Accepted.com Odds 'N Ends

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Index

What's New at Accepted.com
Essay Tip of the Month
Resume Tip of the Month
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

What's New at Accepted.com

New Web Site

Over the next few months Accepted.com will be rolling out a new Web site. In addition to a new look, the site will contain a valuable search function, simpler navigation, faster function, and ultimately a catalogue system for choosing Accepted.com’s services.

Best Wishes for the Holiday Season

The entire staff at Accepted.com would like to thank you for your patronage and wish you a joyous Holiday Season and great New Year!

Time Marches On

In this season, time seems to march at double time. It’s hard to focus on essays and keep all the personal, professional, and educational balls in the air. Those application deadlines somehow manage to creep up mysteriously out of nowhere.

We want to help you, but please give us enough time to do so. We are extremely busy. Don’t wait to sign up for Accepted.com services or to contact your editor until you only have a week left in which to write and submit your applications.

Acceptances!!!!

Those acceptances are starting to come in! 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 were admitted, how we helped you, AND how we can do better. E-mail acceptances@accepted.com or visit our share-your-success page .

Essay Tip of the Month

Ugh! Those @!#$* Word Limits!!!

Now, now. Don’t get angry. Deal. Use writing techniques that convey your message and stay within the word limits. First and foremost, focus. For advice on focusing your essay, please refer to “The Essential Laser”.

Additionally, poor writing habits can make your writing wordy and flabby; good writing techniques, like exercise and a healthy diet, make it powerful and concise. To give your writing a healthy diet and exercise routine incorporate these techniques:

1. Minimize use of the passive voice.
   • Flabby: Experience A has been complemented by experience B. (8 words)
   • Lean: Experience B complements experience A. (5 words)
2. Use active, descriptive verbs.
   • Obese: I was the one who made the decision… (8 words)
   • Slender: I decided… (2 words)
3. Minimize use of the verb “to be” (Please note that I did not say “eliminate.”)
   • Overweight: He was the person who led… (6 words)
   • Svelte: He led (2 words)
     
   • Plump: She is a skillful negotiator. (5 words)
   • Slim: She negotiates skillfully. (3 words)
4. Check whether you need the verb preceding an infinitive.
   • Fat: She was able to fix … (5 words)
   • Trim: She fixed… (2 words)

These few techniques will put your writing in shape, help you stay within those limits, and give you one less reason to curse your applications.

Resume Tip of the Month

Concise Resumes

Mastering the art of writing concise personal statements offers one other benefit besides a fat envelope: good practice in writing concise resumes. A long, densely packed resume full of paragraph-length blocks of narrative detail will consign your resume to the shredder as fast as a resume scrawled in crayon on pink paper. So long as you don’t leave out essential information, the shorter and crisper your resume is, the better. White space is your friend.

Resumes are not life stories or job histories. They are advertisements to entice employers to invite you to an interview when you can elaborate on the information your resume only telegraphed. When was the last time you saw a verbose ad? Good resumes are punchy and to the point — every word should matter.

Tailoring your resume to each industry, position, and company will help you be concise because only some of your accomplishments will be relevant for any given employer. Focusing on your achievements rather than job functions will not only impress the employer, but also communicate your job responsibilities. Other tips for keeping resumes concise:

1. Reduce the use of articles: “a,” “an,” “the.”
2. Minimize the use of helping verbs: “has,” “might,” “was,” etc.
   • The projects have been extended an additional five months.
   • Projects extended five more months.
3. Use adjectives to help you convey information more efficiently.
   • Five promotions and raises of 20 percent per year reflect a career that is on a fast track and has the potential for executive-level management responsibilities.
   • Five promotions with 20 percent annual raises reflect a fast-track career with executive-level potential.
4. Possessives can do the work of prepositional phrases in less space:
   • …analysis of the client resulting in termination of the project
   • …client analysis resulted in project’s termination.
5. Use Arabic numbers rather than spelling numbers out: “13 new projects.”
6. Condense information that is not essential:
   • Projects in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC.
   • Projects in five key Atlantic seaboard cities.

Paul Bodine
Editor, Accepted.com
Member, National Resume Writers Association and
the Professional Association of Resume Writers

Law Admissions News You Can Use

LSAT Numbers Skyrocket

The Law School Admission Council reports record numbers of wannabe lawyers taking the LSAT in recent months. In June, 23,908 test takers sat for the LSAT, an 18.6% increase over 2000. In October 46,745 people took the LSAT, an increase of 23.5%. LSDAS predicts strong numbers for December too. The June and October statistics reveal the largest increases in over a decade.

MBA Admissions News You Can Use

Chats Future

We have an exciting line-up of MBA admissions chats. These chats are great opportunities for you to interact with students and admissions professionals at the schools of your choice. Mark you calendar and don’t miss out.

December 5, 2001
Julia Min, Admissions Director of NYU Stern and a Stern second-year student.

December 10, 2001
Barbara Jones, the Consortium’s Chief Operating Officer, and representatives of four Consortium schools.

December 20, 2001
Sally Jaeger, Tuck’s Director of MBA Admissions, and a Tuck second-year student will participate in a Tuck admissions chat. Please join us.

January 7, 2002
Alex Brown, Wharton’s Associate Director of Admissions.

January 16, 2002
Dawna Clarke, Darden’s Director of Admissions, and Suzan Gibbs, Chair of the Student Admissions Committee.

January 22, 2002
Elissa Ellis, Assistant Dean, and Matt Turner, Admissions Director, of University of Texas’ McCombs School of Business.

All the chats are at 6:00 PM PT (-8:00 GMT; 7:00 PM Mountain Time; 8:00 PM Central Time; 9:00 PM ET).

Chats Past

We have had lively and informative chats throughout October and November with representatives from Columbia, Haas, UMBS, UNC, MIT and UCLA.

Here are a couple of snippets:

”What role does UMBS's interview play in the admission process of UMBS? What qualities does UMBS evaluate in the interview?

”GMAT quant score aside, how does the admissions committee evaluate or perceive the applicant who was a liberal arts major and took no quant classes as an undergrad because they placed out with AP credit in math and science? Is this lack of quant experience considered a negative?”

For the answers to these and many other questions asked in the chats, please visit our Transcript Index.

Application Trends

At the UCLA chat on November 26, UCLA’s Admissions Director Linda Baldwin revealed that Anderson’s application were up 91% over the first round last year. The following day, BW Online in an article by Mica Schneider cited the following year-over-year increases in application numbers:

Duke – 200%+
Berkeley – 76%
Columbia – 70%
Kellogg – 65%
MIT — estimate 30 – 50%

Michigan’s Admissions Director Kris Nebel told O&E that Michigan’s first round application are “up this year, by about 20%.”

What do these numbers mean? They don’t mean that twice or three times as many applicants are applying this year to business school as applied last year. My sense, and that of a number of adcom directors, is that the number of applicants has increased moderately, but the number of applicants applying first round and the number of schools they applied to have increased dramatically. What do these statistics mean to you, especially since you have no influence over the behavior of your competition? They mean you should apply to more schools. Today I would recommend 6-8 schools, not the 5-7 I recommended previously. They also imply that you need to be coldly objective and realistic when you choose your schools if you don’t want to throw away your time and money — or sell yourself short.

Social Impact and Environmental Management

The World Resources Institute ranks business schools on their social impact and environmental management programs and involvement. While overall unimpressed with how well MBA programs’ integrate social impact and environmental management into coursework and curricula, WRI’s report, “Beyond Pinstripes 2001,” gives high marks to the following programs at the cutting edge of social impact management:

• Harvard
• Loyola
• Michigan
• UNC Kenan-Flagler
• York University, Schulich

Leading MBA programs incorporating environmental management:

• George Washington
• University of Jyvaeskylae
• Michigan
• UNC Kenan-Flagler
• Yale

For more information, please visit http://www.wri.org/.

The Geekiest MBA Programs Says Business 2.0

Bentley College
Carnegie Mellon
Columbia
HBS
Indiana
MIT
NYU
Kellogg
Purdue
Stanford
University of Arizona
Haas
UC Irvine
UCLA
University of Maryland
Michigan
UNC
Wharton
UT Austin
Vanderbilt

For further information, please visit Business 2.0.

Med Admissions News You Can Use

Medical School Application Numbers Drop

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that applications to medical school dropped again, the fifth straight year of decline. The 125 accredited American medical schools received 34,859 applications for the 2001-2002 academic year, down 6% from last year and 25.8% from 1996.

Don’t celebrate yet. Even after the drop, there are two applicants for every medical school slot.

College Admissions News You Can Use

Book Review

"Making the Most of College: Students Speak Their Minds” by Richard J. Light, Professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and the John F. Kennedy School of Government, should be mandatory reading for the summer between high school and college. Light has spent years researching the activities and classes that make college most educational, satisfying, and stimulating. Rather than learning from trial and error or the idiosyncratic experiences of your circle of friends, take advantage of Light's thorough research and the experience of thousands of students. To make the most of your college experience, I strongly recommend “Making the Most of College.”

Tell a Friend

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Our Services

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