The constraint is length, and it is brutal

A college applicant gets 650 words to be a person. A business school applicant frequently gets 300, sometimes twice or three times over, and is expected to cover a career arc, a reason for the degree, a post-graduation plan, and something human. Most applicants respond by compressing — cutting the specifics and keeping the summary, which is exactly backwards.

Three hundred words is enough for one scene and one idea. It is not enough for a career overview, and the résumé already handled that anyway.

"Why an MBA, why now, why here" is one argument, not three

Adcoms read the goals essay looking for a line that holds: something you are doing, something you cannot do without the degree, and a specific reason this program closes that gap. Applicants who treat the three prompts as three separate essays end up contradicting themselves across a single application.

We build the spine first, then write the essays off it. It also makes the short ones dramatically easier, because you already know what each one is for.

Older applicants have a different problem

Most of my business school clients are working adults, and the recurring failure is not weak writing — it is professional writing. Years of memos and status updates train the voice out of people. The first thing we usually do is get you to tell me the story out loud, because you are far more interesting in conversation than on the page, and then we get the page to match.

Where business and graduate clients have landed

Harvard Business School · Cornell Tech · Kogod School of Business at American University · Alliance Manchester Business School · Georgia Institute of Technology.

Already have a draft? A written diagnostic is $150 — one page back within three days on whether this topic is worth the next six weeks, what it is actually about, and what would have to change. No session and no sales call, and it is credited in full toward any package within 14 days.

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One menu, every kind of application

There is no separate graduate rate and no separate professional-school package. The packages on the main page apply to any application that asks for a personal statement. Longer engagements cost more only because they contain more essays, not because of the degree.*