I will teach you how to bring your life stories to essays faster with F1GMAT's essay guides. Download below or subscribe to F1GMAT's Service and work with me - Atul Jose, Author/Editor/Founding Consultant, F1GMAT(16 Years of helping applicants gain admissions to M7 and Top 30 schools) A big misconception applicants have is around the value of an Admissions Consultant.
I get this question quite a lot – are you an MBA?
Does an MBA Admissions Consultant be an MBA Alum?
The question shows that the applicant is at the early stage of researching consultants.
If you have analyzed the core curriculum or the electives in top MBA programs, you will notice that most of the learning is around Finance, Accounting, Operations, or Leadership. And none of these learnings are applicable when you guide a client through MBA application essay editing or strategy.
MBA Curriculum is mostly around Operations, Finance, Accounting and Strategy - Not on Writing an Essay or Guiding with Personal Branding
As a consultant without an MBA, who started F1GMAT and helped applicants get into M7 and Top 15 MBA programs, I would say that MBA application essay editing is 60% guiding through the writing process and 40% with strategic inputs.
MBA application essay editing is 60% guiding through the writing process and 40% with strategic inputs.
The 60% of guiding through the writing process also includes nudging recommenders to capture the right traits, editing resumes to highlight impactful entries, and iteratively improving the essays.
Most importantly, it is all about the quality of the essay.
Why MBA Consultants should Write Essays?
The consultant should have the writing skills to guide the applicant.
For me, writing is like a muscle. That is why every year, I write MBA Essay examples, for F1GMAT’s Essay Guides to workout that writing muscles.
The purpose of going through the uncomfortable writing process every year is that I want to be aware of how to incorporate the latest trends and strategies that worked for my clients in the recent months.
I don’t want to be a consultant, who offers just edit comments with no skills in guiding applicant to write better essays.
Any consultant can offer hundreds of comments on the same line, and ask them questions, but if they are not writing essays, they can’t help applicants write better essays.
Comments on Essay - Not the Same as Thinking like a Writer
The comments on the essays will be comments on the 2rd or 3rd best version of what the applicant could write but the reality is that for a consultant to start editing, it is always better that the applicant goes through at least 5-7 iterations of the essay based on the input of a writer.
That is where a writer/consultant like me is different.
If a client comes with the 2nd or 3rd draft, I can guide them and show what the essay is lacking through a writing process that help them reach their best version. Once their best essay is handed over to a consultant like me, I can offer comments to improve the narrative.
Coaching through the essay writing process is lacking in the current admissions essay editing market.
That is where F1GMAT’s Essay Editing is different. I go through close 10-12 edits before finalizing an essay. And the first 5 iteration is on guiding the applicant to write the best version they can write.
5th Iteration of Essay Writing - Magic Happens
Once I get the 5th iteration it is all about commenting and creating the best version of the essay by analysing the opener, transitions, concluding line and motivations.
Strategic Guidance - The 40% of What an MBA Admissions Consultant Should Offer
So, 60 percent of an essay editing and review service should be around writing.
The 40% of strategic inputs are around five deliverables:
1) The Right Examples
I hope you have watched my analysis of IMPACTFUL life experiences. By watching that video, you will understand that if you choose the wrong example to highlight for the essays, no matter how perfect your essays are, you will not stand out from a competing peer with diverse life experiences, professional milestones, or better GMAT/GRE/GPA scores.
A big part of strategic input that an admissions consultant can offer is in choosing the right examples for your resume and essays.
2) Feasible Post-MBA Goals
Once you choose the right examples, the goals essay should be phrased in such a way that the gap between your career journey and post-MBA goals should be met by the exposure and learning experience that an MBA can offer.
I have seen both sides of the spectrum in the feasibility of achieving goals.
Either the applicant is overqualified for an MBA or underqualified to apply.
Then there are applicants who mistakenly highlighted the wrong examples from their careers.
At F1GMAT’s Essay Editing services, I start with an IMPACT table to ensure that you capture the most impactful life, career, extra-curricular, and volunteering experiences for your MBA application.
Another data that consultants like me use is the employment trends over the past 3 to 4 years. I edit the trends for F1GMAT premium and F1GMAT’s research section. My 15 years of research have given me a unique perspective on schools that have pivoted from marketing to consulting, schools that moved from technology when the industry faced a slowdown, and schools that pivoted away from investment banking during the 2008 financial crisis and when the boom in investment banking came back in 2023, the school again started hiring in the niche.
There are schools that pivot aggressively according to market demands, and then there are schools that maintain consistency in hiring and tweak one or two industry or a job function every year.
If you don’t understand the history of the school and their changing hiring strategy, you might quote a post-MBA goal that is not feasible.
Even if your story is convincing, if the school is not looking for your profile to place into the industry, the goals essay will not work.
Once the feasibility of the goals is established, select stories that convey strength in the chosen post-MBA industry or function.
3) Stereotypes
Everyone believes in certain stereotypes. They won’t admit it openly but it is kind of a shortcut for a person to understand another person from a completely different culture.
So stereotype is a shortcut coming from an unconscious bias or also originating from availability biases.
Let's say you have 3 friends from a particular culture and you interact with these 3 persons and then based on your observation, you make the assumption that everyone from this ethnicity, nationality, region, job function, industry, or city behave in a certain way. But in this world where everybody is inundated with multiple media from different cultures, stereotyping based on the persons exposure can be a little tricky.
I have collaborated with global citizens working in Europe, in Africa, In India, In China, and the US. If the admissions team had evaluated the person based on their ethnicity, nationality, or even their city, they would have been so wrong.
Another stereotype is based on your profession.
Investment Bankers, Private Equity analysts, Consultants, and Technologists all have certain assumed stereotypical traits and behaviors.
It is your duty as an applicant to highlight what makes you different.
Don’t allow the admissions team to generalize your profile.
Your values evolve with exposure.
So accentuate stereotypes that schools prefer and eliminate stereotypes that can affect your admission chances.
4) Culture of the School
One essential strategic input that I offer is to share how the school’s culture has evolved. There are very few libertarian US schools.
Most US schools are left or left-leaning.
I recently had an initial discussion with a potential client and in the first 20 minutes of the discussion, he shared his frustration of the reservation system in India. He was a meritorious student applying to US universities. This person is truly not a match for US universities where DEI initiatives are ingrained into the culture.
He could mask his frustration. But most schools have some essays on what they did to uplift the less fortunate citizens. If the person can’t empathize with a historically marginalized population in one country, he is unlikely to empathize with another minority in a different country.
These applicants are cultural misfits.
There are limitation even for consultants to build a convincing story if the applicant doesn’t have values of equity and justice.
5) Initiatives
Schools prioritize certain initiatives.
If you go through the latest 10 or 15 or 20 tweets from let's say Harvard, Stanford. Wharton, Kellogg, MIT or Chicago Booth, you will see that each school is prioritising certain industries or functions with news releases, research insights and tone of the message.
We can understand what the schools are prioritizing
Are they prioritizing climate change?
Are they prioritizing AI?
Are they prioritizing sustainability?
Once you get a sense of the frequency with which they promote certain initiatives, you will understand that the school also wants candidates from certain industries and functions with goals that will help them achieve their goals
When you shortlist professional milestones, include some examples that are also aligned with the school’s initiatives.
As an admissions consultant, one of the strategic inputs I offer is around initiatives that schools are prioritizing.
I hope you understood how F1GMAT’s Essay Editing is different
If you need help with personal branding, shortlisting the right examples for your essays, advice on creating narratives, and editing your application essays, Subscribe to F1GMAT's Essay Editing Service at store.f1gmat.com/essay-editing.
I am Atul Jose. For help, Sign up for F1GMAT's Essay Editing Service
