Nov 2007 Accepted Odds 'N Ends: Editor Secrets; Integrating Accomplishments, Responsibilities

Accepted.com Odds 'N Ends

What's New at Accepted: MBA Round 2 Specials; MBA Interview Month; B-School Photo Contest
Chats: Upcoming Chats: Ross, Consortium,Wharton, Hass, and Duke; Recent Chat Transcripts: Yale, LBS, MIT, CMU, Cornell, and INSEAD
Blog Posts of Interest
Essay Tip: Editor's Secrets
Resume Tip: Integrating Accomplishments and Responsibilities
Wrap Up: Accepted.com Services; Newsletter Subscription Management

Comprehensive Help with Your Round 2 MBA Applications: Save up to $100
Save money by starting work on your Round 2 applications NOW. Purchase our comprehensive services by Nov. 30, 2007 and take advantage of these deals:

Buy one of Accepted.com's Comprehensive MBA Program Editing and Consulting Packages and save $50.
Buy Accepted.com's Buy-7-Get-1-Free and save $100.

Don't let time slip through your fingers. Before you know it, you'll be facing both the holidays and R2 submission dates. Add in year-end deadlines at work, and you have a recipe for one stomach-churning time-crunch. Now you can save money, get comprehensive, professional consulting and editing assistance, and start your essays early enough to submit your best.

MBA Interview Month at Accepted
Round 1 MBA interview invitations are popping up and will continue to appear throughout November. Accepted has declared November to be International MBA Admissions Interview Month. (Hallmark, are you listening?)

What does International MBA Admissions Interview Month mean for you? Lots of resources to help you prepare for your MBA interview:

Mock MBA interviews and MBA interview coaching: Practice makes perfect with Accepted.com's experienced interviewers.
MBA I.V.: Mainline to Top MBA Programs: Get this month's featured ebook at 20% off through November 30.
MBA Interview Teleseminar: Take advantage of expert advice on MBA interviews with Accepted.com's MBA Interview Teleseminar. There will be a panel discussion followed by a Q&A session, with MBA admissions experts Linda Abraham, Maxx Duffy and Inge Miller.
MBA Interview Prep Course: Put your best foot forward after taking our free, 5-day, email course.
Accepted's MBA Interview Feedback Database: See what the others are saying -- already sporting new interview reports from this year's interviews.
It's a 10! Contest: Provide your interview feedback and you'll be automatically eligible for valuable prizes.

Beautiful B-School Photo Contest

I have long advocated school visits as a great way to learn about a school, its culture, and its student life. They also provide you with invaluable insights you can use to show your fit with the program in your essays and interviews.

Now you can have even more fun while visiting, especially if you're an amateur photographer yearning to be recognized for your artistic brilliance -- or just your nice photo. We are hosting our second annual Beautiful B-School Photo Contest. Enter to win one of the many prizes and a chance to show your photo to the world!

Accepted.com Chats

We are launching this year’s MBA admissions season with a wonderful line-up of MBA chats. Join Accepted.com's President, Linda Abraham, as she hosts the following chats with these leading MBA programs:

Michigan Maven

Join us for our annual Miching Ross chat on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/6:00 PM GMT with Director of Admissions Soojin Kwon Koh.

Consortium Confab

Applying through the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management? Then come and chat with Jackie Olden, Director of Recruiting on Tuesday November 13 at 5:00 PM PT/8:00 PM ET.

Wondering about Wharton Interviews?

Ask your pressing Wharton interview questions on Thursday November 15, 2007 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/5:00 PM GMT when Thomas Caleel, Director of MBA Admissions fields your questions.

Hass Happenings

Come join the chatter about Haas' mantra of leadership through innovation and more on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/6:00 PM GMT with Peter Johnson, Director of Admissions.

Facts about Fuqua

Discover the inside scoop on Fuqua on Thursday, November 29, 2007 at 10:00 AM PT/ 1:00 PM ET/5:00 PM GMT with Liz Riley Hargrove, Fuqua's Assistant Dean.

All chats take place in the Accepted.com chatroom. To receive reminders about upcoming chats, please subscribe to our MBA admissions events list.

And of course, last month's chats have generated must-read transcripts:

Blog Posts of Interest

Here are some highlights of recent blog posts on Accepted Admissions Almanac:

Enjoyed these posts? Sign-up for Accepted Admissions Almanac blog posts updates and begin receiving admissions tips and the lastest news on college and graduate school admissions. On the sign-up page, you can choose to recieve all the blog posts via email (using Feedblitz) or RSS feeds.

Essay Tip

Editor’s Secrets

I'm about to let you in on some of our trade secrets: Here are the five errors that Accepted.com editors look for when we first lay eyes on your essays:

1) Evading the question. You're not in politics. Make sure your essays answer all parts of a question.

2) Meandering. Having essays that wander through the pathways and byways of your mind or life might work if you're James Joyce, but rarely work if you're not. Make sure that each essay has a point, a theme. Then stick to it.

3) The gray flannel generality. Sweeping declarative statements that any applicant can make. Platitudes about the preciousness of life, the universality of man, the centrality of family, the importance of vision and buy-in in leadership, motherhood and apple pie … They're a dime-a-dozen in personal statements and application essays. As much as I like those values, unless you can demonstrate that you uphold them by using specifics, details, and anecdotes to prove your point and distinguish you from the masses, you will write a bland, boring essay. Detail and show-me specifics reveal your values, distinguish you from your competition, and add interest to your essays.

4) Superficiality. Closely related to the gray flannel generality, superficiality means that when asked why you want to pursue a particular goal, you answer, "Because I want to help people." That's nice. But you could become a plumber and help people. Why do you want to help people as a doctor, lawyer (yes, they say they want to help people, too), psychologist, or even businessperson? Why do you want to attend a particular program? If your answer applies to all the schools on your list and could be given by anyone else applying to that program, you are being superficial and have not done your homework. If you are just cutting and pasting essays to answer different schools' questions, you are being superficial. Give the process the time, attention, and thought it requires if you want to get accepted.

5) Writing what you think they want to hear. This is mistake #1, according to many adcom members. To paraphrase JFK, write what you want them to know; don't write what you think they want to read.

When you proof your prose, look for these fatal errors, and do what we do: Get rid of them!

Resume Tip

Integrating Accomplishments and Responsibilities

This column has often extolled the importance of using concrete accomplishments in your résumé to convey the impression that you are a person who makes things happen and has an identifiable impact in your workplace. This continuous browbeating is necessary because frequently résumés merely list responsibilities, with little indication of actual impact. It's nice to know a person does these interesting or impressive things -- but to what effect?

So how do you integrate those responsibilities effectively without losing the focus on the accomplishments? And without making the résumé formatting overly fussy? Here are a few suggestions:

For each position, presumably you note the organization, then your title. Following the title, as the first bullet point, you can say, "Key responsibilities: manage 3 analysts; oversee $2M annual department budget; lead approximately 2 $1M engagements per year including client interface, requirements gathering, assignment of team roles." Then the remaining bullet points can be used for the specific accomplishments you want to spotlight.
A similar option is not to use the bullet for the responsibilities, but to put "Key Responsibilities" directly under the position with some font formatting to highlight the phrase. Then follow this with bullet points of accomplishments.
A different approach is to integrate the responsibilities directly into the accomplishments. In using this approach, it's important to make sure the responsibilities are clear. For example, you can start a new bullet point with the responsibility and then follow with the related accomplishment: "Lead approximately 2 $1M engagements per year; each of 4 such engagements won additional business of over $500K, was completed under budget and by deadline, and earned letter of commendation from client manager."

It's a challenge to effectively portray your responsibilities while keeping the focus on the accomplishments, but by following the simple approaches above, you'll find it's quite manageable.

Cindy Tokumitsu
Senior Editor, Accepted.com

Wrap Up

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.

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