MBA Admissions Tip: Essay Polishing
The deadline is looming and you’re making one final pass through your application before hitting submit. This isn’t the time for drastic changes – but there might still be an opportunity for small improvements.
Read on for three big picture, “crunch time” tips!
Keep It Professional
It’s true that many schools ask “fun” questions and most urge applicants to be themselves rather than submitting “overly polished” material. But it’s important to remember that this is a graduate school application, and you should approach your essays with a degree of formality.
You do want your unique narrative voice to come through, but even professional writers know to vary their tone based on their audience. Before you submit, scan your materials for slang or overly conversational speech patterns in your writing.
Emphasize Action
Lapsing into the passive voice is a common essay-writing pitfall. This means constructing sentences about how some unseen force or agent acted upon something or someone else (e.g. “we were required to” or “the project was completed”).
Instead, make sure that you’re putting your own thoughts and actions at the fore. By making a conscious effort to write “I/he/she did x” rather than “x was done to y” you can make your comments more informative, dynamic and, often, more concise.
Avoid Repetition
It’s often a good idea to give the reader a sense of an essay’s direction through an introduction, and to sum up the key ideas through a conclusion. Ideally, though, each sentence of an essay will add some new information to the document or build the reader’s understanding of what you’ve already written. And for shorter essays (e.g. 250-300 words), you can probably dive right into the content rather than giving the reader a detailed road map at the outset of your response.
So if a sentence isn’t saying anything new, it’s probably safe to cut it. This rule can be particularly helpful with last-minute edits if your responses are running over the word limit. It also helps to ensure that you’re including as much relevant information about your candidacy as you can within the allotted length.
Good luck with those finishing touches!
MBA Admissions Academy
In addition to the MBA essay tips above, learn more from Clear Admit’s Admissions Academy below.
Episode 12: Essays I: The Basics
MBA Applywire
Applying to deferred programs this year, would love to hear thoughts on my application.
675 GMAT Focus, 3.723 at Non Target Undergraduate, Finance Major. Decent extra curricular on-campus, for internship experience started college with internship at a small ABL shop, interned sophomore summer/junior school year at a large publicly traded mortgage company doing Risk, interned after junior year at a Big4 doing Risk Consulting for FSOs. Returning FT to same B4 in Deals practice.
Would love to hear thoughts. Thanks.
Orthopaedic surgeon with cross-border training/work exposure i.e. UK, HK & Pakistan
• Strong involvement in research, publications, and innovation-related work
• Interested in the intersection of clinical medicine, healthcare systems, digital health, and business
• Long-term goal is to move from being a clinician to a broader leadership role where I can help build, scale, or evaluate healthcare solutions
African female - after 7 years at an international engineering consultancy and 3 in public sector, looking to get into infrastructure finance through an infrastructure focused MBA and internship pipeline. Certified PPP practitioner but not ao much leadership experience. Hoping to join a big 4 infrastructure advisory or infrastructure fund post MBA.
Only applying to Wharton "Deferred" Program (Due to eligibility)
Demographic: Asian Male, 26
Academic Background: B.S. & M.S. in Nuclear Engineering @ Top school in S.Korea
GPA: B.S.(3.76/4.30), M.S.(3.93/4.30)
GMAT Focus: 675 (Q-96th, DI-95th, V-56th)
Pre-MBA Employer: Recieved FT Offer @ Bain (expected start: July 2026)
Post-MBA Goal:
- Short: Banking
- Long: Infrastructure PE
Internships: Internship @ BCG
Research Experience:
4 conferences and several papers under review about Nuclear Fuel Materials, Nuclear Plant Economics & EPC, Nuclear Reactor Core Design
Extracurricular Activities/Leadership:
- Led a consulting project for a nuclear energy company in S.Korea
- Honor Society, College of Engineering
- VP of the student council @ UG department
- Soccer/Baseball team(non-varsity)
Awards:
- 2 x Minister's Award (1st place in Nationwide competition in Energy Sector)
- 5~10 x Minor Awards mostly in Energy & Nuclear Engineering
Honors:
- U.S. Army Commendation Medal
- Presidential Science Scholarship(Awarded by the President of the Korea, one of 25 recipients nationwide) - Fully funded during UG
- Korea Defense Veteran's Association (KDVA) Scholarship
- Honor Society of the College of Engineering
Hi All,
Location: India YOE:2.8 yrs Industry: Software Role: Senior software developer
I have been working in a software Mnc and recently got fired. I had initially planned to apply for MBA programs for 2027 intake. But given the recent layoff I'm not sure what to do next. I didn't yet take the gmat. And confused if I should do a job hunt now or prepare for gmat, since I wanted to apply for round 1s by sep.
I definitely want to go for a good International MBA for 2027 intake.
What should I do next, follow are the choices I can think of-
1. Prepare for a good gmat score, finish it in next 2-3 months, I also have a small startup idea that I would like to in parallel experiment/try out, not sure how far it will succeed.
2. Prepare for gmat, complete in next 2-3 months then do job hunt(might or might not be able to get a job by the time I apply for round 1s)
Please suggest what is better for my mba applications.
MBA LiveWire
Waitlisted post interview. Gutted. I have offers from INSEAD and LBS but Stern was my first choice.