When the word count goes down, the natural approach is to make the narrative more “resume like.” This is far from the right approach. 
Storytelling is more relevant now than ever. When AdCom read 1000s of “short resume summary” with essays, your ability to stand out with an interesting narrative will matter. For those readers who are not familiar with our storytelling approach, click here and read our previous articles about storytelling. In this article, we will cover the importance of conveying struggle in the essay.
Learning from the Struggle
We as humans are interested in the “Struggle.” With hundreds of scenarios, our minds focus on struggles from which we can learn about a person, a situation, or a virtue. That is how humans have survived over the past 200,000 years. The paleolithic cave paintings suggest human’s need to communicate the struggle, which during the Aurignacian period was mostly about hunting. Our ability to learn from other people’s struggles keep us hooked to a story or a movie.
Earning Attention
The most beautifully written words in an essay will fail to earn AdCom’s attention if the words don’t ....
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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.