Hi F.
I have two things to say that should put you at ease.
1. Your experiences, achievements, thoughts, actions etc. are exclusively yours, so even if you are able to copy a writing format from a book, you would still be talking about your own experiences. Having worked with many applicants myself, I can say that beyond a point, an individual's story begins to dominate over a format you have followed from a book or a consultant.
2. Despite information gathering and becoming experts, a lot of applicants tend to miss out important aspects of their stories, which can make their essays from complete to half baked. It is important to mainatin the flow between events of a particular example and not leave any lose ends. Applicants do that all the time.
yeah, but I do agree that applicants are far more knowledgable about the MBA application process that they were even 3-4 years ago!
Namita Garg,
www.mbadecoder.com