One thing you can do today to make your essays more competitive

What’s good, folk. Today, I’m going to try something a little different with the content for the blog. I’ve posted externally-written content (links to interesting articles, links to other blogs, emails from other people, etc.) on here, but I’ve never had a guest blogger write a real entry for this site before. That is, until today…

My long-time readers might remember mentioning my man Detavio, who was my roomie for two years at the GSB and has been maintaining a great blog about marketing, personal branding, and life visioning for a little more than a year. Well, he’s our guest blogger for today. As he was doing his regular blogging yesterday, he came up with the entry below and realized that it didn’t really fit in his own blog, so he passed it along to me because he thought that it was a better fit for my readers. As soon as I read it, I knew that it would be just what some of you need to see…and it especially timely with the first-round MBA application deadlines coming up soon.

You can check out some of Detavio’s other writings at his blog –> www.Detavio.com. Several of my readers have become followers of his site and the consensus is that he’s posting some really great content. Having followed his site for a while, I’m really impressed at how he’s developing a full suite of content to help his readers achieve their goals and live out their dreams…and I’m not just saying that because he’s my peoples either.

By the way, Detavio has entered a blogging contest being held by SAM-e Nature Made to be a featured blogger on their site. Given his focus on helping people discover their passions and develop themselves, he’d be a perfect fit for that role. So, if you have 30 second to spare, please help him out by voting for him in the competition…You can vote for him here –>
LINK TO DETAVIO’S ENTRY IN THE COMPETITION. Thanks in advance for casting your vote.

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Detavio wrote:

“One thing you can do today to make your essays more competitive”

if you’re planning on attending business school beginning fall 2010, chances are you are making sure your essays are tight. you’ve shifted through your memory bank for your best accomplishments and your peaceful dreams at night have been replaced with repetitious scenes of you explaining that, not only do you need an mba but you need it right now. as a graduate of stanford gsb, i am fortunate to be a part of this process every year. friends and mentees (and friends of mentees) send me their essays in order to get my “expert” opinion on how to get into the bschool of their dreams.

while i don’t claim to be an expert, there is one flaw i often see: the essays are written in a vacuum. time after time, i see essay after essay of people writing as if theirs will be the only essay the admissions representative is going to read. there is no recognition that the essay before them might be from a marine whose greatest accomplishment is leading 100 troops during war for 9 months and bringing them all home safely. there is no understanding that the person after them wants an mba because they are the first person in their family to go to college and they are carrying a family’s hopes, dreams, and legacy on their back. and of course, it all makes me wonder “what if?” what if the writers of the essays I read knew what their peers were writing, would they write the same essay?

still looking for the answer to the title of this post? it’s simple. the one thing you can do today to make your essays more competitive is to realize that it’s just that…a competition. you will be the 10th essay of the day, the 100th essay of the month and guess what? every person applying is phenomenal. so then the question becomes: what is it about you that is going to differentiate you from the bunch? what is it about you that will create that emotional connection with the reader that makes them fight for your application amongst the other thousands? what is it about you that, after comparing you to the others, makes the admissions team say “we’ve gotta let this one in!”

my intention is not to scare you. my intention is to help you realize the context in which your essays will be evaluated and to challenge you to tell a story that is unique and unforgettable. and if you’re worried that you can’t compete because you have never been to iraq, don’t be. i hadn’t either (and still haven’t). it’s not necessarily about doing extraordinary feats, it is also very much about doing the ordinary extraordinarily well. good luck!