🚫 Essay Sins: Save Your Life History for Your Memoirs

What Happened To You ≠ Why It Happened

Every MBA application essay is its own unique challenge. Some are quite specific to your plans for your MBA and after (hello, Wharton). Others are focused exercises in getting to know you, like Duke’s “25 random things about you”. Some essays that are typically viewed as the hardest, like Harvard’s and Stanford’s, are truly open ended inquiries, giving you free rein but also really no direction.

All of these essays have the same intent — to understand you and how you could fit into the diverse jigsaw of a class the program is building. The best essays take a “show, don’t tell” approach — weaving the stories of your life and facts about you to portray how you’ve reached this inflection point after the successes in your life.

It’s hard to do this effectively without trial and error, and often requires more than one outside eye. Most people do not undergo the active self-reflection throughout their early career necessary to ace the essays in one try. Their path to this point is often a mixture of the outbound (their own talents, effort and decision-making) with the inbound (environmental circumstances, other events).

A mistake we often see is applicants just writing down their life’s history, chronologically: Birth ⇒ Early Life ⇒ College ⇒ Work ⇒ Why MBA. It makes sense — if a school wants to get to know you, shouldn’t they want to know it all?

Factually, yes, this is how it happened to you, but it’s almost certainly not the best way to tell your story. Writing down everything typically means focusing on nothing. If you’re unable to distill things down for an essay, how will you focus and excel in the constantly overwhelming, two year sprint that is your MBA?

A chronologically-oriented essay isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But if your essay is shaping up to be your full life’s history, consider saving the breadth for your memoirs. Instead, take a risk and get to know yourself better. Consider honing in on the narratives that most closely align to your current success, hopes for your MBA and future goals. Tell those stories vibrantly and passionately.

You might be surprised what you discover about yourself in doing so.

For help in distilling your story, schedule a free consultation with one of our founders or search and connect with one of our mentors by creating a profile on beenthere.mba!