Life cycle of a B school essay

Application essays are very often an aspect of B school admissions that puts the best of students into first gear mode. The whole prospect of sitting with pen and paper (this reference is metaphorical, for we know that the pen and paper age is well left behind and forgotten. Sigh!!!) and writing where you came from and where you intend to go is not like watching Megan Fox in the Transformers. And strangely enough the belief that writing essays begin with putting pen onto paper is probably the farthest away from the truth as you can get. The life cycle of an essay has many stages. And while I do agree that you can write great essays without following this approach to the tee, if truth be told it is very much the recommended approach.

The first stage and the most important one of them all is the Brainstorming stage. This is the thinking cap phase. It would do the applicant a world of good if he/she can introspect and identify career goals and how they tie in with his/her profile. An exercise to also spare thought on a string of significant personal milestones that made a difference to the applicant either professionally and personally will also be of great use.

The next stage is the ‘Creating a career sketch’ phase. This is basically putting your thoughts from the earlier phase into plain text. Since you are not guided by any questions per se, please feel free to highlight all that you think is significant. Based on the comfort of the applicant, this can be put down in free prose, bulleted lists or even verse (ok if you can do this, you should probably attempt writing your own version of ‘The Golden Gate’).

It is only after finishing the above two stages that you should get down to the brick and mortar writing the essay exercise. You can now cull out details from your career sketch to answer the essay question for the B school of your choice. You will be pleasantly surprised how easy finding a plot for your essays get with this approach. This will also hold you in good stead if you are making multiple applications.

The essay now in hand, you can subject it to a review process. It might be a good idea to run this past an unbiased, trained third eye and once the semantics and the content are whetted; your essays are pretty much good to go.

Click submit or post the essay transcripts as the case may be and keep your fingers crossed.

What to write in an Application?

An application is all about showcasing yourself. Just like a presentation to a client highlighting features and USP of product or service, an application highlights your achievements and career goals etc and tells the school why you can be the right student they are looking for.

In a nutshell, though it might appear a little blunt but you have to sell yourself to the school and application plays an important role in that.

According to us the best way of writing application essays for schools like Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Ross, Oxford , ISB, Insead etc is to start with a laundry list of whatever you have done in your life right from schooling, to college to all companies you have joined. Don’t forget extra curriculars. After that think which ones are good and will be valued by the B school. This is where B school alumni’s experience comes handy and can make the difference. Make sure that you are selling right thing packaged rightly to the right school.

Complete your drafts and get it reviewed by people who have applied to schools, current students or alumni. Don’t be fussy about stuffing good words because that’s not what adcom wants to judge.

In the end, don’t forget that the story line should be strong and should look distinct and not like any other application.