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Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday.

MBA admissions committees try to identify applicants who are constantly active, challenging themselves in all spheres of their lives. So, not only are extracurricular and community activities powerful in showing an MBA candidate’s benevolence, but they also help create the impression that the candidate is always pursuing goals and is therefore predisposed to success.

Each week, we meet at least one candidate who says, “I have been so busy professionally that I haven’t had time to volunteer. However, I was really active during college.” In almost all cases, however, as candidates get further from their college years, their college experience becomes less and less relevant. Although having a record of consistent achievement throughout college and into a candidate’s professional life is best, MBA applicants are often evaluated on a “What have you done for me lately?” basis, meaning that contemporary community service is generally more important.

Although MBA admissions officers know that finding time to commit to external activities can be challenging for some professionals, they still encounter many applicants from the most competitive fields who indeed find time to give back to others. So, if you had a rich and fulfilling college experience filled with leadership, in short, keep that trend going. You have a powerful complement to your contemporary involvements, but not a substitute.

Recently, a prospective business school candidate emailed mbaMission with the following question: “What is the most basic stylistic error that candidates make when writing their MBA application essays?” Our answer: unnecessary repetition. Although repeating a word within a single sentence or in consecutive sentences does not constitute a grammatical mistake, it can still be grating to a reader’s “ear.”

Consider this example:

“During my time at XYZ Sales, I increased productivity by 31% and increased revenue by 21%. Meanwhile, I increased my client base by an industry-leading 81%, bringing increased prestige to my firm.”

Although this example—which uses the word “increased” four times in just two sentences—may seem like an exaggerated case, it is actually not as rare as you might think. However, the repetition can be easily eliminated and the sentences made increasingly reader friendly with just a few simple changes:

“During my time at XYZ Sales, I increased productivity by 31% and revenue by 21%. Meanwhile, I grew my client base by an industry-leading 81%, enhancing my firm’s prestige.”

The key to eliminating repetition is to first become aware of the potential problem and then gain distance from your work. By stepping away from your essay drafts for a day or two and then going back to reread them, you will gain the objectivity necessary to catch—and correct—this easily avoidable mistake.

Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose an MBA program, but the educational experience at business school is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Each Wednesday, we profile a standout professor as identified by students. Today, we focus on Sanjay Dhar from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

If one were to say that a star marketing professor could be found in the city of Chicago, one would likely guess that he/she would be found at Kellogg. However, Chicago Booth is working hard to develop its marketing program, and the school can boast that it can claim the professor who wrote what the Journal of Marketing Research deemed its best article of 2008 and who has received several other awards and citations, including being recognized as an outstanding faculty member in at least three Bloomberg Businessweek guides to the best business schools: Sanjay Dhar (“Marketing Strategy,” “Marketing Workshop”). In a March 2010 Chicago Booth admissions chat, Dhar was described as one of the school’s “amazing marketing professors.” In addition, students told mbaMission they are pleased that Dhar is teaching more and researching less. He keeps the energy high in his classroom by constantly walking up and down the aisles during discussions and then literally running to the board to write down salient points.

For more information about Chicago Booth and 15 other top-ranked business schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Which business school is right for you? How can you find the best fit? mbaMission founder Jeremy Shinewald will help prospective MBAs understand the differences between the top MBA programs during an #MBAchat on Twitter on Wednesday, April 24, at 1 p.m. EDT. Jeremy will elaborate on areas that will affect your academic and social lives in B-school, including the flexibility of a program’s curriculum, the breadth of core courses, the different methods of instruction, the varying sizes of the sections/cohorts and more.  Be sure to follow @mbaMission and the #mbachat hashtag to ask your business school selection questions and to learn how you can start preparing now so you can make an educated decision when you apply! Join us for this valuable event that will be essential to your B-school planning!

English, thankfully, is a language without many gender-related problems, but some do exist, and being gender neutral in MBA application essays can be important. In general, a key way to avoid such problems is to pluralize—to talk about groups rather than individuals. Consider the following examples:

a. “Today’s manager must be financially literate to do his job well.”

b. “Today’s manager must be financially literate to do his/her job well.”

c. “Today’s managers must be financially literate to do their job well.”

In (a), the sentence is poor because it is not gender neutral. Simply put, avoid writing “his” and assuming that the manager is a man. When you are talking about a hypothetical manager and don’t know that manager’s gender, you cannot assume the manager is a man any more than you can assume she is a woman.

Sentence (b) is better because it shows that the writer is sensitive to gender issues and, therefore, has made sure to insert “/her” after “his.” However, using “his/her,” “him/her,” “he/she” (or “s/he”) and other such constructions can make essays unnecessarily cumbersome and can also disrupt an essay’s style or rhythm for the reader.

Sentence (c), therefore, is the best of the three sentences. Words that entail gender considerations when singular lose such considerations when pluralized: “his/her” becomes “their,” “him/her” becomes “them,” “he/she” or “s/he” becomes “they.” Pluralizing gender-laden pronouns will allow you to avoid this awkward problem—and, as you may have noticed, will save word count as well.