A jolting discovery!
Out of curiousity I had a peek at the extracurriculars section of the HBS application. I started filling the application long ago but I somehow never went to this page till today. I got a bittersweet surprise. HBS gives me 250 characters each to describe 4 extracurricular activities during college and 4 after college. I did expect them to give me space to list the activities but not to describe them. So I sat and filled out the extracurriculars section completely. Now should I laugh or cry? This means I'm going to make a lot of changes to my essays, all the descriptions will have to go and all the learnings will have to grow!
I feel like giving myself a pat on the back for finishing the essays earlier. Now it's very easy for me to just remove the redundancies, I already have ideas for the new-found space. Had I realized this 15 days later, I will be kicking myself for all the rewriting I will have to do in the last moment. I think the undergrad essay and other info essay will have to change significantly. The other essays are fine for HBS. But I think they won't be so fine for other schools if their applications are anything like that of HBS. So I will spend a lot of time tomorrow and this weekend to investigate the applications of each school and decide how to change my essays. My plan will allow this, I just need to move things around a bit :D.
So people out there, rush and complete the data forms in your applications. This will really help you to better utilize the space in your essays. Ok it's 4 am. Ciao!
I feel like giving myself a pat on the back for finishing the essays earlier. Now it's very easy for me to just remove the redundancies, I already have ideas for the new-found space. Had I realized this 15 days later, I will be kicking myself for all the rewriting I will have to do in the last moment. I think the undergrad essay and other info essay will have to change significantly. The other essays are fine for HBS. But I think they won't be so fine for other schools if their applications are anything like that of HBS. So I will spend a lot of time tomorrow and this weekend to investigate the applications of each school and decide how to change my essays. My plan will allow this, I just need to move things around a bit :D.
So people out there, rush and complete the data forms in your applications. This will really help you to better utilize the space in your essays. Ok it's 4 am. Ciao!
4 comments:
Hey good tip ... I browsed all my applications forms in brief but haven't really checked the word limits on different sections.
The actual application is one of the most time-consuming parts. Finding numbers, dates, employment numbers, etc. Ridiculous.
And 185 characters is like 2 sentences. Silly.
Filling in the app is a royal pain! Some schools give u 100 characters some give 250 some even 1000 chars to fill in the details. So no copy paste there either :sigh:
Yeap, the content of applications can make serious impact on the content and plan of essays. And as hobbes says, applications can bring some pain, as different schools set different limits in describing different facts and conditions. And the last but not least, it is necessary to check applications as soon as possible for additional questions that can look harmless at first, but will take a lot of time to answer in fact. Such as "describe your hobbies and why they are important to you".
I keep making notes about such hidden stones of application forms of my target schools in my blog.
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