I Have Awesome Essays

Question

It's funny how everyone thinks they have great essays. Kind of like how everyone has awesome recommendations. 

I spent a lot of time on my essays (probably too much time), agonized over the tone and the overall positioning support that they provided so I think my essays were good, but I don't really know if they were "great." Maybe they were great. I'm a journalist, so I would like to think that I'm a better writer than a lot of the competition, but it's so subjective that I have no idea if my essays were good or not.

Vault has a bunch of "essays that worked," i.e., essays from students who were admitted to their respective schools. Most of them are terrible. Not so much the content, but the style and the tone are horrendous.

I read a book recently called "65 Successful Harvard Business School Application Essays." These were very good. Witty, but not in an overbearing sense. Of course the content was incredible, military people, sail-around-the-world types, people with amazing experiences.

I would love to sneak into the admissions offices of the schools I applied to and read the essays that my "competition" have written and see if they're any good. There is one person on this forum who asked me to review a couple essays and I was very impressed, I hope most people don't write as well as him. I hope most of the competition writes essays like the ones available on Vault.

Won't it be nice in a few months when we have an idea where we're going to school and we can forget all this stuff? I imagine like a year down the road someone will approach me and say, "I'm thinking about applying to business school, do you have any tips? How much time did you spend on essays? When should I take the GMAT?" Of course if this happened to me right now, I would talk the person's ear off for like three days straight, but a year from now I'm sure I'll be like, "You know, I don't really remember too much about the timing of it all, just do a lot of research. I forget when I took the GMAT and when I wrote my essays."

Thanks for tuning in to my 2 o'clock stream-of-consciousness post.

lhotseface · Answer

Next year, I am sure many of us will hear their classmates saying, "Oh, I wrote my essays over a weekend and submitted 5 applications in a week. BTW, I also took the GMAT two weeks before the deadline while getting my skydiving certification in the evenings." Really ? Mate, you probably don't need an MBA.

It's funny how time eases the pain. When I check my folders and notice some essays with versions ranging from 0.1 to 2.4, I sweat all over again.

OasisNYK · Answer

I think Rhyme seems to have a pretty good handle on what the competiton is writing - he has read a lot of them. So has Hjort. 
*disclaimer - please dont flood their boxes with PMs - I know both were quite busy with this sort of work during the earlier rounds.

If you are a good writer, you probably have great essays - so I wouldnt stress. Its all subjective though as you know.

johnnyx9 · Answer

Lhotseface - You're right, I'm sure we'll hear stories about all sorts of superhuman feats from our classmates.

OasisNYK · Answer

How many of them do you think will actually be telling the truth?

rhyme · Answer

Someimes I wish I could use portions of the essays I see as good examples of what not to write. Most of what I saw was what I'd consider good drafts - but poor writing. Part of it is sometimes just a lack of english skills, part of it is just sometimes people dont know how to convey ideas well. I read one this morning that went on for about three paragraphs about a job, and even after re-reading them several times, I'm not really sure what it says. 

Also, lots of cliched statements. Really tiresome to read.

rhyme · Answer

1 or 2.

Most of the GSB classmates I met admitted they spent a lot of time on stuff.

dukes · Answer

When its all said and done, I would actually love to see what other posters' successful essays looked like...not that anyone would let me.

rhyme · Answer

When its all said and done, if the school I attend will give me permission to share them, I'll post my own.

Ozmba · Answer

If that happens, i will be the first one to read!! :lol:

johnnyx9 · Answer

A lot of the essays in Montauk's book were ridiculously long too. As much as I loved his book the essays weren't that helpful because the school's I applied to had very short essays. Also the "sample" recommendation that he has in his book goes on for several thousand words.

lepium · Answer

I think style is slightly overrated vs. content. You can't create new content, you can only select the content which you think is best for each essay from within your experiences. But you can re-work style a zillion times.

I guess what I'm saying is: if the experiences you've had are good/interesting and you tell them quite well, those are good essays. 

Now if the content is poor or boring and you write stellarly, you're still stuck with poor essays. 

This is just my educated guess, as I haven't seen any essays other than the typical examples available for free in websites.

Cheers. L.

johnnyx9 · Answer

I agree.

Somebody on this forum has talked about how essays should really show "awareness" and I think that is what is really good about the essays in the Harvard book. These people are able to, in very few words, demonstrate that they can contextualize their experiences and draw meaningful conclusions.

rhyme · Answer

This is what good essay writing is all about. Introspection.

goldenspaceship · Answer

Yes, rhyme, introspection is a major thing, i learned that the hard way.

ah, and yes, weighing out the competition, only if I could do that. I actually tried to get a group of friends to read each others essays, but that didn't work out too well. I am applying second round this year; and only if I have a way of know how other people who are applying to Wharton, Duke, Haas wrote..... maybe that will stimulate me to write better.

fatb · Answer

Why to dig this post out from the bottom of the grave. Did you go deep into hell to drag this bat out? :twisted:

gmatbschool · Answer

Rhyme did you ever share your essays? Is it possible to take a look?
I have round 2 apps and I'd love to get some tips.

LevFin7S · Answer

yeah i thought i had great essays too

until i got rejected..haha

goldenspaceship · Answer

For those who are applying R2 to top 20 schools, I will be happy to cross-read essays with you if you think that can be beneficial. You know what they say, two heads are better than one.

crackfire2003 · Answer

I think we need to make 400 posts to get access to the vault and then to it depends on people if they want to share their essays

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