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) After editing and reviewing over 300 Essays, I noticed a pattern for Winning MBA Essay. I wouldn't recommend that you force yourself to include the 7 Elements for all your essays, but while editing, review for the narrative structure and presences of:
1) Protagonist
Amateur writing doesn't establish the protagonist early on. In Essays, the word count is in the 250-500 range. Starting with you, and then building context necessary for the essay is the first step in your essay unless the question is about failure, setback or weaknesses. In such scenarios, context and narrative for the event should be the starting point.
Remember that your resume is the reference material for the admission team. Editing the resume to include the most prominent and relevant achievements in your life is as important as editing your essay. The resume should include achievements that demonstrate your leadership skills, communication, and expertise as an individual contributor - in that order. If you need help, choose our resume editing service.
Most applicants have excelled as an individual contributor and reached the peak of their career before pursuing a career in management. The career path should become obvious with the resume. The admission team is trying to gather context on your resume. If you are not going to use the achievements listed on the resume for your essays then perhaps they are not relevant. Remove them.
Contextualize your achievements into personality traits - extraversion, leadership, maturity (conflict management), communication (colleagues, leadership and team), persuasion (selling ideas to a team), motivating team (after failure), resource management (time, budget and skills) and openness (listening, pivoting after setback and innovation).
Technologists and Finance Professionals are mostly ambiverts and in some cases introverts, but establishing extroversion is a crucial aspect of selling your candidacy.
Community Service and Extra-curricular questions are means to measure your extroversion. If you don't have any legitimate experience in either of the two, citing a work-experience where you have to communicate across department or hierarchy while organizing an event (conferences or social events) or competing on behalf of the company (sports or talent shows) is essential. Unfortunately, organizing events (marathons, competitions, festivals) have been done to death. They seemed cliché now because most narratives don't introduce the challenges or the setbacks are obvious - scheduling conflicts, star not showing up, or logistical challenges. Think beyond the obvious when you are demonstrating your leadership skills and extroversion.
2) Antagonist
Few Applicants had the misfortune to suffer uncertainty like a natural calamity, deadly illness, war or migrating to the US under extreme condition. All of them are a great story for MBA Application Essays, but that doesn't mean that other applicants have no chance to introduce an antagonist. It need not be a person or extreme circumstances. Applicants who introduce a "Villain" are often harsh on other's judgments while overlooking their misjudgment.
Failures are the result of our misjudgment. You can blame it on external circumstances or people, but they read poorly in MBA Admissions.
Maybe the antagonist is you; your lack of awareness, research, or team building skills.
Maybe the antagonist is your client. Even if that was the reality, avoid the temptation to blame the client.
Admission team would rather have someone who is mature enough to handle the extreme pressure that clients put you through in Management Consulting and Investment Banking.
If you demonstrate that you can't take challenging timeline or high expectations, the narrative might be used against you.
Essays with interesting narrative mix personal weakness, and a genuine opposing force into the essays. They have a well-defined story arc on how the applicant overcame the obstacle by realizing a truth, applying a strategy or through the acquisition of skill. Limited word count makes skill acquisition the most clichéd narrative.
It is obvious that you acquired a skill after 2-5 years. Don't use a narrative where there is no aha moment on how you defeated the antagonist. To create a balanced narrative, read Winning MBA Essay Guide.
3) Logic
The ISTJ personality type is the most common in the world (13%). They tend to think in a logical and practical way. We badly need such personalities to work on problems with integrity, persistence, and dedication. However, such personalities have limited creativity. The storytelling is filled with logical narratives.
An event A happened, I reacted with B, and the Result was C.
Maybe, you really did that, but logical storytelling is the most overused form, and perhaps playing around with the sequence of events with pillaring or W-Patterns might change the perspective about your candidacy. The idea to structure an essay is a logical exercise once you know the technique, but structuring each sentence requires creativity and a keen awareness of your audience. Admission teams are reading essays in the hundreds. Don't lose them with predictability. Don't go crazy either and end with obscure themes or open-ended narratives.
Three things happen in memorable movies and novels.
First, there is a breakaway from the routine. Something bad happens. The protagonist is forced to act courageously and use all his positive attributes while fighting against the antagonist (self-doubt, weaknesses, or a villain).
Second, when the protagonist recovers and go back to the routine, something even worse happens, raising the stake - the death of the loved one or the destruction of the world (superhero movies) if he doesn't act. Notice that every good story requires the protagonist to come out of his comfort zone and act.
How you act is the only measure of your character. Everything else is PR or story you tell to keep your status in the society.
Third - the protagonist fights and rescues the person/world/himself for a final resolution.
The three-structure story format is a logical exercise once you are aware of it. Even if you don't have the flair to create memorable phrases, the structure in itself will improve your storytelling capability and the quality of your Essay. More storytelling ideas in Winning MBA Essay Guide.
4) Emotion
Boring essays stay away from emotions fearing that the admission team might construe the narrative as a work of fiction. The fear is legitimate. I have seen applicants overdoing it and turning their essay into a blog or even a novel. At some deep level, the reviewer is thinking, "What a made-up story.” This is because although creativity and vulnerability are expected in an engaging essay, overdoing it is easy.
Remember that you are still applying to a program where your Quant skills are valued the most.
Writing is a tool to capture your personality. That is why we have emphasized on storytelling, contexts, and leadership narratives. They are structures to capture your personality. Video Essays are tools to measure your communication skills and the ability to think on the feet. Schools use them mostly to evaluate international applicants. If you are a native, a 1-3 minute video is not going to mess up your candidacy unless you freeze or mumble incoherently. For international applicants, addressing the question directly even if the answer sounds clichéd should be the strategy.
Demonstrate Movement
Essays that look routine lacks movement. Active verbs capturing the setback, how you overcame it and the actions you took to build the team and persuaded the management is a much more interesting read than a mundane, "How I managed a setback" in plain vanilla form.
Not all negative and positive emotions are worth mentioning, but Winning MBA Essay regularly use these emotional states
Negative Emotions
• Anger
• Anxiety
• Doubt
• Embarrassment
• Fear
• Frustration
Positive Emotions
• Courage
• Hope
• Pride
• Politeness
• Satisfaction
• Trust
AdCom will connect with the negative and positive emotions, and understand what you went through. They don’t want sociopaths, who are only worried about profits, to fill the MBA classes, but need leaders who can create an environment where the team garner confidence and thrive, taking the team forward to worthwhile goals and greater innovation.
5) Support
Nothing in our life happens without a support network.
"I was able to build F1GMAT because, at the age of 27, my parents allowed me to work from their home for 3 years. Yes, I was that guy staying with my parents in my late 20s and into 30. I also had the good fortune to partner with some of the best GMAT Prep and Admissions Consulting companies. Business Schools gave interviews and helped my readers gain a better perspective on each school. But nothing would have happened if you didn't read what I wrote and purchased my books. I continue to help MBA applicants with my services because I had support from my readers, partners, Business Schools, and a loving family."
In my 20s, I could never have given statements of gratitude like that. Now, in my 30s, I understand why.
Most applicants have yet to form a sense of accomplishment. Not that you didn't accomplish anything worthwhile, but the possibility seems endless. In your 30s, you will have a realistic sense of what is possible and what is not. Also, the competitive nature of MBA application builds the fear in applicants that any statements that give credit to others might jeopardize their admission chances.
95% of the essay should be about you - the protagonist, but don't shy away from giving credit to the team, or a partner that helped you create a solution. Few applicants have the confidence to do it. I show how it is done here.
6) Skeptic
Interesting narratives always build skepticism about the applicant until the story resolves. Edge of the seat thriller is worth watching because at a sub-conscious level we know that we will not be hurt sitting in a dark room with hundreds of fellow movie buffs. But we would like to feel what the protagonist is going through, and learn how he handled the setbacks - not at a functional but an emotional level.
We are emotional beings creating tribes for the battle in a fake battlefield (sports), watching fake story (movies), and snooping on other's manicured life stories (Facebook and Instagram).
The admission team is like us. They want stories.
After reading rave reviews, I recently watched Robert Redford's, All is Lost - a story of an elderly man stuck in the sea, finding every means to survive. I wondered how such an interesting premise never connected with me as much as Tom Hank's Cast Away did.
The reason - dialogues.
Redford's movie had no dialogues, nothing at stake, and no backstory while Cast Away had everything. Even in moments of extreme loneliness, Hanks talked to Wilson - the volleyball.
Words capture emotions. Here is how you capture emotion without turning melodramatic
Even though I am a big proponent of "Show Don't Tell Approach,” explicit statements about your doubts and fears, build the interest in your story. Another strategy that we use in our Essay Review service is an introduction of a skeptic - a client or a manager (not your direct supervisor) or a backstory of previous failures to convey what is at stake.
7) Mentor
The story is incomplete without a supervisor guiding you through setbacks. Your mentors should be your recommenders. Without mentors - either in the form of direct supervisors or thinkers or innovators in your field, our learning trajectory would be limited.
Schools love applicants who acknowledge the role of mentors in their career progression.
A large part of top MBA program's popularity is the role Alumni plays in sharing opportunities with current students and mentoring them through a new skill during industry visits and internships. Not all your essay might need a mentor, but the narrative for a failure essay will be realistic when you introduce a mentor into the story.
Use the role of the mentor strategically to connect the story with the essay and recommendation letter. If you want to learn the secrets of great essays, Download Winning MBA Essay Guide
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