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
MBA Admission News You Can Use
Law Admission News You Can Use
Medical Admission News You Can Use
College Admission News You Can Use
Our Services
Referral Reward Program
Accepted.com has grown phenomenally over the years due to word-of-mouth. Now thanks to the new Accepted.com Affiliate Program (see article below), we have an easy and efficient way to concretely express our appreciation to former clients and Acceptees who send new clients our way.
It's easy too. Just four simple steps:
Profit from Accepted.com's Affiliate Program
Accepted.com launched its new affiliate program this month. If you, your business, or club have a Web site, you can earn valuable referral fees by linking to Accepted.com. Participation doesn't cost you a penny. Please visit our affiliate section to learn more.
Wait-listed?
Visit http://www.accepted.com/services for information on how Accepted.com can help you with your wait-list letters and strategy.
Dinged?
If you received the skinny envelope and would like feedback and suggestions for next year, please visit http://www.accepted.com/services.
Love Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry
No it doesn't. But I was reminded of this trite saying from an even triter old movie during a recent visit to the supermarket.
"I'm sorry; we only have plastic bags this evening" the checker apologized.
"No problem. I prefer plastic bags." I happily replied.
While the checker earned a few points for her pleasant demeanor, she was injecting a negative where she didn't have to. The plastic bag wasn't an issue for me, and its absence wouldn't have detracted from my opinion of my local supermarket - unless of course someone pointed out that the store couldn't manage to order enough paper bags to satisfy the demands of the environmentally correct consumer.
What do grocery stores have in common with applicants? Just like my local market, you shouldn't create issues where none exist. For example, if you have a test score somewhat below the school's average, but still within the 25-50-percentile range, don't start apologizing and drawing attention to your score. Without mentioning the score, provide other evidence of your academic ability. Only if you are dealing with truly extenuating circumstances (inability to take a test prep course is not one of them) and had regularly scored higher on practice exams, should you even consider "explaining" a slightly less than desirable test score.
Here's another example: If you graduated with an excellent GPA from a no-name school and landed a plum job at an elite firm that usually only hires Ivy grads, don't highlight your school's no-name status by trumpeting in your essay, "Even though I went to No-Name College, my firm, which normally hires only graduates of Harvard and Stanford, offered me a position because they recognized my stellar qualities." You should highlight the experiences, attributes, and achievements that caused the firm to hire you, but don't focus on your colleagues' qualifications or your school's lack of academic panache.
Finally, if you are taking classes to prepare for your graduate studies - and make up for a less-than-headline-grabbing undergrad performance -- focus on the positive and don't remind them of the slightly negative. Say that you enrolled in the post-bac course to further explore the medical sciences or you are taking calculus, statistics, and accounting to prepare for b-school. Then earn the A's. The adcom will conclude that your freshman C in organic chem or calc reflects long-gone immaturity, and the recent grades show your true academic bent.
If you have genuine negatives, for example, a GPA more than .5 below the school's average or test scores below the school's 25th percentile, then you do have some explaining to do. Saying "I'm sorry" still won't do much good, but taking responsibility, discussing circumstances, and providing other evidence of your ability could mitigate the damage.
Highlighting Skills and Qualities from Non-Work Activities
You do have the leadership, teamwork, or organizational experience for that great job your friend told you about. But your resume doesn't show it, because you didn't acquire the experience from work. You acquired it from community volunteering. Or participation with a theater ensemble. Or teaching Sunday school. Or political activism. Or coaching tennis.
Especially if you are changing careers or are short on work experience, you may want to draw on your non-professional experience to demonstrate the skills, talents, and qualities that a desired job requires. You can use your resume to do so, by providing details of the relevant activities.
First, identify the skills, talents, experience, and/or qualities you want to portray, and then the related activities. Add a section called "Other Relevant Experience" after the "Professional Experience" section of your resume and use bullet points just as you do for the work section. The basic approach is the same: present specific accomplishments to illustrate your skills/experience. Here is an example for a person who wants to highlight leadership, communication skills, and initiative:
- Teacher of ESL and American Life Skills classes, ABC Community Center, 9/00-present
- Teach one evening a week; class consists of adult students who recently immigrated from Central America.
- As ESL teacher, identified need among students for guidance and support in adapting to new culture; developed proposal, including curriculum, implementation plan, and suggestions for funding, for new American Life Skills Class.
- Presented proposal to program director and board; received approval in one week.
- Recruited and trained three other volunteers to team-teach the course.
- By obtaining regular feedback from students, continuously improve and refine course.
- Developing new proposal for weekend "crash course" on U.S. employment practices.
If this person is a junior-level accountant seeking a broader corporate finance role involving cross-functional processes and project leadership, or a computer engineer who seeks an IT consulting position involving client interaction, teamwork, and initiative in problem-solving, this non-work experience is clearly invaluable to her marketability.
Cindy Tokumitsu
Senior Editor, Accepted.com
Member, Professional Association of Resume Writers
Spring Special for MBA applicants
To get started on the right foot, take advantage of Accepted.com's Spring Special. You can purchase one hour of Admissions Consulting and one Initial Essay Package for only $650 (Stanford $800) -- that's $110.00 off Accepted.com's regular price for these services when purchased separately! Good through April 30, 2003.
For additional information, please visit the Spring Special.
Accepted.com Extends "It's a 10!"
Accepted.com is extending until April 30 "It's a 10!," the contest for MBA applicants who fill out an MBA Interview Feedback questionnaire after interviewing. It's painless: Provide feedback on your MBA admissions interview and you're enrolled. Every tenth questionnaire wins a $10 gift certificate at Accepted.com or Amazon.com, winner's choice. :-)
For complete information, please "It's a 10!"
Lying on resumes -- you're out!
According to BusinessWeek and other sources, officials at UC Berkeley's Haas Graduate School of Business ran background checks this year on the roughly 100 students it admitted first round and recently rejected 5% for lying on their resumes.
Haas is one of a growing number of educational institutions that are particularly concerned about ethics in the wake of the collapse of Enron, et al., last year.
Wharton School of Business this year began requiring applicants to pay a $35 fee for an outside firm to audit their applications. As Rosemaria Martinelli, Wharton's Director of Admissions, told the Los Angeles Times, "Competition is tough these days, but we're trying to remind them that integrity is the most important thing".
For more information, please visit http://www.businessweek.com/careers/content/mar2003/ca20030312_7349_ca013.htm or
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bizskul15mar15,1,1234831.story.
Joint degree programs
The Economist and BusinessWeek report that about 25%-35% of students at top B-schools are now pursuing two degrees at once as they try to beef up their skills and marketability in a tough job environment. Deans caution them not to expect automatically higher salaries as a reward for the additional letters after their names, but dollar signs upon graduation are not their only motivation. Typically, students save a year (and tuition) by enrolling in joint programs as opposed to two programs separately.
The most popular joint degree is the MBA/JD. But other combinations serve different niches and reflect different interests, for example, MD/MBA, MS/MBA, MPH/MBA and many more.
For more information go to http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_11/b3824109_mz025.htm
LSAC Update
LSAC is rolling out a slew of new online services to better serve law school applicants. The following services are now available for free to online account holders:
- Activity Updates
- Master Law School Reports
- LSAT admission tickets
- LSAT disclosure materials ($25 fee for optional hard-copy)
- An expanded Candidate Referral Service
Also, register online and automatically receive your scores back via email for free (even more quickly than TelScore!, which is still available for $10).
To check out LSAC's new online services, visit www.LSAC.org or go directly to online services by clicking: https://os.lsac.org/Release/logon/logon.aspx
Accepted.com Early Bird Special for Pre-Meds
Purchase selected Accepted.com Essay and Letter of Recommendation Packages by May 31 and receive 10% off the package price. Get a head start on your applications AND save money!
http://www.accepted.com/services/medicalservices.aspx.
Alternative Curricula in Med School
The American Medical Student Association Foundation has chosen the University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts, and University of California, Irvine Schools of Medicine to test the integration of complementary and alternative medical approaches into their mainstream medical curricula. The new curriculum was designed by an advisory panel of 20 AMSA foundation members interested in the training of future physicians.
For more information about this and other AMSA programs you can visit www.amsa.org.
New Premed Site
MedSchoolChat is devoted to helping past, present, and future MDs get the information they are looking for. It has a growing forum, chat capability, and a budding collection of links, articles, and news items.
Check out www.medschoolchat.com.
Admission Season Reveals More Transfers
The Associated Press reports that nearly one third of all college students transfer to different institutions of higher learning at some point during their studies. Most transfers are from community colleges to four-year universities. Ideally, transfer students should be aware of the various prerequisites they need to fulfill and choose their major well in advance to facilitate seamless transfers from one institution to another. The new tendency for "articulation agreements" to be made among intrastate institutions is seen as a great boon to any prospective transfer student. Problems transferring credit are more common when students transfer interstate.
For more information go to www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/03/11/college.transfers.ap/index.html
Fewer College Students Graduate in 4 Years
The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA has found that only approximately 36% of college students finish their degrees in four years, while after six years, only roughly 58% complete their studies.
At private institutions, rates were significantly higher than at public universities.
The study, reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education, also revealed ethnic differences. About 38% of white and Asian-American students finished within four years; only 29% of African-American and 21% of Mexican-American students did so.
With rare exception, women among various ethnic groups tended to finish their degrees more quickly than did their male counterparts. Additionally, the study revealed that students who performed better in high school were more likely to finish college quickly than students who didn't do well during their high school years.
Stanford Freezes Faculty and Staff Salaries
The Chronicle reports that the current U.S. economic downturn has hit one of the nation's top private universities. In addition to cutting the operating budgets of all departments by 5%-10% and instituting selected layoffs, all 8,700 employees at Stanford University in California will have their salaries frozen in order to trim the school's projected budget deficit of $25 million. Administrators stressed that unless the U.S. economy continues to tank, the freeze is a one-time measure and that the university will be back on a normal course next year. They also added that bonuses and raises to underpaid staff would be unaffected by any budgetary cuts.
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 can be found in our catalog. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us at http://www.accepted.com/services/generalinquiry.aspx.
We look forward to serving you.
|