The Internship Essay: Choosing the Right Story Inside 250 Words
A candidate, Mei, is applying for a paid summer internship at a regional logistics company. The prompt reads: 'In no more than 250 words, describe a time you solved a problem with limited resources. Tell us what you did and what you learned.'
Mei's draft currently opens: 'Throughout my life, I have always been passionate about teamwork and problem-solving. Ever since I was young, I have believed that challenges are opportunities in disguise. When I was chosen to lead a project, I knew I would have to use all my skills.'
She has three possible stories: (1) a 30-person food drive that beat its collection target but involved no real obstacle; (2) a delivery van that failed 40 minutes before a 200-parcel run, solved by borrowing a school minibus and re-routing two drivers; (3) a scheduling clash between her part-time job and an exam, resolved by swapping shifts with a colleague.
The company has said it receives about 400 applications for 6 places. Mei has 250 words and cannot exceed them.
1. Choose which story Mei should use. Justify the choice against each element of the prompt and against the reader she is writing for.
Read the worked answer
Story (2), the failed van.
- 'A time you solved a problem' - the prompt wants one bounded incident. Story (1) has an outcome but no problem: nothing went wrong, so there is nothing to solve and the essay becomes a boast. Story (3) has a problem but a routine one, resolved by an ordinary favour.
- 'With limited resources' - this is the discriminator. Story (2) has a measurable constraint: 40 minutes, 200 parcels, one van down, two drivers already committed. Borrowing a minibus is a resource decision, so the constraint is visible in the action rather than asserted.
- 'What you learned' - a logistics reader will accept a lesson about triage and communication (which parcels, which customers called first, who authorises a borrowed vehicle) far more readily than 'I learned the value of teamwork'.
- The audience: 6 places from 400 applications means skim-reading. A concrete scene with numbers survives a 20-second read; an abstract opening does not.
Story (3) is not worthless - it could be one sentence of context - but as the spine of a 250-word answer it asks the reader to be impressed by shift-swapping.
2. Rewrite Mei's opening in no more than 45 words so that it drops the reader into the scene and makes the resource constraint felt. Explain what you removed and why.
Read the worked answer
Model opening (38 words):
'At 07:20 the van's gearbox failed. Two hundred parcels were due at the depot by nine, one driver had already left for a collection, and the only vehicle left on site was a school minibus borrowed on a handshake.'
What was removed and why:
- Throughout my life I have always been passionate… - a claim, not evidence; it consumes 12 words and tells the reader nothing they can verify.
- Ever since I was young… challenges are opportunities in disguise - a cliché that signals a generic essay within the first two lines, exactly the risk at 400:6.
- When I was chosen to lead a project - passive and vague; it hides the stakes that the rest of the essay needs.
What the rewrite does instead: it fixes time and place (07:20), states the constraint as a number (200 parcels, 40 minutes), and introduces the substitute resource (the minibus) so the reader can already see the shape of the solution. The verbs are active and the sentence order follows the pressure: failure, deadline, shortage, workaround.
3. Propose a word budget for the 250-word answer and say what Mei should cut from story (2) to stay inside it.
Read the worked answer
Budget: roughly 90 words for the situation and constraint, 90 for the decisions and actions, 50 for the learning and its link to the company, with about 20 words of slack. Reflection under a quarter of the essay; more than that and it becomes an assertion the reader has no evidence for.
Cut from story (2):
- The backstory of why the food drive or her previous roles matter - the prompt asks for one incident.
- Mechanical detail of the van (mileage, model, who owned it) beyond what explains the failure.
- The full list of what happened to each of the 200 parcels; keep two examples - the priority customer and the one that still went late - because the late one is what makes the learning credible.
- Any sentence that begins 'This taught me that…' followed by an abstraction. Replace with the specific change in behaviour: 'Now, before a run, I check what the backup vehicle is and who can authorise it.'
Do not cut: the numbers (40 minutes, 200 parcels, one van), the borrowed minibus, and the one thing that went wrong anyway. The prompt asks what she learned; a flawless account reads as either lucky or edited.