Some other thoughts on HBS Essays

As we've been reviewing a large number of HBS essays over the past couple of weeks, here are some additional thoughts from one of our alumni reviewers:

• You only have two essays of 400 words each.  Make each word count!  Avoid repeating or reiterating things or stating the obvious - make sure every word in your essay is necessary and meaningful.
• Write in simple English.  Use short sentences, regular words and avoid jargon.
• What you did well:
• Focus more on what you did, less on the peripheral outcomes - e.g., "I got a promotion because.." is important but not at the expense of saying what you actually did
• Explain how and why you went about this differently than other people would have, or someone else in your place would have
• Talk about the results and outcomes as quantitative and objectively as possible - avoid saying things like "my colleagues were thrilled that I had solved... " - this adds very little to your essay
• What you could have done better:
• This is a huge struggle for a lot of people - mentally you need to get comfortable with the idea that you are not perfect!
• Like in the previous section, focus on writing about what you could have done better, instead of finger pointing or spending too many words trying to identify the root cause of what you did
• You can write about what you learned from the experience, but focus less on the sentimentality of what you felt and more on analyzing what happened in the situation.

Applicant Insight - MIT Sloan Information Session

MBAover30 posted some excellent information from a recent MIT Sloan information session in Santa Monica.  Here’s a brief excerpt about goals on the application:

“I also got a burning question of mine settled once and for all.  I had read some time ago on The Essay Snark’s blog that you shouldn’t mention your goals on Sloan’s app because their adcom really doesn’t want to hear it. Then at the Riordan/DMAC event I got my face cracked when the adcom officer who represented Sloan basically said that advice was bunk.

On this day, however, I learned from the horses mouth that the actual truth was at the midpoint between those two pieces of advice. I raised my question about the two opinions that I had received, demonstrated the obvious contradiction and put a period on my question with “which is it“? There were several giggles in the room over that.

The answer that I got was [basically] that Sloan isn’t really interested in what you say you’re going to do because you probably won’t end up doing that. Statistically, 80% of Sloan’s students change careers while in the program, many not even knowing about their chosen professions before they get there. That corroborated the bit about goals being less important.

She did, however, say that they’d like for you to be very clear on your need for an MBA and why now, which corroborates some of what the other adcom officer at Riordan spoke about. Why you need the MBA and why now is basically the first leg of your goals statement, which is traditionally followed by your immediate, mid (optional) and long term MBA goals. So finally, it was settled. I now knew exactly what I needed to do to tweak my Sloan essays, which had been bothering me for weeks.”