UPDATE: This article was originally posted on August 3, 2020. It has been updated with new information and tips below.

The process of completing your MBA application for any top-ranking business school can be a challenge. Of course, you’ve needed to juggle choosing the right schools with visits and interview prep – and don’t even get me started on all the work you’ve put into your essays!

Just like the process as a whole, the development of your essays can feel like a bit of an odyssey. First came the brainstorming, then some notes that helped you create a draft, and then the tedious process of editing your essay yourself before passing it on to a friend or colleague to read. It may have felt like you have re-written your essay too many times already to make sure everything is a-okay.

But, is your draft really as spotless as you think it is? After all, elite MBA programs are looking for much more than just ‘okay’. Indeed, your essays – and your application – will need to stand out to compete amongst the tough competition. 

You may be thinking, “Yeah, but I have a better professional record than most of those people” or “But no one can compete with me in terms of a passion for impact”. However, it can be easy to forget that your peers competing for your ideal MBA-spot are most likely just as qualified. When it comes to peerless MBA programs, you need to assume that every candidate has the track record on their CV for admission.

With this in mind, it is more important than ever to make sure that one of the most complex and versatile parts of your application – your admissions essay – is flawless. And flawless writing includes much more than just a grammar check.

So when it comes down to finalizing your MBA essay for submission to the admissions committee, we highly recommend contacting your MBA consultant. In fact, we would even argue that conferring with your consultant is critical when it comes to emphasizing storytelling in your essays.

Besides having years of experience helping candidates brainstorm, develop, and review MBA essays, MBA consultants also have extensive experience helping candidates prepare their essays for submission and are prepared to catch anything that may cause your application to be set aside.

So, how can MBA consultants help you finalize your essay? We have compiled just a few ways below.

 

Way #1: MBA consultants can help you make your essay more concise

One of the things our experienced editors at Ellin Lolis Consulting see candidates struggle with the most when wrapping up their MBA essay is conciseness.

Conciseness is making sure your writing is only as long as it needs to be – no more, and no less. It means removing details that may seem unimportant, formulating sentences with fewer words where possible, and ensuring that your writing never feels unnecessarily repetitive.

In their article, 13 Ways to Make Your Writing More Interesting to Read, the Oxford Royale Academy explains how writers are “at risk of waffling” if they are too liberal with their words. They say about conciseness:

“Read through your essay objectively and take out the bits that aren’t relevant to the argument or that labour the point. As well as editing out chunks of text, it’s important to be economical with words – not using ten where five will suffice, and avoiding clunky phrases…”

Of course, being concise in your MBA essay also serves a second purpose that is often irrelevant in other types of writing: limited word counts.

You may indeed have been tempted to tell a fully-developed story about every achievement on your CV. Even if each story you thought of was excellent, the truth is that you likely just did not have the space to write about each experience.

Most schools limit their essays to 500 words or less. We know from experience that it is not possible to discuss more than a few stories in the appropriate amount of detail in this small space. Of course, this does not mean your essays can’t be persuasive (for more details about this, check out our blog post How to Write a Compelling Essay in 500 Words).

At this point in your essay writing process, you will have probably recognized the need to keep it brief. In our experience as MBA consultants, this fact becomes really critical in the final stages of creating your essay, when you have to choose exactly which words can get you where you need to be in terms of word count.

This is why, during what we at Ellin Lolis Consulting call the finalization phase of essay writing, it is more important than ever to focus on conciseness.

Here are a few ways we do that:

 

Removing extraneous details 

Sometimes, when examining a final draft for submission to the admission committee, your MBA consultant may notice details in your essay that may not be strictly necessary to include. 

While we generally encourage including lots of detail to stories in your MBA essays, there is also a cap that needs to be put on this advice. During development, it is helpful – especially for your editor, who may not know those details until you’ve told them – to experiment with all the relevant information available. As a candidate, it can even sometimes feel strange to include details, which your editor has asked for, that may not seem necessary at first glance. Our editors, however, know the value of evaluating that information before deciding its relevance.

During finalization, in contrast, is when you and your MBA consultant need to keep an eye out for details that, looking at your essay as a whole, are least-important. In fact, you may realize that some of those details are not necessary at all.

Recently, we worked with our client Fernando to finalize his essay. Take a look at the pre-finalized version of this paragraph:

“My abilities to connect with people again helped me adapt to the different environment and helped me overcome the challenges of a different culture: I began spending time to understand their pain and get close to them, arranging meetings only to understand their point of view on the major issues of the expansion contract. Not only did I get to understand their needs better, but I also learned their jargon and ways of working, which helped me improve my language skills and understand their professional culture.” (86 words)

In this story, Fernando’s wording, in particular in regards to the arranged meetings, is not particularly concise. Take this excerpt after the essay was finalized:

“My ability to connect with people again helped me adapt to the new environment and overcome cultural challenges. I began arranging meetings with managers and engineers to understand their perspectives on major issues. Not only did I comprehend their needs better, but I also learned their jargon and workflows, which helped me improve my language skills and understand their professional culture.” (61 words)

This way, Fernando can save some space, make his language sound more professional, and ensure that the adcom doesn’t have to read any more than necessary.

 

Never write more than necessary

But, you may be thinking, not all schools require candidates to stick to strict word counts for their MBA admissions essays. Do I still need to think about conciseness for those schools?

Our answer: Yes. No matter what the school, you should always be trying to make your writing as concise as possible.

Indeed, essays required by some top-tier schools, such as Harvard, have no word count. Similarly, Booth’s two essay questions only have a minimum word count:

How will the Booth MBA help you achieve your immediate and long-term post-MBA career goals? (250 word minimum)

Chicago Booth immerses you in a choice-rich environment. How have your interests, leadership experiences, and other passions influenced the choices in your life? (250 word minimum)

But just because Booth and HBS give you the freedom to write your memoir doesn’t mean you should take it. In fact, taking advantage of this may even be bad for your application.

Imagine for a minute that you are on the HBS admissions committee, reading tens – if not scores – of essays each day. Between so many applications to assess, you do not want to read any more than necessary to understand the candidate in front of you. And if a single candidate needs 3000 words to say what another can communicate in 1000, you will probably prefer the candidate who favors being concise.

By asking you to choose how much you are going to tell them, these schools are asking you to complete a more difficult challenge than those limiting your writing. Those schools are analyzing your ability to determine the relevant from the irrelevant, even when you do not strictly have to. They are testing your ability to present an argument smartly, which will not include writing them a novel.

This means that conciseness is possibly even more important for essays that have no word count. We recommend limiting your writing to no more than 1200 words for HBS and around 500 words for Booth.

Way #2: MBA consultants can help you polish your phrasing to perfection

Giving your essay that final polish is just as important as checking it for conciseness. When polishing your essay, your MBA consultant is examining your language to make sure it is as professional, smooth, and as interesting to read as possible.

To clarify, we are not talking specifically about grammar here. While that is also something your editor will ensure is spot-on, polishing refers to aspects like word choice and phrasing. Basically, polishing means making sure you’ve chosen the best words possible.

Polishing may include searching for synonyms that have a more exact connotation and ensuring that no phrases or words are over-used. It may also include reformulating phrasing to be more precise. It especially means thoroughly examining the text for any ambiguities or possible misinterpretations.

Avoid ambiguities or misinterpretations

As MBA consultants, we constantly help clients deal with ambiguities and misunderstandings in their writing. It is important to point out the essential role these issues play in a successful MBA essay. 

Ambiguities are passages of text that could be interpreted in more than one way. If two or more meanings can be derived from a single word, this is referred to as lexical ambiguity. If the confusion derives from possible meanings from the sentence itself, this is called syntactic ambiguity. Both can pose a problem in MBA admissions essays. 

For example, if I told you “I had a meeting on Tuesday, which was right on time”, you could understand this in multiple ways. You could think the meeting was punctual, for example. On the other hand, you could understand that I am relieved because the project would have been endangered had we waited until Wednesday to hold the meeting. This is an example of syntactic ambiguity.

At other times, it can be hard to tell what a specific passage is referring to. Take a look at this example from a recent client, Eduarda:

Because it is unclear what the pronoun “they” refers to in her sentence, this passage could be interpreted in multiple ways. This is an example of lexical ambiguity.

It is easy to see how ambiguities can pose a problem in MBA essays. Even more important than avoiding ambiguous phrasing, however, is avoiding phrasing that can cause the reader to misunderstand an entire mindset or value.

With inappropriate phrasing, you could potentially run the risk of sounding offensive to the reader or a specific group of people. 

For example, in an early version of an essay, one client recounted volunteering with youths in Brasilia. He began his story by saying:

“In Brasilia, I began volunteering for an NGO that helped poor people, especially kids, improve their English.”

While this may be true, it might not always come off as polite or politically correct. After all, you have no idea who will be reading your essay, what their background is, or their political affiliation. Thus, it is best to avoid language like “poor people” – which a sensitive reader could interoperate negatively – and instead write something like:

“In Brasilia, I began volunteering for an NGO that helped underprivileged children improve their English.”

This way a misunderstanding of your text – and your mindset – can be easily avoided. 

 

Way #3: MBA consultants can help you with technical editing

An important element in finalizing any MBA essay is taking a careful look at what we at Ellin Lolis Consulting call technical editing. Actually, this is probably what comes to mind when you imagine someone else reading your MBA essay.

Technical editing includes the mechanics of the English language, such as grammar, spelling, punctuation, syntax, and word choice. These are the edits that make sure your essay is grammatically sound. Correcting and trimming word count is also included in technical editing.

Technical editing guarantees that your essay adheres to the standard use of the English language. 

On the one hand, technical editing ensures that your readers can understand what you are saying (and sometimes not even being 100% grammatically correct guarantees that!).

On the other hand, these adjustments are often what give your essay that professional touch. Although the admissions board is not judging you on your language skills, poor use of language could still contribute negatively to their perception of you. You wouldn’t want to give the admissions board the idea that you don’t pay attention to detail just because you use inconsistent capitalization. 

Not only are such oversights unnecessary, but they are also easy to avoid in the first place. If nothing else, you need to make sure your essay uses language correctly.

At Ellin Lolis Consulting, we complement technical editing with strategic editing, a process that takes elements like choice of story and theme or examining which topics work best with your target school. Strategic editing is usually complete or nearly complete by the time you are ready to finalize your essay.

 

Way #4: MBA consultants can help you with ‘bonus comments’

Last but not least, your editor is also there to catch things you might have missed when conceptualizing your essays in the first place. 

While many of our clients hire us to help them develop their application from start to finish, others hire us near the end of the process to ensure that their essay is good-to-go before submission. 

If you belong to the latter category, you may have already gone through the process of structuring your essay, identifying your values, and making sure your stories reveal impact. Although you may be an excellent writer, it is possible that you missed the mark on one or more of these elements. 

Do not fret, however! Even in the finalization stage of essay editing, your MBA consultant is still keeping an eye open for anything that could make your argument as a whole stronger, stand out more, or reveal your inner motivations to the admissions board.

Recently, our client Ana submitted an essay to us and asked us to help her finalize. Besides taking care of issues like conciseness, ambiguities, phrasing, error-free grammar, and correct punctuation, we also examined her text to see if any details could help make her argument more powerful. Our editor pointed out that, should Ana want to keep working on her essay before finalizing, the following points would be good to tackle:

Of course, this didn’t mean we left Ana out in the rain! Besides leaving these and other comments, we also made sure Ana’s essay was ready for submission in case she preferred to finalize without addressing these issues.

However, if Ana wants to use these ‘bonus comments’ to make further improvements before crossing the finish line, we are here to help.

Our editors have tons of experience helping clients determine which stories and themes work best for their profile, their target school, and convey that you are perfect for their program. No matter how long we have worked with you, we will always offer suggestions to help you make your essay even better.

 

Ready to finalize your MBA essays?

So, how do you know when your essay is – finally! – finalized? Couldn’t the language be just a tiny bit better? Am I sure there are no grammar mistakes? What about if we tweaked this story just a bit?

Sometimes, it can be tough to figure out when your essay is really done. Where is the line between “good enough” and “overthinking it”? This is where MBA consultants are extremely helpful.

All too often, we see clients who insist on making further adjustments to essays that have been finalized, sometimes even multiple times. Although you may want to change a detail here or there, there comes a point when you can say “enough is enough”. Your editor is an expert at identifying when you can say, “I did it!”.

Of course, our editors have tons of experience helping clients finalize their essays in time to hit that precious deadline, as well. Keep in mind that contacting your MBA consultant as soon as possible greatly increases their ability to focus on your essay before crunch time. 

So don’t wait until the last minute rush – have our experienced editors at Ellin Lolis Consulting help you finalize your essay ASAP!