Stanford GSB MBA Class of 2015 ▸ Admissions Essay Tips
You are here: Vince Prep / Essays / Stanford GSB MBA Class of 2015 ▸ Admissions Essay TipsFiled under: stanford
Quick links
How to write
STANFORD ESSAYS
VIDEO!
What matters most to the Stanford GSB AdCom, and why
2012 - 2013 ESSAYS
Saying More with Less
The new application season is right around the corner, for us and for many of you. If you're eager to get started, take a look at the 2012-2013 essay questions and guidance.
This year, we are asking you to write three essays instead of four.
Essays 1 and 2 are unchanged:
- What matters most to you, and why?
- What do you want to do - REALLY - and why Stanford?
The Essay 3 prompt now reads:
Answer one of the three questions below. Tell us not only what you did but also how you did it. What was the outcome? How did people respond? Only describe experiences that have occurred during the last three years.
- Option A: Tell us about a time in the last three years when you built or developed a team whose performance exceeded expectations.
- Option B: Tell us about a time in the last three years when you identified and pursued an opportunity to improve an organization.
- Option C: Tell us about a time in the last three years when you went beyond what was defined or established.
Why did we make this change? As we reviewed your essays last year, we were left wanting more insight into how and why you do the things you do. We want to allow you to write more meaningfully. As such, we eliminated one of the required essays and increased the suggested word count for Essay 3. We reduced the combined word limit from 1800 to 1600 words, but the decision of how you allocate those words remains yours.
We feel this change will serve you well and will simplify your application process. Stay in touch this summer for more updates, including the new application set to launch by 1 July.
Online application data form short answer questions
-
Your favorite food:
-
Your favorite thing to read:
-
Please describe yourself in up to 20 words OR choose up to 20 words to describe you:
Essays
We read your essays to get to know you as a person and to learn about the ideas and interests that motivate you. Tell us in your own words who you are.
In other parts of the application, we learn about your academic and professional accomplishments (i.e., what you have done). Through your personal essays (Essays 1 and 2), we learn more about the person behind the achievements (i.e., who you are).
Because we want to discover who you are, resist the urge to "package" yourself in order to come across in a way you think Stanford wants. Such attempts simply blur our understanding of who you are and what you can accomplish.
We want to hear your genuine voice throughout the essays that you write and this is the time to think carefully about your values, your passions, your hopes and dreams.
In your short answer responses (Essay 3, options A, B, or C), we learn more about the experiences that have shaped your attitudes, behaviors, and aspirations.
Truly, the most impressive essays are those that do not begin with the goal of impressing us.
Essay Questions for Class of 2015
(entering Fall 2013)
Tell us in your own words who you are. Answer essay questions 1, 2, and one of the three options for essay 3.
-
Essay 1: What matters most to you, and why?
- The best examples of Essay 1 reflect the process of self-examination that you have undertaken to write them.
- They give us a vivid and genuine image of who you are—and they also convey how you became the person you are.
- They do not focus merely on what you've done or accomplished. Instead, they share with us the values, experiences, and lessons that have shaped your perspectives.
- They are written from the heart and address not only a person, situation, or event, but also how that person, situation, or event has influenced your life.
-
Essay 2: What do you want to do—REALLY—and why Stanford?
- Use this essay to explain your view of your future, not to repeat accomplishments from your past.
-
You should address two distinct topics:
- your career aspirations
- and your rationale for earning your MBA at Stanford, in particular.
- The best examples of Essay 2 express your passions or focused interests, explain why you have decided to pursue graduate education in management, and demonstrate your desire to take advantage of the opportunities that are distinctive to the Stanford MBA Program.
-
Essay 3: Answer one of the three questions below. Tell us not only what you did but also how you did it. What was the outcome? How did people respond? Only describe experiences that have occurred during the last three years.
- Option A: Tell us about a time in the last three years when you built or developed a team whose performance exceeded expectations.
- Option B: Tell us about a time in the last three years when you identified and pursued an opportunity to improve an organization.
- Option C: Tell us about a time in the last three years when you went beyond what was defined or established.
Essay Length
Your answers for all of the essay questions cannot exceed 1,600 words.
You have your own story to tell, so please allocate the 1,600 words among all of the essays in the way that is most effective for you. We provide some guidelines below as a starting point, but you should feel comfortable to write as much or as little as you like on any essay question, as long as you do not exceed 1,600 words total.
- Essay 1: 750 words
- Essay 2: 450 words
- Essay 3: 400 words
Formatting
- Use a 12-point font, double spaced
- Recommended fonts are Arial, Courier, and Times New Roman
- Indicate which essay question you are answering at the beginning of each essay (this does not count towards the 1,600 word limit).
- Number all pages
- Upload all three essays as one document
- Preview the uploaded document to ensure that the formatting is true to the original
- Save a copy of your essays
Editing Your Essays
Begin work on these essays early, to give yourself time to reflect, write, and edit.
Feel free to ask your friends or family members to provide constructive feedback. When you ask for feedback, ask if the essays' tone sounds like your voice. It should. Your family and friends know you better than anyone else. If they do not believe that the essays capture who you are, how you live, what you believe, and what you aspire to do, then surely the Committee on Admissions will be unable to recognize what is most distinctive about you.
There is a big difference, however, between 'feedback' and 'coaching.' There are few hard and fast rules, but you cross a line when any part of the application (excluding the Letters of Reference) ceases to be exclusively yours in either thought or word.
Appropriate feedback occurs when you show someone your completed application, perhaps one or two times, and are apprised of errors or omissions.
In contrast, inappropriate coaching occurs when your application or your self-presentation is colored by someone else.
You best serve your own interests when your personal thoughts, individual voice, and unique style remain intact at the end of your editing process.
It is improper and a violation of the terms of this application process, to have someone else write any part of your Stanford MBA Program application. Such an act will result in denial of your application or withdrawal of your offer of admission.
Additional Information
If there is any other information that is critical for us to know and is not captured elsewhere, please include it. Examples of pertinent additional information include:
- Extenuating circumstances affecting academic or work performance
- Explanation of why you do not have a Letter of Reference from your current direct supervisor or peer
- Explanation of criminal conviction, criminal charges sustained against you in a juvenile proceeding, and/or court-supervised probation
- Explanation of academic suspension or expulsion
- Any other information that you did not have sufficient space to complete in another section of the application (please begin the information in the appropriate section)
- Additional work experience that cannot fit into the space provided
- Additional information about your academic experience (e.g., independent research) not noted elsewhere
In a recent post to “Ask the School Experts,” the official website of the GMAT, the head of admissions for the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) shared his take on what admissions committees are really looking for from prospective applicants.
Stanford GSB Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions Derrick Bolton explains that the MBA admissions process at most schools includes two separate processes: evaluation and selection.
Evaluation involves reviewing each application and assessing candidates in many areas. “We look for the most promising students in terms of intellectual distinction and professional merit,” Bolton writes, adding that this judgment is based on all of the information available – not just a single factor like college grades, essays, GMAT scores or any other element.
Though every school has its own admissions criteria, most are looking for candidates who exhibit intellect and leadership – a desire to learn and curiosity about the world combined with demonstrated ability to make a difference, Bolton says.
As for evaluating intellect, schools look toward scores and transcripts as a foundation. “But your approach toward your education is as important as your ability,” Bolton stresses. In evaluating leadership, admissions committees assess an applicant’s impact on the people and organizations around you and how those experiences impact you, according to Bolton. “Your leadership potential emerges through aspects including but not limited to athletics, community service, extracurricular activities, internships, research projects and part-time and full-time employment,” he writes.
The second process admissions committees must go through in creating an MBA class is selection. “Having evaluated each application, Admissions Offices then are faced with the difficult decisions of crafting a class: determining which candidates to admit among those evaluated as highly qualified,” he writes, adding that there are many more qualified candidates than there are places in an MBA program.
It’s not as easy as just eliminating candidates with weaknesses, Bolton says. “In an effort to create an engaging student community, we select those applicants who, collectively, represent a breadth of background, talent and experience,” he writes. “The reasons some applicants stand out more than others are not easily categorized, since excellence itself does not come in uniform dimensions.” This means that the selection process, by its very nature, is subjective.
“Complete your application authentically,” Bolton advises prospective applicants. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to shape your application to fit what you think an Admissions Committee is looking for because too often applicants think that view is narrower than it is, he cautions.
“Have confidence in what you have achieved. Be faithful to your passions. Trust in what you aspire to accomplish,” he urges. Look at the application process as an opportunity to truly explore your values and envision your potential, Bolton says.
(found at http://asktheexpert.mba.com/2012/07/30/what-are-admissions-committees-really-looking-for/; accessed 2012/08)
PREVIOUS
We read your essays to get to know you as a person and to learn about the ideas and interests that motivate you. Tell us in your own words who you really are.
In other parts of the application, we learn about your academic and professional accomplishments (i.e., what you have done). Through your personal essays (Essays 1 and 2), we learn more about the person behind the achievements (i.e., who you are).
Because we want to discover who you are, resist the urge to "package" yourself in order to come across in a way you think Stanford wants. Such attempts simply blur our understanding of who you are and what you can accomplish.
We want to hear your genuine voice throughout the essays that you write and this is the time to think carefully about your values, your passions, your hopes and dreams.
In your short answer responses (Essay 3, options A, B, C, or D), we learn more about the experiences that have shaped your attitudes, behaviors, and aspirations.
Truly, the most impressive essays are those that do not begin with the goal of impressing us.
PREVIOUS ESSAY QUESTIONS
Essay Questions for Class of 2014
(entering Fall 2012)
Tell us in your own words who you really are. Answer essay questions 1, 2, and two of the four options for essay 3.
-
Essay 1: What matters most to you, and why?
-
The best examples of Essay 1 reflect the process of self-examination that you have undertaken to write them.
-
They give us a vivid and genuine image of who you are—and they also convey how you became the person you are.
-
They do not focus merely on what you've done or accomplished. Instead, they share with us the values, experiences, and lessons that have shaped your perspectives.
-
They are written from the heart and address not only a person, situation, or event, but also how that person, situation, or event has influenced your life.
-
-
Essay 2: What do you want to do—REALLY—and why Stanford?
-
Use this essay to explain your view of your future, not to repeat accomplishments from your past.
-
You should address three distinct topics:
-
your career aspirations
-
the role of an MBA education in achieving those aspirations
-
and your rationale for earning that MBA at Stanford, in particular.
-
-
The best examples of Essay 2 express your passions or focused interests; explain why you have decided to pursue graduate education in management; and demonstrate your desire to take advantage of the opportunities that are distinctive to the Stanford MBA Program.
-
-
Essay 3: Answer two of the four questions below. Tell us not only what you did but also how you did it. What was the outcome? How did people respond? Only describe experiences that have occurred during the last three years.
-
Option A: Tell us about a time when you built or developed a team whose performance exceeded expectations.
-
Option B: Tell us about a time when you made a lasting impact on your organization.
-
Option C: Tell us about a time when you generated support from others for an idea or initiative.
-
Option D: Tell us about a time when you went beyond what was defined or established.
-
(found at http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/admission/essays.html; accessed 2011/06)
ESSAY WORD LIMITS
Essay Length
Your answers for all of the essay questions cannot exceed 1,800 words.
You have your own story to tell, so please allocate the 1,800 words among all of the essays in the way that is most effective for you. We provide some guidelines below as a starting point, but you should feel comfortable to write as much or as little as you like on any essay question, as long as you do not exceed 1,800 words total.
-
Essay 1: 750 words
-
Essay 2: 450 words
-
Essay 3: 300 words each
Formatting
-
Use a 12-point font, double spaced
-
Recommended fonts are Arial, Courier, and Times New Roman
-
Indicate which essay question you are answering at the beginning of each essay (this does not count towards the 1800 word limit).
-
Number all pages
-
Upload all four essays as one document
-
Preview the uploaded document to ensure that the formatting is true to the original
-
Save a copy of your essays
Writing Effective Essays
advice from Stanford MBA Admissions Dean Derrick Bolton
Regardless of the outcome of the admission process, I believe strongly that you will benefit from the opportunity for structured reflection that the business school application provides. I hope that you will approach the application process as a way to learn about yourself—that's the goal—with the byproduct being the application that you submit to us.
Rarely during our lives are we asked to think deeply about what is most important to us. Stanford professor Bill Damon’s book, The Moral Advantage: How to Succeed in Business by Doing the Right Thing, contained the following passages that might help you maintain the larger context as you delve into the essay writing process.
"We are not always aware of the forces that ultimately move us. While focusing on the "how" questions—how to survive, how to get ahead, how to make a name for ourselves—often we forget the "why" questions that are more essential for finding and staying on the best course: Why pursue this objective? Why behave in this manner? Why aspire to this kind of life? Why become this type of person?
These "why" questions help us realize our highest aspirations and our truest interests. To answer these questions well, we must decide what matters most to us, what we will be able to contribute to in our careers, what are the right (as opposed to the wrong) ways of behaving as we aim toward this end, and, ultimately, what kind of persons we want to become. Because everyone, everywhere, wants to live an admirable life, a life of consequence, the "why" questions cannot be ignored for long without great peril to one’s personal stability and enduring success. It is like ignoring the rudder on a ship—no matter how much you look after all the boat’s other moving parts, you may end up lost at sea."
Essay Philosophy
The Stanford MBA Program essays provide you an opportunity to reflect on your own "truest interests" and "highest aspirations."
While the letters of reference are stories about you told by others, these essays enable you to tell your own story, what matters most to you and why, as well as how you have decided you can best contribute to society.
Please think of the Stanford essays as conversations on paper—when we read files, we feel that we meet people, also known as our "flat friends"—and tell us your story in a natural, genuine way.
Our goal is to understand what motivates you and how you have become the person you are today. In addition, we’re interested in what kind of person you need the Stanford MBA Program to help you become.
Reflective, insightful essays help us envision the individual behind all of the experiences and accomplishments that we read about elsewhere in your application.
The most important piece of advice on these essays is extremely simple: answer the questions—each component of each question.
An additional suggestion for writing essays is equally straightforward: think a lot before you write. We want a holistic view of you as a person: your values, passions, ideas, experiences, and aspirations.
Essay 1
In the first essay, tell a story—and tell a story that only you can tell.
Tell this essay in a straightforward and sincere way. This probably sounds strange, since these are essays for business school, but we really don’t expect to hear about your business experience in this essay (though, of course, you are free to write about whatever you would like).
Remember that we have your entire application—work history, letters of reference, short-answer responses, etc.—to learn what you have accomplished and the type of impact you have made. Your task in this first essay is to connect the people, situations, and events in your life with the values you adhere to and the choices you have made. This essay gives you a terrific opportunity to learn about yourself!
Many good essays describe the "what," but great essays move to the next order and describe how and why these "whats" have influenced your life. The most common mistake applicants make is spending too much time describing the "what" and not enough time describing how and why these guiding forces have shaped your behavior, attitudes, and objectives in your personal and professional lives. Please be assured that we do appreciate and reward thoughtful self-assessment and appropriate levels of self-disclosure.
Essay 2
In the second essay, please note that there are two separate but related questions. Answer both! First, we ask you what you want to do - REALLY. Tell us what you aspire to do. You don’t need to come up with a "safe" answer because you’re worried that your true aim is not what we want to see. REALLY. What are your ideas for your best self after Stanford? What, and how, do you hope to contribute in your professional life after earning your MBA?
Tell us what, in your heart, you would like to achieve. What is the dream that brings meaning to your life? How do you plan to make an impact? We give you broad license to envision your future. Take advantage of it. You may, however, find it difficult to explain why you need an MBA to reach your aims if those aims are completely undefined. Be honest, with yourself and with us, in addressing those questions. You certainly do not need to make up a path, but a level of focused interests will enable you to make the most of the Stanford experience.
Second, we ask why Stanford. How will the MBA Program at Stanford help you turn your dreams into reality? The key here is that you should have objectives for your Stanford education. How do you plan to take advantage of the incredible opportunities at Stanford? How do you envision yourself contributing, growing, and learning here at the Graduate School of Business? And how will the Stanford experience help you become the person you described in the first part of Essay 2?
From both parts of Essay 2, we learn about your dreams, what has shaped them, and how Stanford can help you bring them into fruition.
Essay 3: Short Answers
Tell us about a time when you…
A. Built or developed a team whose performance exceeded expectations.
B. Made a lasting impact on an organization.
C. Generated support from others for an idea or initiative.
D. Went beyond what was defined or established.
Unlike the two previous essays, in which you are asked to write about your life from a more holistic perspective, these questions ask you to reflect on a specific recent experience (within the last three years) that has made a difference to you and/or the people around you.
The best answers will transport us to that moment in time by painting a vivid picture not only of what you did, but also of how you did it. Include supporting details. What led to the situation? What did you say? How did they respond? What were you thinking at the time? What were you feeling at the time? Include details about what you thought and felt during that time and your perceptions about how others responded. From these short-answer responses, we visualize you "in action."
Good People Can Give Bad Advice
Moving beyond the specific essay and short-answer questions, I'd like to address a couple of myths.
Myth #1: Tell the Committee on Admissions what makes you unique in your essays. This often leads applicants to believe that you need to have accomplishments or feats that are unusual or different from your peers (e.g., traveling to an exotic place or talking about a tragic situation in your life).
But how are you to know which of your experiences are unique when you know neither the backgrounds of the other applicants nor the topics they have chosen? What makes you unique is not that you have had these experiences, but rather how and why your perspective has changed or been reinforced as a result of those and other everyday experiences.
That is a story that only you can tell. If you concentrate your efforts on telling us who you are, differentiation will occur naturally; if your goal is to appear unique, you actually may achieve the opposite effect.
Truly, the most impressive essays that we read each year are those that do not begin with the goal of impressing us.
Myth #2: There is a widespread perception that if you don't have amazing essays, you won't be admitted even if you are a compelling applicant.
Please remember that no single element of your application is dispositive. And since we recognize that our application has limits, we constantly remind ourselves to focus on the applicant rather than the application.
This means that we will admit someone despite the application essays if we feel we’ve gotten a good sense of the person overall. Yes, the essays are important. But they are neither our only avenue of understanding you, nor are they disproportionately influential in the admission process.
Accounting Versus Marketing
Alumnus Leo Linbeck, MBA '94 told me something on an alumni panel in Houston a few years ago that I have since appropriated.
Leo said that, in management terms, the Stanford essays are not a marketing exercise but an accounting exercise.
This is not an undertaking in which you look at an audience/customer (i.e., the Committee on Admissions) and then write what you believe we want to hear. It is quite the opposite. This is a process in which you look inside yourself and try to express most clearly what is there. We are trying to get a good sense of your perspectives, your thoughts on management and leadership, and how Stanford can help you realize your goals.
As Professor Damon would say, we are helping you ensure that your rudder steers you to the right port.
Derrick Bolton, MBA 1998
Assistant Dean for MBA Admissions
updated 6 July 2011
(found at http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/admission/dir_essays-p.html; accessed 2011/07)
Editing Your Essays
Begin work on these essays early, to give yourself time to reflect, write, and edit.
Feel free to ask your friends or family members to provide constructive feedback. When you ask for feedback, ask if the essays' tone sounds like your voice. It should. Your family and friends know you better than anyone else. If they do not believe that the essays capture who you are, how you live, what you believe, and what you aspire to do, then surely the Committee on Admissions will be unable to recognize what is most distinctive about you.
There is a big difference, however, between 'feedback' and 'coaching.' There are few hard and fast rules, but you cross a line when any part of the application (excluding the Letters of Reference) ceases to be exclusively yours in either thought or word.
Appropriate feedback occurs when you show someone your completed application, perhaps one or two times, and are apprised of errors or omissions.
In contrast, inappropriate coaching occurs when your application or your self-presentation is colored by someone else.
You best serve your own interests when your personal thoughts, individual voice, and unique style remain intact at the end of your editing process.
It is improper and a violation of the spirit of the Fundamental Standard and Honor Code and the terms of this application process, to have someone else write any part of your Stanford MBA Program application. Such an act will result in denial of your application or withdrawal of your offer of admission.
Additional Information
If there is any other information that is critical for us to know and is not captured elsewhere, please include it. Examples of pertinent additional information include:
-
Extenuating circumstances affecting academic or work performance
-
Explanation of why you do not have a Letter of Reference from your current direct supervisor or peer
-
Explanation of criminal conviction, criminal charges sustained against you in a juvenile proceeding, and/or court-supervised probation
-
Explanation of academic suspension or expulsion
-
Any other information that you did not have sufficient space to complete in another section of the application (please begin the information in the appropriate section)
-
Additional work experience that cannot fit into the space provided
-
Additional information about your academic experience (e.g., independent research) not noted elsewhere
updated 9 June 2011
(found at http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/admission/essays.html; accessed 2011/06)
Vince hints
STANFORD ESSAY TIPS
- Please note that I am providing tips in the same order that I suggest candidates write Stanford's essays.
- I encourage my clients to write the easiest essays first.
- Doing so helps them build momentum, which they need to tackle tricky questions, like "What matters most to you, and why?"
ESSAY ORDER
- I suggest grouping your essays into four stages, as indicated below.
- Also, I encourage my clients to send quick outlines or bullet points of possible answers before they write a full essay draft.
- I am a "big picture" thinker who likes to see the overall strategy of an application before digging into one particular essay.
- I save my clients significant time (and money) by helping select the best possible mix of stories before they begin drafting full essays.
STAGE ONE
Essay Two (goals / why MBA / Why Stanford)
STAGE TWO
STAGE THREE
STAGE FOUR
Essay 1: What matters most to you, and why?
-
Authenticity matters most to Stanford.
-
Be yourself. Lots of AdCom directors say it. Stanford means it.
-
Submit essays that you will be able to share with your children or grandchildren.
TIP 1: TELL YOUR STORY
-
In the first essay, tell a story—and tell a story that only you can tell.
-
Tell this essay in a straightforward and sincere way. This probably sounds strange, since these are essays for business school, but we really don’t expect to hear about your business experience in this essay (though, of course, you are free to write about whatever you would like).
-
Remember that we have your entire application—work history, letters of reference, short-answer responses, etc.—to learn what you have accomplished and the type of impact you have made. Your task in this first essay is to connect the people, situations, and events in your life with the values you adhere to and the choices you have made. This essay gives you a terrific opportunity to learn about yourself!
-
Many good essays describe the "what," but great essays move to the next order and describe how and why these "whats" have influenced your life. The most common mistake applicants make is spending too much time describing the "what" and not enough time describing how and why these guiding forces have shaped your behavior, attitudes, and objectives in your personal and professional lives.
(found at http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/admission/dir_essays-p.html; accessed 2011/07)
TIP 2: GET OUTSIDE YOURSELF
- Inside out
- Outside in
Often, my clients discover that their “why” has something to do with family influences. But the successful ones do not stop there. Our parents influence us, but we also make decisions that define our adult lives.
- "Here lies Bob. He always tried his best."
- "Cindy R.I.P. She cared about her family."
TIP 3: SHOW. DON'T TELL.
The best writers show. They don't tell.
What does that mean?
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." — Anton Chekov
- To "show" means to demonstrate.
-
To "tell" means to assert.
Most writers emphasize the results of what happened.
Can you show your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions to express an event or story?
For example, we may say, "He is sloppy." This is telling.
In order to truly convince your readers, make sure to show with details exactly what you mean. Save your assertions for the topic and controlling sentences.
You can't tell us someone is a wonderful person, a talented musician or a spoiled child. We won't believe you. You must show us. Look for any opportunity to show us in real time, to act out, to let us feel. The difference will amaze you.
For example, we may say, "His shoelaces are untied, his socks are mismatched, his shirt untucked, and his face unwashed." This is showing.
How do I SHOW, not tell?
Read my favorite writing coach, William Zinsser:
The content below is modified from Zinsser's On Writing Well, 25th Anniversary: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
Other versions of Zinsser's memoir writing tips can be found here and here.
Writing About Yourself
The Memoir
-
Of all the subjects available to you as a writer, the one you know best is yourself: your past and your present, your thoughts and your emotions. Yet it’s probably the subject you try hardest to avoid.
-
Give yourself permission to write about yourself, and have a good time doing it.
-
Don't be eager to please. If you consciously write for (admissions officers), you'll end up not writing for anybody. If you write for yourself, you'll reach the people you want to write for.
The crucial ingredient in memoir is, of course, people. Sounds and smells and songs and sleeping porches will take you just so far. Finally you must summon back the men and women and children who notably crossed your life. What was it that made them memorable—what turn of mind, what crazy habits?
Write about yourself, by all means, with confidence and with pleasure. But see that all the details—people, places, events, anecdotes, ideas, emotions—are moving your story steadily along. Make sure every component in your memoir is doing useful work.
Which brings me to memoir as a form. I'll read almost anybody's memoir. For me, no other nonfiction form goes so deeply to the roots of personal experience—to all the drama and pain and humor and unexpectedness of life. The books I remember most vividly from my first reading of them tend to be memoirs: books such as
-
Russell Bakers’ Growing Up
-
Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments
-
Mary Karr's The Liars' Club
-
Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes
-
Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory
-
Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings
What gives them their power is the narrowness of their focus. Unlike autobiography, which spans an entire life, memoir assumes the life and ignores most of it. The memoir writer takes us back to some corner of his or her past that was unusually intense—childhood, for instance—or that was framed by war or some other social upheaval.
-
Nabokov's Speak, Memory, the most elegant memoir I know, invokes a golden boyhood in czarist St. Petersburg, a world of private tutors and summer houses that the Russian Revolution would end forever. It's an act of writing frozen in a unique time and place.
Think narrow, then, when you try the form. Memoir isn't the summary of a life; it's a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. It may look like a casual and even random calling up of bygone events. It's not; it's a deliberate construction. Thoreau wrote seven different drafts of Walden in eight years; no American memoir was more painstakingly pieced together. To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth. One secret of the art is detail. Any kind of detail will work—a sound or a smell or a song title—as long as it played a shaping role in the portion of your life you have chosen to distil.
MEMOIR EXCERPT 1
Consider sound. Here's how Eudora Welty begins One Writer's Beginnings, a deceptively slender book packed with rich remembrance
"In our house on North Congress Street, in Jackson, Mississippi, where I was born, the oldest of three children, in 1909, we grew up to the striking of clocks. There was a mission-style oak grandfather clock standing in the hall, which sent its gong-like strokes through the living room, dining room, kitchen, and pantry, and up the sounding board of the stairwell. Through the night, it could find its way into our ears; sometimes, even on the sleeping porch, midnight could wake us up. My parents' bedroom had a smaller striking clock that answered it. Though the kitchen clock did nothing but show the time, the dining room clock was a cuckoo clock with weights on long chains, on one of which my baby brother, after climbing on a chair to the top of the china closet, once succeeded in suspending the cat for a moment. I don't know whether or not my father's Ohio family, in having been Swiss back in the 1700s before the first three Welty brothers came to America, had anything to do with this; but we all of us have been time-minded all our lives. This was good at least for a future fiction writer, being able to learn so penetratingly, and almost first of all, about chronology. It was one of a good many things I learned almost without knowing it; it would be there when I needed it.
My father loved all instruments that would instruct and fascinate. His place to keep things was the drawer in the "library table" where lying on top of his folded maps was a telescope with brass extensions, to find the moon and the Big Dipper after supper in our front yard, and to keep appointments with eclipses. There was a folding Kodak that was brought out for Christmas, birthdays, and trips. In the back of the drawer you could find a magnifying glass, a kaleidoscope, and a gyroscope kept in a black buckram box, which he would set dancing for us on a string pulled tight. He had also supplied himself with an assortment of puzzles composed of metal rings and intersecting links and keys chained together, impossible for the rest of us, however patiently shown, to take apart; he had an almost childlike love of the ingenious.
In time, a barometer was added to our dining room wall; but we really didn't need it. My father had the country boy’s accurate knowledge of the weather and its skies. He went out and stood on our front steps first thing in the morning and took a look at it and a sniff. He was a pretty good weather prophet. "Well, I'm not," my mother would say with enormous self-satisfaction.
So I developed a strong meteorological sensibility. In years ahead when I wrote stories, atmosphere took its influential role from the start. Commotion in the weather and the inner feelings aroused by such a hovering disturbance emerged connected in dramatic form."
Notice how much we learn instantly about Eudora Welty’s beginnings—the kind of home she was born into, the kind of man her father was. She has rung us into her Mississippi girlhood with the chiming of clocks up and down the stairs and even out onto the sleeping porch.
MEMOIR EXCERPT 2
For Alfred Kazin, smell is a thread that he follows back to his boyhood in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. From my first encounter with Kazan's A Walker in the City, long ago, I remember it as a sensory memoir. The following passage is not only a good example of how to write with your nose; it shows how memoir is nourished by a writers ability to create a sense of place—what it was that made his neighborhood and his heritage distinctive:
"It was the darkness and emptiness of the streets I liked most about Friday evening, as if in preparation for that day of rest and worship which the Jews greet "as a bride"—that day when the very touch of money is prohibited, all work, all travel, all household duties, even to the turning on and off of a light—Jewry had found its way past its tormented heart to some ancient still center of itself. I waited for the streets to go dark on Friday evening as other children waited for the Christmas lights.
When I returned home after three, the warm odor of a coffee cake baking in the oven, and the sight of my mother on her hands and knees scrubbing the linoleum on the dining room floor, filled me with such tenderness that I could feel my senses reaching out to embrace every single object in our household.
My great moment came at six, when my father returned from work, his overalls smelling faintly of turpentine and shellac, white drops of silver paint still gleaming on his chin. Hanging his overcoat in the long dark hall that led into our kitchen, he would leave in one pocket a loosely folded copy of the New York World; and then everything that beckoned to me from that other hemisphere of my brain beyond the East River would start up from the smell of fresh newsprint and the sight of the globe on the front page. It was a paper that carried special associations for me with Brooklyn Bridge.
They published the World under the green dome on Park Row overlooking the bridge; the fresh salt air of New York harbor lingered for me in the smell of paint and damp newsprint in the hall. I felt that my father brought the outside straight into our house with each day's copy of the World."
Kazin would eventually cross the Brooklyn Bridge and become the dean of American literary critics. But the literary genre that has been at the center of his life is not the usual stuff of literature: the novel, or the short story, or the poem. It's memoir, or what he calls "personal history"—specifically, such "personal American classics," discovered when he was a boy, as Walt Whitman's Civil War diary Specimen Days and his Leaves of Grass, Thoreau's Walden and especially his Journals, and The Education of Henry Adams.
What excited Kazin was that Whitman, Thoreau and Adams wrote themselves into the landscape of American literature by daring to use the most intimate forms—journals, diaries, letters and memoirs—and that he could also make the same "cherished connection" to America by writing personal history and thereby place himself, the son of Russian Jews, in the same landscape. You can use your own personal history to cross your own Brooklyn Bridge.
MEMOIR EXCERPT 3
For Maxine Hong Kingston, a daughter of Chinese immigrants in Stockton, California, shyness and embarrassment were central to the experience of being a child starting school in a strange land. In this passage, aptly called "Finding a Voice," from her book The Woman Warrior, notice how vividly Kingston recalls both facts and feelings from those traumatic early years in America:
"When I went to kindergarten and had to speak English for the first time, I became silent. A dumbness—a shame—still cracks my voice in two, even when I want to say "hello" casually, or ask an easy question in front of the check-out counter, or ask directions of a bus driver. I stand frozen.
During the first silent year I spoke to no one at school, did not ask before going to the lavatory, and flunked kindergarten. My sister also said nothing for three years, silent in the playground and silent at lunch. There were other quiet Chinese girls not of our family, but most of them got over it sooner than we did.
I enjoyed the silence. At first it did not occur to me I was supposed to talk or to pass kindergarten. I talked at home and to one or two of the Chinese kids in class. I made motions and even made some jokes. I drank out of a toy saucer when the water spilled out of the cup, and everybody laughed, pointed at me, so I did it some more. I didn't know that Americans don't drink out of saucers…
It was when I found out I had to talk that school became a misery, that the silence became a misery. I did not speak and felt bad each time that I did not speak. I read aloud in first grade, though, and heard the barest whisper with little squeaks come out of my throat. "Louder," said the teacher, who scared the voice away again. The other Chinese girls did not talk either, so I knew the silence had to do with being a Chinese girl.”
That childhood whisper is now an adult writer's voice that speaks to us with wisdom and humor, and I'm grateful to have that voice in our midst. Nobody but a Chinese-American woman could have made me feel what it's like to be a Chinese girl plunked down in an American kindergarten and expected to be an American girl.
BOTTOM LINE
Start early, dig deep, and enjoy the process.
-Updated by Vince on 4 Dec 2012
-
I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide.
-
If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form.
Watch Vince videos on YouTube
Follow Vince on Twitter ▸ @TokyoVince
Results
Testimonials
"Preparing admissions essays for MBA programs can be a lonely process, involving much introspection and contemplation. Throughout this process, Vince was an invaluable partner to me, providing objective and professional advice that was critical to my success; ultimately, I gained admissions to 5 top programs in the US, including HBS, Wharton and Northwestern’s JD-MBA program."
Harvard Business School Class of 2012
More here http://www.vinceprep.com/testimonials
