My journey to a B-school....... » essays

Who should review your essays?

missionmba — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:09:47 +0000

Posted this “comment” on a recent post by a fellow-applicant McCoy
After I had finished, I realised that the comment had already acquired the size of a post. So why not post it on my own blog and compensate for the recent lack of activity. Some R2 applicants and applicants to class of 2012 may find it useful.

Not sure what your mentor told u. But I go by this classification (mostly similar to yours):
1) The closest friend: who can tell whether u r projecting the right picture of ur personality. Smbody, who can point out “Hey, why don’t u mention that incident?”

2)The BSchool guy: (Alum,current student)These are the guys who have been through the process; they know what it takes to get through.

3)The Grammarian: Try getting in touch with your English school-teacher, your journalist aunt or may be your college-magazine student editor: somebody whose grasp on the language is impeccable. This person can point out errors of flow and grammar.

4)The colleague: Somebody who know you in professional capacity. (Your recommender may be one of the best choices for this.) You may choose to handover only the essays on professional topics to this person.(if you dont want to reveal your personal side to him.)

5) The Adcom Eye: Somebody who knows u only thru chats/mails. Whose only window to know u will be your essays. This is important as this will be the view the adcom will have to your candidature. In most cases, this would be a co-applicant, wom u have met online. (Of course, do ur homework on this person b4 u choose to handover ur essays to him.)

This surely is not a non-overlapping classification. Your best friend can be your colleague as well as a master of language. The B-school guy you get to pick may not know u first-hand and can serve the purpose of the adcom eye.

Final advice: Don’t drown yourself in a sea of reviews. Different people will have different opinions, but your application is your story; it’s your opinion that matters most. Make sure that u don’t lose your voice that’s coming out of ur essays. I, too, have used many reviewers for my Tuck and Darden essays and I know that I have ignored many,many of those review-comments because I felt that incorporating those may have affected the message I wanted to deliver.

Please note this is strictly what I feel works for me. Some Gurus strictly advise against having more than two reviewers. ( As you may have noticed, I too would prefer fewer reviewers, if the multiple roles listed above can be played by a single person.)

Tuck essays::mixed reviews

missionmba — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 10:08:42 +0000

As I said in the last post, I had sent my essays to my reviewers: a couple of friends, a senior from college-days and one of my recommenders. The reviews have started coming in and they vary greatly in response.
Reviewer 1 really liked my essays.. He has reviewed a number of essays in last few years and as he said normally he could find gaping holes right in the first read. He had read my essays twice and still liked them , so that made me think that I’ve done a decent job. Detailed reviews from him are awaited.
Reviewer 2 almost tore my drafts to pieces.. He said that the essays can be considered a good start, but nothing more than that. I was prepared for a brutal feedback and I didn’t mind his comments on grammar (I had left that to the final revision) but when he said that for a couple of essays, even the understanding of Qs seems to be missing, this was really a cause of concern for me.. This was a general feedback; he would send a detailed review soon..
Reviewer 3 liked most of my essays. But for goals-essay (The make or break one!!), he felt that the flow and the facts haven’t come that good. But other than that,he found all the three essays quite good.
Reviewer 4: mixed reviews. He found the leadership essay excellent! Ditto for “constructive criticism” essay. For essay1. he found the goals need to be clarified a bit more, though he was okay with the second half (Why Tuck?) But he strongly felt that essay 4 needs to be rewritten completely!!

I am very impatiently awaiting detailed reviews from the first two reviewers. Both of these are quite senior to me and are very busy people. I’m already grateful to them that they could find time for me; not really sure when I should ping them for reminding. But as of now,I’m really finding it hard to concentrate w/o their feedback and I feel that before I proceed to write another set of flawed essays, perhaps it would be good if i can get the basics right.. (Am i using this as an excuse for procrastination!!) After reviewer2′s comments, I’ve gone back to read my Tuck-drafts at least ten times and somehow I stil am in love with my efforts.

So what else I’m doing other than getting confused over my reviewers’ comments.. Right now I’m concentrating on Ross drafts. Yes, I’m lagging behind the schedule that I had set for myself, but the essays are giving me a hard time.
Alternate profession essay is quite tricky, I’m still confused between two possible professions.. (Yeah, the goal-clarity is missing in alternate career too!! ) Also struggling with “Most significant professional achievent” essay.. Not sure how can I narrate my stories without getting too technical. Can’t tell them how the debugger was misbehaving and how I cracked a number of the bugs by putting printf() statements in all the right places, neither can i go on to tell them how I dug deep into code and resolved a number of memory leaks. (Non-IT blog-readers, pardon me here! ) Regarding “a challenging time in your life”, I have a story, but that’s in distant past and then it’s a bit common.. Essay-advisors on BW forums have advised me against using that.
Had planned to reuse the Tuck essay (in parts) for goals, but that too is under fire from my reviewers. Add to all this the fact that none of the four essays cover my extra-curricular leadership efforts, so i’m forced to go for an optional essay as well!!(May be here I can reuse Tuck leadership essay with some tweaks)
In sum, with less than three weeks from submission,my essays for Ross are really in a bad shape. But hopefully, I’ll be able to set things right soon. Maximum by Monday EOD, Ross first drafts will be dispatched to the reviewers.

Tuck-taka-tak:: First drafts complete!!

missionmba — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:11:31 +0000

FInally, my first set of drafts for my first school are ready.. Exceeded the personal deadline set by myself by a day, but still I’m happy that at last, I’ve some thing ready.. I’ve sent these essays to my reviewers:: two of my close college-friends and one of my recommenders. Have also written to a senior from my undergrad, who’s pursuing his MBA @ Kelly if he can find time to review these. If he agrees, it’d be great.. Nothing like having a current student,who has gone through the process, review your essays!!

Gurus say that life becomes easy once you’re done with first two-three sets of essays. Partly because you get in flow of expressing your ideas cogently in prose and partly because you may be in a position of recycling your essays written so far for subsequent schools. (of course, with some tweaking and editting). Let’s see if that holds for me.

For now,it’s over to Ross.. Yes, for some silly reason, I’ve chosen to write Tuck essays first, though the deadline for Ross is full five days earlier than that for Tuck!!
And yes, got this wonderful video on Tuck courtsey Yepsee. Hope you’ll like it too..

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQtLsz5za5E&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]

Are you answering the question??

missionmba — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:40:44 +0000

You must have heard this so many times from B-school adcom members.. Many applicants often dgress from what is asked . And then while the resulting essay may be compelling in language, replete with examples and perfect in style, it often doesn’t fulfil the elementary criterion:: It doesn’t answer the question!!
This often is a result of copy-pasting answers between two similar-sounding essay prompts. And this can go undetected even after several rounds of self and peer-reviews. Especially, when you’ve digressed only a little and when the Qs are quite similar; may be sth like:: Michigan’s “Most sigifican professional accomplishment” and Yale’s “A professional accomplishment that exhibits your leadership style.”

I attended a B-school fair last year. There one of the adcoms (from Vanderbilt or HEC, Paris i remember) gave this simple magic formula. I’ve started using it; so thought of sharing it with my blogosphere friends.

When you’ve completed the essay, give it to somebody who knows you well: a friend, a colleague, your wife or anybody you deem fit for this. You may be wondering, what’s new here.. The new part comes here:: Give them only the essay, not the question. And then, ask them to guess the question.
If they guess the question correctly or are even close,Bingo!! you’ve been writing the essays well. At least you’re answering the questions!!!!
But in case they guess “What did you learn from a failiure?” or ”Tell us about a challenging time in your life” when the question is “Tell us about a constructive Criticism that you’ve received”, may be the forced-fitting hasn’t come out well. The theme and the story may remain same, but perhaps you need to concentrate less on the challenge faced and more on the post failiure/challenge feedback,

Hope that helps!!

Just missed my first deadline :-(

missionmba — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 08:52:40 +0000

I may have caused some of the readers to panic about whether they too have missed a deadline, But it’s not a school deadline that i’m talking about.. It’s the personal deadline that I’d given to myself.. I had decided to get the list of my target schools ready by May 31. Further, I had planned to finish the first draft of my goals essay by June 15.. The updates are not very positive as of now… Have already missed the deadline for task 1. Task 2 is not in a great shape as of now. Would be tough to get that ready by June 15.

Still, I guess I can say that I’m making okayish progress..I may not have finalised all the schools , but at least I’m in process of getting clear regarding my career goals.. For long term goals, I feel that I’d be most comfortable in manageemnt of a technology company. For short term goals, I’m down to three in list:: technology (something like joining product-management or biz-develeopment team of a Tech-company), tech-consulting (Starting with a job at mckinsey BTO,Acenture) or strategy consulting.. Just need to work out which of the three will take me to my long term goals in the best possible manner. Consulting really appeals to me: however, I’m not sure whether I’m happy with the drawbacks of a consulting career (Lots of travel, family life getting affected etc) So I’m inclined towards starting with consulting, getting a rich experience of tech-industry and then getting back to an IT company.

I know I’m not making complete sense here. Whatever I’ve written above is too vague and a bit disconnected too. But this is just a first level of my zeroing in on my goals. I hope to refine and reframe this with more research and convert this into my first draft of career goals essay very soon.

About school selection, I’ve added Ross to my list.. Now it’s ISB, Ross and Stanford.(and may be IIM-A). Next to explore are: Duke, Darden,Haas and Tuck. Further, right now, I’m still hovering over dream schools. I need to locate my safety schools and reach schools too.

Lots of work to do!! Already feeling short of time!! People, pray for me!!!