Essays Time Investment

Question

On average, how long did it take to get through the essays of one school? (i.e. one day for an essay's rough draft?)

xlick · Answer

lol..I've been working on Columbia essays since March. Wait..that's actually kind of sad...nevermind :cry:

Steel · Answer

Timing is a total random factor that depends a lot on your writing style.

I spent about a month and a half on my first set and then did about 2-3 week turnarounds for the other schools I applied to (retooling essays and writing new ones). That was typically a few hours a day, with some marathon days on the weekends (especially in those 2-3 week periods)

This can totally vary though and I know there are some pretty innovative methods for organizing attacking essays that have come out on the forum.

topher · Answer

I'm currently reading Your MBA Game Plan and in it they say you should expect to spend an average of 30 - 50 hours per application. I'm guessing that time allotment may be true for the first 1 or 2, but afterwards, they will go by a lot faster.

Steel's estimates seem like a pretty good general guideline.

Steel's estimates seem like a pretty good general guideline.

pmenon · Answer

Yeah, I think it totally depends. The initial ones will take a lot longer for us, because we're still finding our tone, writing styles, etc. I suspect that the R2 apps will be a lot quicker.

The other thing I found was that if you can latch onto exactly what you want to talk about for a given essay question, you're already a good chunk of the way there. For example, as soon as I ready Kellogg's 4b essay, my mind grabbed onto an idea and I just ran with it. It took me probably about 3 hours to come up with a decent first draft, within the word limits.

Speaking of which ... any of my Kellogg peeps who are going in this year, let me know if you're down to critique 4b

refurb · Answer

First one took me forever (6-8 weeks) then after that each one got easier as I had quality material to work with.

By the end I could get a pretty good essay out in 2-3 weeks (20 hours a week).

RF

highhopes · Answer

I've drafted a set and they frankly haven't taken very long at all. Maybe an hour a piece at the most (keep in mind they're first drafts). But, as I think has been suggested in previous posts, it's everything that goes into the essays that takes all the time. Researching specifics about the school, making sure you have all the info to make your goals specific. I'm guessing it's going to take me some time to trim the word counts. Including all this, I'm sure the number would be much higher and I don't think I could estimate it.

triple5soul · Answer

When choosing essays (from a list of options - i.e. choose 2 from the following list of essays), must they be in the specific order of that list?

refurb · Answer

When you submit your essays, you submit them individually.

The web interface will say "Please upload your response to essay question #4."

You can't really change the order.

RF

triple5soul · Answer

Thanks refurb.

Essays Time Investment

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