Monthly Archives: September 2010

Grad School Admissions Writing: Embracing Imperfection

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Hi all,

Recently we were featured at http://www.gradschoolsmag.com/fall2010.html to share our perspective on admissions writing. Please find the article below!

Cheers,

Janson

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So, you’ve worked tirelessly to obtain near perfect grades in high school and college. You’ve amassed an inimitable battery of leadership experiences, both as a student and throughout a young but promising career. Now, all that’s left is the graduate school admissions process, and one of the many hurdles you face is writing your statement of purpose.

Fact: the statement of purpose (SOP) is a marketing opportunity that many applicants fail to seize. It is a valuable barometer for your aptitude, communication skills, vision, values and passion. It is not your resume: it is a forward-thinking, reflective essay that can make your candidacy more than a sheet of paper, and resonate with an admissions committee representative.

For many, it can be a daunting task to effectively translate an impressive resume into a humanizing application and SOP. In most graduate programs, the SOP is intended to give insight into your academic and/or professional history, your goals and interests, and your reasons for applying to a specific institution. Quite understandably, applicants feel constrained by these criteria and a perceived inflexibility in essay structure. Take the following introductory paragraph for example:

“After graduating from MIT in 2003 with a degree in mechanical engineering, I began working for a start-up that has been an industry pioneer in the development of robotic prosthetic devices. Today, I seek admission to USC’s Biomedical Engineering Program in order to build on my current interests and help develop a new wave of medical technology that revolutionizes patient care and lives of people everywhere.”

Your introduction may sound like a subtle variation on this—not poorly constructed per se, but absolutely underwhelming and flat. Simply asking the right kinds of questions can give this paragraph more heft: why have you chosen your career goals—an intellectual passion, a unique cultural circumstance or a serendipitous event? What about the connectivity between your past, present and future? Have you encountered roadblocks along the way?  Why is it important to “revolutionize patient care and people’s lives”—what personal values are beneath this cliché?

As admissions processes grow increasingly competitive in every sphere, there is a higher premium on your admissions package. And while certain programs will place greater emphasis on communication and writing ability than others, all graduate programs—no matter how small—will want inspired applicants that are self-aware community members and energized contributors. This is where deeper, more authentic writing truly comes into play. You don’t have to be a super-human candidate, and in fact, embracing certain career missteps or rites of passage can make your application even stronger.

Of course, different types of applicants  face very different expectations. MBA applicants must answer a dizzying array of targeted  questions that uncover their strategic career goals, medical school applicants must display the prerequisite drive and comprehensive skill set for a medical career, and law school applicants must craft more open-ended statements that underscore their analytical and communication capabilities.

However, regardless of what type of graduate program you’re applying to, you must launch a persuasive, authentic campaign to distinguish yourself from hundreds of other applicants. So, before writing your materials, take the time to consider the more difficult ‘why’ questions: why do I want this education and what path will it enable? Why did I make certain career decisions and how are they related? What are the drivers behind my ultimate goals?

Applicants that adequately answer ‘why’ questions are able to tether their accomplishments and goals to values, a keen self-awareness, and the seasoned EQ required of today’s leaders in business, medicine, law and elsewhere. In a recent study, when given a list of a dozen words to describe their CEO, only one in five employees picked “caring” or “warm”; ironically, CEO’s picked these words twice as often to describe themselves. Business and academic communities are becoming increasingly sensitive to this marked disparity. Across the admissions spectrum, automatons with perfect resumes and test scores are being outnumbered by more authentic, visionary and even imperfect leaders.

Your ability to answer the “why “ gives a powerful window into your soft skills, and your potential to develop them to lead tomorrow’s organizations and industries. You may not be the perfect applicant, but your ability to embrace imperfections and craft authentic materials can make you exceptional.

It can also make the critical difference in your admissions results.

Being Gay in Your Admissions Essay

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Hi everyone,

One question we get from applicants across the board – medical, MBA, grad school and college – is how to broach the subject of sexuality in admissions writing. Should I reveal my sexuality or not, and to what degree? Will it hurt my chances if I do?

The important thing to keep in mind is that sexuality, like other personal (vs academic or professional) elements of your candidacy, is just one dimension of your complete admissions package. It should be positioned like any other. For a Latino applicant looking to start a revolutionary green consulting company in Colombia, being gay provides an even stronger testament to the applicant’s ability to traverse all sorts of cultural and social boundaries. An applicant from Beijing – where many would agree sexuality is less openly spoken about than the US – might also speak volumes about his/her leadership potential through past gay activism.

I would like to think (and most diversity initiatives/data would affirm) that most admissions committees in the U.S. today are seeking new levels of diversity, and have profound respect for the applicants that share their full identities within their admissions materials. You can never know every reader and his/her personal bias; however, if just one committee member appreciates your perspective, you can win an ambassador. We’ve seen this happen at colleges and MBA programs across the country, suggesting in our minds that it does really pay to be who you are.

Of course, a key concern is whether you truly want to mention your sexual orientation in your admissions materials. If you do, there is absolutely nothing that should hold you back–but there are some important considerations to be made. The “gay essay” can be taken to the extreme if saturated with one’s inner outsider’s monologue (you know, all the justifiably tumultuous, emotion-laden thoughts associated with coming to terms with one’s sexuality). College applicants should be particularly wary of this. You want to show that you’re ready for Yale, not ready for Yale in a couple of years.

However, an MBA applicant who has helped establish an HIV clinic for gay men in Alabama may use his identity as a springboard for a much broader, high-impact essay that demonstrates exemplary leadership skills and vision. Ultimately, regardless of whether you are mentioning your sexuality, the color of your skin, or your religious background, you want it to humanize you, but not become the centerpiece of the narrative. An essay that feels too ‘emotionally raw’ may call into question the self-awareness of an applicant, or even his/her psychological/emotional readiness for a rigorous and somewhat homogenous environment.

We recently worked with an AADSAS applicant who wanted to discuss the polarity between his religious and secular/university education. It was difficult to help him pull back on the deeply felt, religious elements of his personal statement, but ultimately, we were able to help him draw out deep themes and transferable skills from his religious education. When writing about topics of such personal importance, it is easy to find yourself on such a tangent. Avoid this it all costs, and find a seasoned thought partner who can help you to ‘rein it in.’ Balance is key!

In many cases, gay applicants can use their identities to speak to their character, the challenge they’ve overcome, and their emotional intelligence. They can use their identities to tell stories about their context. However, like any other dimension of your candidacy or person, your sexuality and unique identity should be incorporated into your admissions writing with the sure-footed strategy and thoughtful reflection.

Cheers,
Janson
Ivy Eyes Editing
www.ivyeyesediting.com
www.twitter.com/IvyEyesEditing

Saying the Unsayable in Admissions Writing

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Many applicants feel constrained by the purported boundaries of admissions writing. Admissions essays and ‘statements of purpose’ feel far too stilted, sort of like meeting the parents for the first time. They strangle the narrative voice; they stifle one’s authentic personality; they inhibit one’s true feelings. However, admissions writing doesn’t have to be that way (nor does your first encounter with your in-laws, for that matter)!

Listening to NPR just the other day, I caught Jonathan Franzen discussing his new novel Freedom and sharing his insight into the purpose of a novel:

Mr. FRANZEN: I wanted to write long before I was in need of therapy. But having said that, much of the work on a novel for me consists in the kind of work you might do in a paid professional’s office of trying to walk back from your stuck, conflicted, miserable place to a point of a little bit more distance from which you can begin to fashion some meaningful narrative of how you got to the stuck place. And the stuck-ness, for the working novelist – or at least for this one – has to do with not wanting to get into certain intensely fraught or private experiences, finding – having – feeling that it’s absolutely necessary to say things that are absolutely unsay-able.

Many novelists have touched on this capacity to say the unsayable, to articulate and breathe life into those lacunae that exist between paragraphs, conversations and even thoughts–but it’s something that really every great piece of writing should aspire to do. Admissions writing is no different, really. Whether you are applying to residency programs and substantiating your interest in pediatric surgery, or regaling a college AdCom with your Academic Decathlon defeat, you should aim to achieve this level of honesty and authenticity…then lightly ‘sanitize’ your writing for the admissions audience (you might not want to confess the all-night party that caused you to fail your Calc exam).

Our Premiere Service begins with a Skype conversation and really works to serve this authenticity-harnessing purpose. To quote Mr. Franzen again–our process is much like one you’d find in a ‘paid professional’s office’–we challenge our clients, we force them to distill connections and answer the tough ‘why’ questions. This is essentially the way our Advanced Service works too, sanz diagnostic phonecall.

Recently, a client seeking a free writing assessment asked if he could just send me a stream of consciousness email. Our response? Absolutely! We’d much prefer the uninhibited, authentic content–the saying of the unsayable–than the dreaded alternative: writing what the AdCom wants to hear.

Keep it authentic.

Cheers,
Janson
Ivy Eyes Editing
www.ivyeyesediting.com