Have you ever had someone push their phone in your face to show you a picture — and for the life of you, you could not figure out what you were looking at?

Don’t make your essays be like that.

When someone has a photo on their phone, chances are that they’re the one who took it. They’re the one who was at that place at that time, looking at that thing that they decided was important enough to capture forever. (Or at least until Apple decides to push an iPhone update that bricks their phone and makes them lose everything that had not been recently backed up. Because THAT never happens. Effing Apple.)

Sorry, where were we?

Oh yeah. Someone’s all, “Look, isn’t this great?” And they’re waiting for a reaction and you’re just staring at the phone, trying to get oriented.

Or even worse, they pull it away and swipe to another one. “See?”

And you’re all, Nope, nope, nope, can’t see a thing, no idea.

And if it’s a new acquaintance, you smile and nod and say “Cool!” and pick up your drink.

Well guess what? The equivalence of “Cool!” from your adcom reader’s side is, “Whelp, don’t know what THAT is supposed to be about, let’s move on,” and they swipe left — to the next application in the stack.

One of the most fundamental problems with the essays you’ve written is that YOU’VE WRITTEN THEM.

Meaning, YOU know what they’re about.

You were there. You had the experience. You can pull it up instantly in your head as a memory.

(Or at least, we HOPE you can! If you’re fabricating essay topics out of whole cloth then that’s another problem entirely.)

Most people write about some experience they had, whether it’s for Kellogg’s essay on “growth” or the Columbia essay about a “team failure” or anything else.

For anything but a career goals or “why MBA?” essay, good essays are stories used in response to the question.

And even for those other essays, stories are often required to do a good job in answering!

But for the majority of schools, you’ll have essays that almost entirely are comprised of a story. Berkeley Haas’ 6-word story essay is a prime example.

How do you make sure that your essay is not an undefined blur of a picture for your adcom reader?

1. Start by answering the question. This may seem soooooo basic but trust us, it’s really going to help you make sure you’re writing on target to what has been asked. There are other ways to do it, including what this Kellogg applicant attempted, but oftentimes those types of approaches are being creative for creativity’s sake. Or trying to be clever or cute. Or some other motivation beyond just being direct. If you are direct in your essays, you cannot lose.

2. Include details. You need to think like a reporter when you’re setting things up. Remember, your adcom reader does not know you. Don’t be like the guy flashing his phone in your face to show you his photo.

All of this may seem overly simplistic and totally obvious when we write it out here — but please don’t discount this advice. Add this post to your favorites (see that little button at the bottom? Active blahg members get access to the Favoriting system which is our on-site bookmarking tool). Come back to it later. Examine your draft – test your writing against what we’re saying. Because apparently this is not so basic.

If all of this were so obvious as you seem to believe, then why do so many of your essays suck worse than black jelly beans?

You may also be interested in:

• Another writing tip: Context matters
• Your essays are a pitch
• You need to think like a lawyer
• “How do I make sure my essays don’t suck as bad as black jellybeans?”

You don’t have to care. So we’ll take it back and not say you “should” care. But you might want to care – at least in the context of writing the best essays you can, which means clearly saying what you mean to say and not saying something ridicjulous.

Like this:

Good news everyone! Though shockingly deeply lodged in my ear canal, my trauma-nurse sister was able to extract the loose silicon earbud cover!

Wait hang on, let me back up. So it turns out that earbuds can break in your ear on the train.

Or so I’ve heard.

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) September 13, 2018

That particular thread is pretty funny because that guy is pretty funny, but if you didn’t notice, what he wrote in the second sentence is actually nonsensical.

Here’s the reply-tweet that pointed it out:

Was she a trauma nurse before she got lodged in the ear canal, or because she got lodged in the ear canal?

— Glenn Hansen (@HansenHouse) September 13, 2018

These are the types of writing errors that not everyone will notice. Usually, the thing-you’re-saying can still be figured out from context. It’s probably true that most all of you reading today knew that the ear bud is what was stuck in the guy’s ear, and that the sister only helped to extract it. But technically that’s not what he wrote.

Being precise with language is more important in some contexts, or with some statements — such as the classic Eats Shoots and Leaves from the wonderful book by the same name.

Getting this wrong in an MBA essay won’t be the end of the world, or the end of your chances of an admit.

But sometimes these errors are funny, which actually is funny/not-funny because what’s funny to the adcom is decidedly not-funny to you when you realize the error happened on an app that’s already been submitted.

So just a reminder today — AGAIN — that grammar counts! And your fifth grade teacher Ms. Henderson is now smiling that FINALLY you see the value in all that she tried to cram down your throat.

 
 
 
And the other reminder that EssaySnark is available this weekend!! In case you have dangling modifiers that you need pointed out.

We’re reblahgging this from a few years ago because it’s timely! and relevant! and hopefully helpful!!
 

Today’s post is about two totally unrelated things, except that they both came up for us multiple times over the past few weeks in the marathon of essay-reviewing we’ve been doing.

First:

Bschool Buzzwords

• close-knit community
• diverse student body
• collaborative students
• strong alumni network
• leadership skills
• business acumen

Or you could say close-knit student body and collaborative community and — well, you get the point.

Maybe we should develop an MBA Essay Generator — just enter the name of the school you’re targeting, your short-term goal and long-term goal, and push a button, and out pops the essay!

‘Cuz people, all of yours have been sounding the same. May as well be a fill-in-the-blanks type proposition, like Mad Libs or something. Wants us to sit around the office playing Buzzword Bingo as we read the essays. Hmmmm… wonder if that every happens in the admissions offices at these schools? It’s gotta be tempting.

Hopefully you have some REAL reasons for wanting to get an MBA and your essays include more than just these tired old cliches and boring buzzwords. Granted, “business acumen” is a pet peeve specific to the ‘Snark – it’s unlikely any of your adcom readers will react quite so negatively as we do when they see that — but none of those just ain’t gonna get you noticed for much.

What might get you noticed but for oh all the wrong reasons would be some of these:

Really Bad Typos

Yes we actually saw these recently.

• “It is not time for me to get my MBA.” (presumably they meant “now”?)
• “I defiantly want to go to Wharton.” (you sure about that?)
• “I am quiet confident that Duke is the best place for my MBA.” (well, confidence is always good!)
• “I can better asses a situation like this in the future.” (oooo we saw this in more than one BSer’s drafts)
• “My goal is to shit my career into consulting.” (our personal fave!)
• (new for 2018!) “Launched a mentoring program to improve faulty efficiency” (coming from someone working in education — presumably they meant “faculty”? but maybe not!)

Writing something like THAT will surely get your adcom reader’s attention. You’d even likely elicit a belly-laugh from them.

When you’re in a sleep-deprived caffeine-adled fog of essay-writing delirium, the eye is not to be trusted. Proofreading is a special task that you should honor and treat with care. Do it separately from any editing process. Put everything aside for awhile and then come back to it again when you’re fresh. When we see mistakes like this in an essay, we will tell you that there are writing errors that you need to watch for… but we won’t necessarily correct them. EssaySnark is not an editor. It’s your job to make your puppies perfect.

Not that any of you are ‘fresh’ right about now – not after all the late nights you’ve been pulling!

On the topic of proofreading and polish, here’s a couple of posts that may help you … at least, if you’re not now in active panic-mode as you rush to pull up the versions you’ve already submitted, to make sure you didn’t commit one of these major faux pas.

• Tips for cutting it down to size (overlimit essays)
• Formatting your MBA essays
• How to write a conclusion
• And one more related to the “buzzwords” thing: Words that appear only in essays and resumes

Nobody’s gonna get rejected for a typo in an essay… but it’s not going to endear you to your adcom reader, either. Attention to detail, people. It’s a beautiful thing.
 

UPDATE! This “buzzword” thing prompted some questions in the comments, which we’ve responded to in a series of follow-up posts, starting here!

1. Wrong school name: Talking about how much you want to go to Wharton in your essay for Columbia
2. Not using spellcheck: Obvious spelling errors
3. Relying on spellcheck: Obvious spelling errors
4. Reusing another school’s essay that clearly doesn’t fit the question: The schools know what their peer schools have asked
5. Going negative: Throwing shade at a boss or a colleague when presenting your story
6. Being boastful
7. Thinking a first draft is good
8. Getting too much input into your essays
9. Not getting any input into your essays
10. Not answering the question

(Hint: As you can see, we have posts on each of these topics all over the blahg — some in the very last week!!)

 
 
You may also be interested in:

• A Stanford applicant case study: Avoidable mistakes
• 3 Last-Minute Mistakes that Will Make You Feel Totally Stupid
• How to fix mistakes in your app after you’ve submitted it.

Or maybe even those for whom English is a first language should do this!

This may be more useful for those who’ve gone through at least one pass of review of one of our services — either an App Accelerator or the Essay Decimator.

When we give feedback, we capture comments on EVERY dimension:

• Does this answer the question?
• Does it make sense?
• Is it a GOOD answer?
• Does it fit what the adcoms are looking for?
• Is it grammatically clean?

Often the feedback can be a little overwhelming at first! There is always a lot to absorb. And what you can do is to help yourself manage all of that advice in a few simple ways.

One way is to spend time with the feedback on multiple different days. It’s very common for the comments we make to not make much sense at all, mostly because you’re learning new techniques of writing and presentation and you know how hard it is when you’re learning something brand new! But also because often the brain closes down or freezes up when faced with criticism. We are never TRYING to criticize, but it is at its core a critique. And the ego doesn’t like it! So often, when someone originally receives this influx of (seeming) negativity, they shut down and have trouble taking it in.

So coming back to it repeatedly will help. It allows the sting to soften and the ego to relax its guard and start to accept the idea that change may be needed, and to better understand where those changes can be done.

Lost in all of this may be corrections in that last category, about grammar.

If you’re an international applicant where English is not your first language, then it’s likely we will be pointing out some common patterns or repeated instances within your draft where you make the same mistakes in your writing. The most frequent issue is a dropped article (missing the word “a” or “the” when writing a noun). Another is improper capitalization (words that are not proper nouns are still capitalized). There are others, too, but those seem to be what we see the most frequently.

You’d never be rejected over something like this; the adcom readers are tolerant of writing errors from candidates coming from other languages. They’ll also in most cases have a TOEFL score for you and they’ll be using your interview to further evaluate your ability to communicate in English. So a writing error or two like this on an essay is not going to prevent your acceptance. (If you’re an American, native speaker or not, that’s less likely be true! Making your essays absolutely perfect is obviously much much better — and remember, you need to do this work on your own! Hiring an editor or having a writer friend do a red-line review on your essays is not appropriate!! That’s too much input into your work and it’s a violation of the standards that the schools are expecting you to meet with your apps.)

Anyway, so what are we suggesting you do?

KEEP A LIST.

If you get feedback from us and we point out these errors in grammar or writing that you have a tendency to make, jot them down. Make a checklist of issues that you will do a pre-submit review to hunt for.

If you know that you often drop the article, then before you upload your essays, after you are sure that everything you’re saying is sound and that the content is exactly as you want it, then do one more pass through them where you look specifically at every single noun, and make sure it has an article identified correctly.

You’re noun-hunting. You’re not reading for content. You’re not checking for spelling. You’re only looking at nouns, and examining each one to make sure that it’s referenced correctly.

Here’s a tip that everyone should use regardless of your native language:

You already know that spellcheck sucks and will betray you all the time.

Specifically though: Spellcheck often does not check words that are written in all capital letters. So, on your resume, if you have headers or have used ALL CAPS for the names of your companies or the name of your college, you must go look at each of those all-caps entries individually. Very often we see ridiculous typos in these headers that are totally face-palm worthy. In just the past few weeks we’ve seen someone who graduated from SMITH COLEGE and another person who had a section on her resume showing she was SELF-EMPOYED.

Can you say “ouch”?

Talk about a way you can instantly un-impress your reader!

Having a separate proofreading step — or several! — is really important. Your essays become too familiar to you; your brain stops seeing what’s literally on the page. (This is actually why it’s so helpful to have a qualified third-party reviewer, to make sure that what’s in your head is what’s literally being said!)

This is in the category of “avoidable misteaks mistakes” or unforced errors.

You don’t want to discover them later, after the app is already in!

You may also be interested in:

• 3 Last Minute Mistakes That Will Make You Feel Totally Stupid
• Nobody’s perfect. But your app needs to be.

Along the lines of “stuff we often say in essay reviews” we’ll offer this advice:

Write like you speak.

(Not like you text, though! There should be no &s and abbreviations and acronyms and shortcuts in essays.)

Words like “partaking” are odd. Do you use this type of language in everyday speech?

A less obvious one is “utilize.” Can’t you just say “use”?

Try reading the essay out loud – does it sound like you? Frequently, applicants use fancy-sounding words in an attempt to make the writing more formal and impress the reader, but they actually take the reader further away from experiencing you as a person. It’s not illegal to use words like this but it can put distance between you and the reader which is not really what you want. It’s a fine line; you don’t want the essay to be too casual, but if it’s too stiff then it sounds artificial, and not authentic.

It’s funny how much we often step on our own toes in an effort to say what we mean! There are so many ways to muff things up and make it harder on the reader to get to know us. One key in communicating who you are is, well, being who you are. For those who don’t write regularly on the job, this can be tough — and perhaps even tougher on those who think they’re good writers. Many students in an academic environment learned to put on airs and adopt a specific stance or tone in putting together an essay. That’s usually going to make you sound stiff and unnatural. When you’re writing an essay for an admissions person to read, that’s not what you want to go for.

There may be as much unlearning to do in writing good essays as there is studying of techniques and figuring out the way to present yourself positively! The goal is that you paint a picture for the reader in terms that allow them to visualize you in their minds as they’re going through your materials.

It’s fine to use contractions; this doesn’t have to meet any APA style guide or whatever. But acronyms are almost always a no-no. Remembering your audience is key.

You’ll get mere minutes with your adcom reviewer while they decide whether to keep reading, or to give your application a pass. It can go by in the blink of an eye. You want your essay to be the one that they remember and keep thinking about all the way home on the subway.

That means the content needs to be compelling, sure, but it also helps tremendously if the voice in the essay is honestly your own.

Wanna get your essays reviewed? Check out our Essay Decimator service – see what innocent mistakes you may be making and understand what goes into an excellent MBA pitch!