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Odds 'N Ends
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tip of the month, admissions information for grad, law, MBA, and medical school applicants,
and news about Accepted.com.
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Index
What's New at Accepted.com
Essay Tip of the Month
Resume Tip of the Month
Grad Admission News You Can Use
Law Admission News You Can Use
MBA Admission News You Can Use
Medical Admission News You Can Use
College Admission News You Can Use
Our Services
BusinessWeek Online Chat
I was invited to participate in an online chat at Businessweek Online on Wednesday June 27.
I enjoyed the spirited exchange with over 130 prospective MBAs. Thanks to Businessweek for
the invitation. You can view the transcript at BusinessWeek
Online.
New Book from Accepted.com Editor
Accepted.com editor Sheila Bender has written a new book, Keeping a Journal You Love,
published by Walking Stick Press. This is Sheila's fifth book on writing about personal
experiences. To find out more about Sheila's book, please visit
Amazon.com.
Price Incrase Coming
The early bird may or may not get the worm, but at Accepted.com that bird is going to save
money. To keep offering you the best editors and outstanding service, we must raise our
prices effective September 1. ("Boo!!! Hiss!!!" I know. I know.) But you can beat
the price increase. Sign up for your editing packages
by August 31, 2000, and you will pay current rates. Just
register before August 31, 2000.
Acceptances!!!!
Those acceptances are rolling in! Harvard, Stanford, Kellogg, Penn, Yale, Columbia, Duke,
Tuck, UCLA, Chicago, Cornell. If Accepted.com played any role in your application process,
whether as an informative Web site or advisor and editor, please let us know where you are
admitted, how we helped you, AND how we can do better. Visit our
acceptance survey or e-mail
acceptances@accepted.com.
Alternatively, let your editor know how you fared.
Your Opinion Please...
We are currently evaluating our site performance. If you have found the Accepted.com
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comments to feedback@accepted.com.
Thanks!
Think! Think! Think!
One evening my daughter came to me for help with her math homework. She had mechanically
applied a method her teacher taught her for finding the size of an angle in an isosceles
triangle . to a triangle with three unequal sides. Mindlessly using the technique, she
couldn't solve the problem. The next day, my son asked if the writing techniques he had
learned in English would also work in history. I assured him that good writing will be as
effective in history as in English. Automaton-like, he promptly applied a template for a
book report to a history essay that didn't refer to a book. It made no sense.
Both my children failed to think. One may be able to perform certain activities without
thought, but writing (or solving geometry problems) isn't among them. Before you apply any
writing techniques — even those recommended in these columns — you have to think.
Thought is an essential prerequisite for your application writing.
What should you mull over before you sit down to write?
- For graduate students: Why do you want to pursue this particular course of
study? What are your goals after you complete your studies? How will this specialty
help you achieve them? Whether you call it a "statement of purpose,"
"goals essay," or "vision statement," you need to know why
you want to be come a doctor, lawyer, tycoon, or Indian chief.
- Why are you applying to these particular programs? Why would you choose to
attend Program A and not Program B? Rankings, geographic location, outstanding
faculty, and excellent reputation are not sufficient reasons. You need to know
exactly how this school will help you achieve your goals (for grad applicants)
or what aspects of this school's educational approach appeal to you and why
(for college applicants).
- What is important to you? Why is it important? How did you develop these
values? In particular, which experiences and activities influenced your values
and reflect them?
- What is distinctive about you? What anecdotes reveal that distinctiveness?
- What are you proud of and why?
Once you have thought thoroughly about these topics, you can intelligently apply the
techniques and advice found in this newsletter and on the Accepted.com Web site.
The bottom line for you (and my kids): "Think! Think! Think!"
Starting The Resume with a Bang
You may reasonably wonder why it is important to start your resume, a summary of
professional experience and achievement, with a summary. Yet where exactly will the
reader's eye first fall when she first scans your resume? You can direct the reader
immediately to the most compelling information by putting a "Professional
Summary" (or "Professional Profile" or "Career Overview")
at the top of the resume.
This summary is a marketing tool, ideally enticing your reader to read further no
matter how busy she is. Thus, its contents are critical. It should be the length
of a short paragraph, with bulleted points, and should cover three areas:
- Your professional role, e.g., "Product manager with profit-and-loss
accountability and technical oversight."
- Your expertise, illustrated through an achievement that benefited your
employer or client, e.g., "Expert negotiator, developing and completing
innovative contracts with three materials vendors that allow quality review
for the first time, yield cost-savings averaging 7%, and provide vendors with
stable revenue."
- Evidence of the positive impact you have made on your client or employer,
e.g., "Devised and implemented new system for product development teams
that decreased re-design from three times per item to zero."
Beware of a common pitfall in the professional summary or profile: general statements
about your skills that aren't substantiated. "Excellent communicator," "strong
problem-solving skills," and "team-oriented manager" are typical examples. To
avoid this problem, consider what you want to communicate in that brief space and then create
a vivid verbal sketch rather than a verbal blur, saying nothing that isn't substantiated or
quantified.
Finally, the summary or profile must be set off visually from the rest of the resume. A
heading is not enough. Either shade or border the summary, drawing the reader's eye to the
space. This can be done conservatively or creatively, depending on the target reader, but
the visual device is essential.
Cindy Tokumitsu
Editor, Accepted.com
Member Professional Association of Resume Writers
ETS Adds Writing Section to GRE
As of October 1, 2002, the Education Testing Service will add an Analytical Writing section
to the GRE and remove the current analytical measure section. The new section will consist
of two essays. The first essay will require the test taker to develop an argument and support
a position on an issue. The second essay will require the test taker to analyze another's
argument.
Ranking of Research Institutions
Evidence Ltd, has ranked research institutes throughout the world based on "bibliometrics,"
a method of analysis that evaluates their performance based on the number of publications they produce
and the amount of times they are then cited by later publications. Citations are used because they
reflect the value of a particular piece of research. The top producers of research were Canada,
Germany, the U.K., and the U.S. Other significant producers include Japan, France, Australia,
and Spain.
The Guardian published the results for the four top countries in the areas of clinical,
biological, physical and environmental science, mathematics, engineering, and social sciences.
For the details, please visit the
Web site.
Legal Gold Standards
A recent article in Time's Global Business supplement highlighted the enormous influence
of American law, in particular N.Y. law, on the global business scene. According to this
article, "U.S. law is becoming the lingua franca of international business." As a
result, increasing numbers of international applicants are applying to U.S. law schools.
Especially popular are one-year LLM programs, where international enrollment has increased
62% since 1996. For many American firms overseas, international graduates of these LLM
programs are highly valued because they bring to the firm American legal skill AND an
intimate knowledge of their native country's language, culture, and business mores.
Alumni Prove Critical in Helping MBAs Obtain internships
The Wall Street Journal reports that several management consulting firms and
technology companies have rescinded or cancelled their internships leaving first-year MBAs
without the summer positions that in the past frequently led to full-time employment. To
help their students, some of the business schools are reaching out to alumni and professors
as sources of summer employment. The article profiled Tucks' successful efforts to assist
twenty students who remained without summer internships at the end of their first year at
Tuck.
Chat Transcripts
We had a great chat with Dr. Cynthia Lewis of Lewis Associates on medical school
admissions practices. In addition to addressing the factors that should determine which
schools you apply to, Dr. Lewis had suggestions on dealing with the current web-based
AMCAS application mess.
View the transcript.
The chat on June 18 became a discussion focused on taking advantage of the additional
writing opportunities provided by the vision essay and experience sections of the AMCAS
application. The transcript is not online yet, but will be posted soon. You will be able
to link to it (as well as all other pre-med chat transcripts) from our
Medical Transcript Index.
Allied Healthcare Fields Web Site
I stumbled across a most useful
web page
devoted to allied healthcare fields. So if medicine appeals to you, but you don't want to or
can't become a physician or dentist, check out this page. It lists, with links to job descriptions
and educational requirements, close to fifty professions in healthcare.
Tuition Continues to Increase
Although I would rather write about increased financial aid, as I have over the last several
months, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that tuition at private colleges
continues its inexorable climb. According to the Chronicle, a number of private colleges are
reporting tuition increases in the 5% range, which exceeds the national inflation rate of
3.3% for the year ending in April. And the Ivys, which previously announced more favorable
financial aid programs, are also increasing tuition 3-5%.
SAT II Provides Opportunity if English is Your Second Language
The Wall Street Journal on June 26 had a lengthy article on the role SAT IIs are
playing in increasing opportunity for Hispanics and other immigrant groups. SAT IIs are
offered in Spanish, French, Chinese, Latin, Korean, German, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, and
Italian. These tests are receiving more weight in college admissions at a number of public
universities, including the University of California, which no longer has an affirmative
action program.
The tests are designed to test the knowledge of those studying a language as a second
language. Native speakers tend to perform extremely well on them, and the relatively high
scores earned by Hispanics on the Spanish test are helping them to attend schools like UC
Berkeley, where Latino representation has historically been low.
Tell a Friend
Please share this issue with friends and colleagues who share your interest in graduate
school admission. Tell a friend or two about
Accepted.com's powerful array of online pre-professional resources. They will thank you
and so will we!
Writing a personal statement is a tough challenge. A former client, an NBC journalist with over
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