Starting with a catchy paragraph, adding elements of storytelling, translating your unique experience to engaging narrative, using numbers without boring the reviewer, avoiding clichés, and finally creating a coherent MBA application essay is no mean task. In our essay review service, we have seen applicants trying to meet all these requirements in the first draft itself. A better strategy is to use iterations, each iteration adding elements of a Winning MBA Essay to the first draft.
Iteration 1: The Free Flow
When you start writing an essay with a goal in mind, most likely you will focus on the event or experience that changed your life the most. What most applicants miss are the minor experiences that had a bigger impact than those mega life-changing events that you have obsessed for the essays. Write freely without any fear of word limit or the number of experiences. If you had three experiences that fundamentally changed your outlook towards life and people, include them all. 500 word-limit; Forget it. Write until you have nothing to recall.
Iteration 2: The Cliché Remover
The words have crossed the 2000 mark. Don’t cut any stories out of the essay. Take a print out of the essay, and be ready with a highlighter. Marking a hard copy moves you closer to the material and separates you from all the distractions that come with staring at a screen. Whenever you see a cliché, in the way you have narrated the experience, the phrases used, the repetition of the words, or the journey of the protagonist, mark the line or the entire paragraph. Some of the Clichéd phrase/words used in essays are: leverage, maximize the revenue, synergy, on the same page, level playing field, pursue, and add value. ...
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About the Author
I am Atul Jose, Founding Consultant of F1GMAT, an MBA admissions consultancy that has worked with applicants since 2009.
For the past 15 years I have edited the application files of admits to the M7 programs: Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Wharton School, MIT Sloan, Chicago Booth, Kellogg School of Management, and Columbia Business School, together with admits to Berkeley Haas, Yale School of Management, NYU Stern, Michigan Ross, Duke Fuqua, Darden, Tuck, IMD, London Business School, INSEAD, SDA Bocconi, IESE Business School, HEC Paris, McCombs, and Tepper, plus other programs inside the global top 30.
My work covers the full MBA application deliverable: career planning and profile evaluation, application essay editing, recommendation letter editing, mock interviews and interview preparation, scholarship and fellowship essay editing, and cover letter editing for funding applications. Full bio with credentials and admit history is here.
I am the author of the Winning MBA Essay Guide, the best-selling essay guide covering M7 MBA programs. I have written and updated the guide annually since 2013, which makes the 2026 edition the thirteenth.
The reason I still write and edit essays every cycle: a good MBA essay carries a real applicant's voice. Writing essays for F1GMAT's Books and Editing essays weekly is how I stay calibrated to what current admissions committees respond to.
Contact me for school selection, career planning, essay strategy, narrative development, essay editing, interview preparation, scholarship essay editing, or guidance documents for recommendation letters.