Looking for some help with your bschool apps? GREAT! You’ve come to the right place. This purpose of this here blahg is to level the playing field, by providing practical, accurate information about bschool admissions to Brave Supplicants everywhere — even those who can’t afford the big ticket prices of “elite” admissions consulting.
We have lots of resources available for cheap, and free, guidance on your applications, however there are a few points to keep in mind if you’re going to seek out some input from the ‘Snark – here’s some tips on some of the factors that can help tip the scales towards the possibility of you getting a response to a request for free advice:
- Be polite. If you’re sending a request to get, like, a FREE essay review, then maybe you’d want to send, like a really NICE note with it. Like, with a “please” and a “thank you” (at, like, a minimum). And if we’ve never interacted before in any way then maybe you could even sort of do something like perhaps briefly introduce yourself. Otherwise it feels a little, oh what’s the word? (rude)
- Compliments work. In fact, you might even say they really work. Probably all the essays we’ve ever reviewed on our site came from people who said nice things about us. The ones that went into a black hole and the poor little Brave Supplicant was left hangin in the dark? Not so much. If you really want to ingratiate yourself to this here EssaySnark and get us to do something for you for free, say something NICE. Or funny. You might even try out your creativity on how you could address us. Like, you could say, “Dear EssaySnark m’lord” or “Dear Holiest of the Holies I Beseechest Thou EssaySnark.” If we’ve already met you, “Hey dude” or “Yo” might work just fine, but perhaps that’s a little too casual if we’ve not yet made the acquaintance*. It depends on who you are (and who you think we are). Bottom line? Yes, EssaySnark can be bribed. Say sweet things to us and we’re yours.
- Be brief. If you’re emailing, or submitting a request for free advice, don’t send us pages and pages. If you’re sending essays for review, they need to be within a reasonable range of the school’s target word count.
- Say “thank you” later. This one drives us batty. We spend hours (yes HOURS — or at least many grueling long minutes) reviewing your drivel work of art of an essay and we post it on this here blahg and… radio silence. Nothing in the comments. No email back to send the appreciation.Now we KNOW that oftentimes, what we say in our essay reviews is not what you expected to hear. Most people, we suspect, send over their essays thinking we’ll say how GREAT they are, how utterly FABULOUS, how yada yada yada best essay since Napolean Bonaparte! But then that’s not what they get. Like, hardly ever. No. We tell it like it is. Your essay was crap. Sorry. But remember the part about you sending it in ‘cuz you wanted to know? (Not to mention the part about you getting the benefit ouf our years of experience in a detailed and personal critique for ab-suh-lutely FREE.) We’d much prefer a cold Guinness draught as a gesture of your appreciation but we’ll take what we can get — and oftentimes we get exactly NOTHING back in return. (One person sent us a Starbucks gift card – that was pretty cool!) If we go to the effort of giving you feedback on your little piece of brilliance, have the common courtesy to acknowledge it. A simple email back will do. Manners, people. They will take you far in life.
- Really say “thank you.” Wanna know one of the most valuable things that you, Brave Supplicant, can do for this here EssaySnark? PARTICIPATE. What that means is, drop a comment on a post. Click the little “like” button on the Amazon product page of the strategy guide that you bought. Or talk us up on some internet forum somewhere. Tweet us. Show that you exist. INTERACT WITH US. This place would appear to be a ghost town based on the practically NO responsiveness from our audience — except that we look at the darn server logs and know that there’s a gazillion of you hovering around out there stalking us on them thar Interwebs. If you really want to say ‘thanks’ – whether it’s for a critique of your own essay or just a snide comment that we make that helps you out in your application strategy – make a note of it in some public venue or another! We still allow anonymous comments. It doesn’t hurt you to post one, does it?
- EVEN BETTER: HELP OTHER PEOPLE! If you use our services here, or buy one of our books on Amazon or Smashwords: PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW! Or hey, why not talk us up on one of those MBA applicant forums that you are stalking religiously every waking moment? If you think we suck, that’s OK. Please tell us! If you think otherwise, then we’d love to know that, too. Having somebody say SOMETHING about the value of the advice we offer will help us tremendously, because it will help OTHER BRAVE SUPPLICANTS find us. You know how that whole social networking stuff works. So, if you do your little part in clicking/commenting/friending/whatever, then it’ll boost our visibility in the Google ecosystem, and that will increase the chances that other lost souls wandering out there in MBA essay land might stumble across this stuff and be helped. (Yes, we recognize that you are oh-so-paranoid about “the competition” but get over it. It’s how the world works. Share the luv and it’ll come back to you.)
In case you didn’t already get it, the main reason for this here blahg is so that we could offer some honest, practical, actionable advice to all you frightened souls, in the hopes of maybe helping some people out in realizing their dreams.
This blahg was never meant to be a one-way street. Come out of the woodwork, you Brave Supplicants, and dive in! The water’s great!