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How to Stand out and be Creative on Essays

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3underscore
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Re: How to Stand out and be Creative on Essays [#permalink] New post   Updated on: 08 Jan 2010, 09:11
crackfire2003 wrote:
8:00 AM. July 1, 2010. The 23rd floor of the Bank of China building in Hong Kong. A woman sitting behind the mahogany desk calls a Shanghai trader to buy 200,000 shares of China Telecom's stock. Moments later, she dashes into a teleconference with Tokyo analysts. When the teleconference finally concludes two hours later, the woman rushes down the stairs, hails a taxi to the Chek Lap Kok Airport, catches a flight to Thailand, and ends her day with a meeting with the CFO of DynaTech Computers. I look forward to maintaining this busy schedule as a portfolio manager of an....

Will this kind of opening be called creative and is this a good strategy ?


Oh good god. All the woman sitting behind the mahogany desk needs to do is consider the life-changing moments for the firm that she has to decide about, stare into a cup of coffee, and then it is a Harvard Business School bloody case study.

Which, to clarify, are amongst the worst pieces of writing known to man, and consistently have numerical errors.

Originally posted by 3underscore on 08 Jan 2010, 09:10.
Last edited by 3underscore on 08 Jan 2010, 09:11, edited 1 time in total.
edited to add more slagging of HBS case studies, as it is necessary
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crackfire2003
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Re: How to Stand out and be Creative on Essays [#permalink] New post   08 Jan 2010, 09:19
ok ok I get it no shiny mohogany desk that reek of HBS case studies :oops:
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3underscore
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Re: How to Stand out and be Creative on Essays [#permalink] New post   08 Jan 2010, 09:36
I am not against people writing interesting essays. I would avoid the third person though - I think it is a really dangerous format to write in as it can give a really bad impression.

As for the HBS case studies, you will see. They have all kinds of garbage in them. "As Rhyme stared out of the window at the snow-drift landscape of midway airport, he realized it was the first time he had encountered in the past weeks that he truly had the opportunity to consider the recent decisions he had made and the firms future. The past week had been extremely demanding for him, stepping in as the emergency CEO of goatse.cx...."
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Re: How to Stand out and be Creative on Essays [#permalink] New post   08 Jan 2010, 10:05
crackfire2003 wrote:
Duckpond please have a look at this sample essay at accepted.com (https://www.accepted.com/mba/sampessay02.aspx) the introduction does tie into the background and future aspirations of the applicant.

What I was trying to get at was can one take a "day in the life of XXX" as a beginning of an essay and then demonstrate that XXX is wad you want to do post MBA and how XXX ties in with your background. The reason I am asking this is coz this kind of intro would be pretty engaging from a reader's point of view.



I think that essay is okay. It is, as the intro says, very clear but I don't even come close to finding it engaging. It's well written but on the boring side in my opinion.

As for your question... Yes, you can start an essay like that but you can do it poorly and do it well. That said, you can start an essay talking about almost anything and make it great/terrible.
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aaudetat
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Re: How to Stand out and be Creative on Essays [#permalink] New post   10 Jan 2010, 10:04
3underscore wrote:
I am not against people writing interesting essays. I would avoid the third person though - I think it is a really dangerous format to write in as it can give a really bad impression.

As for the HBS case studies, you will see. They have all kinds of garbage in them. "As Rhyme stared out of the window at the snow-drift landscape of midway airport, he realized it was the first time he had encountered in the past weeks that he truly had the opportunity to consider the recent decisions he had made and the firms future. The past week had been extremely demanding for him, stepping in as the emergency CEO of goatse.cx...."


YES. IS TRUE. DO NOT DO.
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Jerz
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Re: How to Stand out and be Creative on Essays [#permalink] New post   10 Jan 2010, 13:24
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Basic rule of thumb re: creativity: If you are copying a creative element of a sample essay found in a book/blog/newspaper, you are not being creative. There will be many, many other essays using the same approach. Tread with caution.

And 3underscore, re: the HBS case studies, I find that the detailed description of the protagonist's mental state at the beginning of the case is crucial to my being able to empathize with their situation and analyze.....

Sorry, couldn't keep a straight face anymore. You are right. They are pure writing trash.
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Re: How to Stand out and be Creative on Essays [#permalink]
10 Jan 2010, 13:24
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