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Lively Language
"My position as an analyst at Big Firm X offered me the opportunity to handle many demanding situations."

You can't get much blander than the preceding sentence. No metaphors. No references to the senses. Wordy. Snore.

Despite knowing that your application essays should be interesting and engaging, personal statements are full of gray prose. Here are five tips that will add some pizzazz to your writing:

1. Use sensory language. Even the references to "color" and "gray" in the previous paragraphs are visual despite referring to concepts, not something with physical presence. Like metaphors, sensory language concretizes abstractions and brings black-and-white text to life. For example, so far in this article my use of "bland" refers to taste. "Exhortations" conjures up memories of an orator or preacher giving fiery speeches pushing you to try a little harder. They all involve the senses and make writing more vivid.
2. Incorporate metaphors . I covered them in last month's tip. They will make your experiences and writing more vibrant.
3. Choose active, descriptive verbs. You can write, "The kite went up." Or you can write, "The kite soared." The latter evokes the image of a kite climbing gracefully high into the sky. The former could refer to anything . well going up.
4. Avoid stuffy prose using lots of adverbs and adjectives. Does food "have a severely elevated temperature," or is it "too hot to handle," "steaming," or "burning my tongue"?
5. Use specifics and details . I know that I harp on this a lot, but I can't say it often enough. Going back to my opening example of dull writing, what was the "situation"? Why was it demanding? Who was involved? Or was it a technically demanding project? Give me some details.

These five key tips will help you avoid the bland, dull prose that plagues so many essays. Follow them to ensure that your essays portray your experiences in vivid, life-like color.  

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The Facts and Nothing but the Facts
Quick quiz: What percentage of resumes is phony? 10 percent? 15 percent?

Surveys of human resource professionals suggest that between 23 and 45
percent of all resumes in circulation contain substantially misleading or inaccurate statements. In fact, Wayne D. Ford, author of the employer's guidebook How to Spot a Phony Resume, conducted his own more disturbing survey: a minimum of 25 to 30 percent of resumes were considered phony by some employers, but others estimated the number at 50 to 60 percent and even much higher.

Dates of employment and education are the facts most commonly
"embellished," but, interestingly, applicants don't fabricate facts
primarily to land desired jobs but out of simple human embarrassment-to cover periods of unemployment, incarceration, or a probable bad reference.

Needless to say, such fabrications spell a prompt end to one's employment chances when detected. Some employers have even sued offending applicants to recover recruiting and hiring expenses. A growing number of employers are also hiring background-checking firms like Global Verification Services and VeriCORP to check dates, employers, even court records and credit histories. In fact, the more important the position, the greater the likelihood that a prospective employee will undergo an extensive background check. Human resource professionals also bring a sophisticated level of intuitive screening to resume evaluation. That means that even a mistake as apparently harmless as stating that you "increased profits" without indicating by how much can be seen as a red flag.

The moral? Misleading resumes are deal breakers, and preparing your
resume is a serious business. The good news is that you don't need to lie to cover up a bad stretch in your employment history. There are
effective--and honest--techniques for crafting resumes that present spotty experiences in the best light. Lying in a resume isn't only wrong--it's unnecessary and counter-productive.

-- By Paul Bodine, Accepted.com editor

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MBA Chats
Haas
Guest: Pete Johnson and Haas students
Date: Sept. 9

Darden
Guest: Dawna Clarke, 2 Darden students
Date Sept. 16

Michigan
Guest: Kris Nebel, Al Cotrone, and Michigan students
Date: Oct. 2

All the chats take place in our chat room at 6:00 PM Pacific Time/9:00 PM Eastern Time on the indicated dates. To find the time in your location, please visit http://www.timeanddate.com

Also, don't miss the transcripts from last year's chats .

On deck for later this year: NYU, Chicago, UT, CMU and others. To learn about future chats, visit our chat schedule page or click here to be added to our MBA chat announcement list.

Business 2.0 "Rankings"
The academic year is about to begin. Application season is around the corner. So every periodical and its brother publishes rankings. This month Business 2.0 has published its recruiters' rankings of MBA programs.

I always advise you to take rankings with a large grain of salt and use them as a tool, not as some objective, divinely inspired measure of quality. Take that advice double-strength for this article, but it still contains useful insights. Especially for those of you who do not qualify for the top fifteen schools, the section on "Hidden Gems" could help you look into a few schools that might work very well for you, but are not as well known as the good 'ol Top Ten.

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1st Southwest Virginia Osteopathic College set to open
The Roanoke Times reports that the Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine in Blacksburg will welcome 157 future physicians as its inaugural class this fall. Nonprofit groups and foundations established the new college specifically in the hopes of luring prospective graduates to work in rural communities. In the meantime, rural hospitals will benefit from students training in their local emergency rooms and clinics.

Despite never having held a class before, the osteopathic college drew more than 650 applications for the 150 available seats. Many students said they were excited rather than nervous at the thought of being the first class at a new school.

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Low Pay Keeps Law Graduates Away From Public Service
The American Bar Association's Commission on Loan Repayment and Forgiveness reports that law-school students are abandoning plans for public-service careers because the meager salaries in those fields won't allow them to repay student-loans.

A dramatic increase in average law school tuition has caused student debts to skyrocket up to $80,000. This lofty sum is much easier to repay when earning the average $90,000 private practice starting salary versus the approximately $36,000 offered to public-interest legal workers.

The report warns that the poor and disadvantaged will lose access to legal services unless something is done to reverse the trend. Many of the report's recommendations aim at expanding loan-forgiveness programs for law graduates who choose public-service careers. Those programs typically forgive or cancel loans after the recipient has completed a designated number of years of public service.

The full report is available online.

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UCSB to offer nation's first Ph.D. in Chicano studies
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the University of California at Santa Barbara has announced it will offer a Ph.D. in Chicano studies, making it the first university in the country with a doctoral program in the discipline. According to Chela Sandoval, chairwoman of the Chicana and Chicano Studies Department, the program "heralds a new era" in the study of Mexican-American history and culture. She further adds that now "the university is moving toward having a truly global perspective on human consciousness and culture". In the last decade, the department has grown from three faculty members to 12 and now has more than 150 undergraduate students. Graduate classes will begin in either 2004 or 2005.

For further information, please review the UCSB announcement .

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US News Rankings Undergraduate Rankings Released
US News & World Report has released its rankings of the best US colleges this year. Not surprisingly, Ivy League schools top the list once again, with Harvard and Princeton sharing this year's top spot. The Top Ten are:

1) Harvard
2) Princeton
3) Yale
4) MIT
5) Cal Tech
6) Duke
7) Stanford
8) Penn
9) Dartmouth
10) Washington U in St. Louis

Party-school Title Irritates Hoosiers
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Indiana University at Bloomington won the party-school distinction in Princeton Review Inc.'s latest Best Colleges guide. The next three institutions on this year's party-school list are Clemson University, the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, and Pennsylvania State University at University Park.

William B. Stephan, Indiana University Vice President for Public Affairs and Government Relations, disavowed the institution's ranking, saying that "Nothing could be further from the truth," and that "If the Princeton Review is going to continue to glamorize or offer a perspective of campus life in Bloomington as one which is dependent on alcohol, then I'm confident that we will not be cooperating with them in the future".

Me thinks the gentleman protests too much.

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Forward This Issue
Please forward this issue to friends interested in graduate school admission. They will thank you and so will we!

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