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($) What if your essays are underlimit?

by EssaySnark

You’d think the adcoms would appreciate short-short essays. After all, most of them have ridiculously small length limits on their essay prompts these days. Wouldn’t it even be better to come in under the limit on what you’re saying in response? If the essay word count is in the 250 to 300 word range, you’re...

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($) Formatting your MBA application essays

by EssaySnark - Discusses

We’re cheating today. Instead of laying out a fresh post with detailed specs for how you should set up your Word docs for submission in your MBA apps, we’re refreshing an older one that captured some guidelines — and cheating even further, we’re starting with the instructions that UCLA Anderson used to include in its...

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($) “I’ll just explain this situation about my background in the interview.”

by EssaySnark

The essays are short. You have so much to say! When there are oddities and unusual aspects to your profile or career path to date, then it can be so hard to fit it all in. This is related to our advice that the essays need to have everything, even when it’s already in the...

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($) Reapplicants and the optional essay: What goes where?

by EssaySnark

If you’re reapplying to business school then by definition that means that there was something off in your original application. The schools give you different essays to lay out for them your explanations for what you’ve addressed and how you’ve improved. We cover a whole bunch of advice for self-assessing your original apps and determining...

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($) The big problem with Columbia’s choose-your-own-length essays

by EssaySnark - Discusses

This year, Columbia tried to innovate by essentially introducing a sliding scale with their essays: They’re giving you a range for how long you can write. Essay 1 on career goals used to be 500 words max; this year, they’re saying you can submit an essay from 100 to 750 words. Well guess what? That...

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($) The other MAJOR problem with Columbia’s essays this year

by EssaySnark - Discusses

First: Our Columbia MBA application guide is out! It discusses the topic we’re covering in this post today from a more practical angle in terms of implications for your strategy, with lots and lots of other super important info-nuggets of gold that you truly need if you’re going to do a good job on this...

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A guiding principle in essay strategy: Don’t outstay your welcome.

by EssaySnark - Discusses Leave a Comment

The Duke adcom has sure bucked the trend. They’ve got not one, but two exceedingly permissively long essays, PLUS three short-answer questions that add up to another decently-sized essay. Plus an optional essay! And a supplemental answer if you need it! Man oh man, they’re just feeding you out all this rope for you to […]

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Hyphenating words does not reduce your word count.

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We actually had a Brave Supplicant do this last year – and we were impressed with the creativity. We had read through several drafts of essays from this person and we kept commenting on the grammar errors around hyphenated words. We saw a bunch of instances like “team-dynamics” and “five-years” and “live-training” — phrases that […]

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So how do you do it?

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EssaySnark concludes this accidental series on brevity and writing good (short!) essays and leaves you to your Thanksgiving wonderfulness* with one piece of practical advice. From Michelangelo: I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. Your essay has an angel in it. Be sure to set her free. * […]

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