August 2008

Accepted.com Odds 'N Ends

In this Issue:

What's New: Admissions Mini-Courses; Price Increase; Ask an Expert; New College Application Book;
Chats: Michigan Ross MBA Chat; SUNY Med Transcript
Blog Posts of Interest
Essay Tip: Pizzazz and Razzmataz
Resume Tip: Top Ten Mistakes to Avoid
Wrap Up: Our Services; Subscription Information

What's New at Accepted.com

Admissions Mini-Courses
Subscribe to Accepted's new email courses. They're chock-full of succinct, practical tips that you can use as you prepare to apply in 08-09. And they're free! Click on any link to sign up:

Price Increase Coming September 1.
Accepted is going to have to raise its prices September 1. Purchase Accepted's application essay editing or admissions consulting services, by August 31, 2008 to avoid the price hike. Ask an Expert You may have noticed the short survey on the Accepted.com website. We've been asking you to tell us why you're visiting our site. Many of you say that you come because you want to "Ask an Expert." There are several ways for you to ask your questions of Accepted's outstanding staff. One-on-one admissions consulting is always the best way to get personalized, professional advice, but if you're not ready to make that investment or just have a quick general question, check out:

Whatever your questions, Accepted.com can help you find the answer. Perfect Phrases for College Application Essays
Accepted editor and noted author Sheila Bender provides options, choices, and thought tools to inspire you as you respond to the Common Application essay questions and other questions frequently asked in college applications. I highly recommend Perfect Phrases for College Application Essays.

Accepted.com Chats

Upcoming Chats:

University of Michigan's Ross School of Business with Soojin Kwon Koh, Director of Admissions, on August 20 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/5:00 PM GMT.

To receive reminders of all admissions events, please subscribe online.

Recent Chat Transcripts:

SUNY Upstate Med Chat with Jennifer Welch

And don't forget to peruse our extensive back catalog of previous admissions chats. We have over 200 transcripts!

Blog Posts of Interest

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.

Essay Tip

Pizzazz and Razzmataz

Did that title get your attention? That's what you want your essay to do the instant the reader opens your file.

Let's examine techniques, other than kitschy titles, for creating interest. Specifically let's look at surprise, irony, and suspense.

Surprise -- Start your essay in an unexpected manner. For example, open an essay about your background by discussing what happened today or will happen tomorrow and connecting the opening to your background. Make sure you spend most of the essay answering the question and discussing your past.
Irony -- "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." Dickens understood that irony grabs interest and opened his classic Tale of Two Cities with that intriguing line. Learn from the master. Are you writing about someone who influenced you greatly? Highlight the contrasts while explaining why he or she was your greatest influence. Was your proudest accomplishment conceived in failure? Open with the failure and discuss how it led to your later success. Use the irony and contrast inherent in these situations to grab attention and tell your story.
Suspense -- Arouse curiosity by using suspense. Ask a question at the beginning of your essay, but don't answer it until the end.

Implicit in these suggestions: Don't start with the common or expected. Don't begin your goals essay or statement of purpose with the typical declarative statement like "I want to be a doctor because ... " or "I was born in ... "

Grab your readers' attention so they will read your essay because they want to, not because they have to.

Resume Tip

Top Ten Mistakes to Avoid
Peter Newfield, president of Career Resumes of Goldens Bridge, New York, has compiled a list of top ten resume mistakes, and it's a good one. In paraphrased form (and with some tweaks and emendations by this author), they are:

Including an "Education" or "Objective" section at the top of the resume. For anyone with more than three years of work experience, this is a faux pas. [Editor's Note: An objective section is a mistake for all.]
Thinking that omitting dates will convince employers to overlook your job-hopping. In fact, it alerts them that you want to hide something.
Focusing your bullets on your job responsibilities rather than accomplishments. Very important!
Using a purely chronological approach when you have changed industries or fields a few times. A more effective approach creates order out of chaos by grouping the jobs under relevant industry or skills headers, such as "Investment Management," "Accounting," etc.
Stating the reason why you left a given job, especially if it was a negative reason.
Including personal information such as marriage status, hobbies, ethnicity, age, or gender.
Exhaustively including every single job you've ever had. Jobs that are not relevant to the position you seek or are caked with cobwebs can simply be listed (under the heading "Other Employment," for example) rather than given a full section.
Not considering the resume's appearance: neatness and clean design (lean toward the conservative) do count.
Creating a single, one-size-fits-all resume and sending it to every employer in the universe. Be selective about where you send your resume and tailor it to likely employers as much as possible.
Sending a resume but no cover letter.

Paul Bodine is author of Great Application Essays for Business School, Great Personal Statements for Law Schools, Perfect Phrases for Business School Acceptance, Perfect Phrases for Law School Acceptance, and Perfect Phrases for Medical School Acceptance.

Wrap Up

Please forward this ezine

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

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 http://www.accepted.com/services.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact us at info@accepted.com or 310-815-9553.

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