Quite a paradox. How could this possibly be? My Stanford essays currently aren't worth the paper they're printed on yet I consider them to be in good shape. Everyone says that Kellogg's essay questions are the hardest, but I wouldn't know it. Stanford is kicking my behind. These word limits are the bane of my existence right now. I'm having a difficult time distilling my behavioral essays to their essential parts so that they fit into 300 words. 300 little words.
I received confirmation that the stories I want to tell are compelling, so in my opinion, they're in fighting shape. I have a starting point (well not quite, since I've rewritten these things multiple times), and know how I can improve them. it's just a matter of sitting down to do it.
In other news, I am feeling confident about both my Wharton and my Kellogg essays. My resume has been sealed with a kiss and I do not forsee additional alterations. I do not have the mental bandwith to think about Chicago's application or essays right now. They only have two essays and a power point presentation, so it's much less writing intense than Kellogg's essays, but the esoteric "leadership" question has me at a loss. I'm sure I can dig deep and find some jewels, but until I get Stanford to a point where I'm just fine tuning things, I don't think focusing on Chicago will do either school justice.
It is late, and I've spent my day off writing essays. Although there is no rest for the weary, I'm going to lay my head on my pillow.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Writing Everyone's Essays But My Own
Before I get started, in honor of Mondays...
One of my colleagues in the Management Leadership Tomorrow program remarked that I am probably having an easy time right now because writing is one of my strengths. He's right, but then he's wrong. He's right in that I have an easy time with grammar, word use, etc, and that I can see for myself where an essay needs work. He's wrong in that I'm going to have to write just as many drafts as everyone else will. I'm not so cavalier as to think that I've got the essays in the bag. That type of hubris in this process is what results in rejections. In fact, the bar will probably be higher for me as an English major who works at a publishing company.
I do enjoy the essay writing process more than the studying for the GMAT process, though. I like to write and always have. You may be surprised to learn that I never wanted to be a fiction writer. The few times I've tried my hand at fiction, I have found myself bored and never felt compelled to see my work through to completion. I'd stop at the first draft and just lose interest. Non-fiction is where my heart was/is. At one point in my life I wanted to be a journalist so that makes sense. I love to recount true stories and find the symbolism, pathos, and humor in things that normal people do on a daily basis. Even still, my attention span has never allowed me to see any of my non fiction work through to the end (but I would love to write a biography of my grandmother -- she just refuses to be interviewed). Sure, I'm a decent writer, but my real talent (I think) is for bringing out the strengths of other writers. Kind of like a writing coach (or editor).
That same colleague sent out an SOS and asked me to look over some of his essays this weekend. He had received the same feedback multiple times and when he thought he was improving, his reviewer told him he hadn't made any progress. I looked them over and what had happened is that the treasure was buried deep, deep in the essay. Several paragraphs into a 750 word essay. He meandered through the essay making a few claims and never substantiating them or introducing ideas and never reconciling them. He had some cool ideas for metaphors but needed a coach to help him make the metaphors work and sing. I went through and helped him create a structure and develop a theme.
I also have a friend applying for medical rotations and she asked me to help her with essays for those programs. Unlike my colleague, She had so many treasures in one essay that readers were getting overwhelmed and she failed to connect the dots for why she wanted to go into radiology in a way that we could understand. So I helped her with creating an outline that kept her on track as she rewrote the essay. We have all of her treasures connected with a central theme that we laid out in the beginning of the essay.
While I was doing all this essay help, I avoided rewriting my own Kellogg essays. It did not help that I can now stream all four seasons of Mad Men on Netflix.
I spent Saturday watching Season 1 and pretending to write. To my credit, I did manage to finish a first draft of my Wharton essays at 2 AM last night and I'm glad that I got my ideas on to paper. As much as I preach about the benefits of outlining, I totally winged it on my career goals essay and wrote what I felt as it came to me.
One of my colleagues in the Management Leadership Tomorrow program remarked that I am probably having an easy time right now because writing is one of my strengths. He's right, but then he's wrong. He's right in that I have an easy time with grammar, word use, etc, and that I can see for myself where an essay needs work. He's wrong in that I'm going to have to write just as many drafts as everyone else will. I'm not so cavalier as to think that I've got the essays in the bag. That type of hubris in this process is what results in rejections. In fact, the bar will probably be higher for me as an English major who works at a publishing company.
I do enjoy the essay writing process more than the studying for the GMAT process, though. I like to write and always have. You may be surprised to learn that I never wanted to be a fiction writer. The few times I've tried my hand at fiction, I have found myself bored and never felt compelled to see my work through to completion. I'd stop at the first draft and just lose interest. Non-fiction is where my heart was/is. At one point in my life I wanted to be a journalist so that makes sense. I love to recount true stories and find the symbolism, pathos, and humor in things that normal people do on a daily basis. Even still, my attention span has never allowed me to see any of my non fiction work through to the end (but I would love to write a biography of my grandmother -- she just refuses to be interviewed). Sure, I'm a decent writer, but my real talent (I think) is for bringing out the strengths of other writers. Kind of like a writing coach (or editor).
That same colleague sent out an SOS and asked me to look over some of his essays this weekend. He had received the same feedback multiple times and when he thought he was improving, his reviewer told him he hadn't made any progress. I looked them over and what had happened is that the treasure was buried deep, deep in the essay. Several paragraphs into a 750 word essay. He meandered through the essay making a few claims and never substantiating them or introducing ideas and never reconciling them. He had some cool ideas for metaphors but needed a coach to help him make the metaphors work and sing. I went through and helped him create a structure and develop a theme.
I also have a friend applying for medical rotations and she asked me to help her with essays for those programs. Unlike my colleague, She had so many treasures in one essay that readers were getting overwhelmed and she failed to connect the dots for why she wanted to go into radiology in a way that we could understand. So I helped her with creating an outline that kept her on track as she rewrote the essay. We have all of her treasures connected with a central theme that we laid out in the beginning of the essay.
While I was doing all this essay help, I avoided rewriting my own Kellogg essays. It did not help that I can now stream all four seasons of Mad Men on Netflix.
I spent Saturday watching Season 1 and pretending to write. To my credit, I did manage to finish a first draft of my Wharton essays at 2 AM last night and I'm glad that I got my ideas on to paper. As much as I preach about the benefits of outlining, I totally winged it on my career goals essay and wrote what I felt as it came to me.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Got my Kellogg Essays Back
I'm happy to report that my essays were in better shape than I thought they were. I am awesome at those Situation Task Action Results essays. Simply awesome. Where I am much less awesome is the Career Goals and Why This School essays. I've actually decided to alter my career goals. More on that later.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff
Recently, I got hooked on a series of blog posts wherein an admissions consultant was sizing up an applicants chances for a variety of schools. Though entertaining, I found myself a bit demoralized after reading these posts and started second guessing my accomplishments, chances, and choice in schools. I know that my GPA is low and am prepared to overcome that hurdle, but the emphasis on working for a big name firm is what got to me. Am I wasting application fees here? I know that it's unlikely that I'll be accepted everywhere I apply, but I do want to have a fighting chance at the school's I apply to. Now is not the time to lose faith in myself, so I decided to tune the self-doubt out and stop reading the series. I will instead channel that energy into fuel to produce stand out applications.
So my theme song for the day...
So my theme song for the day...
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Onward, Ho! More Essay Outlining
I had a lovely evening last night. Simply lovely. Despite leaving work at 6 PM, I did not make it home until 8 due to protests on the subway.
I won't go into the details of the protest or even offer an opinion on them as my blog is not political in nature. All I will say is that my subway station was closed and I wound up having to take the expensive ferry home. Though inconvenient, it was a beautiful ride on the SF Bay.
The subway shut down took a chunk of my time last night that I was going to devote to writing Wharton essays, but last night I managed to get outlines for all down on paper. After having written a set of essays for Kellogg, my ideas flowed more freely. I'm going to be able to re-use an anecdote for Wharton that I've used in my Kellogg essay. I will not be copying and pasting, however, because the Wharton question is actually different from the Kellogg question. It's just that the theme is similar.
So why Wharton?
Wharton is a program that I got excited about in the last month after learning about the small business development center and their integrated marketing and operations major. I originally hesitated because it's a larger program and after speaking to some marketing students I got the impression that their support for those entering brand management wasn't that great. Upon a more thorough reflection of my career goals, I realized that Wharton's emphasis on finance and analytics is perfect for me in that I'll be forced to develop a knowledge base in areas that I'm currently lacking and through experiential opportunities, I'll be able to connect marketing and analytics in a way that I haven't been able to before.
I won't go into the details of the protest or even offer an opinion on them as my blog is not political in nature. All I will say is that my subway station was closed and I wound up having to take the expensive ferry home. Though inconvenient, it was a beautiful ride on the SF Bay.
The subway shut down took a chunk of my time last night that I was going to devote to writing Wharton essays, but last night I managed to get outlines for all down on paper. After having written a set of essays for Kellogg, my ideas flowed more freely. I'm going to be able to re-use an anecdote for Wharton that I've used in my Kellogg essay. I will not be copying and pasting, however, because the Wharton question is actually different from the Kellogg question. It's just that the theme is similar.
So why Wharton?
Wharton is a program that I got excited about in the last month after learning about the small business development center and their integrated marketing and operations major. I originally hesitated because it's a larger program and after speaking to some marketing students I got the impression that their support for those entering brand management wasn't that great. Upon a more thorough reflection of my career goals, I realized that Wharton's emphasis on finance and analytics is perfect for me in that I'll be forced to develop a knowledge base in areas that I'm currently lacking and through experiential opportunities, I'll be able to connect marketing and analytics in a way that I haven't been able to before.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Kellogg First Draft Finished
After a brutal seven-hour writing session, I have completed the first draft of my Kellogg essays. I need to give my boyfriend a special thank you for his understanding. We were supposed to go to the movies and out to eat this weekend but I just haven't had the bandwith. I managed to make breakfast and lunch today but have not changed from my pajamas. I had to send him to the store to get things for dinner, and at 9 oclock we will have our Sunday snuggle time. :) Right now, I'm unwinding with a cheap glass of Sauvignon Blac.
Reminders to myself about essay writing:
Be yourself. I'm sure you've heard admissions officers and consultants advise applicants to be themselves and not try to paint a portrait of what they think the adcom wants them to be. Truer words have never been spoken. I had trouble articulating the motivation behind my long term goals on paper and I hesitated to go for broke in talking about my career plans because I was afraid the adcom wouldn't believe I had the juice to make a career switch. For weeks, my career goals essays were boring and seemed too force. They actually pained me to write. Today, I restructured my career goals essay and talked about the deal with my father that led me to this career goal. My words flowed so naturally and so much easier than they had before.
Brainstorm and outline. It is essential to have a plan before you start attacking an essay. You need to know what you want to highlight in your essay, what anecdotes you want to tell and why they're relevant before you set pen to paper. This outline is your essay's skeleton. This outline allows you to think through your essay and establish a structure. I am a big structure freak. Structure in writing fascinates me. James Joyce is painful to read but I had to respect dude's structure. In fact in undergrad, I contemplated doing a PhD in Literature studying narrative structure (yes I'm that much of a geek). Structure gives the reader sign posts. The reader needs these sign posts so that your points are not lost. It also gives you a frame work to operate in so that you don't get lost in the writing sauce yourself.
A rough draft is just that. Rough. I am an experienced writer and spent my college education writing papers upon papers, but even with that experience I had to remind myself that the first rough draft is to really get your ideas on paper. There's no way in Hades that you're going to sound like Maya Angelou or Nabokov as soon as you put your fingers on the keys. It's just not happening. If the outline gives you a skeleton, the rough draft puts the meat on that skeleton. Power through those moments where you get stumped. One of my tricks is if I get stuck on how to describe something or on a word to use I'll write a stand-in phrase and put brackets around it so I know to go back and clean it up when I do my first repass. Some people work best when they do this rough draft through stream of consciousness (a literary style that I've always hated due to my love of structure), and this may be you. So you have to let the words flow through you and write your thoughts out. Follow the map you created in your outline until you get to the end and don't worry about how crappy or how good the essay is when you've finished.
Do not be afraid to abort the mission. This is another tip I picked up writing papers. I have thrown away pages of a paper and entire essays because after I got them on paper they sparked an idea for a paper that was much better than what I had. In the past few weeks, I wrote maybe two entire essays that I abandoned. I lifted maybe one or two sentences or ideas and used them to spark the essays that I have labeled my first draft. You have to give yourself ample time to write garbage. Nabokov's first iteration of Lolita was probably rubbish, so keep in mind that the greats got that way because they practiced, practiced, practiced. We're not writing novels here, but expect to go through some iterations before you get your polished jewel ready to submit to the adcom.
It is almost time for True Blood and Breaking Bad. My first draft has been sent off to my MBA application coach and I look forward to seeing what she has to say. I should include another self-reminder -- humble yourself. You need someone to keep it real with you and tell you where and why your essay sucks. I'm expecting lots of constructive criticism. I'd be kidding if I told you that I will squeal with glee when I see all of the comments about what I need to change and what sucked, but I need and want to hear this.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Time flies
I can't believe it's been a month since I last took the time out to draft a blog post. So much has happened..
1) My work trip to MD has been canceled. I planned to take a week off afterward and visit Tuck, Wharton, Columbia and Yale. After much deliberation on how to get the best bang for my buck, I decided to push off visiting the east coast schools until September. This situation is not ideal, but I am going to make the best of it by getting all of my west coast visits out of the way now. Which leads me to point #2...
2) Not going to MD means that I can go to the Many Voices conference. If I were going to MD I would not be in the bay area for the event, so there is some silver lining in that cloud. Stanford is my top choice right now. I visited in the fall, and sat in on a class, but did not speak to very many students outside of my former Housemate. This weekend I'll get to hear more from students, get to speak to admissions officers and ask questions, and get to partake in an actual class. The Many Voices folks have sent along assignments -- one of the readings is 40 pages long. I'm going to have a veritable read-a-thon.
3) Speaking of visiting campuses, I had an opportunity to visit Darden at the beginning of this month for the MLT kick-off seminar. I wound up getting to Virginia pretty early on Thursday so I planned to visit a class, take a campus tour and attend a chili cook-off. Well I wound up falling ill that first day. I don't know if I was dehydrated or what, but I did not feel up to touring campus etc. Lucky for me I got to see a lot of the campus over the weekend and it's gorgeous. Like absolutely stunning. We also got our own classroom experience as one of the most popular professors at Darden led a case-based discussion for us. I enjoyed the case method. It was stimulating, but it didn't strike me as something that I must have as the dominant/sole teaching method. One could argue that with the case method you are always applying theories, but I'll have to think about devoting my entire 2-years to case studies. I spoke to numerous students over the weekend and they were all very friendly. I heard a lot about the benefits of going to a school like Darden when it comes to recruiting for management consulting. I also heard from quite a few future brand managers (more than I expected). I'm still undecided on Darden. It's a beautiful campus -- there's no denying that. I would get a great general management education there and I'm sure I would land a great first gig post MBA. I need to do some soul-searching to see if I can adjust to living in a small city.
4) I wound up getting an A on my calculus final and subsequently an A in the class. Yay me! I'm glad that it's out of the way and I've got my Thursdays back. Now I have a stats course and a calc course under my belt -- and I got A's in both. Woot. I had originally planned to take Micro economics and accounting in addition to calc and stat, but my MLT coach has me rethinking my original plna. I long ago abandoned the idea of taking 4 courses and settled on 3, but she thinks that 2 is sufficient. A 3rd would just be me driving the point home. I have a few months to think about what I'm going to do. I can take micro economics, lose another 4-6 hours out of my week and pay about 800 bucks. Or I can save the money for something else. If the $800 puts me closer to my long term goal without putting me into the red, it's probably worth taking the additional course. Fortunately I won't have to cross that bridge until May when the extension school offers the micro economics course.
5) This past month I researched Duke Fuqua. The students I spoke to seem excited about the program, but right now I am undecided on how I feel about it. I plan to visit the school in the fall to experience life on campus.
6) I gave my resume yet another face lift and have included more figures to show impact
7) I spoke with a former house mate who is a 2Y at Wharton. She's majoring in marketing there and I wondered how that was like for her. When I hear Wharton, I think consulting, not so much marketing/brand management, and as it's a school I'm considering, I wanted to talk to her on the phone about her time at Wharton. As it turns out, she thought she was going into finance but after a few weeks she quickly realized that it was not for her and managed to shift her career focus before recruiting started. She gave me the email address of one of her cohort mates who, like me, is from a publishing background and who, like I hopefully will be, is going into brand management next year. I need to email her to arrange a time for an informational interview.
8) My little sister surprised me with a visit this past weekend. She came up from Southern California for a weekend and wound up spending most of her time playing Call of Duty and hanging out with one of her friends who moved away from Santa Barbara. She did cook a fabulous dinner for me on Saturday and we got to spend some time together despite my pretty hectic schedule.
In summary, my list of schools is looking like this now:
Stanford
Tuck
Wharton
Fuqua
Darden
Anderson
Marshall
Stern
Columbia
Haas
Georgetown
Yale SOM
Kellogg
Booth
Keep in mind that this is a long list and I haven't researched all of these schools in depth yet. Stanford, Haas, and Anderson are definitely on my short list.
What's on the agenda for April:
Many Voices Conference
Toastmasters Speech # 5 (I've already got an idea)
Lent
Vegas and Janet Jackson at the end of the month with two of my bffs
A visit to Haas and hopefully a visit to USC and Anderson
Career planning and informational interviews with brand managers (I'm trying to paint vividly what my short term and long term goals are. They are abstract right now and for b-school apps, they need to be crystal clear).
And an email to my grandmother, and that I'll do right now.
1) My work trip to MD has been canceled. I planned to take a week off afterward and visit Tuck, Wharton, Columbia and Yale. After much deliberation on how to get the best bang for my buck, I decided to push off visiting the east coast schools until September. This situation is not ideal, but I am going to make the best of it by getting all of my west coast visits out of the way now. Which leads me to point #2...
2) Not going to MD means that I can go to the Many Voices conference. If I were going to MD I would not be in the bay area for the event, so there is some silver lining in that cloud. Stanford is my top choice right now. I visited in the fall, and sat in on a class, but did not speak to very many students outside of my former Housemate. This weekend I'll get to hear more from students, get to speak to admissions officers and ask questions, and get to partake in an actual class. The Many Voices folks have sent along assignments -- one of the readings is 40 pages long. I'm going to have a veritable read-a-thon.
3) Speaking of visiting campuses, I had an opportunity to visit Darden at the beginning of this month for the MLT kick-off seminar. I wound up getting to Virginia pretty early on Thursday so I planned to visit a class, take a campus tour and attend a chili cook-off. Well I wound up falling ill that first day. I don't know if I was dehydrated or what, but I did not feel up to touring campus etc. Lucky for me I got to see a lot of the campus over the weekend and it's gorgeous. Like absolutely stunning. We also got our own classroom experience as one of the most popular professors at Darden led a case-based discussion for us. I enjoyed the case method. It was stimulating, but it didn't strike me as something that I must have as the dominant/sole teaching method. One could argue that with the case method you are always applying theories, but I'll have to think about devoting my entire 2-years to case studies. I spoke to numerous students over the weekend and they were all very friendly. I heard a lot about the benefits of going to a school like Darden when it comes to recruiting for management consulting. I also heard from quite a few future brand managers (more than I expected). I'm still undecided on Darden. It's a beautiful campus -- there's no denying that. I would get a great general management education there and I'm sure I would land a great first gig post MBA. I need to do some soul-searching to see if I can adjust to living in a small city.
4) I wound up getting an A on my calculus final and subsequently an A in the class. Yay me! I'm glad that it's out of the way and I've got my Thursdays back. Now I have a stats course and a calc course under my belt -- and I got A's in both. Woot. I had originally planned to take Micro economics and accounting in addition to calc and stat, but my MLT coach has me rethinking my original plna. I long ago abandoned the idea of taking 4 courses and settled on 3, but she thinks that 2 is sufficient. A 3rd would just be me driving the point home. I have a few months to think about what I'm going to do. I can take micro economics, lose another 4-6 hours out of my week and pay about 800 bucks. Or I can save the money for something else. If the $800 puts me closer to my long term goal without putting me into the red, it's probably worth taking the additional course. Fortunately I won't have to cross that bridge until May when the extension school offers the micro economics course.
5) This past month I researched Duke Fuqua. The students I spoke to seem excited about the program, but right now I am undecided on how I feel about it. I plan to visit the school in the fall to experience life on campus.
6) I gave my resume yet another face lift and have included more figures to show impact
7) I spoke with a former house mate who is a 2Y at Wharton. She's majoring in marketing there and I wondered how that was like for her. When I hear Wharton, I think consulting, not so much marketing/brand management, and as it's a school I'm considering, I wanted to talk to her on the phone about her time at Wharton. As it turns out, she thought she was going into finance but after a few weeks she quickly realized that it was not for her and managed to shift her career focus before recruiting started. She gave me the email address of one of her cohort mates who, like me, is from a publishing background and who, like I hopefully will be, is going into brand management next year. I need to email her to arrange a time for an informational interview.
8) My little sister surprised me with a visit this past weekend. She came up from Southern California for a weekend and wound up spending most of her time playing Call of Duty and hanging out with one of her friends who moved away from Santa Barbara. She did cook a fabulous dinner for me on Saturday and we got to spend some time together despite my pretty hectic schedule.
In summary, my list of schools is looking like this now:
Stanford
Tuck
Wharton
Fuqua
Darden
Anderson
Marshall
Stern
Columbia
Haas
Georgetown
Yale SOM
Kellogg
Booth
Keep in mind that this is a long list and I haven't researched all of these schools in depth yet. Stanford, Haas, and Anderson are definitely on my short list.
What's on the agenda for April:
Many Voices Conference
Toastmasters Speech # 5 (I've already got an idea)
Lent
Vegas and Janet Jackson at the end of the month with two of my bffs
A visit to Haas and hopefully a visit to USC and Anderson
Career planning and informational interviews with brand managers (I'm trying to paint vividly what my short term and long term goals are. They are abstract right now and for b-school apps, they need to be crystal clear).
And an email to my grandmother, and that I'll do right now.
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