Three tenets for an exceptional essay

1. Essay promotes the Admission Drivers and fully answers the question.
2. Essay is authentic, moving, sincere, modest, introspective. Doesn't present the candidate as a perfect person.   Uses emotion and instrospection.
3. Essay is interesting: unique / bold / funny / suspenseful. Some ways to achieve this:
– Suspense, drama.
– Short paragraphs, short sentences, section titles.
– By writing it as a script for a great movie.
– By writing it as a chapter in a book.
– By using unique, bold and funny ideas, stuff they never saw before.

For example:
Essay Question: What would you do if you had 1 hour with our dean?
Answer: I would lock the room from the inside. Until the security people break in, I will have at least two hours to convince him why Kellogg is my #1 choice…

You definitely don't have to use all of it in all the essays.

The above is based on:
1. Ongoing conversations with admission committees.
2. Recent interviews with Aringo and non-Aringo candidates who were exceptionally successful.

These tenets change from year to year because of:

1. The saturation effects of the admission committees once they see too many essays with the same principles.
2. Sentiments, b-school market conditions and admission theories change from year to year.