Many applicants obsess over opening lines instead of the entire narrative. So much so that they forget that the purpose of the opening line is to spark curiosity about your story.
Here are 5 Openers to create a memorable MBA Application Essay
1) Dialogue
When an applicant mentions an impactful statement, an offensive statement, or a random statement as a dialogue in the opening line, the reader is immediately trying to figure out the context of that dialogue. One thing is guaranteed – the reviewer will definitely focus on the second and third lines. And if the dialogue has nothing to do with your story, instead of sparking curiosity, the admissions team will be annoyed with this mental hack. So you must be extremely careful to include relevant lines and offer some context in the first paragraph itself. If you are not mentioning anything related to the opening line in the first half of the essay, make sure that there are enough compelling events in the narrative that will push the reviewer to read the entire story. But if the gap between the context of the opening line and the revelation is too wide, a dialogue won’t be an effective tool as an opening line.
2) Value Statement
Mentioning a value or a line related to your value as an opener is a direct way to focus the narrative on who you are and what is driving you. This could be a very good way to set expectations as long as you have enough dramatic events in your story. Otherwise, directly mentioning a value immediately switches the reviewer’s mindset from exploring your story to validating the values. If the events in the narrative are shortlisted carefully, you can meet the expectations, but even if one event has nothing to do with the value you have highlighted in the opener, the impact of the entire essay will go down.
For Example, “I have always stood up for the underdog..”
If you start with such a line, the narrative must be consistent on how you have uplifted the underserved or helped the underserved find opportunities.
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3) Personal Crisis
Starting an opening line with a crisis statement about your childhood, a setback in your work, or a tragedy in your family – all works as long as the rest of the essay is not all about the tragedy. The essay can very easily turn into a pity party if you use too many lines to expand on the setback. If you must, make sure that your resilience or attitude towards facing a setback is clearly highlighted after you use a personal crisis as an opening statement. Don’t assume that the admissions team will interpret your attitude. Mention it as an explicit statement.
For Example: “Losing my parents – both to Cancer before I turned 18 forced me to grow up fast..”
If you have similar tragic events, don’t make those events the central theme but mention them to convey a larger picture about taking responsibilities and coping with setbacks
4) Problem Statement
Problem Statements are very good if your narrative is about a long-term goal/vision that will help a particular community, demographic, neighborhood, or country. The opening line will be considered a vision statement. Like any lines in an essay, make sure that the vision is not too outrageous if you don’t have previous achievements through work, volunteering, or extracurricular activities to back it up.
An Example of a problem statement is
“96% of Malaria deaths are in Africa..”
With this statement, you are setting the expectations that your long-term goal is aligned with solving malaria deaths in Africa. The rest of the narrative should passionately discuss the specifics and how you will help solve the problem.
5) Context Statement
If the essay has less than 300 words to capture your story, you can start with a context statement to set the expectations on your skillsets, achievements, and potential to reach short-term and long-term goals. Again, context statements work really well for goals essays.
For Example, a classic context statement is
“As someone who has led a team of 20, I”
With the statement, the reviewer is expecting a narrative about leadership or building leadership skills.
So to summarize:
1) Use Dialogues as openers if you have an unusual life and career path
2) Use Value Statement only if the events captured in the narrative align with the value in the opener
3) Start with an opener about a personal crisis but make sure that you don’t dwell on the negative event
4) Use a problem statement if the goal is larger than you; that is, helping a community, a demographic, a neighborhood, or a country.
5) Use Context Statement for traditional goals essay or essay with less than 300 words
