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]!
So, without further ado, our eighth essay!
The essay prompt:
Our eighth essay prompt is another behavioral one coming from a previous application season from a school with a fantastic football team. It requires more thought than the average essay in this category, however, because it asks about failure. It asks for advice.
Describe a time in your career when you were frustrated or disappointed. What advice would you give to a colleague who was dealing with a similar situation? (400 word maximum)Let’s dive into this week’s essay!
Quote:
Arriving in [CITY], [STATE] on a redeye flights, I was atypically cheery on this specific Monday morning. In the previous weeks, I had worked hard compiling statistics for my tracks so the testers would know exactly what scripts to test over the weekend. I was expecting to see my most struggling track atop the weekly standings, indicating that we had completed our planned test scripts. What happened next made me feel defeated and frustrated as my track hadn’t moved from its spot at the bottom of the pack.
This has the foundation of a good introduction for this type of essay. It’s event based and attempts to suck the reader in from the very beginning. A for effort. D on execution. Here’s why – it’s confusing. Beyond the little stuff (e.g. deleting “specific”, “during” instead of “in”, etc.) there’s a disconnect here.
The applicant landed happy – but why? Because they had compiled stats over the weekend – for them or for the applicant? And s/he was disappointed their worst track hadn’t improved so then why were they so happy?
Additionally, this is a confusing description of the core activity. The applicant should work to make it less technical. And we’d recommend against saying “weekend”. Did THEY work the weekend? If so, the word weekend should come earlier in the sentence. Right now it makes it sound like they worked their team hard over the weekend.
Quote:
Although my other tracks were meeting or exceeding their goals, the tester that was responsible for testing the notices that consumers would get was falling behind , week after week, and it seemed that there was nothing I could do to correct that . The testing manager had seen this for weeks and told me that he wanted to let her go at the end of the week ; however, knowing how long it had taken to train her, I approached a close friend of mine with the best track to see what I could do differently to motivate and coach my tester.
Again, we won’t focus on the core of the writing which we’d want to fix up. What we would say is to make this sentiment softer. It’s the start of this applicant looking for solutions and should set them up appropriately. For example, the current wording makes them sound helpless. Also, we’d restructure to something like this:
“The project manager, aware of the deteriorating situation, approached me to discuss rolling the resource off at the end of the week. However, knowing the risk to the project timeline in onboarding a new team member, I requested an additional month to explore alternative solutions. I approached a close friend who was leading another track to get her perspective on the issue and see what I could do differently to motivate or coach my tester.”
The changes are subtle but the entire read of this paragraph has shifted.
Quote:
She had known me for a year and almost immediately turned to me and said, “It’s not about ‘what’ you say; it’s about ‘how’ you say it.”
This makes it sound like this friend had been waiting to tell the applicant that for months. Doesn’t come across positively. We would recommend something along these lines, “After discussing the situation, she mentioned something that resonated deeply with me. She said, ‘it isn’t about what you say, but rather how you say it. She explained…’”
Quote:
I was confused and asked her to explain how my other tracks were right below hers on the top of the chart.
We don’t know why, but this “on the charts” mentality really doesn’t sit well with us. It goes against the MBA spirit when you’re applying to a collaborative school. We would remove it.
Quote:
She explained that I had always succeeded on the project by working at a fast pace, quickly and efficiently, with my planning spreadsheets and task lists to my teams. However, this team’s tester didn’t operate like that and my friend felt that I may have intimidated her. After some introspection, I realized that I had never really gotten to know her like my other teams and began to change my approach.
This, generally speaking, is good material. We’d improve the writing, but this is a good learning!
Quote:
In order to gain a better understand of her work style, I worked alongside her in a room for the next week. I was frustrated that she didn’t seem to be following the design documents or asking questions proactively so I could help her . Over the next 4 weeks, I sat in a room with her and took considerable time to explain concept as soon as she had questions , even staying late to finish my own tasks. I made sure that she grasped the material and felt confident explaining it to others. My second step was to develop a simpler process that would help her track the daily tasks. I enlisted her help and we both created our own “proprietary” template . This exercise was extremely valuable for her and also helped me see how she worked more clearly. Using this template, she began communicating much more effectively on the most important items and I was able to proactively get solutions for her to complete her tasks.
The applicant is on a roll! And it isn’t particularly because of his / her writing, but rather the example they chose. This is where you can clearly see the importance of picking a deep, impactful example. There is a lot of material to pull from and it allows the writer to showcase a variety of key themes in a natural yet important way.
Now, granted, the writing needs a little tender loving care (for example, there are typos here – make sure you proof your essays!). Two quick rules we noticed in this paragraph (these are just two – not all – there are many!):
1) Avoid contractions – yes, we know it saves word count, but it looks sloppy
2) Any number less than or equal to ten gets spelled out. Anything greater than 11 is a number
Quote:
Within 4 weeks, I was so amazed with [RESOURCE NAME]. She and I had really connected through this exercise and, although my track wasn’t at the top, I saw that she was meeting each goal and was opening up to me with any concerns proactively. We had a real relationship and it made her feel connected to me and willing to share her concerns, sometimes even correcting me. This situation has forever changed the way that I approach leadership and motivation.
Overall, fine – we’d want to tighten this up, however. For example, writers have a tendency to use certain words. They default to them. Recognizing that can be an important, yet difficult, step. This applicant, for example, loves “proactively”. Good writing is as much about prose and literary mastery as it is about variety. Different words, different length sentences, etc.
Quote:
I realize now that not all people can operate using the same analytical methods that work for me.
The applicant is trying to share a profound learning yet does so in a slightly condescending way here. We would suggest a rewording. Perhaps: “ I learned a basic but fundamental lesson: just because something works for me does not mean it will work for someone else”?
Quote:
Effective motivation requires leaders to invest in their resources, make personal connections to make them feel like valued team members and to adjust working styles to get the most out of each person . The strongest piece of advice that I would give to a colleague in a similarly frustrating situation would be to understand whether their “how” is overshadowing their “what”.
For all its room for improvement, this essay ends in a wonderful way. We love the last sentence. Slap this on a tshirt and sell it! It not only ends with memorable phrasing, but also brings the reader full circle to the lesson this applicant has learned along the way.
A FEW PARTING THOUGHTS:
In our previous essay, we had an issue with the applicant not answering the complete question. They completely ignored the part of the prompt that asked for their learnings. We had suggested, in a 400 word essay, at least 100 (we’d prefer 150) words be dedicated to answering that question.
This applicant didn’t make that mistake. Their lessons were sprinkled throughout and the sum total of that word count was in the perfect range.
However, make sure you read your essay out loud and share it with as many people as you can. Ask them two overarching questions. Is the content clear? By that we mean can the reader clearly understand what’s happening regardless of background and experience. And secondly, what are the two or three key things they think of the writer after having read it. Does the individual come across as arrogant? Humble? Determined? Pig headed? Good or bad, ask for the themes. And if those don’t match up with what you’re trying to showcase, then it gives you an indication there’s some work ahead of you.
Overall, as far as first drafts go, this is a solid start!
- The folks
Critical Square
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11 Oct 2015, 14:16
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