B-Schooled Podcast Episode #305: How to Edit Your MBA Essays Down to Size

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Timestamps refer to the audio.

Erika Olson: Today, I’m going to give you some tips for editing your MBA essays. And let me say up front that even if you’re very confident in your editing skills, or you’ve already gotten your essays under the word count limit, you still might want to listen. One, you might realize you could edit your essays down even more, making room for other details that would help differentiate you as a candidate. Two, what I’m going to cover might make you realize you’ve picked the wrong stories for your essays overall. And three, it’s always good to learn something new to make your writing more concise, whether it’s for your MBA essays or not.

So let’s start with making sure you’re using the right stories in the first place. Let’s say you have an essay where you’re expected to give an example of a time when you thought outside the box, or showed leadership, or what have you. Any of those essays where you have to give an example. We actually have a whole episode on using the STAR method for this sort of essay, STAR standing for Situation, Task, Action, and Result.

I’m not going to go too deep into that here again, except to say that you might know you’re using the wrong story if your setup is taking up half your allotted word count, or even less than that. If just setting up a story is eating a good chunk of your word count, then you probably need to switch stories. You need to pick an easy-to-understand situation that you can describe in a sentence or two, and then get on to the T, A, and R parts, which are the important details the adcom wants to hear about: what you did.

So making sure you’re writing about impactful examples that can be concisely set up is going to save you words right off the bat. It’s really worth your time to brainstorm all of the possible stories you could write about that would fit an MBA essay prompt, and pick the right one.

[02:34] For all essays, even the more open-ended ones where the STAR technique might not be relevant, you’re going to want to be mindful about spending your precious word count on adjectives that aren’t worthy of a spot. I’m definitely talking about severely overused adjectives in MBA essays. Some of them are “key,” “very,” “really,” “unique,” stuff like that. These words are not unique, and they’re a total waste of space in MBA essays, and really in any writing. I promise if you delete those types of words from your essays, your materials are going to be stronger. You can also do a search for overused words, and you’ll find great articles on other words and phrases to strike from your writing from here on out.

Along with certain adjectives, like the ones I just mentioned, adverbs are another thing to delete. As a refresher, adverbs are words that typically end in L-Y and describe how something, usually a verb, is done. Here are a few examples. “She walked hurriedly to the meeting.” That could have been “She dashed to the meeting.” “‘Quiet down,’ he said loudly.” That could be “‘Quiet down,’ he commanded.”

Switching up the verb to make it more particular about what you’re saying, to make it clearer, is typically going to give you a stronger, more memorable word in the first place, and it will also save you at least one word, if not a few more. You could also usually just drop the adverb altogether in MBA essays and not lose any meaning.

[04:26] Another tip, which sounds obvious, is that sometimes there are simply shorter ways to say the same thing. Instead of saying something like “My long-term career goal is to run a microfinance firm,” you could say “Eventually, I want to run a microfinance firm.” That saves you two words right there.

Also be on the lookout for the word “of.” With rare exceptions, every time I use the word “of” in my writing, I go back and find a way to write it more concisely. For example, if you wrote something like “I wanted to go beyond the responsibilities of my role,” you could say “I wanted to exceed my manager’s expectations.” That saved you two words, and see how the word “of” is no longer in there? When you see the word “of,” it can usually be taken out, and the sentence can be flipped to include a possessive. So in this case, “I wanted to go beyond the responsibilities of my role” became “I wanted to exceed my manager’s expectations,” or it could even be “my role’s expectations.” Either way, it saved you words.

I know we’ve been talking about one or two words here and there, aside from picking a completely different story that’s more succinct. But over the course of an essay that might be 300 words or however long, all these little one- and two-word deletions really can add up to dozens of words to get you under your word count. And you’re going to have a much stronger response because you haven’t deleted anything important. These deletions aren’t going to affect the impact of your writing or your story, so always target them first.

Here’s another silly one that still probably bears mentioning. Don’t feel like you need to write out the entire school name every single time. If you want to write “HBS” after you initially write out “Harvard Business School,” that’s totally fine.

[06:40] Now, what if you’ve done all these things and you’re still way over the word count limit? I would definitely recommend printing out your essays and literally going through them line by line with a pen. I know that’s old school, and I know it kills trees, but there’s something to be said for reading a physical, printed-out piece of paper rather than a screen. At least it helps me edit. Maybe not everybody, but I think it’s worth a try if you’re really struggling.

Then you need to start looking for redundancy, things that don’t tell them anything about you. Remember, the whole point is to convince the admissions committee that you deserve a highly coveted spot in their program. So if you make a point, you don’t need to make that point again in 10 different ways. This is something I see a lot when I look at MBA hopefuls’ essays and help with editing. It requires you to be objective about your own writing and know when you’re repeating things, even though you might be saying them in different ways. If you don’t think you can be objective, then find somebody who’s a very fierce editor to help you.

Along those lines, look for sentences, or maybe even whole paragraphs, where you might come off like you’re lecturing the reader. This is another thing we see a lot. People lose track of the question and the answer the admissions committee is looking for, and they start almost trying to educate the reader. The admissions committee doesn’t need a speech about how misunderstood AI is, or what investment banking is really about, or even what your role is, if it’s a very common role they probably have a lot of familiarity with.

They don’t want you to explain how your group is organized before you launch into a story. They don’t want what we call inside baseball: the inner workings of your team or your group or your firm or your clients that don’t have anything to do with your candidacy. They just want you to answer their question in the clearest, most succinct, and most memorable way possible. So don’t let what makes you stand out get lost in a huge setup about organizational structure or roles or things they don’t need to know.

[09:36] Along those same lines, you should not be including comparisons to, or even mentions of, other business school programs. You should act like the school you’re applying to is the only school that exists. I find that if somebody has mentioned another MBA program in their essays, the likelihood that they’re telling the adcom something it already knows about its own school is extraordinarily high.

Say you have a sentence like “Compared to other MBA programs, School X has a better ranking and more famous professors.” Do you see the issues with that? It’s telling them something they already know. It’s telling them nothing about yourself, and it’s wasting valuable word count in the process.

It’s also a sentence that literally anybody could write. So if there are sentences in your essays that anybody could write, where you’re just stating facts about the program back to the people at that program, that’s a waste of word count.

If you need to explain why you think you’re a good fit for the program, keep it as personal to you as possible. Don’t just recite things back from their own website. Tie program details back to why they matter to you and your goals. You can gain word count back if you have generic statements, and spend it on things that are specific to you, tying your goals and motivations to the program.

[11:13] Now, if you feel like you’ve done all of this, you’ve gone through five rounds of editing, and you’re still stuck way above the word count, then you or someone else needs to examine your essay critically and ask: Is every single word in this response necessary to make my point and answer their specific question?

On top of that, ask yourself: Do my responses show, instead of tell, what I would bring to the program that would benefit my classmates? Remember that just saying you’re innovative doesn’t prove that you are. You should not have any sentences like that in your essay, so those are easy cuts. Saying “I am X, Y, or Z adjective.” Rather, you need to share an anecdote that makes the case for you, like relaying the story of how you developed a new product that didn’t exist before and found a unique way to market it. That shows you’re innovative without ever having to say the words “I am innovative.” Anecdotes speak for you in much more memorable ways.

And if all else fails, give it a break. This is why you should never write your essays or submit them at the last minute. If you’re really struggling to get your essay down to the required word count, you need time to step away from it and revisit it with fresh eyes and a more open mind about what could go, or whether you need to switch the story you’re telling completely. You’re likely to find some words and sentences that aren’t critical when you come back with fresh eyes.

And once again, give it to a friend who’s a good editor. There’s also the option of buying a few hours with an admissions consultant on our team, who’s going to be nerdy just like me and absolutely love the challenge of getting your essay down to just the nuts and bolts that need to be there, and making it stronger in the process. They’ll probably give you other helpful strategic advice as well.

[13:34] Before we wrap up, I want to address a question I get a lot: Do you really have to stay under the word count limits? Is all this pain of editing down worth it, or can you fudge it a little bit?

Sometimes there are character counts involved, meaning you’re either writing your response directly in the application or pasting it into a field on the online application, where there’s a hard cutoff and you can see the words or characters remaining. For schools where you can upload your essay responses as a PDF, though, I still wouldn’t advise going much over the limits. These people have been doing this a long time. They know how to eyeball what 400 words or 600 words looks like. Do you have a little bit of wiggle room? Probably. They’re not going to run a word count on a PDF. But I would still try to keep it less than 5% over, if you absolutely cannot cut it down any further.

So in closing, I realize this episode isn’t going to have the power to transform anybody into a big nerd like myself who thrives on editing. I just find it a challenge I love, to say things as succinctly as possible. I do all those weird little games and apps that make you take a sentence down to its core. I love that kind of stuff, but I know I’m a rarity. So even if this podcast hasn’t made you look forward to the editing process, I hope it’s at least given you some strategies to rein in the length of your responses, and to end up with stronger materials, since they’re typically stronger when they’re more concise.

Best of luck. I’ll leave you with a funny quote I found from the writer Dr. Seuss that’s very relevant to this episode about editing. Dr. Seuss said, “The writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads.”