Essays

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The Essays

There’s not much to be said in terms of advice for the essay section of the application other than to make sure you find someone competent to look over your essays before you submit them. Having someone check over your work is not cheating; in fact, it is an extremely smart thing to do. Sometimes you can become so invested in your own work, you’ll miss a little error which can be catastrophic. Having a second pair of eyes look over your work lowers the chance those tiny mistakes get a chance to snowball.

This year the essay prompts are:

1. The four MSMS Ideals are scholarship, service, community and creativity. Explain what these terms mean to you. Select the two attributes with which you most strongly identify, and explain how you embody them.

2. What makes you unique, and how would that uniqueness enable you to be a special part of the MSMS Class of 2014.

These questions are pretty straight forward. There is no trick to answering them other than to do your very best.

Frequently Asked Questions about the essays:

1. How long do the essays have to be?

As it says in the instructions, the essays must be between 500-750 words long. That works out to be about two-and-a-half pages double spaced with normal margins.

2. Do I have to write both essays?

Yes, you do.

3. May my essay be longer than 750 words?

We won’t penalize you if you go over the 750 word mark, but don’t write a book. Reviewers have a limited amount of time to go over these applications and do not want to see any 20 page essays. Writing several pages does not prove you are any smarter than anyone else, only that you are very long winded.

4. Do the essays have to be typed?

Yes, they do. It’s the year 2011, people. If you don’t know how to type or use a computer, now is the time to learn.

5. How should I submit my essays?

However you wish, as long as we receive them in a format we can identify. You can mail them in, fax them in, upload them to the online application or email them as an attachment. If you choose to submit via the online application or by email make sure your file has one of the following extensions .doc, .docx, .wpd, .txt, .sxw or .pdf. If you can’t get it to us in one of those formats then you must send us a hardcopy instead.

Click here to get to work on the application!

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