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Submit a Stellar Application

MBA BlastOff: 45 Terrific Tips to Launch Your MBA Application to Acceptance.

The Consultant's Guide to MBA Admission


Best Practices for
MBA Admissions

The Finance Professional`s Guide to MBA Admissions Success

The Techie`s Guide to MBA Admissions

The Nine Mistakes You Don`t Want to Make on an MBA Waitlist

The Nine Mistakes You Don`t Want to Make on a Med School Waitlist

Write Your Way to a Residency Match

Create a Better Sequel: How to Reapply Right to Business School

Write Your Way to a Fellowship Match

The Nine Mistakes You Don`t Want to Make on a Law School Waitlist


How to Write Great College Application Essays and Stay Sane

September 2008 Volume 11, Issue 9
Free monthly newsletter Subscribers: 2457
Archives ISSN: 1526-2316
Published by Accepted.com Linda Abraham, Editor
Subscriber self administration

Accepted.com Odds 'N Ends

In This Issue:
  • What's New at Accepted: Accepted is Growing; Featured Ebook; MBA Mojo Contest; MBAChats; Blog Posts of Interest; Connect with Accepted
  • Essay Tip: Lively Language
  • Resume Tip: Avoiding “Crutch” Words in Your Resume
  • Wrap Up: Our Services; Subscription Information




Accepted.com is Growing!

We welcome three new editors to our staff:
  • Catherine Cook served on the Duke University Law School Admissions Committee and also has previously worked with Accepted.
  • Dr. Katherine Kidd has advised hundreds of students through their undergraduate careers and on to their graduate education in her capacity as professor and director of two undergraduate international studies programs.
  • Dr. Rebecca Blustein served in UCLA's Scholarship Resource Center where she helped hundreds of students craft winning applications and personal statements, for everything from small departmental essay prizes to prestigious international awards such as the Fulbright. Visit to see her complete bio.

If you would like to work with any of these three highly qualified professionals, please submit a service request.

Featured Ebook: The Consultant’s Guide to MBA Admission

We have updated one of my favorite ebooks for the 2008-09 application season: “The Consultant’s Guide to MBA Admission.” In this ebook, fictional MBA applicant and management consultant, Scott Murray, applies to several schools including Harvard Business School. The ebook contains both his story and practical tips as well as Scott’s sample HBS essays for this year’s questions.

The 2008 version of the Consultant’s Guide will be available within a couple of weeks. If you order now, you will receive the updated version as soon as it is available. Please enter coupon code CG2009 upon checkout. MBA Mojo Contest

Accepted's MBA Mojo opens the door to a world of opportunity by combining fun and information. Each month through January, Accepted.com will pose five new questions geared towards developing an MBA admissions strategy and identifying key attributes that will make the applicant's essays stand out from the crowd.

Correctly answering all five questions wins the applicant a membership in the 100% Club and an MBA Mojo t-shirt. In addition, every participant will automatically be entered in a drawing and eligible to win a $50 credit on Accepted.com services or a free MBA admissions ebook.

Blog Posts of Interest

Connect with Accepted

  • Accepted on Facebook
  • Accepted on Twitter
  • Accepted Forums

  • Accepted.com Chats

    The MBA chat season is in full swing. Here are the upcoming chats, hosted by Linda Abraham, for the month of September:

      Sept. 11: INSEAD MBA Admissions

      Sept. 15: Wharton MBA Admissions

      Sept. 25: Yale MBA Admissions

      Sept. 29: London Business School Admissions

    Visit our chat schedule page for exact times and more information. All chats will take place in the Accepted.com chat room.

    And don’t forget to checkout our 2009 Michigan Ross chat transcript. The chat was a big success and is a must-read for all Ross applicants.


    Essay Tip

    Lively Language


    "My position as an analyst at Big Firm X offered me the ability to handle many demanding situations."

    You can't get much blander than the preceding sentence. No metaphors. No references to the senses. Wordy. Snore.

    Despite realizing that your application essays should be interesting and engaging, personal statements are full of gray prose. Use these five tips to add pizzazz to your writing:

    1. Use sensory language. Even the references to "color" and "gray" in the previous paragraphs are visual despite referring to concepts, not something with physical presence. Like metaphors, sensory language concretizes abstractions and brings black-and-white text to life. For example, so far in this article my use of "bland" refers to taste. "Exhortations" conjures up memories of an orator or preacher giving fiery speeches pushing you to try harder. These phrases all involve the senses and make writing more vivid.
    2.  Incorporate metaphors. They will make your experiences and writing more vibrant.
    3.  Choose active, descriptive verbs. You can write, "The kite went up." Or you can write, "The kite soared." The latter evokes the image of a kite climbing gracefully high into the sky. The former could refer to anything … well going up.
    4. Avoid stuffy prose using lots of adverbs and adjectives. Does food "have a severely elevated temperature," or is it "too hot to handle," "steaming," or "burning my tongue"?
    5. Use specifics and details. I know that I harp on this a lot, but I can't say it often enough. Going back to my opening example of dull writing, what was the "situation"? Why was it demanding? Who was involved? Or was it a technically demanding project? How so? Give me some substance. Give me some details.

    These five key tips will help you avoid the bland, dull prose that plagues so many essays. Follow them to ensure that your essays portray your experiences in vivid, life-like color.


    Resume Tip

    Avoiding "Crutch" Words in Your Resume


    With the application season now well underway, many of you are revamping and updating your resume as an important step in the application process. Many will succumb to the temptation to use generalities and buzz words as a crutch to make the process go faster and/or to try to sound in sync with the target audience, the adcoms. What is the problem with such words? They don't say anything. They're deceptive. On first glance, they seem clear, but when you really think about what they mean - nothing is there.

    Here are some examples of the two types of crutch words and how to avoid them.

    Generalities. Leadership, entrepreneurial - those might just be the two most overused generalities currently decorating resumes. "Provided leadership to newly formed pricing team." Sounds okay - at first. What exactly does "provided leadership" mean? It could mean motivating the team to stick to its recommendation in spite of senior management's initial skepticism, getting a cross-functional group to envision a common goal and utilize their diverse skills to meet it, or numerous other interesting and meaningful achievements. Similarly, consider, "Instilled entrepreneurial attitude among administrative staff." "Entrepreneurial attitude" can mean any number of things - seeking and grabbing opportunities, individual accountability and initiative - but the reader would never know if you used the vague phrase.

    Buzz words. "Drive," "add value," "change" (alone or following "drive"), "leverage" are just some. "Drove process to create common technology platform across divisions." Impressive, or so it sounds, until you start to wonder just what the writer meant by "drove." Developing the process? Getting resistant users onboard? Leading an implementation team? Any or all of the above? Or consider "add value" - what value, exactly, and how did you add it? "Change management" is tricky, in that it is an accepted phrase in the business community, yet used alone it doesn't say much. If you feel it would be helpful to show familiarity with the concept, use the phrase and then specify, e.g., "Employed change management by doing [specific thing] when/where/how/with or for whom."

    Generalities and buzz words are seductive - don't fall for them!

    Cindy Tokumitsu
    Senior Editor, Accepted.com
    Member, Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants


    Wrap Up

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

    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.

    Published by Accepted.com
    ISSN:1526-2316

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    Copyright
    Copyright 2008 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!
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    News
    MBA Mojo Contest
  • Do you have it?
  • Find out & win great prizes!
  • Cornell Chatter
    Guest: Randall Sawyer, Dir. of Admissions
    Date: Oct 13, 2008
    Time: 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/ 5:00 PM GMT
    Place: Chat Room
    Consortium Chat
    Guest: Jackie Olden, Director of Recruiting
    Date: Oct. 23, 2008
    Time: 5:00 PM PT/8:00 PM ET
    Place: Chat Room
    Haas Chat
    Guest: Peter Johnson, Dir. of MBA Admissions
    Date: Oct. 29, 2008
    Time: 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/ 5:00 PM GMT
    Place: Chat Room
    Wharton Chat
    Guest: Judith Hodara, Sr Associate Dir MBA Admissions & Other Adcom Members
    Date: Nov 5, 2008
    Time: 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/ 5:00 PM GMT
    Place: Chat Room
    Kellogg Chat
    Guest: Beth Flye, Dir. of MBA Admissions
    Date: Mon. Nov. 10, 2008
    Time: 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/ 5:00 PM GMT
    Place: Chat Room

    Client Testimonial
    "Cindy's assistance was invaluable. I consider myself to be a reasonably effective writer, but the Cindy's editing really served to take my 80% work and provide the polish and focus that my essays needed to stand out. (Accepted to Duke's XMBA program)"


     
     
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