Yeah yeah yeah it’s still summer. You have plenty of time before Round 1 hits. Or do you? Generally speaking, once the Fourth of July holiday has happened in the States, that’s also when the BSers who end up being the most successful have geared up and gotten busy. We actually recommended that people get […]
Continue reading...You are almost definitely not gonna wanna write essays this summer.
Most people really — REALLY — don’t like writing essays. But this year? Ugh. It’s gonna be tough, folks. EssaySnark is of course going to be right along with you, but we just wanted to have a little get-real talk with you right now. You’re sitting here in June. You’re feeling whatever level of anxiety, […]
Continue reading...($) Breathless bloat and gloat can backfire.
This is most frequently an issue with the older MBA applicant though we see it across the board. You’ve been involved in some high-profile projects. You have a sense that the adcoms want to hear about “impact.” You combine those two into an essay that talks about how “we helped millions of people by launching...
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Don’t wait to deliver the punchline
There’s a common tendency among novice essay-writers (which everyone applying to bschool always is) to want to have a big ending. This happens all the time with Stanford Essay A on “what matters most” — we see BSers write a full 700 words and then, finally, they pull out the answer to the question: “Because […]
Continue reading...“completely lost on HBS essay and need help”
We heard from a BSer once that he stumbled upon the ‘Snark through a google search that was phrased somehow like that, so let’s see if we can offer some starting points and ways to break into the analysis process for dealing with the Harvard MBA question this year. Just in case you’re in the […]
Continue reading...($) An essay is an argument redux (with some comments on MBA application theme)
We’ve talked about this before – “an essay is an argument” post from 2012 – but it’s unlikely many of you have seen it, and this concept keeps coming up in feedback we’re giving to BSers. So we thought we’d do it front-and-center on the main page today for all of you. Let’s break things...
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($) Goldplating
This is a tricky thing to critique, because the type of MBA applicant who does this actually has a lot to offer. And by calling this out, it can make it seem like we’re critiquing the person, or saying that this applicant is not going to make it in to a top school. Not at...
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A jumble of jargon
Jargon is insidious. Even when we issue warnings to BSers that they cannot have jargon in their apps, we still see it crop up everywhere. Finance candidates can be particularly guilty of this, but it’s a risk in literally every resume. When you’re living and breathing the sector you work in, doing it every day […]
Continue reading...($) Yet another “Ack! I don’t know what to write in my Harvard HBS MBA essay!” post
You thought we were kidding when we said it’s time to write essays? Nope. Here we are, telling you really truly to start writing essays. With some advice on specifically what to write for Harvard! Now, before we get into it, let’s direct you here to what we talked about in the run-up to Round...
While much of the blahg is available completely for free, the content here is reserved for members with full blahg access only ($9.95/month for six months, cancel anytime). Please login to view this content or purchase a membership.
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 […]
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