to publish them, and instead only spoke in roundabout terms on what the BSer did well, to benefit them and everyone else. Here’s the full category of such snarking so that you can dig through and learn.

We know that other MBA admissions consultants do publish examples of “good” MBA essays. If you’ve been coming around even half a second of your life, you have already figured out that EssaySnark helps our clients get results because we do not do things the way other consultants do.

Thank you to Dr. Rogers and Dr. Feller for this research.

Finally: If you clicked on that link to the scientific study up above and immediately clicked away, here’s the article on Medium that first alerted us to the research . In case that is more accessible and better in your comfort zone. Though we’d also encourage you to go back and read the actual study. It may be mentally more taxing than you’re used to, but it is a great skill to have, to deal with actual research papers — especially when you’re claiming you want to go to grad school!

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