In the previous sections of this book, I have said much about the kinds of content that should go into your essay and how it should be expressed. This section warns of approaches that should be avoided and things that should not appear.
Don’t mess with the truth
Don’t stretch, twist or otherwise mess with the facts. Don’t make claims that sound dodgy, even if true, unless you have thorough corroborating detail. Not only must what you say be true, it must be easily perceived to be true. The admissions officer, who has probably read 5000 essays, has an ear for a tinny sounding claim and unconvincing use of evidence. This is your first and, hope- fully, last time doing MBA applications. Play the smart odds and stick with the truth. Anyway, you don’t need to make things up – chances are your true stories, analysed properly, are just as useful to you as the ones you might be tempted to make up.
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Don’t suck up
Don’t waste your own and everyone else’s time telling the reader about the excellent reputation of the university, the wisdom of the faculty, the astute- ness of the admissions committee, the beauty of the grounds, the size of the endowment, the outstanding nature of the student body, the power of the alumni network or any other form of eye-batting flattery. You are there to talk about you and why you will be a unique benefit to the school. Stick to the topic. (It’s fine to refer to a school’s excellence in highly specific terms, for example saying how your proposed career in real-estate finance would benefit from being at, say, Wharton, which according to your research has the top faculty in this field.)
Don’t be a tin soldier
Show your intimacy and vulnerability. If you don’t feel a twinge of embar- rassment in sharing a certain story, failure or ethical decision – if it would be no problem if some prankster were to email your completed essays randomly to people in your personal and professional circle – then your essays are not personal enough. Adcom treats your essays as confidential, based on the assumption that confidences are being protected. Don’t disappoint them in this. They don’t have a prurient interest in your private life and thoughts, but they are serious about getting special inside knowledge about you.
Your essays are, obviously, still a professional task and you must stay on the right side of professional norms. Being personal is one thing, being inappropriate is another. Don’t confess to being a shoplifter. Don’t discuss bodily functions. Don’t say anything you wouldn’t say one-to-one to a trusted professional mentor. If you can maintain this personal–professional balance, you will distinguish yourself from most other applicants.
Don’t try to be someone else
Many candidates try to be what they think the generic business school appli- cant is: conservative, respectable, quantitative, ‘businesslike’, and so on. It’s natural to want to fit in with the business school ethic, but don’t second-guess the committee and try to feed them what you think they ‘want to hear’.
Trying to be a model applicant is not to your advantage because, contrary to popular belief, there is no accepted business school ‘type’. The real business school ethos endorses a broad mix of backgrounds, experiences and opinions.
If you try to reinvent yourself as something more normative, you will trade your individuality, personality and interest for an anonymity that won’t be noticeable. Trying to be someone you are not practically screams poor self- confidence and low self-worth. If you’re going to be rejected, at least be 144 WRITING TOOLS AND METHODS
rejected for who you are. It would be truly pathetic if you were to pose as someone else and be rejected.
Don’t be generic
You will only get in if you differentiate yourself in a valuable way. The commit- tee wants to know who you really are and what is particularly special and different about you. Therefore, you should at all costs avoid feeding them generic information. There will be nothing memorable and unique that stands out for the admissions officer to get a grip on.
How do you know if something is generic? Easy. If what you say could be on the next file or the next after that, it’s generic. If what you say could only have been written by you, it’s specific and unique. Forget what MBA applicants are supposed to be like and supposed to want. Talk about the career you want.
Talk about your actual goals and motivations. Share your real hopes, dreams and fears. Give voice to your own values, your genuine beliefs and your real ethical or personal struggles.
Don’t stereotype yourself
When dealing with your profile, try to anticipate and go beyond the stereo- types of background, ethnicity and job definition that may be associated with it. If you are an auditor, don’t be a ‘suit’; if you are a research scientist, don’t sound as though you talk to lab mice. That is, rather than letting the reader loll comfortably in the personality types he might associate with you as a scientist, a Christian, an immigrant, an IT professional, a lesbian, an Asian, and so on, surprise him with non-conforming attitudes and attributes. Drill deeply enough into yourself so that you get below your typecasting and reach the layer where you are unique.
Don’t try to be over-competent
Of course, the tendency is to be as adequate as possible, but you can go too far.
Not only is nobody perfect, but you, as an applicant for professional educa- tion, are by definition incompetent in many respects. You are a work in progress and that’s okay. Often, in the effort to demonstrate achievement and appear successful, applicants portray themselves as so competent that the committee wonders if they really need the MBA. Leave space in your applica- tion for the curriculum and extramurals to have plenty to teach you, and tell the committee what it is you need to learn.
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Don’t repeat material presented elsewhere
This shouldn’t need explaining. The reader will have your complete file, so any repetition of its contents in the essays is a waste. You can, of course, reframe or cast a new light on facts appearing elsewhere in your file. Just avoid the dull- ness of repetition. Also, steer clear of that which is already obvious. If your Gmat is 750 and your college GPA is 4.0, don’t write essays arguing your intel- lectual competence. It’s obvious. Use your essays to show you are not just an egg-head.
Don’t try to say too much
It is better to focus on a small piece of your story and chew it thoroughly than to bite off too much and choke on it. Make choices that narrow your horizons but allow you to deepen your analysis. Essays that try to be too comprehensive end up sounding watered-down. Get as many of the details and facts about you – employment history, awards, positions held, and so on – into the appli- cation sheet question boxes so you are free to use the essays for developing your themes and message. The essays are not there for you to tell the commit- tee didactically what you’ve done; they are there so you can show them who you are and what you are aspiring to become.
Don’t make lists (particularly not of your past)
Don’t go down a track that sounds like: ‘After college in Wisconsin I worked for CNN in Atlanta, and then for the Georgia State Legislature, while taking evening classes in economics at City College, and followed this with a year in Taiwan, before coming back to work on my school applications, which I post- poned for a year because my father had a bypass . . .’ Not only will a list of activities and accomplishments dampen the reader’s interest, but all you are really saying is that you have no idea what is important in your profile, or you can’t be bothered to extract it.
Don’t provide facts that are not integrated into the message
It’s always a burden to follow a writer into the details of his argument. The reward for the reader is that the details ultimately make a solid case. Not so if they are irrelevant. Facts that are not interpreted or integrated into the story are just frustrating ‘noise’ the reader has to filter out. Don’t make the reader work harder than she has to. Remember, your job is to pick, describe and analyse the most important things about you: you must work hard so that the reader does not have to.
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Don’t blame or point fingers
Don’t ever say anything negative about anyone, or any group, or nationality, or company, or anything at all, no matter who did what to you or how badly it has affected your life. Avoid racist, sexist and all other forms of unkind speech.
If you come across negatively, you will not be admitted anywhere. It’s better to say nothing.
Don’t get onto controversial topics
Stay clear of religion, politics, abortion, inner-city poverty, the war on drugs, 9/11, the Middle East, and social or ideological opinions of any kind. Not only could this be an automatic red light if you get the wrong reader, but all the time you spend on this you are not adding anything about why you are spe- cial, different and therefore valuable to the school. Your goal is to get in, not to convince anyone of anything. The only relevant topic is you. The reader won’t care what your precious position is, and they won’t be reading long enough to figure it out either way.
You can make an exception to this rule if an ideological perspective is an obvious part of who you are and what you plan to do. If you are a veterinarian activist, say, and you plan to launch an international animal medical non-profit foundation, you can make the necessary ideological claims.
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