https://gmatclub.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-06-16_19-29-30-150x150.png By Adam Hoff, Amerasia Consulting Group This is a post I write basically every year because it comes from what I'm seeing each round, every day, on basically every application. That drum beat is really rigid, hard-to-read Why School X sections on essays. I give the same note to every single client so now I'm giving it to everybody: the simplest and most important thing you can do to improve your Why School X portion of career goals essay is to personalize any and all content. This is a great way to avoid writing something off-putting, as well as a quick and easy method for making your essays warmer, more personal, and easier to connect with. So, what do I mean by "personalizing" this part of the app? Simple: make anything you write about the school specific to you, your experience, your desires, or what you require from a program. Never just state absolutes, generalities, or even known truths and facts - always make them personally-held viewpoints. Examples are the best way to understand this (after the jump): Example #1 GOOD - "I am seeking an intense MBA experience, which is why INSEAD is my top choice." BAD - "INSEAD is one of the most intense MBA programs in the world." WHY - The first sentence is a statement about what you want (an intense experience), which is used as justification for pursuing the school. It doesn't matter whether you are right or wrong in your assessment, so long as you believe it and can then base a decision on that belief. Whereas in the second sentence, you are simply stating a fact. There are multiple problems with this: A) you might be wrong, B) even if you are right it might sound lecturing (which can irritate a reader who is far more of an expert on the subject than you are), or C) even if you are right and the reader is not mildly irritated, you still miss a chance to express something about you. Anything in any essay that doesn't tell the reader more about you, your world, and what you want is wasted space. Example #2 Good - "One thing that drew me to Duke right away was the small class size, which has always been the ideal setting for me to grow and learn." BAD - "Small class sizes are the best way to learn, which is why I love Duke." WHY - This one has a wrinkle, which is that the "bad" sentence sort of seems to personalize the statement with the "why I love Duke" part. The problem is that the revelation is still not based on a personal belief, but rather a statement of fact. Indeed, this statement of fact is even more egregious than the INSEAD statement above because it's offering up as concrete fact something that is highly debatable. Maybe large classes are the best way to learn. Maybe it's online. Maybe it's one-on-one. Who are you to say? Who am I to say? None of us are experts in the sphere of ideal learning models, so this just sounds completely arrogant. Whereas in the "good" example, we see that it's simply a personal preference that is the basis for further interest in Duke. I could go on and on and write 10 examples, but two is probably enough. The main thing is to read every single sentence you write about a program and make sure that it's always personal - told from your perspective, your opinion, your beliefs, and your desires. If it dissolves into "brochure writing" - just statements of fact, no matter how benign or flattering to the school - there is zero upside and plenty of downside. It's a small thing, but we see it crop up in probably 90% of the essays we read, so it's obviously a fairly widespread problem. And while it may not be the entire difference between being admitted or denied, it can definitely be the difference between getting a good or a bad read of your file. And in our experience, *that* is often the difference between being admitted or denied. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you are interested in making sure your essays are personalized (as well as everything else they need to be), hit us up at mba@amerasiaconsulting.com .

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: Study groups: truths & myths, do’s & don’ts

Before starting your INSEAD journey, everybody is very excited and curious about an awful lot of things. One of these are the study groups: a group of 5-6 people that will work together during all the courses of P1 and... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: Business Foundations Program and Getting to Know Singapore

Dear All, I joined the Business Foundation Program in December 2018, prior the beginning of the school in January 2019. This program is designed for those who haven’t worked or for those whom are not yet familiar with Finance and... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: How I Scored 700+ on GMAT and Why I Only Applied to INSEAD

Photo of the magical Chateau de Fontainebleau But first, let me introduce myself and my background (since this my first blog). Kumusta kaibigan? ça va mon amie? I’m Drew Copuyoc. I was born in the Philippines. Unlike a lot of my... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: 3 Life Lessons from My MBA Application Journey

While there are already many wonderful and life-saving posts on tips to get into top business schools, this isn’t one of them. I had embarked on the MBA application process not knowing what to expect and took it one step... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: My Journey Into An MBA

Indian engineers doing an MBA is such a common phenomenon that nowadays people are surprised if an engineer says that he/she wants to continue working in the technical field throughout his/her life. Continuing this tradition, I had decided to... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: Welcome Home

I’m sitting on a plane heading for my first week at INSEAD’s Fontainebleau campus, trying to decide whether to watch Skyscraper featuring Dwayne The Rock Johnson or to overdose on Ambien until I hallucinate about sky cats who want to... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: The 19D’s INSEAD Journey: Officially Starts !

Starting from this week, our INSEAD Class of 2019 December is officially in session. We can finally meet the peers of our class, our study group members, our Career Development Coaches, our Deans and faculty, and our Personal Leadership... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: A Series of Fortunate Decisions

A songwriter, a real estate investor, and a world traveler. A middle child, a husband and a dad. Bungee jumped from 100 meters high, scuba dived 40 meters deep, camped, hiked, climbed, rafted and kayaked. Been on a sinking ship,... Continue Reading →

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15 Jan 2019, 21:00

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: How to Make Friends with Culture

Many people say that getting along with Culture is an art, as with all relationships. But the optimist in me would like to think that what we call “art”, like magic, is just science waiting to be understood, and technology... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: About a Yellow Submarine

What is it like to meet 300 hundred people in a week? At the end of the Welcome week here at INSEAD I could not help but stop for a second to reflect on the prior seven days. So many... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: Five Rules of Design That You can Apply in Business Schools

Four months, 12 core courses, a new club (I+D club) and 16 social events have happened since my last post. The experience at INSEAD has been truly amazing, and the learning immense. Amidst all the activities and 200 alpha peers,... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: My journey towards INSEAD

I’ve toyed with the idea of doing an MBA for the better part of my career, and the reasons for doing one had changed over the years. I came from an untraditional background of mathematical sciences (with a double major... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: Similarities between INSEAD and a Startup Environment

If you ask any INSEAD student what he or she is missing most, the answer is most likely going to be “more time”. Way before I stepped on campus, I heard about the extreme intensity of the program and how... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: Beyond INSEAD

Dear All, When I joined consulting in January 2016, I was told to ‘make My own McKinsey.’ Which not only meant that the next months and years to come could be anything I wanted, but also that it was ultimately... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: Splash For Good

The INSEAD MBA Journey started only a month ago. Even though the MBA Programme was loaded with energy and passion, we need to take a step back and reflect. The first lesson we learnt at INSEAD was not Finance, was not... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: Halfway through the World – P3 in Abu Dhabi

Today is Sunday, February 3rd. It’s the first work day in February in Abu Dhabi. The official first work day of our second half of the INSEAD MBA program. The 40+ of us in Abu Dhabi just spent the entire 8... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: Time Management in the life of an INSEADer

It’s been one month since INSEAD started and I am finally beginning to feel the heat. The first month was pretty chilled out – welcome week, welcome party, dean’s party, buddy dinner, section dinner, nationality dinner, broke dinner, fancy dinner, fancy... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: The beauty of INSEAD Friendships!

When I came to INSEAD, I had a notion that given the short time span of 10 months and the pace of things here, it would be almost impossible to establish any kind of bonds or friendships here. 4 months... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: A Glimpse into Indonesia’s Digital Revolution

I had the privilege of visiting some of Indonesia’s most exciting tech firms over the weekend of 1-2 Feb during the Jakarta Trek organised by the INSEAD Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) Club. While I had often heard about Southeast... Continue Reading →

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FROM Insead Admissions Blog: Time, ROI and Serendipity

As Linkin Park used to say, time is indeed a valuable thing, and its opportunity cost is incredibly high it at INSEAD: for each activity that you are choosing, there are three or four valid alternatives that you are implicitly... Continue Reading →