Pointers to Application Essays

STATUTORY WARNING:

You are reading this post to the benefit of my blog and to your possible peril. If you benefit the credit is all mine (and only mine) and if you suffer because of any information provided here then you (and only you) are responsible. What may have worked for the author may not work for you and you are advised to exercise due caution before using any of the info given below.

I first thought and had even communicated the same to the ISB-PGP yahoo group that I would post my actual essays which I had submitted to ISB as a part of the admission application. However, on second thoughts, I decided against it. I somehow felt that instead of helping the prospective applicants - the essays, especially mine (I’ll give the reasons later), could actually work to their detriment. Therefore, I shall not post the actual essays but shall give a few pointers to some of the stuff I wrote in the essay.

First the reasons for not posting my actual essays (and you could look for pointers all through the reasons):

1. My essays or essays of any other ISB admit/student could be (mis)construed to be the model essays. There is no way of finding out if the essays posted are actually model essays or not. For all you know, the essays could have been treated as pathetic by the ad-com and the person could have got the admission not because of the essays but in spite of the essays (surely, this is not my case man! My essays were truly ‘top class' ;-) )
   
2. Even if the essay posted were to be a model essay, it would still be just ‘a’ model and not the 'only' model. The best of all 'models', indeed, could be the essay that an applicant (could also be you, if you are an applicant) is yet to write.
3. A sample essay might lead an applicant to tune the essay in harmony with the given model rather than tuning it in harmony with the real self of the applicant.
4. Each applicant is different in terms of the applicant’s work-experience, education, interests and aspirations etc. What might have worked for one might not necessarily work for the other.

Therefore I am not posting the actual drafts of my application essays.

Nevertheless, I shall post in the next few days some of the pointers to what I wrote and some ‘gyaan’ on what I think worked in my favour.

Keep watching this space for more….