We keep seeing really silly typos. Like, really silly ones. We’re too busy reading essays right now to go into detail but just let this serve as a warning: Spellcheck is not good enough! In fact, it’s even worse than that, people. Listen up: SPELLCHECK IS NOT YOUR FRIEND! Even that is not fully the […]
Continue reading...($) Stress-test your sentences.
We’ve offered before that your MBA essays are a pitch. Each individual essay is presenting an argument in response to the question that the school has asked, and the collection of essays and your other application assets must combine together into a meaningful whole that convinces your reader to issue an interview invite and eventually […]
Continue reading...($) Sweating the small stuff: Formatting decisions on MBA essays
We have occasionally talked about formatting essays in terms of double spaced or single spaced and hopefully you already got the memo about font size. Because everything matters in your MBA essay submission. Premium content starts here… ———– ———– Premium content ends. As with so many aspects of your application process, a mistake […]
Continue reading...($) Even if Harvard’s essay length is unlimited, the adcom reviewer’s attention is not.
This was originally posted on the blahg in December 2016 — but we figured it was worth reblahgging for all you planning on trying for HBS right now… Because some of the ‘Snark is timeless! Premium content starts here… ———– ———– Premium content ends. For more practical advice on...
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There are two parts to your pitch: What you say, and how you say it.
This may sound so obvious as to be useless, but hear us out. The way you write about your career goals is at least as important as what the career goals actually are. Or to put it another way: If the reader can’t figure out what you’re saying you want to do with the MBA, […]
Continue reading...Gnats, typos, and other pesky things
This is an assortment of the funny/not-funny typos in MBA applications that have come across our desk in the recent past — funny because of what they are, not funny if they make it into an actual application! (in an international applicant’s essay): “I spent one year as an exchange student in a blue collard […]
Continue reading...($) The Essay Development Process (revised)
In the summer we introduced people to the essay development process in this post. Today we’ll give a revised view of that, corrected for real reality (rather than hoped-for reality which is what most of us actually strive for yet often fail to materialize in our lives). Premium content starts here… ———– ———– Premium […]
Continue reading...The 10 most common mistakes to make in your MBA essays
Wrong school name: Talking about how much you want to go to Wharton in your essay for Columbia Not using spellcheck: Obvious spelling errors Relying on spellcheck: Obvious spelling errors Reusing another school’s essay that clearly doesn’t fit the question: The schools know what their peer schools have asked Going negative: Throwing shade at a […]
Continue reading...($) Improbable attribution
This is another one of those writing tips post that most people won’t understand when they read it casually as part of our daily posting here on the blahg. For that, we apologize – sort of. We like to raise these more sophisticated issues here publicly on the blahg, in order to plant the seed […]
Continue reading...($) WRITING WEEK! Day 4: The problem of the parrot.
You may be wondering why we’re spending so much time talking about issues of writing style on a blahg that’s supposed to be about strategies for getting in. A good set of essays for an MBA application will answer the question that the school has posted in its essay prompt. That goes without saying. Anyone […]
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