Essay Reviewing

This is to all the people who are asked to review the essays.

Please comment on the content of the essay. If you think you are not convinced with the logic, say so. But don’t comment on the sentence structure, grammar etc unless there is something noticeably wrong or you are some hot shot writer. I want to convey what I feel, not what you think I should feel.

An example of a conversation:

Me: Hey I just emailed you two paragraphs. The first one is about my goals and the second one mentions why I need an MBA to get to those. Don’t worry about the English, sentence structure etc, just tell me if it the reasoning I have used make sense to you or not.

Him: I think this is totally wrong.

Me: Wow, great. Can you tell me what part?

Him: I think you should make smaller sentences and not use sentences this long with so many commas. I think you should say X as Y…

Me: But that is not what we are talking about?

He rewrote the entire thing, that conveyed the same meaning but it was the way he wanted it, not essentially better.

It’s best if you your reviewer has been in the same shoes as you, that way they are reading the essay with a bigger picture in mind. So the ideal situation is if you can find an alumni from a business school that has a similar ranking to what you are applying to..

Otherwise, please talk to your reviewer and mention your expectations, and keep them small. Just tell them two or three attributes of the essay (that you think are the essay’s weaknesses but ofcourse don’t tell them that you think they are weak) and if they think everything makes sense, then you are off the hook. Time to move to the next essay