EssaySnark Essay Review! Stanford Essay 1: What matters most, and why?
Uh oh. The classic Stanford essay. We're a little surprised it took this long for anyone to send this in! It's traditionally held the spot of “Most Difficult Essay” among all top business schools of the world – that is, until HBS mixed things up with the completely open-ended essay this year.
SIDE NOTE: DO NOT BE TEMPTED TO RE-USE YOUR STANFORD ESSAY 1 FOR HBS.That's just a little word o' advice from the 'Snark. We're actually going to discuss Stanford today, not Harvard. But we know that many people will try to jigger other schools' essays into that Harvard prompt, and Stanford Essay 1 is a common candidate for this misguided effort. Please resist the urge. Not only are the questions the schools are asking totally unrelated, but the schools themselves are so different that the Stanford content just isn't appropriate for Harvard.
Not to mention the fact that it'll be completely obvious to Harvard if that's what you do.
But back to Stanford.
As you know, Stanford doesn't have actual word limits for each individual essay. They have guidelines for a suggested allocation, and you can't go over 1600 words total. They recommend a 750-word essay for the Matters Most question – which is downright liberal by bschool essay standards these days. Used to be, 750 words was a middle-length essay. Now, this is one of the longest essays around.
Still, 750 words isn't that long when you have a lot to say. After all, this essay is asking you to talk about the thing that's most precious to you – most important – most core-critical over all else in the world. Seems like that should take some space to do a good job, wouldn't it?
Yes and no.
Some people do in fact wander off into la-la-land with the extreme permissiveness that Stanford has allowed of 750 words for Essay 1. Your biggest challenge with this essay is that you must FOCUS. You have to directly answer the question – in fact, both elements of the question.
We're happy to report that the Brave Supplicant who sent in this draft did exactly that. At least, there's a clear and direct answer to the main element right upfront – in the first sentence, in fact. Here's what we got:
Keeping an open mind, from exploring other countries to shedding personal biases, matters most to me. As a first generation Chinese American, I not only grew up speaking two languages, but I also adopted two distinct cultures. My parents, who had lived in Germany before immigrating to the United States, further influenced me to broaden my horizon. Because of them, I have always gravitated towards new ideas and experiences.
So refreshing! So direct! You would not believe how many of these essays we see where there is no specific answer to the question to be found – not in the first sentence, not in the first paragraph, not nowhere.
So your next tip for today (besides the one about not trying to re-use Stanford 1 to HBS) is that you
MUST ANSWER THE QUESTION.This is true for every essay for every school – you're saying, “Like, duh, EssaySnark” right?
Yeah. Well. Not everyone seems to get this part. It's a very very common misstep among BSers' drafts everywhere. And it's super critical for Stanford.
The reason for that is, with 750 words, you can quickly hang yourself if you don't have a specific core around which to build your essay. You must know literally what you're talking about (“duh” again, right?) in order to say something useful and intelligent.
This BSer has done a fairly good job of that. We get a real answer in the first sentence. When we first read it, we had some misgivings that it sounded like an answer written to impress the adcom – that's probably the second most common mistake that people make on this one, behind the “not answer the question” part. The hardest part of Stanford essay 1 is to say something that's authentic, to share a real part of yourself. The answer given in the first sentence made us hesitate straightaway, since we were worried it was gonna be another one of those essays. We were also worried that it sounded like the BSer was answering the “matters most” question with multiple responses.
That's tip #3: Only write one single answer in this essay. This BSer has said that “keeping an open mind” is the most important thing, and that works, but it seems like they are also saying that “exploring other countries” and “shedding personal biases” are also what “matters most” - and obviously you can only have ONE thing that “matters most”. Singular. The way it's written, we can kinda excuse it, but you're heading into dangerous territory there.
EssaySnark has already managed to write 750 words ourselves in this discussion of just a single paragraph of Stanford Essay 1 – so we need to wrap things up here. Obviously there's a lot that can be said about any of these essays, and we're not trying to claim that we've covered all the ground in even this one paragraph. Here's a quick summary, to help this BSer understand what they've done and where they need to be careful:
1. Besides the “multiple answers” thing you need to look at the focus of the essay. You start off with this decent opening and then you do an excellent job of talking about specific experiences in your life by which this answer is true – (tip #4 for BSers: that's the way to execute on this essay, is by DESCRIBING ACTUAL EVENTS that have shaped you and made the “matters most” thing what it is). **BUT!** This BSer has too much “not-me” content. You describe in great detail some experiences in Germany, which are well-written and generally interesting... but are they about YOU? You need to be careful with this. We're not saying that you should delete all of it, but you need to examine it closely and make sure that it's revealing something specific about you – and that it's truly supporting your answer to the “matters most” thing. Around paragraphs 6 and 7 we started wondering what the point was. And paragraph 8 is really off track. You're totally out in the wilderness there discussing your friends' grandparents... what does that have to do with YOU? This needs attention.
2. You need to test the argument you're making. This is again true for everyone (tip #5: does the “why” answer fit logically with the “matters most” answer?) This BSer brings everything full circle at the very end but it's a little high-concept; we're not completely convinced that these threads tie up as neatly as you want them to. Maybe it's fine... the essay feels complete, which is definitely important and hard to do... but somehow the “why” statement seems like it could be more directly focused on YOU.
Hopefully these tips and the specific reactions we've offered to the brave BSer who submitted this will also be useful to all of you. This is still one of the hardest essays around. If you're just starting out on your essay-writing adventure, we do not recommend beginning with Stanford. Get your feet wet on essays to another school – Wharton or Kellogg have “easy” essays to learn the ropes with. Then come tackle your Stanford drafts a little later, after you have your chops down. The whole ordeal will be easier that way.
Or relatively so. It's still Stanford. And it's still a killer of a question.
Good luck with it!
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12 Aug 2013, 12:52
). There's also a couple essays in the queue so turnaround depends on who's been approved and when.
And I am sure you are busy this season with tons of Harvard essays coming to you from your clients 
