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Section 8: Essays (page 2)

• What are your strengths and weaknesses?:
  • For weaknesses, they want subtle character weaknesses or things that can be worked out during an MBA degree (not your 'application' weaknesses, like a low GMAT score). For example:
    • "I've grown very quickly in the last four years and I need the foundation of a management program to help me better adjust to these changes" might work.
    • impatience; to be idealistic when a pragmatic perspective may be best; like to take on the largest challenges without proper consideration to everything that is required in a project's lifecycle; to expect as much from others as you offer and get frustrated when they don't live up to your standards; to be very self-critical; to talk too much when listening may be best; to not take enough risks; to be tactless sometimes when discussing differences of opinions; to prefer revolutionary changes when a few small fixes may keep everyone happy for at least a while.
    • Do not choose a weakness that is really a 'strength' in disguise such as "I work to hard". Even "I'm a perfectionist" is risky unless you really explain how it has gotten you into trouble.
    • Think unique: "I'm good at this team-sport, but not good at this individual-sport." Not only would something like that stand out, but it also highlights that you're a team player!
  • For strengths, read over the rest of your essays and application and see what strengths you haven't already addressed thoroughly. If you've already spent 2 essays on your leadership experience, then write about your strengths simply being part of a team here. The ability to listen is a strength and it's one you probably won't be able to elaborate upon elsewhere. For example:
    • to be enthusiastic; energetic; always open to new ideas and learning new things; to go after every project as best as you can without hesitation; to be respectful, professional and well-liked; to have international ambitions and an appreciation of people who are different; to communicate well.
  • Show (or at least say) that you are working on your weaknesses.
  • Note that often, weaknesses and strengths are different perspectives on the same ideas. Enthusiasm is a strength, but if you're too enthusiastic, you may not be careful or prudent enough in your haste. A good essay will encompass a dozen strengths and 5 or 6 weaknesses (or 3 strengths and 1-2 weaknesses, depending on how much you want to discuss each) and interweave them in that manner. If you have a few short anecdotes that can highlight a few strengths and weaknesses, then use them. Look over the collection of your 'stories' and see which ones you can tell in a few sentences and be applicable here. In other words, in most essays, you will have to tell one (or maybe 2) clear stories that have to fit into a specific mold. Here you can tell a dozen quick stories from any time or place in your life -- use this opportunity to make yourself look as colorful and dynamic as possible! You'd be surprised how much a couple stray sentences can do that.
• Setback or failure
  • Think outside of work: language problems, problems while traveling in an unknown place, extra-curricular activities, working with difficult people.
  • End on a positive note. Show that you experienced a setback, realized what you did wrong, and adjusted ultimately to either achieve some degree of success, or to learn a lesson. Don't write an essay where you 99% succeeded but had a small obstacle along the way.
  • This is a leadership question: show that you appreciated the learning experience and how it helped you succeed as a better leader at a future occasion.
• Ethical dilemma
  • Everyone else is going to write a 'they asked me to adjust the numbers' story: those may work best for this essay, but can you do anything more unique?
  • Don't tell just the story, tell who you were trying to 'protect'; did you make the wrong choice initially and accept your mistake?; what were your thoughts when you were wondering about the 'right' decision -- remember the key to an ethical dilemma is that there is no 'right' or 'wrong', simply, 2 conflicting detrimental choices.
  • Think about the times when you and someone else were trying to figure out what to do - whether to tell other people about something or not - to include other people in something or not - to present different versions of the 'truth' to different audiences - etc. Did you ever feel pressured to go against your own judgment?
  • Give details; make the reader empathize for your situation by taking them to the time and place. What are your personal beliefs and how were they challenged?
• What matters to you most and why? (Stanford's first question)
  • Apparently, the most common answer is 'balance in life'. Maybe you should try something different..
  • There are no right or wrong answers or approaches to this; it was my favorite essay question actually for this reason. You can write just about anything. However, I would suggest you look over the accomplishments that you want to talk about in your essays and you career goals. Then find a basic thread that can intertwine all of them. This will be something vague but poignant: 'helping other people' or 'taking on new challenges'. Then there's your essay structure: open with how you like to take on new challenges and use all of your essay material as proof of that. If you write something too specific such as: 'What's most important to me is bringing potable water to this village in eastern Africa' then a good part of your essays will probably be irrelvant to this thesis statement.
• Why an MBA here? Why now? / What are your short- and long- term goals?
  • First, this is one question you should answer in your essays, even if they do not explicitly ask it.
  • "This is a truly critical essay... Start with this essay." - Montauk, 'How to Get Into the Top MBA Programs'.
  • Check that what you write will match your 'Objective' in your résumé.
  • Start by stating your specific short- and long-term career goals. Then spend sometime giving you guess at the future of the world. Talk a bit about where you've come from and how the MBA will join your past and future.
  • If you want to talk about your undergraduate career for some reason (to mention that you double majored, or that your school is better than the committee may think for whatever reasons - maybe you majored in a program that is highly ranked in US News and World Report's guide), this is a good place to do that since you can tie it back into what you're looking for in an MBA program. Maybe you like smaller, close-knit, team-based programs and you can make the connection between their school and your UG school that way.
  • Don't be vague! Read your opening paragraph - is it something that any applicant could have written about any school? If so, you'd better change it so that it can only come from you. For example: "I'm at a turning point in my career and an MBA.." is generic. How about: "I'm moving from being an underwater yoga instructor to my lifelong goal of running an organic grocery and an MBA.."
  • For you to complete your career trajectory from the past to the long-term goal, what are you missing? It should be something the school can offer you. Choose things unique to each school. Follow that up with what you can uniquely offer the school and the students in your class and teams.
  • Say your goal is to manage increasingly large projects and take on increasingly critical responsibilities. If your goal is a 'dream', it's OK to say that too.
  • "I have a lot of diverse real-world experience: from leading a large team on a highly successful and profitable four-year project to starting and building my own company, Bill's Flowers. These skills and accomplishments will provide a great reference point as I advance into management positions and continue to grow Bill's Flowers in my spare time. However to truly excel in these future endeavors, I will also need the foundation that can only be acquired from a more formal training environment. The ... classes at Stanford will best provide me with this foundation."
  • End on an up-note if you like.

1. "More than anything else, you need a clear, specific, and noble career goal" - See the 'Introduction and When to Apply' page on this site for more information. To reiterate a key point from there: "The admissions committee members see each applicant as who they will be in 10 or 20 years. They don't see them as much as who they are now or who they were 5 years ago. In other words, use your previous experiences and accomplishments not to paint a picture of the past, but to support your clear and specific trajectory into the future. That's how you will be accepted."
2. Overall, do your essays display management potential? Go out of your way to make each section of each résumé shout 'I'm a leader!' - even if you didn't manage large teams, talk about the ideas that were yours, how you influenced others, and how in the future, you'll be a natural manager.
3. Tell stories. Don't just say all the great things you did; don't just try to impress. Be real and stir emotions. Be personal in every essay. Don't be boring and academic (remember the Harvard 'define success' essay we talked about earlier). Stories should be about minutes or hours, not months or years. Discuss things you did wrong and what you learned. You will not be the most impressive candidate they see this year. But your essays can be the most compelling.
4. Over the course of all of your essays to a school, you have to have one key, unique, and special story to tell. Your essays taken together should read like one coherent picture. This doesn't have to be an Olympic-sized feat, just something that helped people and had a meaningful impact on an organization. Figure out what this unique story is for you and wind the other stories and answers to your essays around it! If you are an engineer, then counter the stereotype of engineers by making your unique overall story being how you care about others. Be a real person; your résumé and some of your essay paragraphs can sum up what you did. Make the overall theme of your essays a personal story.
5. Choose your stories wisely. Most important is that your essays explain why you are unique; what you can bring to an MBA program. Stories from your previous work experience are most valuable although you should include- in the course of all of your essays to a particular school - a story or 2 from your extra-curricular/hobby/service experiences to add some depth and flavor.
6. Don't just tell stories. Tell how the stories shaped you; how they affected you; what you learned; how they changed your outlook. For instance, explain how the events described made you start thinking about something you'd never thought about before. Explain how the events made you consider going back to school to study entrepreneurship, etc.
7. Know who you are, what your strengths are, and be honest about it (wording taken from a previous page)
8. Your essays should sound like you. As Keith Ferrazzi says "don't be afraid to be vulnerable" - a personal story is more memorable than a boring cathartic safe story.
9. Bring your friends, co-workers, contacts, even family into your stories; show you are someone who people can connect with without bragging about the number of people you know or dropping big names.
10. Your essays should demonstrate that you have successfully worked with difficult people in the past and have taken criticism from your boss and handled it maturely and constructively. (At the most basic level, that you're a 'team player').
11. Were your born in a different country? Traveled in any? Studied in any? Lived in any?
12. Be fun! Do not be boring and academic. Use an exclamation point once or twice! Write with gusto and enthusiasm.
13. Have someone else read all of your essays for each school, though they should read all of the essays for any given school as if they were one unit.
14. Backup your work regularly to a CD. Imagine you've been working on your essays from March and it's now October. You're just about to finally apply to 5 schools with 100s of hours of worked already put into perfecting your essays... and your hard drive crashes.
15. Answer the question. It's a good idea to divert a little bit off of the question for a paragraph or 2 to differentiate yourself from the other applicants. Maybe open with something completely unique but make sure you tie it back into the question very quickly.
16. Find a faculty member in the program and say in your essay that you're excited about learning from them. Choose someone who is currently teaching classes relevant to your area of interest (i.e. entrepreneurship or finance) - not someone who is retired, only doing research, or who hasn't taught a class in the last 5 years. Read one of their papers from their personal website and mention how you have used their ideas already (if you can - don't stretch this obviously).
17. Be honest.
18. Read the different sections of your essays. Are there any parts where you say 'I' a lot? Can you rephrase them to sound more like team experiences? Keep the details where you took key leadership roles, but otherwise, sound like you are a constant team player.
19. Don't bore your reader with unnecessary details. Don't list people's names when you can just refer to them by title or as a group.
20. Use details that take the reader to the time and place you're describing. A few key details in some places can make your writing come alive and makes the reader believe that this is a real story that they won't see from 100 other applicants.
21. Use a custom font or 2. See the 'Résumé' section above for details. Obviously use the same font in your résumé as in your essays regardless of whether you use your own personal font, or the free fonts everyone has: Times New Roman, Tahoma, etc.
22. Put the page number and your name at the top of each page. In Microsoft Word, go to 'View' -> 'Page Header/Footer'.
23. Don't have 1 specific example that you want to use in a given paragraph or question? Try a rapid-fire list. For example, maybe you don't have one compelling story from your travels, but can sum up 6 of them in a sentence each with a common theme.
24. Everyone says to show professional growth in your résumé and essays. How do you do this? One way is to explicitly mention how many promotions and merit-based raises you have earned. Maybe even name all job titles and the years in a line in your résumé: Analyst (1999-2001) -> Senior Analyst (2001-2004) -> Executive Officer (2004-). Some suggest that you should break your résumé's employment sections up into different entries for each new title even if you stayed in the same company doing mostly the same thing. Use your discretion here: it may confuse and clutter things too much to use this as an absolute rule - it's just one option. Be sure to mention how, over time, you have taken on more responsibility and bigger projects in both your résumé and essays.
25. Try uploading your essay on the school's online application and then view it in the 'Print/Preview' option. See if the school adds any headers or footers to each page. ApplyYourself (used by Stanford, CMU, and others in 2005) adds your name and a code for example in 'Arial' font. Build your page headers so that they tie together nicely with the automatically-added ones (for example, put 'Page 1/5' in the right place in the page header so that it appears just below your name on the Print/Preview version of your application).
26. Try repeating the questions at the top of the first page of each essay. Try putting the questions in the school's colors. When you upload your file, see if the school automatically adds a header or footer to each page. Fit your format to look the best given those additions. (Stanford adds a header, for instance. Adding a line to the top of your pages so that it separates their header from your writing looks nice).
27. Consider using (centered / italicized) 'headlines' in large essays. Write 500 words, skip a couple lines for a short header which may reference another part of the question, and continue. This helps your essays look organized and keeps the reader focused. For any essay over 2 pages, split it up into about 3 parts.
28. Do use italics occasionally to really make your essay come off the page. Do not overuse it though.
29. Spell the name of the school correctly. If you're applying to Oxford's Business program, spell it correctly: Saïd. If you're in Microsoft Word, go to 'Insert -> Symbol'.
30. Similarly, if you spell the word 'résumé' anywhere, try to get the accent on it too. Same for fiancé (if you're marrying a man) and fiancée (if you're marrying a woman). And clichés...
31. Speaking of fiancé(e)s, if you're married or in a relationship, why not casually mention it? It's an example of a team you're a part of and it helps to show that you're someone other people want to be around. Of course, it's probably best not to make your fiancé(e) too big a part of your essays - if there's a way to quickly mention them, that's OK, otherwise maybe it's best not to.
32. Try not to bring your family into your essays in the usual clichéd ways, for example, if you have a 'Who is the person you admire most?' essay question to answer.
33. Do a search for these words/phrases and try to remove them as much as possible: rather, quite, somewhat, probably, possibly; which is, that is, who is; can, could, would, might, may; not; I believe. (See other bullets especially in the 'How to write better essays' section below for more information on why they are bad when overused and how to replace them).
34. Use correct grammar and write dazzling, vigorous sentences. Buy a copy of Strunk and White's 'The Elements of Style' (its $8). See my notes in the related section below.
35. Make sure you answer the question in the best way possible. See 2 books: Bouknight and Shrum's 'Your MBA Game Plan' and Montauk's 'How to Get Into the Top MBA Programs' for information about what the question is really asking and how to best answer it. Montauk's book has lots of example essays.
36. Stick to the word limits. It's probably OK to go over by a few though.
37. Double-space all essays! Especially if they ask for double-spaced essays; Not 1.5-space, double-space. UCLA and Stanford asks for this; others may too. It makes your essays easier on the eyes for someone who is reading hundreds of them.
38. Put your name on each essay page and number each page.
39. Make sure you re-emphasize the 1 or 2 key points about yourself. In other words: you train dolphins at Sea World and that's your key selling point. You should mention it in one essay no matter what they ask. Maybe mention it in 2 or 3 if you can. That way, after reading the essays, the committee will have a well-framed picture of you. A week later, you'll want them to think, "did we remember to admit that dolphin trainer?".
40. Use a good thesaurus but don't overuse it. Your words should be direct, not flowery. But they should not be boring. thesaurus.reference.com is much better than the thesaurus that comes with Microsoft Word.
41. Make sure over the span of all of the essays for a given school that you include a mention of all of your selling points - not just your top 2-3, but all of them. Use the list created above of your selling points. In other words, mention your top 2-3 in all essays. Mention the rest in at least 1 of them.
42. If the question asks for information about your family, then spend a paragraph or 2 talking about their stories and then focus back on yourself. Otherwise, tell your own stories only-- not someone else's!
43. Make your essay unique and interesting. Most applicants will write about how their achievements in high school and college sports gave them confidence. Many will write about the death of a pet or backpacking around Europe or tell some boring story about their youth. Make sure you don't. (Note- it's OK to mention your travels in Europe, but don't spend too long on it and don't try to draw a grand moral from it about how the world is a diverse place. As mentioned already, it's even better if you can pick a specific story from your travels and simply write a good story about it as part of your essay.)
44. Do not mention anything you did in high school (unless you were a Junior Olympic champion, in which case, spend at most a paragraph on it). That was over 10 years ago -- have you really not done anything worthwhile in the last 10 years?
45. Maybe use a couple of quotes throughout your essay sets and elaborate on their relevance to you?
46. Make sure you mention as many specifics about their school as possible as reasons why you want to attend. Make the specifics relevant to your own application: you work well in teams and you have mentioned examples of this in your essays. Then tie it together by saying: "Thus the teamwork-based case-studies system of your school would be a perfect match for me." See Bouknight and Shrum's 'Your MBA Game Plan' for help.
47. YES, the admissions committee readers know what the essay questions are for the other top schools. So don't transparently reuse one answer for another school asking for something slightly different.
48. Don't use one really good essay that you wrote for one school in another school's 'optional' essay section.
49. For the Optional Essay: remember "STEP 1: Make a list of your interesting stories" on the previous page? Why not fit a good, telling story in here? There's no limitations, you don't have to bring it around to explicitly 'sell' yourself; just show an insight into your life that you could not do otherwise. From Brandon Royal's 88 Great MBA Application Tips and Strategies to Get You Into a Top Business School: "Do not let something that you feel passionate about get reduced to just a single sentence or a one-line entry hidden away in your essay.. [talk about it in the optional essay section]"
50. Check if they school you're applying to has any books or magazines and read them. Most are available online so you don't even need to pay for a subscription. Reference something you recently read something in their journal in your essays. At the very least, they're interesting publications which will give you a good idea of what the schools are like. Not sure what the 'case-study' method of Harvard is like? Then you haven't read an issue of the magazine they publish..
    • No matter where you're applying, you should read: Harvard Business Review.
    • Stanford publishes the Stanford Business School Magazine quarterly.
    • Wharton publishes the Wharton Journal.
    • MIT/Sloan publishes the MIT Sloan Management Review - they offer a free trial issue.
    • Oxford/Saïd prints the (more local) Business at Oxford.
    • If you're applying to Harvard, forget about mentioning the HBR- that won't set you apart. But mentioning Harbus might. Here are some student newspapers:
      • Harbus, Harvard Business School's Newspaper.
      • Berkeley/Haas has the HassWeek Online (although it seems to no longer be in publication..)
      • Chicago has the Chicago Business Online
      • University of Michigan/Ross has the Monroe Street Journal (named for a street in Ann Arbor).
      • Carnegie Mellon/Tepper has the Robber Barons.
    • Some schools don't have their own journal that I know of, but you might impress the committee if you dropped a reference to local Business Journals:
    • LA Business Journal
    • There are others..
51. Don't just name-drop the school's journal or newspaper, tie an article from it into your essay. Make sure the connection is fluid and relevant though. Also, if you have experience writing articles or serving on a publishing/newspaper staff, say how "in the same spirit" that you'd like to get involved with the school's student-run paper. The committee wants people who will get involved.
52. Find out what other clubs are available and say how you'd like to join or contribute to them. Find out about the interesting less obvious things about each school and mention them. Mention one or two things about the school and tie it into the rest of your essay; don't make it look like you're just listing what the school offers. For instance:
    • MIT/Sloan has:
      • Many clubs and events.
      • Center for eBusiness @MIT: Investigates the key changes that e-Business will affect on the world.
      • The MIT Entrepreneurship Center: has the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition. Mainly focused on high-tech ventures.
    • Stanford has:
      • Study groups are a big part of students' lives.
      • Center for Leadership Development and Research (CLDR) - which has leadership coaching, seminars, and business simulations to help you learn to listen and become an effective leader. CLDR created a 'Leadership Development Platform'. Students work in small groups called Bridge Teams.
      • Center for Entrepreneurial Studies (CES) - study and intern with startups.
      • Center for Global Business and the Economy (CGBE) - includes the 'Global Management Certificate', intern in international companies.
      • Center for Social Innovation (CSI) - includes the 'Certificate in Public Management', study and workshop with social organizations.
      • Global Management Program (GMP), which is part of the Center for Global Business and the Economy - it offers an academic certificate within the MBA. 25% of the 2004 class earned this. Even if you don't earn the certificate, you can take part in student-led trips to various countries, the 'Global Management Immersion Experience (GMIX)' international internships.
      • "Public Management Program (PMP), as part of the Center for Social Innovation, remains the premier program preparing MBA students to apply their management skills to areas of social concern."
    • Berkeley/Haas has:
      • Socially Responsible Business Leadership Initiative - a focus on ethics and corporate responsibility.
      • A number of clubs including: Entrepreneur's Association and the Haas Asia Business Conference.
      • International Business Development - 25% of students are selected for international consulting assignments.
    • UCLA/Anderson has:
      • They advertise themselves as having one of the top entrepreneurial programs in the world.
      • The Center for Management in the Information Economy -- research e-commerce.
      • A of clubs including the International Business Association
    • Cambridge/Judge has:
      • the Entrepreneurship Consulting Project
      • the Major Consulting Project
      • and the Individual Project
      • Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (CfEL)
    • Oxford/Saïd has:
      • Concentrations in: Entrepreneurship, Global and Comparative Business, others.
      • Electives in E-Commerce, Entrepreneurial Finance, and others.
      • All students are involved in the 'New Business Development Project' in the spring. A team works on a new business idea to get first-hand experience of its development.
      • All students are a part of the 'Strategic Consulting Project' where you consult as a team for an outside company.
      • 'Saïd Business School Venture Fund' helps students get experience in venture capital and investing.
      • The 'Peter Moores Lecturership in Chinese Business Studies' is one examples of teaching an understanding of global markets - China in particular at Saïd; there will be a new elective on business in China.
      • Saïd is very project-based.
      • In 2001, they accepted 30% of their applicants. It's a 1-year program.
    • University of Michigan/Ross has:
      • Over 60 clubs.
      • Entrepalooza
      • Rock and Roll B-School (where students perform songs for classmates).
      • Ross allows students to take electives in the second semester of their first year- almost no other school allows this. They also allow time during the second semester for students to interview for summer internships.
      • Is working on a 'Leadership Academy' in 2005 which includes a set of courses on leadership.
      • Has field projects as part of their core curriculum; no other school has this (as of 2005).
      • EMAP Entrepreneurial Multidisciplinary Action Projects - allows students to work with start-ups at various stages of development. It's a course that begins in the second semester of your first year. Michigan wants applicants who are excited about the MAP idea: you could be working in Prague at a Biotech startup; or in Denver at a ladder company. (There are other MAPs besides EMAP).
      • The William Davidson Institute is a leading center of expertise on emerging markets in places such as China or Brazil.
    • Looking for other schools? Read their websites and see The MBA Jungle's search page on each school.
53. Get their attention. Make sure you start off with a sentence in each essay that you know the admissions committee reader will re-read three times just because they've never seen anything like it before. Something like:
    • Tell us something about your childhood.. When the hot air balloon started losing altitude over the lion-infested plains, I knew we were in trouble..
    • What may be one of the greatest opening sentences ever: George Orwell in the essay "England Your England" describing The Blitz on London in WWII: "As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me." (1941)
    If you add a unique twist to your essay, make sure it's relevant and make sure you bring it back into answering the question quickly. If you can't do this, then ignore this rule. On the other hand, don't try to be too cute - your writing should appear as a fluid and honest story, not a collection of clever 'angles'.
54. Spend hours, days, weeks, and months on your essays. Write them and then come back and trim the fat. Re-arrange words so that they flow perfectly. Read them out loud to help with this. Spend as much time on any given sentence as you would usually spend on an entire paragraph. Make each sentence ring. Make your essays works of art.

• Order lists in sentences from short to long. "The largest, most effective, most transcendent ideas.."
• Generally do not use contractions in formal writing. However it is OK to use them occasionally as needed to not sound long-winded and boring.
• Write with depth!
• Start and end paragraphs with short, direct sentences (a suggestion; not a rule).
• Try 2 or 3 short sentences in a row. It helps pick up the pace of your writing.
• Example of an interesting sentence: "Add a bit of.., subtract a bit of.., throw in a bit of.., and the choice is clear.."
• Use examples instead of explaining generic terms.
• You can start a sentence with 'But', 'Or', or 'And' if it follows a related sentence.
• When to use a colon or a semicolon?
  • Both joined sentence parts must be able to stand individually as separate sentences!
  • If you have 2 parallel ideas, then use a ';'. Try making both sentence halves start the same way:
    "The benefits of Plan A..; the benefits of Plan B.." or "He said this happened; however, she said .."
  • If you have 1 idea and an example, detail, or elaboration, use a ':'.
• Use a long dash before details or examples- like this. (Use in place of 'such as' or 'for example').
• Try repeating sounds- 'an excellent equestrian', 'a political politeness'.

• Only use 'can', 'could', 'would', 'might', 'may', etc in situations involving real uncertainty. Use 'shall' or 'will', etc. instead.
• Do not use 'etc' in formal writing.
• Make definite assertions. Do a search for 'not' (or 'can't'/'didn't'/..) in your essays and try to rephrase any sentence that uses it. Sometimes it's needed; often you can make a stronger sentence by removing it.
  An example: "I did not take a standard path.." -> "I took a unique path.."
• "Be specific, definite, concrete". Every sentence should show details. Read every sentence individually.
• Your writing should show accuracy and vigor. Give examples.
• Correct usage:
  • cannot ... or ...
  • can neither ... nor ...
• Correct: "To go boldly.." Not: "To boldly go.."
• Correct usage:
  • 'that' defines and restricts. It should be used if the following phrase is needed to know the exact object the sentence refers to.
  • 'which' simply adds a fact; it is not needed to know what is being refered to. You probably don't need many 'which'es in your writing- Strunk suggests you go "which hunting".

Section 9: Final Thoughts

This is the best MBA site that I've been to in awhile! Thank you for actually EXPLAINING strengths and weaknesses! other sites just say "be specific" or something so vague it makes you mad! Thank you again for such thorough information!!!

-- cheggie, May 11, 2008

I feel it is so hard to stand out while I think I have all the potential to do so. I am really glad of reading this whole document, it makes me want to help out, through my experience. My statements might seem vague, but this website is a great source of inspiration in order to work on an application (it also shows how an application should be something close to a part to full time job!) Thanks again!

-- Gonzalo Hurtado, March 16, 2010

Thank you so much for the amount of work and resources you made available on this website. I stumble across your articles after making a search for answering hard questions in applications. I'm not applying to an MBA program, rather I'm seeking a fellowship and always have a hard time answering what I feel are tricky questions. Good Luck.

-- Fabiola J, Feb 15, 2011

I have a clear guideline of what's now missing in my essays. I appreciate that this sit has bbut forth clearly how I must subliment and compliment what I already have. Thumbs up

-- Beatrix uanivi, Aug 15, 2011

Great website with in-depth elaboration on MBA application strategies. It's very diferent from all others, an unique one. Thanks for telling us the truth of success. In deed rigrous steps are required to get in to the school of our choice. Kudos, Mustfaa

-- Mustafa Golam, Jan 17, 2012

Thank god I stumbled on to this page! It's so thorough, specific and senible thhat it's like talking to a real consultant. Thanks for tiss really cool stuff!

-- Rohit Kalla, Jan 25, 2012

I stumbled on this website via browsing multiple google search pags. I have tto say - it is absolutely fantastic and provides infrmation no other website offers for free. Thank you so much for your hard work in draftin tthis!

-- Neil, Oct 16, 2013