1) Self-reflection. Before you start work on any essay, spend some time thinking through the following questions: Who am I? What experiences have led to who I am today? What do I want to do in next five, 10 years? What I am passionate about? What do I really dislike? What are my strengths and weaknesses? Do I like my current job? Indeed, most of the b-school essays stem from these questions. Once you get through the process, you will find that writing essays is just like putting down what you find about yourself. Be true to yourself during the self-reflection process. You can also talk to your classmates, colleagues and friends to get a better understanding of how they perceive you.

2) Story-lining. First, come up with a short paragraph to describe your personality, your leadership style, your achievements and your goals. This paragraph will be the guiding theme of your essays. Then, begin to review each essay topic to see how each essay can be elaborated to support your theme. Write a few topic sentences and find a few alternative stories for each essay. Brainstorm that with your friends to see if they are compelling enough. Be open to changes.

3) Writing essays. Once you have the overall storyline and mini storyline for each essay, it is time to start the real writing process. This takes time—you will definitely feel pain and doubt about your English proficiency at certain stages of the process. Stay optimistic, because everyone shares this pain. For your first draft, try to do a quick draft without any self-editing—just get it all down on paper. You will revise it many times before making it perfect anyway. After you put together the first draft, take a break and revisit it in a few days. You will then do several rounds of revision yourself before sending out for comments.

4) Revising. Revisions are typically based on the comments you get from your essay reviewers, most of whom are alumni or current students of the school you are applying to. You should probably send your essays to quite a few them for their honest comments. You should probably wait until you get all the comments before starting to revise. Some of the comments will be consistent across the board in pointing out the most obvious gaps in your work. Some of them may conflict with each other—if so, you need to make your own judgment call on which to address.

5) Fine-tuning. Now, it is time to improve the language, grammar and wording. If you have good native-speaker friends, don’t hesitate to ask them for help. Otherwise, you can find professional agency to help you, e.g., www.essayedge.com.
6) When you feel you have fallen in love with your essays and the person (basically yourself) behind the essays, go ahead and submit them!

What's the best practice of getting a good recommendation letter?
I see several key successful factors in getting a good recommendation letter.

1) Find a recommender who does know you well and is willing to spend time on you out of his/her hectic schedule. This is far more important than finding a senior person who knows little about you.

2) Try to have recommenders from diverse backgrounds. Just as essays should cover both your professional experience and personal stories, recommendation letters should do so too. For most McKinsey babies, like me, who have had no work experience outside of McKinsey, two recommenders can come from the Firm, say one DGL and one EM you have closely worked with. If you have a third recommender, he or she can either be a client or your college professor.

3) Make sure the recommendation process is a collaborative one. Don’t just write the recommendation letter and just him or her submit it for you. If so, your recommendation letter won’t provide any fresh perspectives that are different from your essays. Don’t be too hands-off either, by sending the form to your recommenders and asking them to write and submit it themselves. The recommendation letter may overlap, or worse, conflict, with your essays! Prepare well and spend some quality time with your recommender to discuss how the letter should look like: the outline, the supporting details, and how the letter complements your essays.

4) Give your recommender enough time! All McKinsey recommenders are very supportive, however they do have very busy schedules.

What was your criteria for choosing a MBA program?

Honestly, there are not quite a few top MBA programs that need to be screened by 2 by 2 matrix...

First of all, I evaluated whether or not they could properly address my development needs. For example, at Wharton, I will receive rigorous training in finance, something in which I am very interested but have not yet gotten an opportunity to learn seriously yet. Choose a school which will give you the most opportunities to develop yourself.

Secondly, see if you click with the culture and with your future classmates. Wharton students are well-rounded and come from very diverse backgrounds. HBS students tend to be young and talented, with a very outstanding track records. Stanford students are also talented, but in a unique way. Kellogg students are very friendly, with strong team-work ethic. Ask yourself who you are, and what kind of people you like spending time with over the next 2 years.

How did you differentiate myself from other candidates with similar consulting backgrounds?

I tried to add my personality into every story and visualized an overall theme of who I was, other than a McKinsey consultant. My objective was to have the admissions committee see a young lady of the following qualities: she is smart and diligent, making her way from a small town to the international stage. She is sincere and warm-hearted, and wants to help other people get the same opportunities she has enjoyed. She aspires to be a business leader who can create significant impact to the society on top of successfully leading a company.

How did you articulate your career goals in your essays?

If you are quite clear about what you want to achieve in 10 years, congratulations, all you need to do is to crystallize it in a logical way. If you haven’t made up your mind on what you want to do, you will have to make up a good story. I see several key elements of a good career goal essay.

1) It should tell a story. It may stem from your experience in your childhood, or be inspired by your parents, or be something related to what you learned at university. It may seem rough at the beginning, but it will get clearer as you progress professionally. You become more determined on your career goal and you understand it at a more in-depth level.

2) You have taken solid steps to prepare yourself for your career goal. This point is connected with the previous point. The choices you have made have all been steps toward that career goal. Your university major, extracurricular activities, joining McKinsey, your industry or practice focus, and so on.

3) Show how business school is a critical step in your journey towards realizing your career goal. Elaborate why and what you want to get out of b-school generally. Then, explain specifically on why a particular school can help you, what resources there are unique for you.

4) Short-term and long-term plan after b-school. This part can be very succinct.
Try to be imaginative. Although you may be passionate about becoming a partner at a consulting firm, b-schools prefer stories that emphasize entrepreneurship and uniqueness. They want to see you do something different from what you have already been doing.

Why do you want to go to business school at all?
As I embark on my business school career here, I feel that I am getting what I expected, if not more, out of my b-school experience. A few things I am enjoying in particular:

1) Opportunity for self-reflection. Over the past three years with McKinsey, I have fully dedicated myself to becoming a good consultant, by developing skills in problem solving, communication, client leadership, and so on. I felt the need to pause for a while and think things over about my goals and my career path. Now, with more time to myself, I can get more answers to these questions by talking with people from different backgrounds and by observing all those new things going on around me every day.

2) I love meeting the people from around the world. I enjoy the diversity of classmates here in terms of nationality, professional backgrounds, personality and communication styles. Experiencing all kinds of “culture shock” has broadened my perspective, extended my comfort zone and enriched my personality.

3) Last but not the least, just having fun. By squeezing time out of sleep and endless homework, I manage to play cards, go to various theme parties, cook, learn to dance, travel around, and so on.

Last but not least, I am learning new academic knowledge through the rigorous academic training here at Wharton. I know that the solid skills I will learn during the next two years are by just part of a rich and wonderful b-school experience!