|
|
 |
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
|
|
| What's New at Accepted.com |
|
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:
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:
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.
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.
**To subscribe to Odds 'N
Ends please visit http://www.accepted.com/newsletter/subscribe.aspx .
Copyright
Copyright 2004 Accepted.com. All Rights Reserved.
Please do not reprint or host on your web site without explicit permission.
However, if you found this newsletter helpful, we encourage you to e-mail it to
a friend or colleague. Thank you.
Information provided in this document
is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied,
including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and
fitness for a particular purpose.
Accepted.com --
helping you write your best!
Application essay editing and advising
Resume
writing and editing
http://www.accepted.com
310-815-9553
info@accepted.com
Accepted.com
PO Box 67423
Los Angeles, CA 90067
|
|
| |
|