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Accepted.com® Company Background
Linda Abraham founded Accepted.com in 1992 as a general editing service operating under the name of Linda Abraham & Associates. At the time, Ms. Abraham edited for businesses and students and explored freelancing as an additional source of revenue. While noticing increasing demand for help with personal statements, she also recognized that if students wrote their essays with the techniques used in writing human interest and feature stories, the essays would be more compelling.
In 1994, despite the skepticism of family and friends, Ms. Abraham decided to specialize in personal statement editing. She wrote a booklet “How to Write an Outstanding Personal Statement,” and lectured over the next few years at a number of colleges and universities in the Southern California area, including UCLA, UC Irvine, USC, Pepperdine, Scripps, and the California State University at Northridge. Ms. Abraham later expanded nationally and gave presentations at the annual American Medical Student Association convention in Washington D.C. and at Yeshiva University of New York.
Simultaneously, use of online services grew, and Ms. Abraham realized that these services removed geographic boundaries and could aid the growth of her business. She began participating in forums on Compuserve and message boards on AOL. In addition to obtaining clients, this participation earned Ms. Abraham Guest Expert status on Kaplan Hall and the Business Week area of AOL, and on US News’ Forum on Compuserve. Most importantly, this experience prepared Abraham and Associates to transform itself into Accepted.com when the Internet changed from techie toy to mass medium.
In July 1996, during the primordial era of the Internet, Ms. Abraham posted her first website. The business exploded, and in fall 1996 she added two editors to her staff to handle the increased volume. The business incorporated and changed its name to Accepted.com in January 1997, and has been growing every since.
The website underwent a major revision in 1998 incorporating a monthly newsletter, bookstore, and new articles. Since then, innovative features are constantly added. Most notably, the MBA Interview Feedback Database, which currently has thousands of entries, was launched in June 1998. A chat section joined the other areas of Accepted.com in May 1999. Since then, Accepted.com has hosted over 240 chats on application procedures, wait-list status, and reapplication techniques. Special guests at these chats include admissions experts and representatives of prestigious universities from around the world.
Accepted has continued to develop new ways to serve the applicant community: a blog and e-books in 2004, the Beautiful B-School Photo Contest in 2006 and forums in 2007. In 2006, Accepted co-founded the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants. In 2007, we inaugurated admissions telethons, where applicants can obtain free, mini-consultations.
Throughout Accepted’s existence it has served as an innovative leader in the emerging field of graduate admissions consulting, an informative resource for all applicants, and a provider of elite advising and editing to those applicants desiring one-on-one assistance.
As of fall 2008, Accepted has seventeen editors on staff, and our clients have been accepted to over 450 programs around the world.
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Client Testimonial
 Paul, I just wanted to let you know that I was just accepted to HBS. ... Thanks again for all your help."
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