Welcome to F1GMAT’s #AskAtulJose series. Today’s question is a common dilemma that applicants face once they iterate through their essays a few times. The question is:
Q) I have put a lot of thought into the essay by working on the story, the transitions and feel that the final essay is heartfelt and impactful. But the problem is that the word count is 200 words over the 500-word limit. I really couldn’t shorten the essay. How should I start editing?
Editing is a skill that cannot be condensed in one book or even a Q&A like this, but from experience, I found some quick hacks that could be used to improve the narrative.
The first place that you really have to look into is the secondary facts or background information.
When you start the draft, the words will flow, and if you have read our Winning MBA Essay Guide, I have also suggested not to self-censor and write freely. So when you write without any hesitation about an event or events leading up to a pivotal part of your life or career, you will capture a lot of secondary information in the form of dialogues, interactions, names, description, and even the technology or a concept unique to your industry.
If you remove close to 65 to 75% of the background information, the essay will read poorly.
There is, however, a balancing act where you can remove 35% of the background information, and you barely would see any difference. This requires an independent eye, and that is why you have a lot of editing services like what F1GMAT is offering.
But I will try to explain with an example that I have used in Winning MBA Essay Guide’s Chapter “10 Rules to Fight Wordiness.”
In this example, the applicant – a software engineer, writes about a coding marathon when the client deadline was near. It goes like this:
"The 3-member team pushed through a non-stop 48-hour coding Marathon, fixing the bugs, sleeping in our conference room with a make-shift 3x5 feet single bed, and strategically used the sleep time to meet the 1st Aug deadline."
Ok.
You might have immediately found a lot of background information that, on the first read, looks important, but we can let go.
What are the primary facts in that sentence?
The primary facts are determined by the relevance of the information in understanding the constraints that an applicant faced. So if you look into the sentence, the primary facts are
• 3-member team
• 48-hour
Why 3-member team: It shows the team size – a data point that the admissions team would look into for evaluating his leadership skills.
Why 48-hour deadline: It shows the constraint that the applicant faced and his ability to achieve goals under pressure.
Don’t remove the primary facts while editing. It has a purpose.
Now, what are the secondary facts?
3x5 feet in 3x5 feet single bed
When you mention a single bed, the reader can infer that the bed is of relatively smaller size. The 3x5 is unnecessary for the MBA Application essay, although it would read well in a novel.
1st August in the phrase 1st August deadline
Although mentioning the deadline is important, the date doesn’t serve any purpose other than offering a certain rhythm to the sentence. So if I read the unedited paragraph again, it goes like this:
"The 3-member team pushed through a non-stop 48-hour coding Marathon, fixing the bugs, sleeping in our conference room with a make-shift 3x5 feet single bed, and strategically used the sleep time to meet the 1st Aug deadline."
If I remove 3x5 feet and 1st August and read it again, how will it sound?
"The 3-member team pushed through a non-stop 48-hour coding Marathon, fixing the bugs, sleeping in our conference room with a make-shift single bed, and strategically used the sleep time to meet the deadline."
It barely made any difference. There are hundreds of such decisions that an editor makes.
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