Our previous post discussed that concise writing is imperative to squeeze lots of information into tight admissions essay prompts. Clear and concise writing will also ensure that admission officers’ with short attention spans do not overlook your key ideas. To do so you must choose your words carefully and eliminate irrelevant or unnecessary material. We understand that this is much easier said than done and offer a few practical tips on how to streamline your writing with examples to illustrate our points.
Eliminate jargon, overly wordy and technical explanations. It would be wise to assume that the reader will not understand the jargon common to your industry, and to speak in plain language. A busy admissions officer (with a pile of essays sitting next to them) is unlikely to spend extra time struggling to comprehend something they do not immediately understand. Even if they do understand, people will be turned off by an essay that sounds like a technical analysis. The essays are a test in effective communication – if you are unable to deliver a coherent explanation in an application essay, it is fair to assume that your future cover letters and interview explanations will be muddled as well.
Here is a test: ask a friend whether your essay could be understood by a thirteen-year-old, or if it instead sounds like a project manager discussing product development plans and business performance with their team. We are not suggesting that you ‘dumb down the message,’ but rather speak in a way that a person lacking deep knowledge of your industry’s particular jargon could easily follow.
Examples:
No: After processing the most urgent action items, we had sufficient bandwidth to address this mission-critical deliverable.
Yes!: After handling the most urgent items, we were able to complete the project.
No: The best way to leverage our resources is by incentivizing all relevant constituencies and picking off the most optimum low-hanging fruit.
Yes!: By providing incentives to our customers and finding easy solutions to easy problems we were better able to utilize our resources.
No: As a new company in a new space, we need to exceed client expectations, so first and foremost I drive client projects in the health-care and telecom verticals. But my job requires an internal focus as well, and I spend a ton of time both building and updating scalable
systems, from knowledge management to invoicing and payroll.
Yes!: As a new company entering a new market, we need to impress our clients with outstanding performance. I personally manage projects for clients in the health-care and telecom industries. But in addition to serving our clients, I am striving to build our business by
ensuring that all our systems from personnel to invoicing support our growth.
No: From a corporate governance and strategic management point of view, I now further appreciate that a company is a complex structure propped up by procedural frameworks and standards, but the human factor could in fact be your greatest liability.
Yes!: From a corporate governance and strategic management point of view, I now appreciate how critical operating procedures and human resource management is for the success of a business.
No: As an operations manager for Beta Enterprises, my role was to manage staff and their day-to-day activities, consistently designing and improving systems or processes that create and deliver output.
Yes!: I served as the operations manager for Beta Enterprises, where I was responsible for managing staff and the day-to-day operations.
No: Haunted by the implication of this delayed insight, therefore, I now exercise great care and measure in due diligence of my battles and selection of my partners.
Yes!: I have learned to be diligent when selecting and managing staff members and business associates.
Eliminate modifiers (which could be unnecessary adjectives, adverbs or adverbial clauses) that add no value. Well-placed modifiers can add clarity and emphasis to an important point we want to make. But in many cases they add little value and are distracting. More importantly, they take up valuable space and will push the essay over the word limit. If the modifier is eliminated, the meaning of the sentence often will not change.
Examples:
Wordy: Every executive knows that constantly delivering superior customer value is an imperative to veritably creating shareholder value.
Concise!: Every executive knows that creating a great customer experience adds to shareholder value.
Wordy: Due to the fact that access to internet resources are actually at the present time very easy to access in many places, the vast majority of users seek to have those kinds of devices that are most easy to carry around with them wherever they go.
Concise!: Because the Internet is available in most places, users often prefer portable devices.
Wordy: Balancing the budget by Friday is an impossibility without some kind of extra help.
Concise!: Balancing the budget by Friday is impossible without extra help.
We hope this information is helpful for all of you graduate school applicants. This was not meant to be a comprehensive English lesson, but food for thought when you face the difficult task of revising an essay draft that is way over the word limit. If you keep these tips in mind, you’ll likely produce final drafts that are more focused and easier to read. As always, we are happy to provide editing assistance to help you produce high quality essays that will clearly communicate your ideas to the reader.