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Odds 'N Ends
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Index
What's New at Accepted.com
Essay Tip of the Month
Resume Tip of the Month
Law Admission News You Can Use
MBA Admission News You Can Use
College Admission News You Can Use
Grad Admission News You Can Use
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Pizzazz And Razzmatazz
That title got your attention. And that's what you want your essay to do when the reader looks into your file. Let's examine techniques, other than kitschy titles, for creating interest. Specifically let's look at surprise, irony, and suspense.
- Surprise -- Start you essay in an unexpected manner. For example, open an essay about your background by starting with yesterday or tomorrow, but make sure you spend most of the essay answering the question and discussing your past.
- Irony -- "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." Dickens understood that irony grabs interest and opened the classic, Tale of Two Cities, with that intriguing line. Learn from the master. Are you writing about someone who influenced you greatly? Are you in certain ways different from your mentor? Highlight the contrasts and differences, while saying that he or she was the greatest influence on you. Was your proudest accomplishment conceived in failure? Open with the failure and discuss how that failure led to your later success. Use the irony and contrast inherent in these situations to grab attention and tell your story.
- Suspense -- Arouse curiosity by using suspense. Ask a question at the beginning of your essay, but don't answer it until the end.
Implicit in these suggestions: don't start with the common or expected. Don't begin your goals essay or statement of purpose with, "I want to be a doctor because . " or "I was born in . "
Let your essays grab your readers' attention so that they will read your essay because they want to and not because they have to.
Resume Tactics That Grab Attention
As life activities go, reading a stack of resumes usually falls somewhere near the lower end of the "want-to-do" list. The document you painstakingly packed with all your accomplishments and aspirations may be given only 10 to 20 seconds to do its job. How can you attract and sustain employers' attention to your skills and experience? The answer varies to some extent with your field. Creative types (graphic artists, writers, illustrators, etc.) may use all manner of exotic design tactics -- two- to three-column formats, graphics or line art, effects such as boxes or shadowing, even unusual paper (colors or patterns).
Job seekers in more traditional fields -- the vast majority -- will have to do their attention grabbing in subtler ways. The font you choose (within conservative limits), the positioning of headers (centered, etc.), the distribution of white space, the use of bold and italics -- all can help your resume stand out. Even simple things like increasing the size of your name at the top of the resume or the understated use of horizontal rules to separate sections can help.
As Susan Britton Whitcomb points out in her book Resume Magic, the key real estate in any resume is the two-inch space around the upper fold of a tri-folded page. What to put there? Headlines work in newspapers and advertising, and they can in resumes too: The highlighted line "Computer Society Award-winning Software Designer with 13 Years' Apple and Sun Experience" can draw the reader's attention to a brief bullet list of skills that encapsulate the message of the resume as a whole. If those bullets are what employers seek they will read the rest of the resume with real interest. When they do, their interest can be sustained by ensuring that the resume includes all the relevant terms and key words specific to the target industry as well as concrete, quantifiable achievements that concretely demonstrate the impact you can have on their organization.
--Paul Bodine, Member, Professional Association of Resume Writers & Career Coaches
Applications Soar
The GMAC Application Trends Survey confirmed what we already know: Application volume skyrocketed in 2001-02. Of the 74 schools that responded to the survey, 84% reported an increase in full-time application volume, and 34% reported increases of greater than 21%. Private full-time MBA programs saw the largest increases, with 41% reporting increases of 21% or more. Sixty percent of part-time and 57% of EMBA programs also reported increases.
What contributed to the surge, especially for the early rounds? According to GMAC, applicants applied to more schools, and increased numbers of women and minorities applied in response to school outreach efforts.
Click here to see the survey results.
Babson Receives Award For Entrepreneurship
BizEd reports that the Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College has earned the 2002 National Model MBA Program award from the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
Columbia Calls Off Search For New Journalism Dean
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education a lively debate rages at Columbia's journalism school over the direction and role of the school. Alumni, faculty, and current students are deliberating the appropriate balance between journalism theory and craft in the curriculum. In light of the uncertainty concerning the school's mission, Columbia president Lee C. Bollinger has temporarily halted the search for a new dean until Columbia determines the school's direction.
Is It Worth It?
Is that Ph.D. worth the tuition and trouble? According to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report, the answer is a resounding, unequivocal "YES!"
"The Big Payoff: Educational Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings" shows that people with a Ph.D. earn an average of $3.4 million over the course of their working lives compared with $2.5 million for those with a masters degree and $2.1 million for those with a bachelor's degree, and $1.2 million for those with only high school diplomas.
You can view the report at
http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p23-210.pdf.
Applications Surge
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports law schools, just like MBA programs and many other professional programs, experienced record-breaking increases in application volume this past year. ABA accredited law schools received 88,418 application for the class matriculating this year, versus 74,994 for the previous year -- an increase of 18%. Thirty law schools reported increases of more than 40% over last year's volume.
College Board And Act To Stop Flagging Accommodations
The College Board and Disabilities Rights Advocates (DRA) announced today that as of October 1, 2003 the College Board would discontinue the practice of identifying score reports on standardized tests taken by students who require extended test-taking time due to documented disabilities.
To address concerns that accommodations for the disabled may be abused, the College Board simultaneously announced a rigorous review process "to ensure that extended test-taking time is not granted to students who do not require this accommodation."
For more information on this change in policy, please view
http://www.collegeboard.com/press/article/0,1443,11360,00.html
ACT also announced that it will stop flagging tests taken with extended time conditions effective with the 2003-2004 testing year. It promises to take the "steps necessary to ensure that only those students with legitimate needs are granted additional time during the testing session."
Click here for more information.
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