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02 Sep 2013, 11:47
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souvik101990
Thanks Souvik!
To everyone else - glad that these are becoming popular! Remember that EssaySnark does reviews of essays on the blahg too. We're a little backed up there as well but we definitely will be posting more in September.
09 Sep 2013, 15:29
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EssaySnark Essay Review! Stanford Essay 3: “when you went beyond what was defined or established”
We're on a Stanford binge! Well no wonder, right? Those essays are HARD! We already tackled the biggie – Stanford Essay 1 – what matters most. And we did a Stanford career goals review too. Now today, we're wrapping it all up with a review of Stanford Essay 3.
Before we go too far, you should know that any of the three options are fine to answer. There is no better one over the others. You can choose any of these prompts and go to town with it with confidence. Just pick the one that you can write the strongest story for; don't overthink it. They're equivalent in the adcom's eyes.
Here's the question this Brave Supplicant chose:
Tell us about a time in the last three years when you went beyond what was defined or established.
And then they said:
(No specific word limit – I have taken it as 600 words)
And we got a little worried at that. That's really a lot more words than the adcom suggests; they say that 400 is a good number for this one. If you're spending 200 more words than recommended on this essay then what have you sacrificed with the others?? This is cause for concern. There's no way that you can do a good job on career goals in 250 words... which means that it's the all-important “matters most” essay that you've cheated yourself on. You wrote about what matters most to you in fewer words than you wrote about this? That instantly raises questions in EssaySnark's mind – but we didn't get the “matters most” essay and so we don't know how it was handled.
Just a warning to the BSer that maybe a re-examination is in order.
In terms of the actual Stanford Essay 3, here's the start of it:
I was recruited as a Planning Engineer to my present company straight out of college in 2011. The construction sector was at a stand still. My recruiting organization especially was going through a very bad phase. In spite of this, I chose this company as my first preference because I always believed that steering a ship through troubled waters is what makes a good helmsman. Starting my career with this mindset really helped me in seeing optimism in the pessimistic situation.
So we hafta say, that first sentence is actually kinda useful. It would be more useful if you actually named names – what is this “present company” that recruited you? Don't force the reader to pick up the resume to know the data. Include it. This goes for all BSers everywhere. But that first sentence is nicely establishing some time and place for the essay, and that's always a good way to begin.
In fact, taken in a vacuum, the whole first paragraph ain't so bad: it gives some insight into the BSer's motivations in accepting this job and gives a little taste of this person's attitude towards things. This is offering information about the BSer that goes beyond straight facts, and it can be very helpful for the adcom – you're communicating a variety of things in that paragraph.
The problem is, there's nothing in that paragraph that's related to the essay question. Sure, you need to establish a time and place for the situation that you're going to discuss in the essay. And maybe that first paragraph does that. But in terms of literally serving THIS essay and setting the stage for THIS question... it's not actually doing much.
Another issue for us is the metaphor introduced in the middle about steering a ship – that threw us off. Do you work in shipping? On a boat? It may seem innocent enough to use that particular metaphor but it actually made us stumble. Your goal in writing your essays needs to be a) answer the question, b) communicate new information about yourself, and c) write in a way that lets the reader move quickly through the material. These are all equally difficult and equally important – but that last one? If you write stuff that makes the reader have to stop and go back and re-read? That is avoidable. You don't want to do that. You want them to be able to breeze through and easily pick up the awesomeness that you're laying down.
We're not saying that it's wrong to use that metaphor, just that it put a roadbump in the way for us. It made the 'Snark brain twist up in confusion for a brief moment, which is never what you want to happen.
The main reason we're harping on that metaphor – besides the fact that it threw us off since you're apparently not in the shipping industry – is that it sets expectations in the reader for what you're going to talk about in the essay. By using that in the intro, the reader has an understanding that your essay is going to be about a time when you were a good helmsman, when you steered some ship (or team or project or whatever) through troubled waters. With a metaphor like that, the reader will presume that you're going to talk about how you saved the day and rescued the maiden and brought us all to safety.
But alas, that is not what the essay is about.
The BSer might think that that's what the essay is about. But it's not.
Here's what we get in the second paragraph:
Being good at computers, I saw an opportunity to computerize day-to-day tasks to help save time. Our company has a good ERP system called EASYCOIN. I took the help of this program to integrate one of the most time consuming processes of manually creating Bar Bending Schedules to the ERP system. Now, all it takes is a matter of 20 minutes to generate a BBS with detailed drawings – which earlier took more than an hour. This system is now being widely used in over 40 construction sites all across the country.
This paragraph made us lose hope. If we hadn't kept reading, we would've assumed the BSer totally missed the point for this essay, and for applying to Stanford in general.
This paragraph sounds like a complete topic for a Stanford Essay 3 all by itself – but a) there's not nearly enough information in here to show what the BSer did that was so awesome, and even worse, b) this paragraph makes this BSer sound just like all the other engineer applicants (and we know from this person's GMAT Club username that they're Indian). So you're reinforcing the main thing that you want to be moving beyond in your essay strategy. In addition, there's all this jargon-y stuff. Your adcom reader probably knows what an ERP system is – but we never like to see any acronyms in essays, they're just not necessary and often they completely get in the way.
That one paragraph either needs to be expanded to become the entire essay – or, probably a better strategy in this case, needs to be cut completely. The BSer actually went on in the remainder of the essay to present some story about how they did a whole bunch of other things – something about taking over at a project that was in trouble and something else about getting a client to pay a lot more money. Either of those could potentially be a good topic for Stanford Essay 3 – but we strongly recommend that you pick just ONE story and go into details on it.
What this BSer is missing in every single story that they've crammed in here – and there are at least three, probably more – is that they're not talking about WHAT THEY DID. They brush way too fast past some stuff about problems and how they got assigned to a position but then BOOM all is fixed, everything is perfect, everyone loves you – and they never say what they actually did to create any of those results.
Not effective.
This essay is too long for us to post the whole thing and discuss – look at how much of your time we've wasted already – but hopefully you will agree with our assessment that, despite how that opening might have value in some context, in this essay, those first two paragraphs are misguided and not necessary – and if the whole essay is already 200 words too long, then there's some obvious need for focus and revision. You need to have ONE story in this essay - “Tell us about a time” - not a mishmash kitchen sink dump of random miscellaneous everything. Find the core example of how you're amazing and tell us about that. In detail. Start to finish. Focus. Refine. Polish.
Hope that helps. Good luck, Brave Supplicant!
EssaySnark reviews essays here and on the EssaySnark blahg – for free!Personally identifiable information in your essay needs to be removed and won't be published – don't worry, you'll be able to stay anonymous if you prefer.
11 Sep 2013, 05:50
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essaysnark
Nice way to say " your essay is sh!t"
Thanks a lot for your review. Looks like this BS needs to improve a lot!
It's difficult to leave an essay alone, especially if the deadline is impending. Usually you have more than one pair of eyes looking at it, since you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. Simply put, drafts are always a work-in-progress, but that doesn't mean the feedback isn't useful (or that we're not grateful for it!) 
