Essays best practices...

That reading ease tool is really neat. The essay I just wrote for Michigan got an overall index score of 54. Too bad its 50% over the limit right now. Oh well, not bad for just sitting down and writing.

Yes the infamous over the limit problem. So much information on the 10% over rule and then some schools really looking down on essays beyond limits.

I have read several of the MBA admissions books and it seems all the essays are way too long. Especially in Montauks book, those essays are all incredibly long, some are like 3 times the limit. That is the one thing i have a problem with in those books. I could write killer 3,000 word essays but its the 500 word ones that seem impossible.

Yes absolutely. Columbia is the worst. Trying to finish all my aims / reasoning / why columbia / why j-term all in 750 words makes for some serious succinctness..

Fantastic tool...

But it gave my strongest essay (based on feedback from others), a very low 20 odd marks only.

Glad to say that the rest of my essays are scoring 40 and above... yay..

wow, great tools ncprasad! I'll definitely need them to help keep the word count down!

EDIT: My current Haas essays are around the high 30's for reading ease...

ncprasad, this is an excellent tool. I am sure that this is going to help us all a lot with keeping the essays simple.

ps. The first essay that I checked got a 65 .. yey !! And it correctly pointed the sentences that could use some "simplification"

EDIT: Darn, the other essay got a 45. And I can now see what horribly complex sentences that essay has ncprasad, if I get in Wharton or Columbia, then half of the credit will go to this tool of yours.

Wow, this is really an awesome tool. It's always a good laugh to see how low a score one can possibly score (single digits baby).

wow! this tool is just fantastic!... ncprasad, thanks for sharing.

I am not surprised. People often think great essays are the essays that show your literary range. You probably used modifiers all over the essay.
They make for poor readability.

When I first started using this tool, I did an exercise to benchmark HBS essays from the Montauk book. Some of the essays scored <40. The point is, an essay with an index of 70+ can suck if your content sucks. The important thing is to write about great accomplishments in your essays with reflection and maturity.Spend time with your essay and it will improve dramatically.

I think your scores are fine. Just keep compacting the essays.

Prasad ! An amazing tool and thanks a lot for sharing the info

cheers !!

You are not going to get away with just a thanks. Coffee and/or beer on you when we meet @ MIT.

Here are 2 great tips!

First, if you want to rewrite a passage to get a higher score, you'll have to cut the average sentence length. This means you'll have to break up long, complex sentences and change them to two, three or four shorter ones. In other words, sprinkle periods over your piece of writing. When you're turning subordinate clauses into independent sentences, you'll find that a lot of them will start with And, But or Or. Don't let that bother you. It's perfectly good English and has been good usage for many centuries. The Old Testament says, "And God said, Let there be light; and there was light." The New Testament says, "But Jesus gave him no answer." And Mark Twain wrote, "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to." So never mind that old superstition. And don't-please don't-put unnecessary commas after your And's, But's and Or's.

Second tip: When it comes to replacing complex words with simple ones, take first aim at words with prefixes and suffixes, like establishment, available or required. Often the best Plain English replacement is a two-word combination like setting up, in stock or called for. If you can't think of a good substitute, use any good thesaurus or book of synonyms. You'll find that there's s no complex, legalistic word that can't be translated into Plain English.

These tips are not mine. They were given by Rudolph Flesch who got a PhD from Columbia for his research on readability.

Again, great suggestions.

But there is one tiny problem - If you turn a clause into an independent sentence, you are almost always going to increase the number of words used. Now that is going to be a tough problem for a lot of us to handle

Yes, the other problem is if you try to compact an essay, chances are you will decrease readability. Fix a readability goal and after any change you make in order to compact the essay, validate if you negatively impacted readability.

NC, great tool. Thank you..

As always, you are ahead of the game

It seems the more time we spend writing clearly, the higher will be the score..my favorite essay got 55.6

aurobindo, Read this.

https://www.mang.canterbury.ac.nz/writin ... esch.shtml

Thanks man. I saw you explaining it to a certain extent, in ur previous post and so deleted that request in my post.