If you've noticed how late night talk show hosts use Segues to transition away from a light-hearted moment from the guest's life, to promoting the guest’s movie or music or book or a show, see how they transition?
Learn from Talk-Show Hosts
It could be a smooth transition with something like, “ Speaking of explosions, this movie had 200 explosions”
Or Speaking of swear words, this movie has over 100 swear words.
Or speaking of dictators, you are playing a dictator in this movie.
There are multiple ways in which late night talk show hosts transition their conversation.
Essays - It's All about Leaning into Multiple Identities
In a visual medium like a late night talk show, you have the advantage of observing through a video format and listening through an audio format. In an essay, where the first impression and the last impression is dependent on what you write, it is all about leaning into your identities while using segues.
Look at how people interact in social media.
I would not recommend that you spend a lot of time in X or Facebook or in some Forum, fighting with some strangers. But at least observe how people interact. I do that and immediately, I see the discussion pivot to a judgment of the person’s primary identity.
It's not a bug. It's a feature.
We are tuned to identities that motivate a person and the incentive structure based on which the person is communicating
Segues and Multiple Identities
When you write essays and use segues, understand this fundamental human tendency to cling on to an identity.
What are the identities by which we most relate to?
For women applicants, I have noticed how they strategically share the societal barriers in regions where they can’t freely express their thoughts or lead an initiative.
Their sex as an identity is used against them.
Such narratives get immediate attention. But again, if you lean too much into one identity, it becomes challenging to stand out in essays.
The second identity that you all know is around gender. That's the most controversial identity, right now in political discourse.
Again like what women applicants are facing in terms of competition, if you lean too much into your LGBTQ+ identity in essays, your chances of standing out from other LGBTQ+ applicants go down dramatically.
You have to find a secondary identity before using segues in your essays.
The third identity is your nationality.
Most top schools are in the US and the UK, and the overwhelming identity in universities are left or left-leaning.
You cannot use a nationality-based essay narrative.
Same with the 4th identity that is your political ideology.
You can’t highlight the talking points of the extreme left or the right in your essays.
Universal Values - Include them as Part of your Identities
Focus on universally accepted values of inclusion, integrity, humility and humanity.
The fifth and the most important identity by which you will be judged, typecast or shortlisted for interviews is based on your professional identity.
The disadvantage of leaning too much into your professional identity is that there are several stereotypes in each profession.
A technologist might be stereotyped as someone with low social skills.
A finance professional might be stereotyped as someone who is unethical.
There are several implicit biases against professional identities.
You should be aware of it, and choose examples accordingly, before seguing from one identity to the other.
That is why schools really look into your extracurricular and volunteering experiences.
They want to learn how you interact with others in the community, with different age groups, different incentives, different education levels, and collaborated with people from different political ideologies.
Moving Beyond your Primary Identity
Have you shown evidence of going beyond your primary identity and find uniting motivations.
Recently, I was approached by a client.
Her winning strategy for other schools was to lean into her professional identity. And it worked for other schools because it was on AI and its transformative value in disbursing loans and in offering value added services for the underserved in American cities.
But for Stanford, I had to dig deep into her story and found that she also has a venture with her family where she's was helping women beneficiaries in rural healthcare where traditional health services can’t reach.
For Stanford’s open-ended essay, it was important that we show her skill set in multiple contexts and not just be a woman engineer working in banking. This was a great differentiating factor 5 to 10 years back when there were not enough women graduates. But right now, women are graduating at a higher level than men.
I advised her to highlight many more identities.
And her first response was that – “So I should show that I am woke?”
This is not about exaggeration or showing your empathy in an exaggerated manner. It is about highlighting your multiple identities so that you are not stereotyped into any one particular group.
Her identity as an entrepreneur was extremely valuable in essays. Recent data shows that the level of entrepreneurship across the world has come down except in two niches - digital creators and AI.
Also, Stanford has the lowest acceptance rate.
I had to find multiple identities for her and then use them as segues for the essays.
We leaned into her primary identity as a woman – then expanded the essay with woman engineer in banking, woman entrepreneur helping women in underserved markets and also highlighted her policy experience to show her adaptability to work with diverse stakeholders.
When the school read her essay, they had evidence of her brilliance in multiple contexts across multiple identities while also being made aware of her primary identity as a woman, and the challenges women face in society and in male-dominated careers.
Not surprisingly, she got an interview invite from Stanford.
If you want my help with brainstorming, shortlisting identities for the segues, reach out to me through F1GMAT’s contact form
