The Biggest MBA Essay Writing Tip
Summertime is essentially the MBA application prep season. All MBA candidates are busy organizing themselves in anticipation of business school application deadlines. There’s a ton of things to think about when applying to business school, almost to the point of being overwhelming. Overwhelmed by the MBA essay writing process? Use a simple matrix to ensure you cover your base.
Always keep the reader in mind. The admissions committee will read your MBA application essays in two ways:
They will read it all the way through, from top to bottom, word for word. This could be a painfully slow process for the admissions committee - depending on how well it's written. However, they will read it through in its entirety.
The second time they read it is to review it. They’re simply going to skim through your MBA application essay to find the key points and details.
This is crucial to know as you need to structure you essay writing accordingly.
It’s critically important that the first sentence of every paragraph should be what that paragraph is going to talk about.
A little writing rule to check yourself is to go through your essay one last time - even after you think you're done. Read the first line of every paragraph of your essay. Don’t even read the rest of the paragraph. You are not done if your essay does not form a high level table of contents. If the first sentence doesn’t form a cohesive coherent narrative, that you and more importantly the admissions committee can readily understand and digest, then go back and fix your thesis sentences.
Remember, the first sentence of every paragraph is what that paragraph is going to talk about. The rest of the sentences support that main point. They provide the details for that same point.
The last sentence of every paragraph drives the point home of what the main point is.
You could restate what the first sentence is of that paragraph, but that is more of an unsophisticated approach. What would come across stronger is to drive the point home.
Let's take Wharton Essay#1 as an example: What do you hope to gain professionally from the Wharton MBA? For the first sentence of a paragraph you could say, “My short term goal is XYZ." The second sentence of that same paragraph, you could start off by saying "Through my short term goal of XYZ..." and you could go into more specific details of what your first sentence is about. The last sentence would drive home the main point. For example, “With my current skills and abilities, along with an MBA, I should have no problem reaching my short term goals.” It’s not a replication of the first sentence, but it drives the point home.
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. is a good book to read on how to write. It is an American English writing style guide originally written in 1918. This book is a classic and goes over a lot of writing techniques which could be very helpful when writing your MBA application essays.