Accepted.com Odds 'N Ends

Goals. Purpose. Direction.
The differences are largely semantic. All applicants to grad school have to discuss their reasons for pursuing graduate study. Think of grad school as a bridge leading from your current professional/educational location to where you want to go. You need to know your ultimate destination in order to cross the right bridge. That destination is your goal, your purpose, your direction.

B-schools require the most clearly defined goals. They really want to understand applicants' well-thought out reasons for leaving the work force, paying tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, and choosing to attend their school. Consequently, MBA applicants need to convey a specific goal, preferably including industry, desired function, and a realistic career path. In addition to specificity, schools look for goals that are logical given their program and its strengths.

Admissions committees do not expect law and medical school applicants to present detailed goals. Although pre-meds should demonstrate exposure to medicine in their applications, presenting a professional direction in the AMCAS essay is optional and usually general. For example, pre-meds may indicate whether they are attracted more to primary or secondary care, clinical practice or a combination of research/teaching and clinical practice. Law school applicants should also have direction based on their experience, but, unless the school requests the information, it's not mandatory to state your long-term goals.

For students pursuing academic graduate degrees and intending to teach, consult, research, or some combination of the above, it is mandatory that your statement of purpose be exactly that: something that reveals the purpose of your studies, why this professional direction appeals to you, and why this program, its curriculum, and staff best supports your realizing that goal.

High schools seniors applying to college can and should tell the schools why they want to attend their specific institution, but they are not expected to have clear professional goals or direction. You're off the hook on this one!

In any case, whether writing about the specific goals for b-school or about a more general direction for medical school, you must anchor your goals in your experience. For example:

• If med school applicants say they want to go into primary practice, their goal sounds terribly hollow if they never volunteered or worked in a clinical setting.
• The IT consultant who wants a general management MBA to transition to a strategy consulting role for IT businesses will be ahead in the admissions game and in the post-MBA job hunt.
• The law student who worked for a legal clinic and expresses interest in public interest law has credence.
• The applicant for a graduate program in environmental studies who has never spent time working for or studying environmental causes and hasn't the slightest idea what to do with the degree sounds like a fool.

Bottom line: express your goals with the appropriate degree of precision and build them on an experiential foundation.

Next month: Structuring a goals essay

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Starting Your Resume with a Professional Profile
A potential employer scans your resume, frowning. He just wants a quick impression before reading further. Why make him work to see your qualifications - and risk losing his attention - when you can convey this information swiftly and succinctly in a "Professional Profile" (or "Summary of Qualifications")?

A Professional Profile right after the contact information attracts the reader's eye immediately and summarizes your potential value to her organization. It whets the reader's appetite. It should be the length of a short to medium paragraph, in bullet form, and contain the following:

• Key professional accomplishments, quantified if possible. Select those most meaningful to your target audience.
• Required or helpful qualifications, such as specialized degrees, certifications, licenses.
• Optional: statements that reflect your personal strengths, e.g., "Completed part-time MBA in 3.5 years, earning 3.8 GPA while working approximately 60 hours per week and gaining 2 promotions." Through plain facts, this sentence shows your focus, time management, capacity for hard work, and ability to thrive under pressure.

The Professional Profile must be set apart graphically from the rest of the resume. For more conservative resumes, placing a simple rule around it works well. For more creative resumes, shading the box or using a more decorative rule are options. This graphic device is essential to drawing the reader's eye to that section first.

You may have two concerns:

1. Won't the content be redundant of the resume? Yes, but minimally. You can note an accomplishment, such as "Brought in 10 new $100K clients in 6 months, doubling previous company record," and then, when discussing this accomplishment later, discuss how you did it.
2. This section replaces your statement of objective. True. Yet the objective statement tells the reader what you want for yourself. If you excite the reader immediately about what you can do for her company, do you think she will miss the statement of objective?

Cindy Tokumitsu,Senior Editor, Accepted.com
Member, Professional Association of Resume Writers

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MBA Admissions Chats
2004 Applicant Chat June 10, 2003
There are lots of things you can do BEFORE the applications come out. Discuss them with the Accepted.com staff and other applicants. Time: 6:00 PM Pacific/9:00 PM Eastern.

INSEAD Chat June 12, 2003
The July 11 deadline for the January 2004 intake at INSEAD is approaching fast. The fall deadlines for the September 2004 intake are on the horizon. Ask your questions about INSEAD's outstanding program, admissions policies, and student life. Johanna Hellborg, INSEAD's MBA Admissions Manager, and other INSEAD representatives will answer your questions. Time: 9:00 AM Pacific/12:00 PM Eastern.

Both chats will take place in the Accepted.com Chat Room. To confirm the time in your locale, please visit http://www.timeanddate.com .

Book Review: 88 Great Tips Presents Mixed Bag
88 Great MBA Application Tips and Strategies by Brandon Royal presents a mixed bag of MBA admissions advice. Valuable insights, especially for letters of recommendation and resumes, mix with plain bad advice.

For example Tip #26, "Mention that an MBA is the missing link between where you are now and the future." 100% right on. (See O&E's Essay Tip this month.) On the other hand, Tip 27, if followed, is a waste of time and valuable essay real estate. It urges, "Mention that a school has a talented, diverse student body, high caliber faculty, and/or top-notch facilities, and/or strong alumni networks." You don't need to tell them what they already know, and anything you write about a school's program that applies to all top programs really says nothing.

Although some of the individual essay tips and examples are valuable, they suffer from a fatal flaw: They approach the questions as if they are in disconnected vacuums. In developing your application strategy and writing the essays, you must view each essay in the context of your overall application. I don't know if the short tip format is at fault, but the author fails to highlight this critical aspect of MBA applications.

In general, the tips and examples for letters of recommendation and resumes were more valuable than those in the essay section of the book.

Haas expands it's Evening and Weekend programs
The Haas School of Business newsletter reports the addition this fall of a second cohort of students to the popular Saturday option of the Evening & Weekend Berkeley MBA Program, bringing the total for the program to two cohorts on weekends and two cohorts in the evening. Dean Tom Campbell attributes the new expansion to "the good fortune of being able to hire seven outstanding new faculty members, all drawn from top universities." As a result, the school will now offer a wider set of elective courses to Evening and Weekend students.

Haas and the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management Split
The Consortium provides scholarships to business students from certain underrepresented minorities. Fourteen universities presently participate in the Consortium, but it has recently decided to exclude UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business from continued membership, according to the Haas website.

Although the Haas School does not wish to withdraw from the Consortium, the school is required to change the way it interacts with the group in order to comply with a California law that prohibits preferential treatment for any individual or group based on race.

Haas has been a member of the Consortium since 1993 and Dean Tom Campbell hopes to negotiate a compromise between the two institutions as soon as possible.

For a more complete perspective, please visit the Haas Newsroom.

Decrease in GMAT test taking
The GMAC Online Newsletter recently published new statistics for GMAT test takers. Though test-taking volume increased steadily from 2000-2002, through April 30, 2003 has seen a 15% decline worldwide from 2002 levels. The current volume in the US and abroad is very close to the 2001 level.

The complete data can be accessed at the GMAC Online Newsletter.

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AMCAS Magic - Past and Future
We had a lively chat for pre-med students on May 27. The transcript will be available soon at our chat transcript page.

For those of you who missed it, we will host another AMCAS Magic chat on June 17 at 6:00 PM Pacific Time/9:00 PM Eastern in our chat room.

Ontario Pledges Funds to Start New Medical School
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Canada will found its first new medical school in almost 35 years. The Ontario government has announced its gift of $68-million to help establish the first medical school in the northern part of the province in the hope that students will remain in the area to practice after qualifying as physicians.

Eventually, the new institution hopes to have 224 students, split between two campuses 400 miles apart at Lakehead University, in Thunder Bay, and Laurentian University of Sudbury, along with multiple teaching and research sites throughout northern Ontario. Roger Strasser, the school's founding dean, says that the entire curriculum will be "an exercise in distance learning ... with an emphasis on an experiential, hands-on approach". Though the school awaits accreditation, the province hopes students will begin classes in fall of next year.

The Weill Cornell Medical College Receives $50 million Gift
Weill Medical College of Cornell University announced that the school has received a $50-million unrestricted anonymous bequest that it will use to create an unprecedented Challenge grant for its $750-million Capital Campaign, one of the largest ever undertaken by a medical college. The Challenge will use the bequest to match major philanthropic gifts to Weill Cornell's Campaign, known as Advancing the Clinical Mission.

The Challenge, with its "matching" strategy, will attempt to raise double the amount of the original bequest, i.e., $100-million. As donors will receive recognition for the total matched gift, "this Challenge provides a tremendous incentive for contributions to the Medical College" says Weill Cornell Campaign Chairman and Overseer Kevin Brine.

The College is already more than halfway toward its $750 million fundraising goal with $386 million already donated.

For more information about Weill Cornell's clinical, educational, and research programs, visit their website.

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Harvard Law School Gets $10 million Grant
The Harvard Crimson Online reports that the New York-based John M. Olin Foundation, which supports research on social and economic policy, has made a $10 million gift to the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Business Harvard Law School, the largest grant from a foundation in the history of the school. Rosenthal Professor of Law Steven Shavell, founder and director of the center, said that the program, which supplies its students with a stipend to do research in law and economics, is "extremely successful". Harvard Law School spokesperson Michael A. Armini added that the grant will be considered as part of a capital campaign that is to begin next month.

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Organizers of TA Union at Yale Lose Unofficial Vote for Representation
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that in an unofficial election, graduate students at Yale University have rejected unionization, surprising union organizers who had expected the symbolic vote to bolster their decade-long struggle for recognition. Anita Seth, chairwoman of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, said she was disappointed by the results, noting that unionization probably lost because of a poor showing in the biological sciences sector. The union battle at Yale, as at many other campuses, has often been framed as a fight pitting humanities students against science students.

What does Yale say? According to Yale spokesperson, Tom Conroy, "the university remains opposed to the unionization of graduate students on principle, arguing that they are not employees, but students."

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Rising Tuition Makes Students Think Twice
Thousands of students at private colleges will pay significantly more than ever before as tuition hikes for the upcoming fall outpace inflation, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. Additionally, because the percentage of families seeking financial aid is increasing, "there are significantly more people looking for aid," says Robert J. Massa, vice president for enrollment and student life at Dickinson College. Further, Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, an association of hundreds of private institutions, says, "schools take affordability very seriously," trying to keep tuition costs reasonable while still providing appropriate salaries to their faculties. He adds that he worries "about how far this cost management can go before it starts to affect the quality of education."

The price increases are affecting the full spectrum of higher education:

• Highly competitive institutions such as Harvard, Brown and Dartmouth are raising tuition substantially, despite large endowments.
• Public colleges are expecting an even greater spike in tuition and fees than private colleges, in part because those tuition decisions are made, either directly or indirectly, by state legislatures.
• Community colleges, too, are preparing for tuition increases approved by state lawmakers.

A few private colleges, however, like Albertson College in Idaho, are bucking the trend, actually slashing their prices by thousands of dollars for the next academic year by incorporating financial aid money into their tuition calculations.

In a related piece, Anne Marie Chaker of The Wall Street Journal reports that financial concerns are influencing applicants' decisions in dramatic ways as more families than usual are choosing colleges with their wallets in mind. Instead of gravitating toward the most prestigious school on their list, many are opting for the one that charges the lowest tuition or offers the most-generous aid package. The upshot is that a number of schools, particularly private colleges just below the top tier, are scrambling to fill their freshman classes. Many, like Emory University, Union College and George Washington University are dipping deeply into their pools of wait-listed applicants. Colleges at the very top of the heap are still getting the students they want.

The battle for top students has important consequences for schools. Yield rates, the percentage of accepted students who actually enroll, are a factor in the closely watched college-ranking guides. If students opt to reject an admission offers because of money, a school can suffer in the rankings.

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