The third of Made to Sticks six key principles, concreteness, doesn’t seem to apply to intangibles like leadership, achievement, teamwork, or character – the topics you typically need to cover in your essays. Yet, even when discussing abstractions, if your essays are concrete they will communicate more effectively and more memorably.

Here are five tips to make your personal statements and application essays concrete:

1. Use sensory language when appropriate. Write in terms of sights, sounds, smells, touch, and taste.
2. Break down large ideas into smaller sub-topics and concepts. (For more on this idea, please see “Fatal Flaw #4: Superficiality.” ) The grand summary or platitude won’t cut it.
3. Quantify when possible. Did you increase membership a lot when president or did you increase membership by 50%? Did you lead a team or did you lead a 10-person team?
4. Without using clichés, relate events, entities, and concepts to ideas that the reader already knows and trusts. For example if I say that “Accepted is the McKinsey of admissions consulting firms,” clients will expect top-notch work and a strategic approach to admissions.
5. Think about the human beings you are addressing in your essays. You have read interviews of and met with admissions committee members. Perhaps create a character that represents Chris Adcom for you. For me, Chris is usually smart, professional, and hard-working. Typically a “people-person” with a genuine interest in others, she also has a well–practiced nose for baloney and doesn’t like the odor. She is always short on time and consequently ends up skimming essays if they are boring or don’t answer the question, even though she doesn’t like to do so. She is dedicated to helping her school create a diverse, talented class of students who will be happy to attend her school, contribute to campus life as students, and add to the school’s reputation as alumni. That’s her job. Write your essays for Chris.

Use these five keys to concreteness when crafting your essays to make them more compelling.

Additional Resources:

• MBA 5 Fatal Flaws
• Med 5 Fatal Flaws
• Law 5 Fatal Flaws
• Grad 5 Fatal Flaws
• College 5 Fatal Flaws

By Linda Abraham, President and Founder of Accepted.com.

Bingo! That’s relevant to applicants. One of the most commonly asked personal statement questions I see on Twitter is “What should I write about?”

You need to write about when YOU made a difference.

So if you are a Michelangelo, Einstein, Gates, or Buffett, you may be able to write about your incredible talents and how they propelled you to achieve, although you may appear arrogant if you take this approach. In any case, you geniuses can stop reading this post.

For the rest of you, please continue.  Think about those times when your participation in a project, organization, business, team, or club made a difference.

• What was the situation? the problem? the challenge?
• What was your role in meeting that challenge?  What did you do?
• What was the result?

You may or may not want to tie this story explicitly to your educational and professional goals. That decision will depend on many factors, but one evergreen topic for your personal statements and application essays remains: times when you made a difference.

Related Resources:

• “PAR” or “CAR” Anyone?
• MBA 5 Fatal Flaws
• Med 5 Fatal Flaws
• Law 5 Fatal Flaws
• Grad 5 Fatal Flaws
• College 5 Fatal Flaws

By Linda Abraham, President and Founder of Accepted.com.

The goal, according to William M. Sullivan and Anne Colby, senior scholars at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, is not only to introduce a stronger liberal arts foundation, but to ensure that business students understand that their liberal arts courses are not irrelevant to their business education and to their future career plans.

There is already a move towards liberalizing the MBA education, and a similar move appears imminent in the undergraduate business sphere as well.

NYU Stern’s program provides a model for the integration of liberal arts and business with its course in professional responsibility and leadership. The course provides an integrated syllabus combining business case studies with the study of classic liberal arts texts, including Confucius, Plato, Cicero, Machiavelli, Walt Whitman, and Chekhov.

You can read volumes about leaders and leadership — good and bad. I just finished reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. In it, Lincoln comes alive as a consummate leader.

According to Goodwin what qualities made Lincoln into one of the most admired if not the most admired president in United States history? Here are a few:

1. Willingness to turn to rivals if he felt they were best qualified for a position. It didn’t matter to him whether they had hurt or helped him previously. The man simply refused to bear grudges. “With malice toward none; with charity for all;” was not just a nice phrase; it was a way of life. And that bigness of spirit propelled him to heights of leadership.
2. Patience with others. While Lincoln could forgive rivals, those around him nurtured their peeves, disagreements, and grudges. Lincoln deftly navigated a hornet’s nest of egos and rivals.
3. Willingness to share praise when things went well and shoulder responsibility when things went wrong. He garnered trust from subordinates as a result.
4. Combination of principles and shrewdness. He didn’t seek fights he couldn’t win, but he kept his eyes on the values that were truly important to him and pursued them with consistency.
5. Gift for using humor and stories to make his point and defuse tension.

In your essays, when can you show a bigness of character — a willingness to reach out to competitors or rivals? Can you show a principled approach to leadership? Can you discuss a time when you told a joke to score points and release tension, and then turned the tide toward your point of view?

• Save $100 on any editing or consulting purchase totaling $1,000 or more. This special ends Thursday March 12. Don’t miss it.
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• Darden Transcript is now online. A few excerpts:

eva (Feb 26, 2009 12:10:34 PM)
Sara: MBA admissions are mostly based on experiences. What do you think about the students who want to continue to the graduate school right after their undergrad? They basically will not have any work experience at all. Can such student still be considered? Can they still apply for an MBA in Darden?

SaraNeherDARDEN (Feb 26, 2009 12:13:15 PM)
Eva, We do have some students who come directly from undergrad. Admission to business school is based on your leadership ability and potential, your intelligence, and your work experience. The first two you can have at any age. The third, a college applicant can have via internships, strong extra-curricular activities, etc. Plus – there is no downside to applying. If you don’t get in now, we will give you feedback over the summer on how to improve your chances in the future.

ThirdRoundApplicant (Feb 26, 2009 12:14:58 PM)
Sara: I am already pointing out a weakness in the additional comments section and word limit is 150 words. I would feel very limited in explaining my reasons to apply in Round 3. Is there any other way I can accomplish this?

SaraNeherDARDEN (Feb 26, 2009 12:16:05 PM)
3rd Round, the “Additional Comments” section should be used with bullet points -it is not an essay. Just tell us what we need to know in the most concise way possible. A few sentences are sufficient.

Dan (Feb 26, 2009 12:20:44 PM)
Sara: How is the current economical situation affecting graduates? I guess job offers are not as good in salaries and numbers as previous years.

SaraNeherDARDEN (Feb 26, 2009 12:23:14 PM)
Dan, it is really too early to tell about salaries and offers for this year, but our second years are doing quite well in the job market. We had all of the top banks (that are left) and all of the top consulting firms, plus even stronger showings from previous years, in manufacturing and marketing. Great jobs are out there, companies are just slower to confirm this year – offers are still coming in now! For more information, consult our employment report on our career development center website.

• Late Season Special. Accepted’s own modest contribution to the Porkulus, I mean Stimulus, Plan: $100 off all orders over $1,000. Use coupon code SAVE100 during checkout to get the discount. Ends March 12.
• Beautiful B-School Photo Contest Let the artist in you emerge through the lens of your digital camera. share your pictures from your b-school visits. And enter our contest to win prizes worth up to $250 in value. Check out last year’s winning photos and the rules for this year’s contest.
• UNC Kenan-Flagler Chat with Sherry Wallace Ask questions about this year’s admissions at UNC, applying third round, or your waitlist status. Sherry and her team will have the answers.
• Save the date: Accepted’s first 2010 MBA admissions telethon is scheduled for March 4, 2009 from 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM PT/4:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET / 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM GMT. Details and registration info to follow.

And ongoing: It’s a 10! MBA Interview Feedback contest and our featured ebook of the month: The Nine Mistakes You Don`t Want to Make on a Med School Waitlist