I have had a few moments where I panicked because I convinced myself that I used the wrong school name in an application. I didn’t have the heart to check every application, but I did check the one I was most worried about. The essay was clean, much to my relief.
This is a relic of the copy and paste method I used to write my essays. Writing essays was a daunting task and the hardest part of the application process. My process for writing my essays was something like this:
- begin 3 months before applications are due
- agonize over the first idea, but tell yourself you’re gestating ideas
- realize you’ve actually been gestating ideas and begin to write
- finish a few
- get lots of feedback from a range of people (ideally in business and outside)
- make sure the reader remembers one thing about me
- copy and paste to finish the rest
I defy you to find anyone who wrote every essay from scratch. In addition to being time-consuming, I don’t think it’s a good idea. As I looked back on the past several years, a few achievements and touchstones stood out. It was important that I paint a true-to-life likeness of myself, and I wanted to do that by talking about the few events which defined my adult life.
An unusual achievement was also an opportunity to showcase leadership skills, as well as the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. All of my major touchstones were multi-dimensional, so I was able to wring several essays out of each with the same high points.
On the plus side, this streamlined my essay writing process through economies of scale. On the minus side, I’m almost certain I wrote ‘
My advice: give yourself an extra half hour to check all of your essays. Better yet, get someone who hasn’t been staring at them for hours to check for you. Also, don’t trust the ‘Find and Replace’ function in Word. You could have had a typo the first time around.
I'll be blogging on essay writing tips. Stay tuned.
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