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Accepted.com Odds 'N Ends
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What's New at Accepted.com |
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Pre-Season Discount for future MBA's and JD's
2006 MBA and JD applicants, purchase essay or letter of recommendation
packages by July 31 and save 10%. For details, please visit the MBA and
JD services pages.
Michigan Medical School Admissions
Dr. Daniel Remick, Dean of Admissions; Robert Ruiz, Director of
admissions; and Michigan Medical School students will answer your
inquiries on July 13 at 5:00 PM PT/8:00 PM ET in the Accepted.com chat
room.
Write Your Way to a Residency Match
Cydney Foote and I have advised literally hundreds of residency
applicants. Cydney Foote has also worked "on the other side" of the
application process, participating in the admissions decision making
process at two fellowship programs. We share our insider's view of
writing for residency admissions in our latest ebook, Write Your Way
to a Residency Match: Advice for your Personal Statement, CV, and
Letters of Recommendation.
Recent Blog Posts
Kellogg 2006 MBA Essays
Admissions Consulting
NIH Research Grants
Law School Admissions Myths
Tuck's Conference for International Educational Consultants
Interview with Departing Stanford Admissions Director
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Essay Tip |
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"Invent first, and then embellish!"
So advised Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth-century English curmudgeon,
wit, and writer.
Now don't think for a minute that Dr. Johnson was advising writers like
you to make things up. He wasn't. He was recommending that writers, be
they a young minister who had sought his advice on writing a sermon or
you confronting the need to write personal statements and application
essays, first create a draft that you can work with and then edit it for
coherence, logic, writing mechanics, clarity and all the qualities that
contribute to good writing. Don't edit as you write that first draft.
Dr. Johnson's works are still being read almost 300 years after his
death. I doubt if your personal statement requires that kind of
longevity; it just needs to work with the rest of your application to
enhance the chances that you will be accepted to the program of your
choice. However, Dr. Johnson's advice is still applicable. Tell your
story. Get it down on paper. Then edit it until it shines.
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Resume Tip |
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Scannability
An application resume is not the place to get fancy with
creative design elements, especially since many schools today
want applicants to submit their applications electronically.
Needless to say, you should avoid the use of art, graphics, or
photos. But even borders, boxes, tables, and sidebars are
distracting and unnecessary. The same goes for special
lettering, different colored type, raised or embossed type, even
italics and underlining.
In reality, the best design element of all is white space. If
the various sections of your resume and the data within those
sections are distributed effectively, the reader's eye will be
drawn naturally down the page to the information you wish to
highlight, without feeling overwhelmed or confused by data.
Again, this may well mean that you will have to delete bulleted
achievements or data points that you're quite proud of, in order
to create a resume that draws the reader in and sustains his or
her interest in the data that are really essential to your
application's message. They call it "scannability."
If possible, use margins as close as possible to one inch. Place
your strongest material in the two-inch visual space that begins
about 2 5/8 inches from the top of your resume. Try to include
your most impressive, impactful achievements and qualifications
in this "primetime" space where the reader's eyes will focus
first. This shouldn't be difficult, since this is the place
where your current position will normally appear.
An excellent way to discover the resume format preferred by the
school you're applying to: Look at the job-hunt resumes
maintained by your target school's career services office. If
you can't get a copy through your professional network, visit
the Yahoo! Group page of the MBA Resumebook Open Source
Initiative. This helpful site contains dozens of actual resumes
from the resume books of business schools like Wharton, Harvard,
Stanford, Columbia, Chicago, Yale, MIT, INSEAD, Northwestern
(Kellogg), and Virginia (Darden). Conforming your resume to the
school's preferred format may take extra time and effort, but
it's a nice way to signal that you're getting with the program.
--Paul Bodine is a Senior Editor at Accepted.com
Author of Great Application Essays for Business School
(forthcoming).
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Our Services
Writing a personal statement is a tough challenge. A former
client, an NBC journalist with over twenty years of experience
in the field, once said that his personal statement "was the
toughest thing I ever had to write." He sought our help.
Shouldn't you?
Accepted.com's editors are here to help you write your best
essays -- eloquent, compelling essays that distinguish you from
the competition and transform you from a transcript and test
score into a competitive applicant and unique individual.
Check us out. Complete information on our services, including
prices, testimonials, and information about our top-notch
professional staff, can be found at
our services page.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact us at
info@accepted.com or 310-815-9553.
We look forward to serving you.
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Copyright 2004 Accepted.com. All Rights Reserved.
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Information provided in this document
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