For MBA Applicants around the world, one thing that bothers them the most is the review process for Essays. Most applicants review their essays for grammar and structural errors but then pass the essays to friends, colleagues, partners, parents, or experts for a detailed review. What most applicants fail to do is to define the best practices for reviewing the essays. Here are 4 Best Practices for Reviewing MBA Application Essays.
1) Describe Context
When you write an MBA Application essay, the context is clear to you. You have read several sample essays and best practices on writing MBA Application Essays before start writing your first draft. Unfortunately, unless you are asking an MBA Admissions Consultant to review your essays, the knowledge of context would be missing. Give a little bit of background about the School and the MBA program that you are trying to get in.
What is the school known for: Consulting, Finance, Marketing, Technology, or Entrepreneurship?
Relevancy in your story is important and it can happen only when reviewers have a clear understanding of the context.
2) Encourage Honesty - Brutal Honesty
Even if it is your family member, by encouraging honest review, reviewers will be able to point out mistakes in sentence structure, grammar, inconsistencies in tone and logical structuring of the essay. If the reviewers are your colleague or friends, they might be little reluctant to point out the obvious gap in the story. Convince them that brutal honesty is what you expect from the review process, and it is all right to criticize the essay.
3) Define Rating Metrics
This might not be a problem for Expert Reviewers but if colleagues, friends, or family, who has no training in scoring your essays, reviews the essay, introduce the following metrics, and ask them to rate the essay on a scale of 1-10 for each element.
Grammar:
Sentence Structure:
Coherence (Does the story add up?):
Wowness (Read our Essay Tips about Storytelling to learn about this metric):
Clichés (A high score in this element means the essay is filled with clichés):
4) Does it answer the Question?
With word limits for this year’s essay going down by 50%, applicants should guide the reviewers to evaluate whether your essay answers the question. Any words or phrases that do not contribute towards answering the questions should be cut off from the essay. For Example, if the essay is about short-term or long-term goals, it should directly address the question in hand, instead of giving details of your background. The resume is available with the AdCom, and they will refer it to learn more about your job history, description, and contributions.
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About the Author
I am Atul Jose - the Founding Consultant at F1GMAT.
Over the past 15 years, I have helped MBA applicants gain admissions to Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, Chicago Booth, Kellogg, Columbia, Haas, Yale, NYU Stern, Ross, Duke Fuqua, Darden, Tuck, IMD, London Business School, INSEAD, IE, IESE, HEC Paris, McCombs, Tepper, and schools in the top 30 global MBA ranking.
I offer end-to-end Admissions Consulting and editing services – Career Planning, Application Essay Editing & Review, Recommendation Letter Editing, Interview Prep, assistance in finding funds and Scholarship Essay & Cover letter editing. See my Full Bio.
I am also the Author of the Winning MBA Essay Guide, covering 16+ top MBA programs with 240+ Sample Essays that I have updated every year since 2013 (11+ years. Phew!!)
I am an Admissions consultant who writes and edits Essays every year. And it is not easy to write good essays.
Contact me for any questions about MBA or Master's application. I would be happy to answer them all