Accepted.com
Odds 'N Ends
We have decided to publish this newsletter as a service to our clients and others who
register for it on our web site. Accepted.com's Odds 'N Ends will bring you our
tip of the month, admissions information for grad, law, MBA, and medical school applicants,
and news about Accepted.com.
We also welcome contributions from readers. If you have comments, questions, or perhaps
an article idea, please e-mail our editor.
We cannot publish everything we receive, but we will try to respond to everyone. And as always,
we appreciate feedback.
Index
What's New at Accepted.com
Tip of the Month
Grad Admission News You Can Use
Law Admission News You Can Use
MBA Admission News You Can Use
Medical Admission News You Can Use
Our Services
What's New at Accepted.com
Vault.com
Vault.com, the leading job and career Web site, has partnered with Accepted.com to provide
advice on writing law and business school personal statements. Two Accepted.com articles
appeared in Vault.com newsletters during the month of January. You can read "
Recipe for Disaster for future MBAs"
and "Recipe for Disaster for future lawyers".
Acceptances!!!!
Those acceptances are rolling in! Harvard, Stanford, Northwestern, Dartmouth, Wharton,
UCLA, U of Chicago. If Accepted.com played any role in your application process —
whether as an informative Web site or advisor and editor — please let us know where
you were admitted, how we helped you, AND how we can do better.
Save the Date!
On March 15 2000, Linda Abraham, Odds 'N Ends editor and Accepted.com's president,
will give a presentation at the American Medical Student Association's Annual Convention in
Washington D.C. Ms. Abraham's presentation is entitled "Ace the AMCAS Essay."
She would love to see you there. Please say "Hi."
For more information about the premed activities at the convention, please visit
http://www.amsa.org/premed.
Contest
Winner
JR is the proud owner of a shiny new Palm Pilot. She got that cool (my kids tell me it's
spelled k-e-w-l) gizmo by providing feedback on some of Accepted.com's expansion plans.
Her response proved to be the winner in Accepted.com's Top Secret Drawing.
Tip of the Month
Timing
"The deadline is a month away. Will that be enough time to write the essays?"
This is often one of the first questions a new client will ask in our initial interview. Sometimes
I can hear the panic in his voice as he weighs the alternatives and begins to think of putting off his
application another year. The answer: if you've already given serious thought to your application and
gotten organized, a month will be plenty of time.
First, you'll need to go through your mental video tape of your life and think of any situation
where you sealed the big deal (what was it worth?), led a discordant group to complete a difficult
project (how did you lead?), or demonstrated your creative talents and abilities to solve difficult
problems (what had everyone else overlooked?). Remember, the anecdotes you bring to your essays tell
more about you than if you merely describe yourself as a leader who seals deals and solves difficult
problems.
Okay, you have a bunch of stories that you think present a full picture of you as an intelligent
leader with serious career potential, now what? How do you make your essay come alive?
First, you'll need to create an outline (yes, junior high school English classes had a purpose!).
The first paragraph needs to be your big opener, an interest-catching story or scene to grab the reader.
The body needs to develop your argument and give examples. And your conclusion should, optimally, tie
the whole essay together and link it with that interest-grabbing story from the beginning.
To begin writing, just sit down and write as if you were telling the story to a friend.
Do not stop to think of "better" words or analyze sentence structure or grammar.
You're on a roll now, so you don't want to lose your train of thought. Once you've written
your ideas down on the paper, you can go through and check editing and perfect your language.
"Okay, Jennifer, you've broken the whole thing down into steps, but I still don't know
how I'm going to do this alone while I work/study full-time and walk my dog every day."
I know the following is a pitch, but it's true. An Accepted.com editor helps you every step
of the way: interviewing you to thresh out the telling anecdotes that distinguish you from
everyone else, getting you started by organizing your essays into an outline, and tightening
up your language and checking your grammar once you've written your thoughts out.
OK. You're organized. You have enough time. And you have direction. So, stop panicking and
go walk your dog!
By Jennifer Bloom, Accepted.com's overseas editor
Grad Admission News You Can Use
Employment Trends in Academia
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports both good news
and bad news.
The bad: Colleges are continuing to hire more part-time and fewer full-time faculty.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, four-year institutions hired 11,083
full-timers and 24,508 part-timers. Overall at four-year institutions, the faculty consisted of
67.4 percent full-timers and 32.6 part-timers. The percentages are similar for two-year
colleges.
The good: Job listings for historians rose 11 percent in the 1998-99 academic year
from the previous year according to the American Historical Association. While the job
market is the best it has been since the early 1990's, when the association started tracking
listings, the picture is not entirely rosy. The number of new PhDs exceeded the number of
available jobs. In 1998, 998 brand new PhDs collected their degrees; in 1997-98 779 jobs
were listed, up from 704 a year earlier.
Law Admissions
News You Can Use
Strategies for Diversity
Law schools have been grappling with their belief in the educational benefits of classroom
diversity and the reality of conflicting legal decisions and expensive courtroom challenges
to affirmative action programs. Disturbed by increasing reliance on numeric criteria, particularly
its own LSAT, LSAC has issued a report on methods for achieving a more diverse student body
without using race-based criteria.
If law schools follow the suggestions contained in the LSAC report, law school admissions
will become increasingly like MBA admissions. In addition to considering academic criteria like
GPA and LSAT, law school adcoms will weigh multiple essays and possibly even interviews. Even now,
"diversity questions" are becoming part of some law school applications. Expect more
and more.
MBA Admissions News You Can Use
Businessweek Forums
Businessweek.com
has added forums to its B-school section.
The BW forums have two features that distinguish them from most MBA discussion boards
on the Web:
- Experts respond to your queries. Nadav Enbar of Businessweek Online says that he
checks the boards daily. Also checking in regularly are Jennifer Reingold, who co-authored
BW's most recent The Best Business Schools, and Mica Schneider, who covers the b-school
beat for BW.
- Civility. According to Enbar, Businessweek is committed to preventing the forums
from "devolving into the wild sniping" found on other admissions boards.
Only the MBA Zone (www.mbazone.com) forums can
boast these traits, and unfortunately they have not attracted the traffic that I believe
BW will. BW's old AOL bulletin boards were heavily trafficked and provided great advice.
These forums, launched at the end of December, promise the same.
Med Admissions News You Can Use
Resident Web Site
Dr. Michael Greger has published an online book,
Heart
Failure - Diary of a Third Year Medical Student, about his third-year medical school
experiences. On the AMSA mailing list, his bleak portrayal of that year depressed almost all
who read it and was immediately disputed by other medical school students and graduates.
In addition to his book, Dr. Greger has solid admissions advice on his site. In perusing
his advice, I noticed that he hadn't participated in clinical volunteer work before starting
medical school. I wrote him and asked if he would have been better prepared for medical school
if he had had such experience. His response:
"I actually did quite a bit of volunteering, but nothing really medical — no clinical
settings. Yes, I think having some genuine exposure (not just having your friend's dad take
you to his office practice once a week) would help in realizing the lifestyle and personalities
that fill the profession. Do I like these people? One could ask. Do I want to be like, act like,
treat people like these people do?"
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of Dr. Greger's point. While most pre-med clients
have clinical volunteer experience, those applying to medical school without any always astound
and perplex me. Before making such a critical decision, you must know what you are getting into.
Volunteer at a hospital, work in a free clinic, do something that will give you a taste of
medicine — before you commit to it.
For Your Enjoyment
Orphan Transcript
A tardy visitor to our most recent chat supplies this month's moment of levity. Apparently
"Eros" walked in a little late for the chat. It was scheduled for 9:00 PM Eastern
Time on January 11. Here is the transcript of his midnight musings.
Eros (11-Jan-00 11:59:08 PM)
I am alone. Why did I have to show up late. That's the story of my life.I'll never get into
law school.
Eros (12-Jan-00 12:00:07 AM)
Yes you will! Cheer up old boy! There's plenty of ways to skin a parakeet.none legal, but what
the hay!
Kindergarten Personal Statement???
Last month I asked for feedback on the e-mail I received which asked for help with a personal
statement for kindergarten. I asked if you thought it was a gag or for real.
Most people that I queried really weren't sure. Here is one intriguing response:
It depends on the sender's address...
If it is from small-town USA, it is a gag.
If it comes from a big city it sadly is not!
Tell a Friend
Please share this issue with friends and colleagues who share your interest in graduate
school admission. Tell a friend or two about
Accepted.com's powerful array of online pre-professional resources. 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/help/essay_help.htm.
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