B school essays: Impact

Well moving on to the application process, as is well known, the essays form the most important and distinguishing part of the entire application. Coz through the essays, we can generate an image of ourselves which can overshadow any other stats that we may have. Some people have asked me about tips on ISB essays but since there's so little time for R2 deadline, I'll make my observations generic to all b-schools essays.

I feel that the key is impact. What impact have you had on the 4 spheres of your life: professional, community, inter-personal/social, personal (in order of importance). By impact, I mean you contribution. For professional impact, especially through resume, it is very important to write what exactly you did as part of the team in quantifiable terms. Use billing rate, man-hours etc to arrive at a numeric value. That's what differentiates your impact from another person who may have just been part of a multi-million $ project but didnt do anything to either win new projects or save a few $s. Similarly in community/personal sphere, just being part of a few clubs/NGOs is not enough. For instance, If you are part of the marketing side of an NGO, tell how many people you have recruited/amount of funds (Rs) you have collected, etc. Through all the essays, the impact shuld come through. On personal side, if you learnt a foreign language, be sure to highlight why you did that and what you gained form it. Just a certificaiton in Spanish would not get you far, coz you have to specify how that helped you and makes you a more desirable candidate to the MBA program.