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
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

What's New at Accepted.com

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 are admitted, how we helped you, AND how we can do better. Visit our acceptance survey form or e-mail us.

Chats

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.

Deadlines Dead Ahead

The holidays are past, and it's back to work. Somehow, those application deadlines seemingly crept up out of nowhere. It's crunch time.

We want to help you, but please give us enough time to do so. Don't wait another minute before registering for Accepted.com services or contacting your editor. Make sure we are available to serve your needs.

Accepted.com Masters the Niche

The Business Advisor profiles Accepted.com in its article on "Niche Masters" by Linda Formichelli.

Condolences

Accepted.com's editors, staff, and clients extend condolences to Accepted.com editor Sheila Bender on the passing of her son, Seth Bender.

Essay Tip of the Month

The Optional Question: To Be or Not To Be

Bottom line: Let it be!

You can use the optional question for the following purposes:

1. To address weaknesses in your profile, for example a low GPA or test score.
2. To bring out a distinctive aspect of your profile or an achievement that you did not have room to include in other essays or parts of your application.

What if you don't have any weaknesses to address? Lucky you! Then you simply have to decide if you have an experience or quality that will add value to your application and isn't given adequate attention elsewhere in your application. In making that evaluation, remember that none of the adcoms seek narrow nerds. They read your essays to discover what kind of human being you are. So if your personal statement or essays have focused exclusively on professional activities and say little about you as an individual, the optional essay allows you to reveal a different side of your personality and experience. You can reveal that other dimension when you write about a hobby, involvement in the arts, distinctive personal background, community service or political experience, sports participation, etc.

Bottom line: The optional essay is an opportunity for you to provide additional reasons for the adcom to admit you. Use it wisely to increase your chances of admission.

Make sure you don't squander it by merely repeating material found elsewhere in the application or offering some kind of grand finale summary. Doing so simply irritates admissions people. In that case, it's better not to be.

Resume Tip of the Month

Resumes for College Students and Recent Graduates

You're seeking an internship during college or have just graduated and are targeting that long-awaited first post-college job. Yet you don't feel that your actual work experience — waitress, cashier, camp counselor — reflects your knowledge, skills, and potential. Most likely, your school-related accomplishments and activities do more accurately reflect your potential and capabilities.

Here are some tips for preparing a resume if you are pursuing a college-related internship or that first post-graduation job that go beyond the obvious "education" and "work experience":

• List all academic honors and awards.
• List participation in any varsity sport(s), noting duration of participation and any notable achievement - and add qualitative information if relevant; for example, did you regularly boost the team's morale?
• Does your school require special papers, theses, or research projects? If so, note the paper/project, its title, grade if B or above, and quote any noteworthy feedback.
• If you have completed a "regular" paper or project that was especially significant in some way, include it, explaining the significance.
• Flesh out activities. Don't just say "wrote regular articles for College Daily"; mention the frequency, any definable impact an article had, average length, type of article (news, features, sports, arts review). If you regularly met tight deadlines, that's worth adding! If you participate in a club even without holding office, detail your efforts.
• If you informally help a professor, say reviewing tests, reserving books, etc., note it.
• If you often help out classmates with schoolwork voluntarily, that's something to add.
• If your school requires four courses per semester and you regularly took five, a potential employer would like to know about your extra commitment — and success.
• Foreign study experience - note any semesters or summers abroad, and add some detail about what you learned and did.
• Do you know foreign languages beyond the rudimentary level? If you have working knowledge of a foreign language, mention it — be sure to specify level, e.g., fluent, conversational, reading knowledge.

Cindy Tokumitsu
Editor, Accepted.com
Member, Professional Association of Resume Writers

Grad Admission News You Can Use

Job Market for English Faculty Turns...

Up.

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the number of faculty openings in English is up for the third year in a row. This year, the number of openings rose by 6% from 899 in 1999 to 954 in 2000 according to the Modern Language Association. The total number of positions in English has risen 37% since 1997.

Law Admissions News You Can Use

ABA Remains Accrediting Authority for Law Schools

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a key Department of Education committee has found that the A.B.A.'s standards for accrediting law schools are reasonable. Critics charge that A.B.A. standards unnecessarily inflate law school costs and consequently make it much harder for disadvantaged students to obtain a legal education. Although the critics have lost this battle, if not the war, they have clearly influenced the A.B.A. to give the law schools more discretion.

MBA Admissions News You Can Use

UNC Chat

I am pleased to announce that our next chat will focus on the Kenan-Flagler Business School of University of North Carolina on Tuesday, January 9, 2001 at 10:00 AM PST (11:00 AM Mountain Time, 12:00 PM Central Time, 1:00 PM Eastern Time, 6:00 PM GMT). Dr. Jim Dean, Associate Dean at Kenan Flagler; Sherry Wallace, Director of Admissions at Kenan-Flagler; and a UNC second-year student will join us for a lively discussion.

I have had the pleasure of corresponding with Dr. Dean about Kenan-Flagler's program and goals. It is a top school committed to growth and improvement. If you are serious about obtaining a quality MBA education, bring your questions about UNC's program and admissions policies to Accepted.com's UNC chat. Mark your calendars!

The chat will take place in our chat room.

For further information, please visit our chat section or e-mail mbachat@accepted.com.

From My Mailbox

"BTW, your admissions chats are a great source of info. A lot of the things discussed came out during my recent campus visits at Wharton and Columbia."

Wharton Announces West Coast Outpost

The Wharton School announced that it is launching Wharton West in Northern California, which will offer Wharton's executive MBA program, MBA courses for students based at the Philadelphia campus, internships, and executive education programs.

Dear Harker explains, "Wharton West is a direct response to market forces. It will bring the Wharton brand of management education and the best of Wharton's resources to emerging markets and developing industries in the West. We recognize that our faculty and students must be able to work firsthand on the West Coast, and this gives us an historic opportunity to expand our leadership in business education and service in one of the world's most important hubs of technological and economic activity."

Chicago Seeks New Dean

Businessweek reports that Dean Robert S. Hamada, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business' dean for the last eight years, announced his departure.

For more details, please visit Businessweek.

Yet Another Set of Rankings

Tired of ranking based on mundane, crass measures like salary, student or recruiter satisfaction, GMAT? Burned out on those who rank according to subjective indices like reputation? According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the most recent yardstick, published by the Academy of Management Journal, ranks b-schools based on the schools' influence and professors' research productivity as measured by the number of pages that faculty members publish in top-tier scholarly journals from 1986 to 1998.

The latest top ten: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Stanford, NYU, Chicago, Columbia, Minnesota, UT-Austin, Harvard, Kellogg.

For the complete list, please visit
http://www.terry.uga.edu/~adennis/rankings.

Med Admissions News You Can Use

Specialty in Demand

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published this month a study projecting the balance between demand and supply for intensivists and pulmonary care specialists in light of the aging population. The study concludes that the current ratio of supply to demand will remain "in rough balance until 2020" for intensivists. However between 2007 and 2020, the study predicts a worsening shortage with a shortfall of 22% by 2020 and 35% by 2030. For pulmonary specialists, the shortfall is anticipated before 2007 and will be 35% by 2020 and 46% by 2030.

Perhaps you should consider this specialty?

Baylor College of Medicine's President Steps Down

Dr. Ralph Feigin, president of Baylor College of Medicine for the last five years, has announced his plans to resign. Dr. Feigin found overly taxing the increasing demands of running the school while also teaching and serving as physician-in-chief of Texas Children's Hospital and chairman of Baylor's pediatrics department. He will stay on as president until Baylor finds his successor, approximately six months to one year.

College Admissions News You Can Use

Do You Have Entrepreneurial Dream?

Are you torn between pursuing your entrepreneurial vision and completing your bachelor's degree? The University of Maryland has designed a program that may allow you to do both.

The Hinman CEOs program for upper-class undergraduates encourages entrepreneurial creativity by placing participants together in a high-tech living arrangement that encourages them to "incubate creative ideas and develop critical business skills in a team-based environment." In addition, students will meet weekly with business leaders and speakers, take courses in entrepreneurship, and be eligible to participate in the Hinman Business Plan Competition.

For more information, please visit http://www.hinmanceos.umd.edu.

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. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us at info@accepted.com or Phone.

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