ISBLife blog has some words of wisdom from the ISBians on writing essays. Here, I have copied and pasted them in case you struggle to find the stuff.

A reader of this blog, Sunil Iyengar, wrote to me asking me how one should go about writing essays for the ISB application. Instead of telling him what I think should be done, I mailed a couple of people in ISB asking them for some fundaes on what strategy they adopted while writing B-School essays. Here is what they had to say:

Tarandeep (Tarandeep_Ahuja at pgp2005.isb.edu):
Be yourself. Get the essay reviewed by some people who you know are good and will give you constructive feedback. Make sure it ties up with the rest of your application - The application is to be looked on as a whole - don’t look at essays separately. Essays are the opportunity for you to tell the person reading something about yourself, that isn’t captured in your resume. But most importantly - Be yourself.

Amandeep(amandeep_singh at pgp2005.isb.edu):
Admission essays are one of the most crucial aspects of the MBA application package. As a result, they should be informative, unique and also reflective of your personality, achievements and interests. I have just given the broad themes and how you should approach for writing essays on them.

Why MBA and Future Plans?
Arguably, this is one of the most important essays. Convey how your past experiences and your future plans motivate to get you an MBA. The essays should convey a strong sense of future. You should concretely identify the sort of position (preferably only one) you intend to pursue and should lay out the steps needed to get to that position. The whole essay should display a logical layout and should convey a strong sense of optimism and success.

Why this school?
In this essay articulate why this school suites you the most. Go through the website of the school thoroughly. Collect info from your friends or other contacts. Talk about the course curriculum and how it fits with your future goals. You can dwell on the school’s diversity, faculty or any other aspect you find fascinating (Could be friendly student body, research orientation etc).

Why You?
This essay is the perfect marketing board for you. To demonstrate that you are unique and also desirable candidate for the school, make this essay speak your personality out. Write in the style which comes naturally to you. Highlight your major achievements. Most of all support your assertions with examples.

Apart from that be concise and avoid verbosity. Be clear of common grammatical and structural issues of the essays. Finally a good beginning and a well thought out ending can make a lot of difference!

Kanan (kanan_nabar at pgp2005.isb.edu ):
I started well in advance - it takes at least 1 month (especially if you're working and doing apps after work hours or on weekends) and over 4-5 drafts.

Looked at the entire application as a package - it was after all my face to the admission's committee. Actually listed down my USPs & tried to bring that out through various examples. I always knew that with my non-engineering/non-CA background, 'diversity' was my ticket to a seat at any b-school - so played that up sufficiently and highlighted how my experiences could add value to a classroom.

Most importantly, tied everything in like an integrated campaign - even made my referees read my essays before drafting their recommendation letters so that they'd focus on similar attributes (as highlighted in my essays)

Girish (girish_nanappa at pgp2005.isb.edu):
This year's essay topics are very similar to last year's, with the notable exception of the case based essay. How did I approach writing for them? To tell the truth... pretty much whatever came to me at 9 am on the coffee-fuelled last day of the application deadline :) But then, you see, I had by then, spent an inordinate amount of time thinking over the essays and making notes for each of the topics so it all tumbled out quite easily.

So here is what really worked - spend some time looking at the topic you are most comfortable with. Every time you are in a meeting (What? You mean you don’t have meetings? You ARE working, aren't you?) and someone bores on with mindless statistics, its Time To Think About Your Essays. Make a list of things you have done until now - where you did your schooling, college - and what were the things you achieved there that would set you apart from other students. Like Dee (name changed to protect identity) could write of his amazing ability to locate a high quality, free-porn site from among the millions of very mediocre ones that lie scattered over the Net or Daman could talk about his preternatural ability to sniff out alcohol from a distance of over 300 yards. Or like the time your teacher made you stand in the sun when you would not rat on your thieving classmate, and the principal who publicly commended you for your integrity.

Or the time you overcame your extreme vertigo by signing up for flying lessons through your NCC squadron. Even the time that you got caught in flagrante delicto critically comparing physical differences with your teachers daughter, behind the shelves in the chemistry laboratory... er... maybe not. In any case, the stuff that you think is complementary to your 'One Page' resume. Using the resume as a template, put in some flesh and blood so that you come out looking like a whole person. When we look at your first essay - thats what we are looking to get a sense of. Remember you are trying to create a wholesome image of yourself that helps you stand out in the applicant pool. It really helps to talk to your peers or long time friends and get their view of what they see in you - they usually discern those qualities in you that you might discount heavily.

While 600 words might seem like a lot - try putting it all down and you will find that you are usually very short of space (like Dhar told me to keep this post to 200 words :) ). Do not feel constrained to fill in the application by hand - you can create the same template on MS-Word or StarOffice and get a neat print out of the essay topic and your response and attach it to the application.

The next two topics - the ethical dilemma and how you faced failure are important. It is very tempting and feels easy to manufacture a set of fictitious events and how you reacted in each case. But these are also very easily apparent to an objective reader, no matter how convinced you are about your powers of persuasion. Again, real life is stranger and far more interesting than fiction and these questions attempt to make you examine yourself. Each persons responses to this question will be unique and if you gave these about half an hour of thought each, it should be easy to come up with a good sequence of events from your life. Four hundred words can be enough space to explain why you felt compelled not to look at the guaranteed leaked question paper, or why you felt strongly enough not to fill in a weekly work report because you had done nothing the past week to justify billing the client.

Failure can be another mechanism by which you can put out what drives you and how you respond. It is also good preparation because failure happens here on campus even to the best of us - it is your ability to deal with it that will help you maintain your sanity and poise. So put it down as honestly as possible (for example being part of a company layoff, while painful, may not in itself be a failure, however the days afterward in which you confront dirty reality can certainly bring on the feelings of failure very strongly).

The last three topics are very straightforward. Most people have experience of working in teams, of watching good leaders within their own peergroups or organizations and should be able to relate easily and naturally to this set of topics. 200 words is a good sized paragraph, so dont sweat it, think about what you usually bring to a team meeting - you could be the one that breaks up the tension usually, or the one who usually does the groundwork or even the one who usually initiates meetings to get the team together - just put it down. The last one is a concise statement of where you would like to be with your ISB MBA - and it will be something that you will most probably be telling the recruiter when you interview for jobs at the end of the next year!

In all your essays please use good grammar. No matter how routine it may seem, bad grammar could just make the difference between you and a lesser applicant - or it could be really bad if in your Business Writing Class, yours is the essay that gets chosen for the "How Not to Write an Essay" example ;)

All the very best!