lessons learned

($) When you’re asked to identify a weakness

September 16, 2022 by EssaySnark

A perennial angle on many schools’ MBA essay questions is an angle asking about strengths and weaknesses. That typically comes up not as a direct question, but instead they ask you to present a challenging experience or your key leadership story or maybe your biggest failure and then discuss what you learned from it. Some...

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We were gonna talk about getting into Columbia today but

September 13, 2019 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

…getting a gift like this dropped from the heavens cannot be passed up. You probably did not watch the Democratic debates last night but apparently there was…. an essay question asked of the candidates? A classic format for many top schools is to ask you to talk about a significant challenge and what you learned […]

($) Embroider it on a pillow.

November 28, 2018 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

But please don’t write it in an MBA essay. We originally started this blahg because we saw too many earnest MBA applicants (aka BSers) saying earnest MBA applicant things in their essays. That was nine years ago (and we’d already been reading MBA essays for many years before then). Alas, not much has changed. 🙁 […]

A BSer’s Journey: Round 1 Update!

October 27, 2017 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

Can you believe we’re halfway through the Fall already?!?? Can you believe that Round 1 is this far along??? Can you believe that it was way back in July that we first heard from our intrepid Brave Supplicant who’s sharing his story with us????? Nope, we can’t either! Here’s an update on app strategy, approach, […]

($) Look back over your life

September 1, 2017 by EssaySnark - Discusses Kellogg, Dartmouth Tuck Leave a Comment

Writing essays may be akin to navel-gazing. You need to understand who you are and where you’ve come from. One of the most difficult parts of writing many essays is coming up with the “lessons learned” out of a story. Schools like Tuck and Kellogg specifically ask you what you learned from an experience. It’s […]

($) Lessons learned in essays: “This experience taught me…”

August 3, 2016 by EssaySnark - Discusses Dartmouth Tuck, Yale SOM

Ah those well-meaning BSers. They’re always trying to say the right thing in their essays. Here’s a snippet of an essay that we get all the time: When I started being a better listener, and not being so assertive with my opinions, I started realizing that my teammates were guided by different values and experiences....

essay critique: HBS essay 2 “done better”

July 6, 2012 by EssaySnark - Discusses Harvard

You know the question: “Tell us about something you wish you had done better.” You get 400 words to lay it down. This is what one Brave Supplicant offered up: September 15th, 2009 was the worst day of my life. Two months after his pancreatic cancer diagnosis, my father was back in the hospital to...