Common Pitfalls
In the first section, we discussed who the target audience is for your essays and how to think about turning inwards to get to the core of why you want to go to business school. In this section, we will discuss the most common mistakes we see business school applicants make in constructing and telling their stories in the essays.
This list is by no means exhaustive and every situation we see is different, but it provides a good framework for things to avoid. You will find in going through these exercises that a good essay reveals itself notably by what it lacks: namely, platitudes, vague language, and abstraction. We will explore each in-depth and visit several examples of good writing vs. bad writing.
Once we solidify how we should frame a story and key pitfalls to avoid, we will be in a great position to tackle, one-by-one, school-specific prompts to connect the various pieces of the puzzle that deliver a compelling profile of who you are.
Pitfall #1: Arrogance;
Mitigant #1: Gracious Over Selfish
You would think a business school application is the one place where you wouldn’t want to be shy about your professional and personal accomplishments. And you’re right – to a point. Your resume and letters of recommendation should highlight and boast about the professional success you’ve enjoyed so far, and these are certainly the right places for it. When it comes to self-aggrandizing, however, this hardly ever works. The problem is that our nature as humans is to look down on aggressive self-promoters, even if it may be warranted.
On the other hand, we root for the people who are generous in their praise and giving credit to others. The same can be said for your audience in business school admissions. It’s a sign of maturity and confidence that you acknowledge all of your success is not solely the result of your managerial competence. Perhaps you’ve had a great mentor, a fantastically motivated team, or maybe you even got lucky. This is the level of self-awareness that stuns an admissions officer trying to fill out a class and decide who would be a positive addition to the learning community in the school.
The following are two examples of good and bad writing regarding common pitfall #1:
Arrogance: Bad Example
After the project arrived in the pipeline, I took it on and managed to complete it in the fastest ever turnaround time in the company’s history. I spent hours gathering research, developing a marketing proposal, and then negotiating with my counterparty for the best possible deal on my terms. Using top-of-the-line business arguments, I was able to secure the bid for the company.
Good Example
Accordingly, our small team of six took ownership of the project. We successfully executed a smooth and unprecedented event, receiving satisfactory feedback from the HRH The Duke of York’s team, as well as the British and Indian embassy offices. We also contributed to the local economy, importing over 20 high-quality international projects launching their business centers in China, enhancing corporate outreach and industry relations. Most importantly, my team members thanked me for their comprehensive and strategic participation.
Pitfall #2: Platitudes;
Mitigant #2: Always Heinz, Never Ketchup
A close cousin of Arrogance, Platitudes can also sink an application very quickly because applicants often run into this pitfall right in the opening paragraph. Platitudes refer to making generalized statements that have no real substance or that are cliché by nature. This is usually evidence of lazy writing or lack of a fully formed concept or story. In casual, everyday confirmations, we use clichés as a way to express a thought or set of ideas in a well understood, if not overused way. The problem in essay writing is that this style hamstrings any level of nuance that you may need to flesh out and describe who you are as an individual, or team leader, or work professional.
Therefore, the best way to avoid this common pitfall is to focus on specifics (i.e. Always Heinz, Never Ketchup). This is where your stories will come to life and it will force you to not take the overgeneralized route to explain and describe your narrative for business school admissions.
Bad Example
As a financier at a Fortune 500 company, I organized and facilitated decisions that moved the bottom line and led the company in the black. Part of these decisions involved a global investment round in the tens of millions of dollars
Good Example
My experience has been unique, working as a financial technology investor making critical investment decisions, fundraising from larger investors for our funds, and supporting entrepreneurs in their toughest challenges. My most notable achievement involved leading a transaction in one of the largest Series A transactions in the region, a $30M round in an online automobile marketplace
Pitfall #3: Making the Essay about the Future;
Mitigant #3: Less Chronological Biography, More Memoir
Business school programs are meant to be transformational, a place where your career trajectory is on the launch pad ready for flight in whatever direction you choose upon graduation. To satisfy this vision, it’s tempting to talk in futuristic terms in your essay about all the things you will do following business school. Our advice: don’t do it. We understand why it’s natural to write in this tense, and in fact, once you’re in school, this kind of thinking is highly encouraged. But as a matter of admissions, it’s more effective to talk about your story as if you’re writing a memoir, instead of a chronological biography. You need to arrive at the point early in your essay and share why this matters to you.
To do this effectively, it’s best to reflect on our lives to date and not make this essay about your vision of the future. Focus on creating the circumstances around important past events or milestones and share what you were thinking at the time and ultimately why you chose to do what you did. Unlike the stock market, where past performance is not indicative of future results, past performance of initiative and project engagement is highly indicative of future impact, and business school admissions counselors know this.
Bad Example
At the end of my professional career, after having spent time in the private sector learning capital markets and later moving to a public-facing role to expand access to credit, I want to lead a next-generation organization that democratizes finance for emerging markets economies
Good Example
My first experience with professional growth was academic. I had always been a student fascinated by economics and finance, and after graduating from the Beijing Forestry University with my undergraduate degree, I intended on pursuing my passion abroad. The vast nature of academia in the United Kingdom appealed to me, as London is considered a center of finance, and I wanted to improve my worldview with an international experience.
Pitfall #4: Pontification; Mitigant #4: Don’t Tell, Share
Your job is not to educate the admissions committee on your views about business or expertise around the industry. Your reader most likely will have read about the immediate need to completely transform, upend, or disrupt every imaginable industry under the sun. Every project is of utmost importance and every sector focus has an enormous greenfield opportunity awaiting them following business school (see what I did there? Common pitfall #2).
It is important to remember that this is not a research paper. You are not creating a Works Cited page and referencing dozens of statistics to make a point. It is okay, and often to your advantage, to include a few stats that help make your case, but only in the service of advancing your larger narrative for why you are applying to business school and why specifically, School X.
Bad Example
Because of my experience in the Authorization Department, I learned how to collaborate in difficult situations.
Good Example
Assigned to the Authorization Production Efficiency Project Team, I worked in close collaboration to standardize business processes in the Authorization Department, a unit where a lack of unified standards had created an environment in which employees resorted to their own uneven approaches and methodologies.
Pitfall #5: Abstraction;
Mitigant #4: You are a Lawyer, Not a Poet
We will make this point over and over again in this course: Structure is King. It is just as important as the actual content of what you write in an essay. As we describe in course 1, your reader is reading hundreds of applications and essays, so they are skimmers trying to get to the essence of what you are trying to say.
Your attempt to be creative – while admirable – will most likely only serve to confuse your reader. This is the last thing you want to happen. Yes, plenty of creative essays make it through, but this is needlessly hard to do and unless you’ve written in this style of prose before, we recommend sticking to a simple and clean layout: thesis statements, and good transition statements so they can extract the main points. You need to remember that your essay response is an opportunity to express a message and you want to ensure that this message is received. Therefore, think of yourself as a lawyer, building a case for your candidacy, rather than a poet, expressing a dual and conflicting perspective of a phenomenon.
Bad Example
Staring at the chalkboard like industrial engineer stares into an abyss, I found myself curiously attached to formulas as if the entire body of mathematics was waiting for me to consume. This aggrandizement of functions, variables, and numbers would propel me, over the years, to a career in information technology
Good Example
My journey began when I was six years old. Two of my aunts, both with Ph.D.'s in mathematics, filled me with curiosity and trained me early in understanding complex math formulas. Over the years, I would utilize these formulas to discover the benefits of merging computer science and math, driving me towards a career in information technology.
