Saturday: Essay writing day

Well, that went surprising well. I officially have a bunch of business school application essays.

All that pain with the Fulbright application has paid off. I’ve really learnt how to sell myself on paper, what my offer is and what I want from business school. All that thinking I needed to do for Fulbright really helped ;specially as I had one day to write a lot of essays. I now have a full draft of all my essays for Duke. I’m even slightly ahead as I wasn’t going to worry about one essay until Christmas.

The Essays

I’ve written all three goal essays. Duke made it bit more fun as there almost long tweets at a max of 250 characters. This was pretty much a copy and paste from Fulbright research objectives essays.

The next essay was 25 random things; I wrote a first draft of that while on my surfing holiday. Even a couple of months later I think it’s fairly good. I just done a couple of tweaks to make it more positive sounding. It’s currently a page long which I think is the right length for a list. I know I’m allowed to have two pages; but don’t see how that will add anything. Think the list I wrote covers my interests; sport, reading, cooking and going out in London.

The final essay was why Duke, but you had set it out like you’re speaking to friends or family. This approach really suited my writing style as I could be informal and friendly.

I had two aims of the essay show them why Duke; which is more than why Fuqua and what I would bring to the class. One step that really worked was creating a mind map of the main things I had to cover and key points and details I could add. You can learn more about mind maps here.

Yes, my drafts can be improved; but I would say there are in pretty good shape. Just need to tighten up the drafting I think. I think my research shows through as well as my personality. Can’t ask for anything more.

Next Steps

I also need to write an optional essay for both schools explaining my low GMAT score just in case the resit doesn’t go as planned. Got the idea from advice provided on the  beat the GMAT site. The essay will go along the lines of; I’m not dumb; just dyslexic and I eat semi differential calculus for breakfast.

Next stop is Harvard essay. I know what I want to sell; but how do I make it good enough for Harvard to go, yep she worth talking to? That’s my next challenge and I’ll honest I avoided it today. Means I have a reprieve of a week; My next drafting slot in my timetable is my five-hour train ride home next Saturday.

 

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