GMAT Club Essay Review 10: Leadership Experience

Thanks for reading and welcome to the eighth post in GMAT Club’s Essay Review Initiative brought to you by Critical Square. Every week or so throughout the summer we’re going to review, comment, and tear apart a real essay from last year. The streets will run red (with ink)! So grab a cup of coffee and read on – this is a great way to see how our admissions consultants, and effectively, an admissions committee looks at your essays. What we like, what we don’t like, and how to avoid mistakes that can sink your application.

If you missed the first reviewed essay on “Career Goals”, you can catch up [here]!
If you missed the second reviewed essay on “A Time You Took a Risk”, you can catch up [here]!
If you missed the third reviewed essay on “Tell Us About Yourself”, you can catch up [here]!
If you missed the fourth reviewed essay on “Duke’s 25 Things About You”, you can catch up [here]!
If you missed the fifth reviewed essay on “Why an MBA, why now?”, you can catch up [here]!
If you missed the sixth reviewed essay on “Why an MBA, why now?”, you can catch up [here]!
If you missed the seventh reviewed essay on “Leadership Experience?”, you can catch up [here]!
If you missed the eighth reviewed essay on “Frustrating Experience?”, you can catch up [here]!
If you missed the ninth reviewed essay on “Why MBA, why now #3?”, you can catch up [here]!

So, without further ado, our tenth essay!

The essay prompt:

Our tenth essay is a straight forward behavioral one. “Tell us about a leadership experience”. 500 words. Sounds straightforward, right? Well it isn’t. You have to talk about what you learned, how you applied it, why you chose those specific lessons, and, on top of all that – suck in the reader. These are actually very difficult essays to do well. Most applicants feel story essays are their forte and the fact of the matter is – they aren’t.

Also, given it’s all about leadership – we picked the essay of an Army officer to review.

Let’s dive into this week’s essay!


Ok, not a bad opening. Well, we take that back. It’s a bad opening. But not because it’s bad. But because it could be SOOOO much better. Sometimes the opening is the victim of the story itself. As you’ll see later in this essay, that isn’t the case here. The essay content itself actually sets the writer up for an interesting hook. A way to really make this come alive. So don’t just write what first comes to mind and then stick with it. Let it evolve. You have to start somewhere but don’t be afraid of meandering back to where it all began!


First off, we don’t have much context here. And it isn’t “good” lack of context – the kind of gap that pulls the reader in closer. But the type that confuses the reader. It’s also married with a fairly obvious statement which doesn’t help anything. Of course effective leaders depend on the achievements and failures of others. Bad leaders can you tell this because, at a basic level, even they know it to be true. This is the end of the 1st paragraph and it’s not the right way to suck in the reader.


Ooh – now we get to the meat of the issue. This sentence alone makes us think of two different ways to open up the essay. One being getting that phone call in the middle of the night telling this brand new 2nd LT that he had a problem on his hands. Or opening the scene as he’s getting dressed down by the commanding officer. Shaky knees, quivering lips, thumping heart, all of it. THIS is the material to pull from.


This is context setting 101. Which is fine. There’s a little more here we’d like to tease out without blowing up the word count. For example, why does this applicant’s ranking officer want to recommend the most severe punishment? Is there something there worth sharing? Also, the “contemplated going against the norm” comes at the wrong place. It should be its own section and at the END. It sets up the complication and is currently lost in the shuffle. What about ending with, “as a young officer facing my first ever such hearing, it would have been acceptable, if not expected, for me to agree with the others”.


The base this is built on is sound – the applicant didn’t want his solider to get the maximum punishment simply because it was easy. BUT – just because of rank and pay? Yes, those are considerations for any leader. The last thing you’d want is a brand new father jobless or making less than before. That isn’t, however, a full justification for fighting. We need to set up more basis here. We need to talk about potential. Was this solider one of the unit’s best assets? Was he indispensable for some technical reason? Or would it send the wrong message and the unit as a whole would suffer?


There are three issues with this. For one, it’s anticlimactic. After all that build up, it lets out with a fizzle. It is also long on the word count. Lastly, it is written in a way that would make the reader roll their eyes. Did the applicant REALLY think about “following the status quo”? Probably not. Write how you think. Write how you feel. If it sounds forced or unreal, it probably is. These are real people reading real stories from other real people. Be genuine! One more point – it’s useful to bifurcate what is story and what is learning. We’d recommend leaving the actual action here and moving the learning to later.


One main comment – safeguard is the wrong word to choose. It makes the applicant sound like he’s protecting this solider because he’s useful. Not because he deserves it on some equally important, yet universally applicable principle. Instead of talking about what to fix here, we’ll instead share the revised ending after our edits. Keep in mind, this applicant got in with a full ride. So maybe pay attention:

I had known a leader could influence people and shape the culture of their team but I realized that it often required standing up for what you believed in and what was in the best interest of others. I could have sat there in silence and done what was best for my career. But that would not have been right for [SOLIDER], my unit, or the Army. [SOLDIER]’s trial served to establish my reputation as tough but fair with the squad. I had not protected him but I had also not left him defenseless. I learned the best way to earn esteem was to truly care about the people you lead. All six of my crews finished with the highest possible rating and two finished first and third out of nearly 600 Soldiers. [SOLDIER]’s crew finished third.

A FEW PARTING THOUGHTS:

This is actually a pretty decent first draft. This is better than what we find in most Ding Reviews from new clients who share their previous applications. But this isn’t about good, or good enough. It’s about great. It’s about engaging. Story essays are difficult to execute well because there are so many moving pieces woven together by the most subtle of threads. So think about how your story harnesses the themes you’re sharing. How it will come across. How it will read. In the end, these essays say much, much more about you than you will ever know.

- The folks Critical Square

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