Imagine that you are an admissions officer at a top university: you will need to sift through endless application essays for the next several months. In the beginning, you’ll diligently read the essays attempting to understand each writer’s ideas. But after a while the sight of essays will make your eyes will hurt and your brain will have trouble focusing – especially on essays filled with long sentences, unnecessary words and modifiers and industry jargon. Eventually you will start to skim bad essays and will miss the key points in many of them.
Back to reality: you will apply to some top graduate school programs this year. Your background is good but not great, and the essays will be important for you to persuade the admissions officer that you belong in their elite program.
Everyone knows that the top graduate schools are looking to fill their classrooms with the smartest, most talented people. With this in mind, many applicants attempt to sound smart by using big words or complex thoughts in their application essays. In our view, such essays will have the opposite effect and decrease their chances of success.
With a tired admissions officer in mind, aim to write concise essays that clearly deliver your message without necessary content or overly complex statements. If you are an MBA applicant you might be aware that the essays are becoming ever shorter, which makes concise writing an absolute necessity.
To maximize the reader’s understanding, try to use short, powerful sentences when possible. For example, which of the following statements can you more quickly grasp?
Too wordy: I have lived alone since I was 14 years old. In order to pursue the best education possible and to learn how to cooperate with others and solve problems independently, I moved away from home to complete my high school education at the best school in California. (45 words)
Concise: Moving away from home at the age of 14 to attend a better high school made me a more independent person. (21 words)
Here is another example:
Too wordy: For all intents and purposes, American industrial productivity generally depends on certain factors that are really more psychological in kind than of any given technological aspect. (26 words)
Concise: American industrial productivity depends more on psychological than on technological factors. (11 words)
We hope our point is clear – when writing essays, less is often more. When you sit down to write the first draft of your essays we do not necessarily recommend concise writing. Sometimes it is important to first do a ‘brain dump’ just to get your key ideas on the paper. However, when editing your essay drafts, look for ways to simply your statements. Doing so will not only, a) make it easier for the reader to understand your ideas; but also, b) help you squeeze more content into a tight word limit.
In our next post we will provide a few more specific tips on how to eliminate unnecessary modifiers and jargon from application essays. And if you are ready to see how we can turn your mediocre essay into an attention-grabber please browse the Essay Editing & Analysis Service pages on our website!