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,
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Index
What's New at Accepted.com
Essay Tip of the Month
Resume 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
College Admission News You Can Use
Our Services
Best Wishes for the Holiday Season!
The entire staff at Accepted.com would like to thank you for your patronage and wish you a
joyous Holiday Season and great New Year!
Time Marches On
In this season, time seems to march at double time. It's hard to focus on essays and keep
all the personal, professional, and educational balls in the air. Those application
deadlines somehow manage to creep up mysteriously out of nowhere.
We want to help you, but please give us enough time to do so. We are extremely busy. Don't
wait to sign up for Accepted.com services or to
contact your editor until you only have a week left in which to write and submit your
applications.
Chats
Come & check out the chats! Accepted.com chats are chock full of info! Visit our transcript
page to catch up on what you missed in earlier chats.
Acceptances
Those acceptances are rolling in! 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.
E-mail acceptances@accepted.com.
The Devil is in the Details
You can argue about the devil, but certainly the substance, distinctiveness, and success of
your essays depends on the details.
Many applicants tend to bury their uniqueness and success under vague assertions. You don't
want to hide your achievements; you want to trumpet them loudly and clearly. For instance,
if you led a team working on a software development project, was it a three-member team or a
thirty-member, cross-functional team with representatives from five different divisions and
two continents? Was the potential market for the product $5 million or $200 million? Did you
launch the product on time and in budget? Did it zoom to the top of the market-share charts?
The details reveal the level of your responsibility, the confidence others have in your
abilities based on their prior experience with you, and the significance of your
accomplishment.
What about your volunteer work? Do you simply "volunteer"? If you do, you aren't
saying anything distinctive or substantive. Are you an EMT working five hours per week? Do
you volunteer at a legal aid clinic? What have you seen or experienced? What have you
learned? Have you launched a bereavement group in a country where such services were
previously unheard of? What were the challenges you overcame to establish that group? What
did you learn from the experience? How has it influenced you?
You may ask, "How can I fit all these details into a short essay?" Good question.
Include many of the specifics in the work history sections — the boxes — of the
application or in an attached resume if allowed. Then in the essay, provide enough detail to
provide context and create interest. Balance your profound insight and reflection with
devilishly dazzling detail.
Resume Tip of the Month
The Facts and Nothing but the Facts
Quick quiz: What percentage of resumes is phony? 10 percent? 15 percent? Surveys of human
resource professionals suggest that between 23 and 45 percent of all resumes in circulation
contain substantially misleading or inaccurate statements. In fact, Wayne D. Ford, author of
the employer's guidebook How to Spot a Phony Resume, conducted his own more disturbing
survey: a minimum of 25 to 30 percent of resumes were considered phony by some employers,
but others estimated the number at 50 to 60 percent and even much higher.
Dates of employment and education are the facts most commonly "embellished," but,
interestingly, applicants don't fabricate facts primarily to land desired jobs but out of
simple human embarrassment — to cover periods of unemployment, incarceration, or a probable
bad reference.
Needless to say, such fabrications spell a prompt end to one's employment chances when
detected. Some employers have even sued offending applicants to recover recruiting and
hiring expenses. A growing number of employers are also hiring background-checking firms
like Global Verification Services and VeriCORP to check dates, employers, even court records
and credit histories. In fact, the more important the position, the greater the likelihood
that a prospective employee will undergo an extensive background check. Human resource
professionals also bring a sophisticated level of intuitive screening to resume evaluation.
That means that even a mistake as apparently harmless as stating that you "increased
profits" without indicating by how much can be seen as a red flag.
The moral? Misleading resumes are deal breakers, and preparing your resume is a serious
business. The good news is that you don't need to lie to cover up a bad stretch in your
employment history. There are effective — and honest — techniques for crafting
resumes that present spotty experiences in the best light. Lying in a resume isn't only
wrong — it's unnecessary.
Paul Bodine
Editor, Accepted.com
Member: National Resume Writer's Association,
Professional Association of Resume Writers
No Pot of Gold
It's no secret that teaching does not guarantee wealth, but a recent report sponsored by a
coalition of college teaching organizations makes it clear that driving a taxi may be more
lucrative.
The Coalition on the Academic Workforce, a group of 25 academic societies, commissioned a
survey of hiring practices in nine social science and humanities fields. The report shows
that in many of the fields over 50% of courses are taught by part-time faculty and grad
students.
Furthermore, the report reveals that these part-timers receive $2000 - $3000 per course. That
pay scale is roughly equivalent to the pay received by baggage handlers or fast-food workers
— and TAs don't get tips.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.theaha.org/caw/pressrelease.htm.
Law School Admissions Transcript
Review a great transcript on law school admissions with Loretta DeLoggio, law school
admissions consultant. For example,
"Ming (ID=99) (Nov 9, 2000 10:20:13 PM)
"So the essential thing in getting to law school is still LSAT... with a 150 LSAT, does
our personal statement do much help at this point?"
For the answer, please review the transcript
online.
LSACD on the Web
LSAC, the charming folks who bring you the LSAT, have developed a great information and
application tool. "LSACD: Computerized Law School Applications and Official Guide to
U.S. Law Schools" can ease your research and the application process. Using this
web-based service, your can research the schools you are interested in, print out your
completed applications to any of the 183 ABA-approved law schools and mail them to the
schools OR, using LSAC's brand new electronic application feature, submit your
applications electronically through LSAC.
Available for $59 from LSAC at http://www.lsac.org/lsacd.asp.
MBA Admissions
On Thursday December 7, 2000 at 8:00 AM Pacific Time (9:00 AM Mountain Time, 10:00 AM
Central Time 11:00 AM Eastern Time; 6:00 PM GMT) Rod Garcia, Director of MBA Admissions at
MIT's Sloan School of Management, and Alex Brown, Associate Director of Admissions at
Wharton, will participate in an online chat focused on MBA education and admissions.
Previous chats with Rod and Alex have provided incredible insight into the MBA admissions
process. Don't miss this opportunity!
PLEASE NOTE THE TIME: For those of you in the New World, the chat is in the morning. For most
of you in the Old World, this chat should be in your evening hours.
Haas Happening
At 7:00PM (8:00 PM Mountain Time, 9:00 PM Central Time, and 10:00 PM Eastern Time) on
December 13, Accepted.com will host a chat with Cheri Scricca, Director of Admissions at the
Haas School of Business, and Jinny Lee, a second-year student at Haas and Vice President of
Admissions in Haas' student government. Bring your questions about Haas' admissions
policies and top-ranked program. Mark your calendars!
New Chat Transcripts Online
MIT
On November 6, Accepted.com hosted a chat with two members of the Sloan admissions
committee and one second-year student. An excerpt:
"Linda Abraham (ID=45) (Nov 6, 2000 10:04:02 PM)
Could you comment on the importance of GPA/GMAT versus essays, interviews?
"Jon McLaughlin (Sloan Admissions) (ID=32) (Nov 6, 2000 10:04:23 PM)
Essays and interviews are critical; remember that everyone out there has great scores,
grades and experiences. What counts after a certain point is the way of presenting that
experience."
View the MIT transcript online.
Wharton
On November 15, 2000, Accepted.com welcomed Alex Brown, a member of Wharton's adcom, Shana
Johnston, a second-year student at Wharton, and a chatroom full of Wharton wannabes to our
first our Wharton chat. An excerpt:
"Ban (ID=141) (Nov 15, 2000 9:29:56 PM)
"? I'm a re-applicant; I need to readdress the weakness i.e. to rewrite [much stuff]
again, also to put in new developments. What strategy I should take? Kind of worried about
getting too long?"
"alex@wharton (ID=131) (Nov 15, 2000 9:30:42 PM)
"B as long as your essay is well structured, then if it is longer, that is fine, but
don't start repeating stuff etc."
View the Wharton chat
transcript online.
Canadian Rankings
"Canadian Business" magazine joins the crowd and publishes its own rankings of
Canadian business schools based on an assumed ROI.
The Top Ten of Canada:
- Queen's
- Manitoba
- Western
- York
- British Columbia
- Toronto
- Wilfrid Laurier
- Simon Fraser
- McGill
- Calgary
For further information, please visit Canadian
Business Magazine.
Increase in AMCAS Application Fees
To cover costs associated with the switch to electronic applications, AMCAS announced a fee
increase for AMCAS 2002. AMCAS is also changing its fee structure to better reflect its
actual costs. The first application will cost $150, and each additional application will
cost $30 regardless of when the applicant decides to submit it. For students who submit the
average number of application (11) or more, the change represents an increase of $45 from
2001. For students submitting fewer than eleven applications, the change will result in an
increase of up to $95 over 2001 fees.
Who's the Prof?
Who will teach you during your first two years at college? Are you more likely to have a
tenured professor as a teacher during those first two years if you attend a top university
or a local community college?
These are a few of the questions addressed in a report released by the Coalition on the
Academic Workforce, which commissioned a survey of nine social-science and humanities fields
conducted by the opinion-research firm, Roper Starch.
The report reveals that except in history and art history non-tenured part-time teachers
teach over 50% of introductory undergraduate courses. Graduate students teach up to 34% of
all undergrad courses and 42.5% of introductory courses.
Students during the first two years of their undergraduate education are as likely to learn
from part-timers and graduate TAs when studying English at Ph.D.-granting institutions as at
community colleges.
The report did not address the critical question: Do full-time professors provide a better
education at the introductory or undergraduate level than part-timer faculty or graduate
students?
For further information please visit:
http://www.theaha.org/caw/index.htm.
Tell a Friend
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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
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