The greatest gift I ever received came from my 11th grade English teacher. She taught me that language is powerful in ways that most people don’t appreciate. It’s not enough to convey a story in words; you have to bring forth the right emotions. Every word must be intentional, placed into its sentence with care. I loved the weekly essays my teacher assigned; I’d spend days carefully tweaking each phrase of my argument, testing different adjectives and punctuation until I was positive I’d gotten it right.
From that year forward, writing was a near-sacred practice for me. I especially liked writing application essays (weird, but true). A good application asks questions that give the writer a chance to look deep inside themselves and lay a piece of their life out on the paper. With each essay I wrote, I found myself examining who I was and what I wanted with ever-growing detail. Sometimes, these applications received rejections—that’s life—but even those disappointing announcements were softened by the knowledge that I’d gained something invaluable just from the time I spent writing them.
My application to Stanford for business school was no different. I found a quiet place on NC State’s campus and stayed there for a whole day trying to hone my response to their famous question: “What matters most to you, and why?”
To be truthful, when I started that essay, I knew the answer. Still, the words I put down felt clunky and stiff. I almost gave up, but I remembered the gentle encouragement of my 11th grade English teacher, and how she taught me to treat every single word as an opportunity to make the reader feel something. Over the next several hours, I visited each word I’d written multiple times, testing out new phrasing and asking if what I’d written evoked the right feelings. When I was done, I felt like I was able to truly express what mattered most to me for the first time in my life.
Over the last few years, I’ve applied this same methodology to friends and clients, and helped people get into graduate and post-graduate programs all over the country. Each opportunity to help someone carefully craft their narrative—choosing each word for the feelings it will evoke—has been a privilege. I’d be honored to work with you on your story.
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Interested in working together on your MBA essays? Click here for my Leland coaching profile.
Written by Sam
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I'm a current MBA at Stanford GSB, and a Caldwell Fellow at North Carolina State University (I review and score undergrad applications every year, so I know what it's like on the other side of the admissions table). I've been helping MBA and other graduate school applicants with their essays for years, and I'm excited to work with you on yours! I learned how to craft great essays when I applied to business school. I was a nontraditional candidate, coming from a technology, UX, and design background, which meant I had to invest a lot of time in my essays to convey why I'd be a good fit for the GSB. I've since applied what I learned from that experience to my essay coaching practice, and my clients have earned spots at Brown, Stanford, UNC School of Medicine, and Northwestern. As a coach, I specialize in finding your voice. When we work together, our goal is to craft stories that grab the attention of the admissions officers and leave them wanting to learn more about you, and why you'd be an asset to their program. Your story is unique; I'd be honored to help you craft it. We're a good fit if: You're dreading those application essays because writing is a slog for you You've written some drafts, but something about them isn't clicking yet You have a nontraditional path to your degree program, and aren't sure how to tell that story You don't even know where to start!
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Harvard Business School
Haas School of Business (Berkeley)
