"Great application essays for business school" Book review

Its been a while since I've been reading various books on Bschool applications and been attending various application editor led webinars. In the gamut of so many of them, I thought it was easy for any applicant to be lost in the need for precise direction and ideas when writing essays. I was as lost when I wanted to understand how to communicate leadership in the essays and the highlights of my career and personality that I'd like my recommenders to remember.

I picked up a book a few months ago called "Great Application Essays for Business School" by Paul Bodine from Accepted.com. I've really gained from this book and although I'm still in the process of writing my essays with no applications submitted yet, I believe a lot of people are now looking for urgent direction and thought this resource could be an option to consider.

I thought I'd breeze through the book just like I had read other books like Richard Montauk. The more I read it, the more I realised that the content was very concise and illustrated with specific examples. They broadened my ideas, explained what Adcoms really want to know and demonstrated the "show not tell" writing strategy that every Bschool essay editor blogs about. As I had not still given my GMAT retake then and didn't plan to start my essays until R2, I stopped reading it until I was really ready to tackle the essays.

What does this book not talk about ?
It is not aimed at someone researching their goals or schools. So if you need advise on how an MBA would help you, what are your career options and possible future MBA career track, this book is not going to help. If you are trying to understand how the entire application process works right from understanding 'why MBA' to researching schools and finding recommenders for your target schools to dealing with application rejection, then I would suggest the comprehensive book by Richard Montauk.

Who is this book for?
You have a list of your target schools and done a reasonable amount of research into your fit with them?
You have a application deadline you are working against?
You really dont have the time to trawl through lists of blogs and webinars to understand what and how to write?
You don't really know what specific answers the admissions committee are trying to provoke through their essay questions?

What does it tell you?
- The method to 'show not tell' by giving illustrative essay examples (Surprisingly the essays in this book are not as some other books publish i.e., extreme high achievers like doctors delivering babies mid-air, grandsons of holocaust victims leading non-profits, etc that threw me off the idea of applying for Bschools itself!)
- Data mine your life by answering specific writing prompt questions
- Structure your essays with suggestions for opening lines, developing the story, concluding the essays, etc.
- Advice on what not to do when answering specific essay questions
- Specific advise on non-goal essays like failure essays, leadership essays, passion and extracurricular essays,  and other unusual topics like the ethics essay
- How to use the optional essay and what not to use it for

Lastly, there is a short chapter on Letters of recommendations with dos and donts. There is also a sample recommendation letter to understand yet again 'show not tell'.

I keep going back to sections in the book when I'm having a second go at my essay drafts. Many times I remember I've not really put in a differentiating factor that I could have used. So if you need specific advise on different essay topics and have not already bought any books nor registered for application editing services, I would highly recommend getting a book and would rate this one highly. Ofcourse, the book is not the solution to the enormous personal effort that is required, it just is an useful aid to find a direction and a lot of inspiration to writing Bschool essays.

Hope this was useful!

PS : Kaneisha's webinar on word count weight loss program was a great show yesterday. And just at the right time when I was struggling to learn some techniques. Hope you were there!

Disclaimer : All thoughts are my own and I have no affiliations with any Bschool advisory organisation whatsoever. 

AWA scores within 2 days!

A routine mailbox check and there was my official score report within 2 days of my taking the test. This time I was a little nervous about my Issue essay. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I was hoping that the argument essay, which I actually practiced writing out during my study, would compensate for the Issue essay. I was pleasantly relieved to see a 5.5 on my AWA (up from 5.0 in my earlier GMAT take). A little off target from the 6.0 score (hence the slightly off target dartboard picture), but the jump from 56th percentile to 77th percentile, made this retake more worth it than it already was.

I've currently picked up on my essay writing. I am also reading the Accepted.com's 'Great Application Essays for Business Schools' book. Hopefully that would give me some perspective to typical fallouts and other strategy ideas. For some reason, I seem more clear in my head about my essays now than I was a couple of months ago. I used to feel lost, wondering what material was suitable and what experiences to draw from. I guess now its time to strike or give a walkover. No more excuses to put it off. Now or never. So when things have got to move, they do. Hope to get my first draft of the essays for school 1 out by this weekend and also update my recommenders with my new score and discuss my recommendations.

I am excited about the BTG new practice questions launch. Its going to be an updated version of the paid product already available on the BTG website. I've been given a reviewer's account and was pleased with some of the changes they have made. My review will be out early next week when the launch happens. Also may have a few premium accounts up for grabs !

What to make out of a 680

Finally after a anxious half day, I finished my GMAT retake with a 680 (Q48,V34). It seems like a more respectable total than my previous take. Still increasing my total by 20 points (only 1 point in verbal made the difference) hopefully makes my $250 investment in the retake worth it in the long run. The score comes close to  the average of many schools like Tepper and Mccombs that I'm targetting. No ISB and Haas though! (sigh). Also the propects of scholarships has me worried.

About the test itself, the quant section was very close to the OG level of difficulty. While I practiced with Grockit and Manhattan, I certainly felt the manhattan level is slightly higher than the actual test for quants. So if you can do Manhattan, you would have a high probability of achieving that score for quants in the real test. I finished with 7 mins to spare, which I could have used in the verbal section, if only it was allowed. The verbal in manhattan however is accurately as tough as the real test. Getting an RC when I had 5 questions left and only 10 mins was no help at all. I was nervous throughout the verbal section, with frequent anxious glances at the timer ticking away. I can guess that a lot of that played on my productivity. But so be it. Its done and dusted.

I hadn't practiced the Analysis of Issue and I wasn't happy with my essay for the Issue section. The Argument essay went well since I had practiced it well. Hopefully the score of one compensates for the other and I get something respectable.

The last week I really stepped up my prep rather than lower my guard. Thanks to Random wok who gave me that piece of advice. I solved all OG, OG verbal guide questions again and went over the Manhattan idiom list. While I think this was good to improve my confidence levels in Math and SC, the CRs unfortunately were not any help since I knew the premise of each argument when I read them again.

Another plus this time was my last GMAT investment of Rs 85 on a can of Red bull. The last time I faced fatigue in my verbal section. I just couldn't wait for the test to end. This time I was alert all through. Maybe it works for some, and doesn't for others. I've never really had a red bull till yesterday, so its not proven to work every time.

A list of what I used as GMAT resources :
OG 11
OG verbal and quant guides
Manhattan SC
Powerscore CR bible
Grockit standard membership practice questions (CATs are buggy, more on that in another post)
Manhattan CAT practice tests
Kaplan free online practice test and CAT CDs
BTG DS strategy overview series

Now, onto to the next chapter. Re-assessing my school choices and getting started with the school essays.
Watch out for my review on the soon to be launched NEW Beat the GMAT practice questions. I also have a few premium accounts up for distribution !

Setting Goals

Giving yourself a goal is to eventually see yourself somewhere doing something you feel will make you happy. But most of the time, we let ourselves be the victims of the external influences and situations that take us out for a ride. Many of us choose to think that is our life and we grow to dislike how it has slowly ridden us of our dreams or what we thought we'd become by a certain age.


Rather than be whisked away for a ride, its more fulfilling to create that destination for yourself. Once that's created very often we find the path is created. Have you felt this happen when you tried goals for the short term? Arranging your wedding, preparing for a important meeting with your top bosses, etc.? The thing here was that an external situation - your fiance/parents, your boss gave you these goals. What would happen if you set one for yourself?

 To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.  ~Eva Young

The most important reason why we get lost after a while in the corporate world is we were so used to the structured world for school work, courses to take, instructors and counsellors to guide us that once we arrived, after the initial euphoria of a few years, gaining those promotions that seemed exciting to get, we find we have been so busy making money for our shareholders & directors and measuring up to the goals that they have set for us, we have forgotten if we had to make any for ourselves long term.

It is never too late to be who you might have been.  ~George Eliot

When I chose the book by Donald Trump 'Think Big and Kick ass', I just picked it up since the title was such a spunky one. Ofcourse I had seen Donald Trump in the reality TV board room and he is someone who would be easily intimidating. What he elaborated in the book with apt examples from his and his friend's/peer's lives was that the most important thing was to keep thinking BIG. That meant you had to have a bigger goal as you move on in life. The bigger you make it in some achievable quantums, the more engaging your interest in your life, the more time you would learn to live stress free. How stress free?

We always forget the time when we do something we love. How can we be stressed moving to a goal that we set for ourselves ? Think about the time you enrolled for a university course or for a job hunt, when you set out to do something that you wanted and achieved. Didn't you find it stress free and fulfilling ?

And like Donald Trump says in his book.

"I like thinking big. If you're going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big."