Life’s a mystery, but your essays shouldn’t be
By Jeremy Dann
I know you’re just trying to build some drama. You’re trying to captivate the admissions committee reader. You’re trying to enthrall, entice and enrapture them with the flow of your story. But you shouldn’t plan to construct your essays as an exercise in slow building, crescendoing stories. You need to tell the reader what she is about to learn about you from the very beginning and then prove it to the reader point to point.
Some writers want to structure their essays as mysteries. The writer sets the stage by describing the dire circumstances the protagonist is facing. The protagonist then goes about overcoming every obstacle thrown in his or her way. And finally, all the pieces come together and our protagonist enjoys a tremendous success! (Or failure, in the case of some business school essays)
MBA applicants need to reveal more at the very beginning, so the reader knows what to look for in the essay. Often, this means putting the moral of the story first:
For a leadership essay, this means writing, “My experience working at Smallco.com showed me that true leadership often means managing from below and questioning preconceived notions about how an organization should run.”
NOT: “I joined Smallco.com because of the company’s exciting approach to the fast-growing nanotechnology market.”
For an achievement essay, this means writing, “Building a not-for-profit aid organization in the aftermath of the Southeast Asian tsunami was taxing, but it is by far my proudest achievement.”
NOT: “When Sanjay prepared his fishing nets in the morning, he had no idea what the day had in store for him.”
This doesn’t mean one has to sacrifice all elements of story-telling in the interest of creating a plain, flat-footed intro. First of all, the kind of accessible writing which makes for the clearest kind of introductions can still be engaging. Secondly, after introducing your reader to what they are about to learn about you, you can include more original storytelling formats. Those sentences about nanotechnology and Sanjay the fisherman are totally appropriate as the third or fourth sentence of a twenty-sentence essay; they still help set the tone near the beginning of your piece.
If you followed a mystery story approach, the good news is that there is often a quick fix. Sometimes, your conclusion can make an excellent intro. Just cut your ending couple of sentences that sum up the lessons learned and paste them at the front of the essay. You would be surprised how often this can work with minimal tweaking. If you have to choose between having a robust intro or a robust conclusion, go with the intro every time to engage your reader from the very beginning.
