miscellaneous

Quick application dos and don’ts

August 16, 2017 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

DO: Complete your app dataset early – it will take more time than you expect!

DO: Proofread carefully, including cross-checking dates and data across your resume and transcripts!

DO: Follow each school’s instructions, and don’t assume that the way one school does it is the same as how any other one will!

DO: Request a waiver for the app fee early if you qualify for one! This usually includes U.S. military (active duty and veteran) plus alumni from TFA, TFI, TFC, the Peace Corps, and a few others – check with your school!

DO: Ask admissions if you have a question! This year we’ve been spotting a high number of errors in different schools’ app forms. If something does not make sense, it could be a mistake — or, if enough applicants get confused by it, then it’ll be useful feedback for the admissions ops team, so that they can change the wording or add more instructions! Always ask if you’re unsure of what they want!!

DON’T: WRITE YOUR ANSWERS IN THE APPLICATION FIELDS IN ALL CAPS! IT’S LIKE YOU’RE SHOUTING AT THE ADCOM. IT’S REALLY ANNOYING AND THEY WON’T LIKE IT.

DON’T: Use exclamation points! They almost NEVER belong in an application or an essay! They just DON’T!

School-specific tips are also available in My SnarkCenter! Enter your School Targets and then scroll down to see EssaySnark’s latest observations on common issues and some advice based on what we’re seeing others do with their essays this season.

Got any MBA app tips to suggest to your fellow BSers? LEAVE ‘EM IN THE COMMENTS!

Make Your Essays Great Again

July 4, 2017 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

In honor of the founding of our great country of America, we offer you this broadcast from Snarkville today, Independence Day. We hope you’re out there having barbeques and picnics and parades, all American Brave Supplicants! The Fourth of July is traditionally our YOU NEED TO GET STARTED ON YOUR ESSAYS, STAT!! milestone, however you can knuckle down on all of that stuff tomorrow. For today, enjoy the fireworks! And we will leave you with this little speech, adapted and modified from its source , which seemed appropriate in honor of the season.

Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans, and people of the world: Thank you.

We, the citizens of Snarkville, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild the essays and to restore their promise for all Brave Supplicants.
Together, we will determine the course of your essays and your apps for the season to come.

You will face challenges. You will confront hardships. But you will get the job done.

Every July Fourth, we gather on these steps to say the same thing: Get started on your essays.

Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring knowledge from one snarky blahgger in Snarkville out to the anonymous internet, but we are transferring knowledge to this computer screen, and giving it to you, the Brave Supplicants.

Starting right here, and right now, this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.

It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across Snarkville. This is your day. This is your celebration. And this, the United Snark of America, is your country.

What truly matters is not which school you choose to apply to, but whether those schools are excited by your essays. July 4th, 2017, will be remembered as the day that you became the ruler of your MBA app strategy. The forgotten BSers of our country will be forgotten no longer.

Adcoms want great applications for their schools, good GMAT scores for their classes, and good students for themselves. These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous admissions office.

But for too many of our BSers, a different reality exists: Poorly written essays shoot down their chances. Unclear messaging clogs their drafts. Two-page resumes make the adcoms groan.

This essay carnage stops right here and stops right now.

We are one Snarkville — and BSers’ pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.

The oath of office we take today is an oath of allegiance to all Brave Supplicants.

From this day forward, a new vision will govern your apps.

From this moment on, it’s going to be Good Essays First.

Every decision on schools, on stories, on examples, on optional essays, will be made to benefit your app strategy. We must protect our applications from the ravages of other readers reading them, making bad suggestions, swaying our judgment. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.

Reapplicants will start winning again, winning like never before.

We will build new strategy guides, and blahg posts, and App Accelerators, and Essay Decimators, all across our wonderful website.

We will get Brave Supplicants off of Facebook and back to work — rebuilding their essays with their hands and their labor.

We will seek friendship and goodwill with the adcoms of the world — but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all BSers to put their own interests first.

We do not seek to impose our way of snark on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow.

At the bedrock of your essays will be a total allegiance to the Strategy of Authenticity, and through our loyalty to being honest, we will discover that yes, you are good enough to get in. With better essays.

We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity.

When Snarkville is united, Brave Supplicants are totally unstoppable.

Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger.

We will no longer accept BSers who are all talk and no action — constantly complaining but never doing anything about it.

The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action.

Do not let anyone tell you it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of BSers.

We will not fail. Your applications will thrive and prosper again.

We stand at the birth of a new season, ready to unlock the mysteries of essay prompts, to free the adcoms from the miseries of bad writing, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow.

So to all BSers, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words: You will never be unprepared again.

Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams will define your MBA destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.
Together, we will make your essays strong again.

We will make essays wealthy again.

We will make essays proud again.

We will make essays safe again.

And yes, together, we will make your essays great again. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless America.

In case you can’t tell by this ridiculous post, Team EssaySnark is off for the U.S. holiday today. Be safe!

Hits from the snarchives:

Hits from the ‘Snarchives:

Hits from the snarchives:

From time to time in the coming weeks, we’ll be tossing out links to archival footage that may be useful to you. The blahg has lots of helpful goodies buried within!

A not-uncommon progression to bschool (conclusion)

March 25, 2015 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

Yesterday we started telling this tale of the BSer with an extended application process – in this case, a many-years extended.

To recap:

We first did a Comprehensive Profile Review for them back in Fall 2012. Then they disappeared on us for a full admissions season, until we were surprised to get a request for a Post-Mortem. Otherwise known as a Reject Analysis.

The rejected app we were asked to analyze was from that initial app season, back in 2012. This BSer was ready to give it a go again in 2014. On this particular app – to a very difficult school – they’d done a halfway decent job but there were some unforced errors. Things they could’ve done differently. Not sure it would’ve made a difference at this particular school, but still. Always a little sad for us to see that after it’s too late to be of help to them. (Hint hint. Getting help on your essays before the app has been rejected is the ideal order of things.)

We laid our full assessment out in black and white, explaining what that one school probably was reacting to in the negative decision they got, and also pointing out opportunities for better positioning if they were to try for any other school in the future.

Then they disappeared on us. Until about a year ago, when we got this:

Hi EssaySnark, thanks for the post-mortem feedback. I didn’t apply in the most recent application cycle. My updates are from 2012-13. I was waitlisted by Sloan for Round 1 and then rejected. I was accepted to Yale SOM and would have attended, but the school where I work suffered a crisis that compelled me to stay. I’d like to apply Round 1 to HBS, GSB, Sloan, and Haas and Round 2 to Tuck, SOM, and maybe Ross. Do you have any advice about this list? Thanks in advance!

Great set of schools, and of course it was super encouraging to see how much progress they’d made on their original attempts two years prior. We had a few back-and-forths with them, and then they signed up for our 8-Guide Bundle, a customizable assortment of our school guides, which we always think is a smart move from anyone who’s serious about this stuff. 😉

And then, the summer went by, and Round 1 deadlines passed, and lo and behold, we started getting news of some progress being made! First there was word from this BSer that they were interviewing at a Great School in Round 1, and then come December, we heard that they were accepted there and one other! The final exchange from them was this:

Thanks for the congratulations! I’m still very excited. Of course you can post my story! EssaySnark has been such a great help to me. Please let me know anything I should do to help.

We did in fact ask for them to write up their own version of events but they went radio silent on us after pinging them several times, so we figured we’d do it ourselves, since we see a few worthwhile takeaways here:

1. Be prepared for this to take more than one year – it’s common for many people and there are vast and sundry reasons for that.

2. We always respect those who go it alone (that’s why so much of what we offer is through this self-service / do it yourself model) and this person had huge successes doing exactly that, with some strategic requests for our professional input along the way.

3. Timing is everything! And be flexible and open, since your priorities may change as you progress through the process. This person ended up accepted to totally different schools than they were originally considering when we first met them.

Love seeing successes like this.

And BSer, if you’re still around and feeling motivated to write up your own version of events with any other perspectives or insights or angles that we missed – we’d love to have it! Same goes for all those other people we’ve worked with over the years who still stalk this here blahg. If we’ve not yet posted your story we sure would love for the chance! You can reach out through our contact form or send whatever you’ve got to Team EssaySnark at gethelpnow at essaysnark dot com.