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Accepted.com Odds 'N Ends
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| What's
New at
Accepted.com |
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New EMBA Email Course
Accepted would like to help
you with your EMBA applications. We have developed a brief, 6-part
email course entitled "Ace the EMBA: Admissions Advice for EMBA
Applicants."
So if you are applying to Wharton's, Columbia's, Chicago's, Duke's
Global EMBA program, or any other leading EMBA program, you can benefit
from this free course.
Sign-up and ace your EMBA application!
Last Month for It’s a 10! Contest This Year
Every tenth MBA applicant who
fills out an interview feedback questionnaire will win a $10 Amazon
gift certificate. It's easy -- just fill out a questionnaire
after you interview with an MBA program and you're automatically
entered in our contest. Hurry -- the contest ends March 31, 2007.
For additional information and contest rules, please visit our contest details page.
Featured Ebook
Here is an except from the The Nine Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make on a Law School Waitlist:
Mistake #8: Provide hyperbolic apologies for weaknesses or mistakes.
Why bother with an exaggerated apology? Just shine a spotlight on your
flaws and failings. That's what your abject apology will do... And take
a lot more time to do it, too.
If you want to know the right moves to make on a law school waitlist, look on page 26 of this month's featured ebook, The Nine Mistakes You Don't Want to Make on an Law School Waitlist. And remember, save 20% on The Nine Mistakes You Don't Want to Make during March.
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| Accepted.com
Chats |
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Join
Accepted.com's
President, Linda Abraham, as
she
hosts the following chats with these leading MBA programs:
Inquiring about the INSEAD Waitlist
Join us for our
first ever INSEAD Waitlist Chat with Caroline Diarte Edwards on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 9:00 AM PT/12:00 PM ET/5:00 PM GMT.
Mining the Michigan Waitlist
On
the Michigan Ross waitlist? So come join the Michigan Ross Waitlist
Chat with Soojin Kwon Koh on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00
PM ET/6:00 PM GMT.
Wondering about the Wharton Waitlist
Ask your
pressing Wharton waitlist questions during the Wharton Waitlist Chat
with Thomas Caleel on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM
ET/5:00 PM GMT.
All chats
take place in the Accepted.com
chatroom. To receive reminders about upcoming chats, please
subscribe to our MBA
admissions events list.
If you are interested in a specific chat topic or school that we
haven't covered, please let us know.
And of course, last month's chats have generated must-read transcripts:
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| Blog
Posts of Interest |
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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 latest news on college and
graduate school admissions. On the sign-up
page, you can choose to receive all the blog posts via email
(using Feedblitz) or RSS feeds.
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| Essay
Tip |
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Use Active, Vivid Verbs
I watched a candle burn a few nights ago. It happened to have a particularly nice flame that conjured up many different images:
- The flame stood.
- The flame danced.
- The flame cavorted.
- The flame pranced.
- The flame swayed.
- The flame flickered.
- The flame fluttered.
- The flame twinkled.
- The flame glowed.
- The flame glittered.
"The flame burned"
sounds so dull next to the alternatives. It's factual, but pedestrian.
Ordinary. Blah. It does not convey any of the images that the other
sentences do because it doesn't have the visual impact.
In describing your activities, use active verbs that convey sensory
information. They will transform your readers into flies on the wall of
your stories. Those well-chosen lively verbs will make your essays come
alive.
Consider the following examples:
Did you "try," "plan" "strive," or "struggle" to complete your project
on time? And what about that marathon you ran? Did you just "run" it?
Or did you limp across the finish line plagued by blisters? Did an
adrenaline surge at the end combined with earlier weeks of training
carry you, propel you, or thrust you across that finish line?
When editing your essays, take a minute to examine your descriptions.
Do they bore? Are they common? If so, examine your verbs. Evaluate each
one, replacing those that are humdrum and weak. Choose muscular,
powerful verbs that convey images, sounds, smells, and experiences. For
help, turn to a thesaurus. You may find descriptive options far better
than the words you are so used to using.
Looking in the thesaurus
is like going to the store to buy a new pair of thick-soled, walking
shoes. It means making the effort to turn in your trusty, worn-out pair
for new ones. Your walk will have new bounce when you pull just
the right pair off the shelf. Your writing will also have restored
vigor when you use the thesaurus to inject life into it.
Warning: To enliven your writing without making a fool of yourself,
only use words that you know the meaning and connotation of. Don't
choose words to impress. Choose them to convey meaning succinctly and
vividly.
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| Resume
Tip |
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Editing an Application Resume
After you’ve brainstormed your work experience to find the most
effective material for your resume, you need to begin hatching away so
only the essential remains. The definition of “essential”
will vary with each school you apply to. Some will want job
responsibilities listed on your resume, some will not. Some will want
you to include your employer’s industry rank; some will want you
to list all your employment since high school.
Be strategic in deciding what content is absolutely essential for your
resume to complement your whole application and what isn’t.
You may well find you have to jettison one of your proudest
accomplishments because it doesn’t support the theme of your
essays or the culture of the school you’re applying to. For
example, suppose that you’re particularly proud of a highly
specialized and innovative bit of code you wrote for a mission-critical
application, but it was in no sense a team project -- you wrote it
entirely on your own, its dollar impact on your organization is
unquantifiable, and it was essentially a technical not a leadership
achievement. In this case, if you have been using your essays to escape
the “techie” pigeonhole and are applying to a school, like Kellogg, where interpersonal skills are highly valued, you should probably omit this “proudest moment” altogether.
Instead, include a bullet about the new process you initiated that
increased group productivity by 5 percent or the time you led a team of
four programmers in completing an understaffed project on deadline.
These kinds of achievements will do a better job of positioning you as
a leader rather than a cubicle-dweller. This is where
“techie” applicants who simply cut-and-paste their work
resumes -- with all their specialized languages, acronyms, and
industry-speak -- into their applications run into trouble. They risk
projecting the “propeller-head” image they’ve worked
so hard in their essays to escape.
Now set your résumé aside for a few days and come back to
it again with "fresh eyes." Don’t make the mistake of thinking a
typo in your resume is any less onerous than in an essay. Misspelled
words and grammatical mistakes are the proverbial kiss of death in a
résumé. Eliminate them.
--Paul Bodine is a Senior Editor at Accepted.com and author of Great Application Essays for Business School.
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| Wrap
Up |
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Our Services
A recently accepted
client to a top program wrote me a thank you note last month:
"... I'd
like to thank [you] on behalf of all your clients for making sure that
some of us live our dream. We only live once (as far as we know) and
you make sure that this one precious time is really worth it!
We would like to help you live your dream and attend your dream school.
We 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. Visit our services
section
to find complete information on our services, including prices,
testimonials, and information about our top-notch professional staff.
If you have any
questions please feel free to contact us at onlinesupport@accepted.com
or 310-815-9553.
We look forward to serving you.
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Copyright
Copyright 2008
Accepted.com. All
Rights Reserved. Please do not reprint or host on your web site without
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Information provided in this document is provided "AS IS" without
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Accepted.com
-- helping you write your best!
Application essay editing and advising
Resume writing and editing
http://www.accepted.com
310-815-9553
onlinesupport@accepted.com
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