Five Ways to Ruin an Application Essay
Looking to write an application essay that will push you to the bottom of the applicant pool? Here are some good ways to do it
by Alison Damast
Admissions officers at excel business schools like to say they’ve seen it whole when it comes to B-school application essays. Still, they at a past period come across an essay that surprises them—and not in a good way. One of these landed on the desk of Isser Gallogly, the admissions director of New York University’s Stern School of Business a few years back. The applicant used the school’s essay question on creativity similar to a platform to explain his penchant for writing and posting fake ads on Craigslist, which included an excerpt of some ad he had written for Valentine’s Day.
"You start reading it, and it gets worse and worse and worse," Gallogly said, referring to the post’s disparaging tone near women and dating. "You finish it and sort of ask yourself: ‘What is this person thinking who writes something like this, thinks it is funny, and also thinks it is pertinent to send to a business school?"
Mistakes like this are not the type admissions officers tend to gloss over. The two or three admissions essays required by the agency of each business school wait to be the area where most applicants labor and where they can make damaging mistakes, admissions officers presume. Just one blunder in an application be possible to ruin an solicitor’s chance of getting in. "If you don’t get the essays right, they can definitely sprout all of your close work," Gallogly said.
Fortunately, there are ways to avoid some of the missteps applicants make while writing their essays. Here are five of the most common ways applicants can sabotage their essays, along with some tips forward avoiding them.
MISTAKE NO. 1: TMI
The applicant who included the questionable Craigslist posting in his application to NYU’s Stern School is a victim of what Gallogly refers to as the "too much denunciation" syndrome. "An essay is not a confessional and an admissions committee is not a form into groups of therapists," Gallogly said. Carrie Marcinkevage, the MBA program admissions director at Penn State University’s Smeal College of Business, has also come across this puzzle while reviewing applications. She said she sometimes reads essays where people put in too many details about a former affinity or family trauma. The excess of personal information in the essay repeatedly has little or nothing to do with what makes the applicant a unsullied MBA candidate. "I do countermand reading those and saying: ‘Wow, I wouldn’t constrain that in an essay," she aforesaid. "There is a little bit of the cringing and a little bit of the ‘How could you possibly be that self-involved that you don’t get this?’" She recommends applicants alone share those details of their personal lives that resonate with the message they are dire to convey in their application about their potential since a business ruler of the roost.
From: Five Ways to Ruin an Application Essay
