Writing great MBA application essays isn’t easy. But making taboo mistakes is easy, and will easily and readily wipe out your chances of getting admitted to a top business school. Here are some common mistakes that many people make in their MBA application essays:
Sounding arrogant – be very careful about not sounding arrogant. As you answer different essay questions, it is incredibly tempting to brag about your accomplishments and all your great personal qualities. Your qualities and accomplishments can always be conveyed in more indirect and subtle ways (i.e. through interesting stories). Don’t use big fancy words, don’t use overly flowery language. Ask your friends to read your MBA application essays and make sure you don’t come off as sounding arrogant or entitled in any way.
Jamming too many themes, issues or topics into one essay – no one is everything to everyone. No one has all the qualities in the world. It’s just not realistic. Focusing on a few issues, lessons, and themes will make your MBA application essays much punchier, much more impactful, and just much more realistic. It’s much easier to engage and immerse the reader in your story if it’s focused and gets a few, but strong points across.
Being overly creative – unlike college applications, business schools are not looking to read creative works of art. Admissions committees just aren’t the right crowd. Business school admissions committees are looking for people who demonstrate managerial potential, have strong personal qualities, and have big, yet focused career visions. It’s very difficult to write a pure creative essay while getting all of these ideas across at the same time. There’s a reason why MBA application essays are generally quite limited in word count. Your essay needs to be fresh, unique and emotionally impactful, but it can be done without sounding overly creative. Great writing is very important. Great storytelling ability is absolutely critical. But creativity overload can harm you.
Being too broad – what’s dangerous about being too broad is that your MBA application essays can often end up sounding too generic and cliché. You also end up not painting a clear enough picture of yourself. Retelling accounts of specific instances at work using lots of detail can be a great way to indirectly communicate what type of person you are to the admissions committee, which is much more powerful than explicit communication.
Writing essays as standalone stories – your entire application and all the themes you want to get across need to be mapped out before you begin doing any writing. Ultimately the four, five or six essays you write for each application need to read as one single essay. What I mean by this is that by the time an admissions officer finishes reading all your essays, they should have a very clear and consistent picture of you. Your application should be viewed as one big puzzle. Each essay is one of those puzzle pieces (along with other components of the application). Every single essay needs to fit into your big picture marketing message. Writing an essay without consideration as to how it aids your positioning effort or how it adds value to your overall application is wasting incredibly valuable application real estate (and could also create a dangerous inconsistency if it doesn’t fit in with your overall message). Your MBA applications essays are highly strategic. They are the most important part of your application. Be very very thoughtful about how you use them.
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