($) essay critique: Wharton “What do you hope to gain professionally?”

This is supposed to be the final day of our recent Writing Week (post 1 here if you want to catch up!) however today we’re going to veer off in another direction and post an essay critique for Wharton. This was sent in by a Brave Supplicant recently and we got another one that we’re hoping to get to soon also — and you can try too if you want! We have an opportunity for you to submit a draft for consideration for a freebie review here on the blahg if you’re up for it — though our ability to post these is becoming fast constrained by those approaching deadlines. For guaranteed, detailed, personal, and PRIVATE feedback our Essay Decimator is the answer!

Today’s essay is for Wharton Essay 2 which goes like this:

What do you hope to gain professionally from the Wharton MBA?

Here’s what we got from this brave Brave Supplicant.

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Here’s where we post the actual draft that this BSer put together for Wharton with commentary on whether it’s working or not!
 
 

 
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Hopefully these comments aren’t completely depressing for the BSer who sent this draft in. We really appreciate that you did so and we hope that you are able to take the remarks as intended: To allow you to see greater opportunity, to understand where there is a lack of clarity in certain sentences in that opening, and to help you identify more opportunities to really pitch the school. You’re totally thinking about things the right way, but the way you’re expressing your ideas is not totally clear. It’s not bad as far as early drafts go, but it’s not quite ready for primetime for such a competitive school. Based on what you shared of your profile, it looks like you might have a shot since you’ve got elements of differentiation compared to the typical pool, but there’s also marked weakness on academics that has us concerned. This means the essays take on even more importance!

If you haven’t picked it up yet:

 

So that’s a wrap on Writing Week — now it’s all about the writing, and just getting it done!

For anyone feeling panicked about the project you’ve undertaken: We’ll be around reading essays all weekend in case you want to hit us up for some help with your apps!