Editing MBA Essays: Power of 7 Iterations

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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