Your Application Essays

Your application essays are your opportunity to convey your sense of who you are, and what your career is. Business schools look closely at the essays to assess your:

• Decision making
• Self awareness
• Reasoning skills
• Writing skills

• All of these abilities, of course, have a great deal to do with your success in business school and beyond. Some admissions directors report that the applicant’s essays are the most important factor in their decision.

If the essays are so important, how come so many of them are mediocre, or worse?

• HUGE MISTAKE #1: Applicants try to write the essays all in one sitting, with no real preparation period.
• HUGE MISTAKE #2: Applicants try to write what they think the b-schools want to hear, instead of expressing themselves.

Let’s explore the right way to go about creating a set of essays that will be a winner. The creation of superior essays takes place in four phases:

• The BRAINSTORMING phase
• The PLANNING phase
• The WRITING phase
• The REFINING phase