Accepted.com Odds 'N Ends

Last month we covered the importance of goals and of anchoring them in your experience. This month, let's discuss structure for goals essays.

It's all too easy (and dull) to start your goals essay with something like following for a hypothetical pre-med:

"After completing medical school, I plan to pursue a residency in family practice and join an HMO in my hometown of Poughkeepsie." 

The author will then drone on and discuss the key experiences that led to the development of this glittering goal. Now there is nothing really wrong with the goal or with the opening. They have the advantage of being concrete and specific. They are also terribly pedestrian, and if your reader is reading hundreds of essays with similar openings, they couldn't be more boring.

Let's examine four other approaches to goals essays:

1. The vision statement. Instead of starting with a declarative statement of your goals, open with a scene of what you would like to do when you complete your education. A-day-in-the-life can work very well. Alternatively, open with a scene that illustrates your goal (See sample MBA goals essay). Then flashback to the experiences critical to the development of this goal.
2. Key experience or accomplishment. What attracts you to your goal? If you have experienced the satisfaction of similar work, especially in a setting that highlights an accomplishment or desirable character traits, open with that seminal event and then discuss its influence on you and your goals. (See sample medical school essay.)
3. Discuss current experience or job. This is especially effective for someone who has an impressive job. For example if you are an MBA applicant who has recently moved up to project manager at a software company, you can discuss what you like about your new responsibilities and how that satisfaction motivates you to broaden your skill set so that you can move into more of a general management role. In other words, analyze what you like and dislike on the job and then show how an MBA will open opportunities to more of what you like and less of what you dislike.
4. Chronological. Start with an event in the past and then chronologically tell the story of your goal's development. (For an example, see "The Twilight Zone")

Your choice of approach depends on the question you are responding to, the specificity of your goals, and other experiences and aspects of your application. Now that you know what to include in a goals essay and how to structure it, it's time to write!

Back to top

Resumes for Immigrants
For immigrants in post-9/11 America, finding work has never been harder. On top of the usual difficulties newly arrived job-hunters face, they must now also contend with increased competition resulting from the government's more draconian limits on work visas. Assuming you have permission to work in the United States, what special approaches should you take to re-purpose your resume for the U.S. job market?

First, make clear what your work status is. Once, it might have been OK to mention this only in the cover letter or even to wait until the interview, but nowadays, if you have the legal right to work here, put it right on your resume - usually at the very end. For example: "Permanent resident of the U.S., with full Immigration and Naturalization Service authorization for employment" or "Visa status: F1-authorized to receive 12 months of practical training."

Next translate - literally and figuratively - your education and work experience into American terms. It's not always easy. Yes, German "Redakteur" is easily translated as "Editor," but what do you do with "Meister Instandhaltung, Gaggenau, Technische Geb�udeausr�stung Elektrische Energietechnik"? Consult bilingual dictionaries for your particular field and ask U.S. peers in your industry for their input. If for technological or cultural reasons, it isn't possible for you to assume the same level of position in the U.S. that you had in your home country, you'll need to highlight the skills and experiences that will best help you get the U.S. job - even if they aren't necessarily what you're proudest of. 

Since many Americans aren't experts on foreign cultures, your resume may also have to supply context or brief explanations for them. For example, after each employer name you could add a brief descriptive sentence:

Zuangshou Science Export/Import
One of five subsidiaries of Chinese State International Trade Division, which specializes in the import and export of pharmaceuticals and chemical raw materials.

Similarly, if your native country assigns you your first job, a U.S. reader may not realize that your first job out of university was not one that you chose. So if your undergraduate major and first position seem glaringly mismatched, you should briefly explain this cultural fact in the section of your resume about that first position. Was your career or education interrupted by war? State this fact in your resume, since it may reflect positively on your character and explain a gap in your employment/educational history.

Perhaps the immigrant's biggest adjustment in crafting a U.S. resume is viewing it as an unabashed vehicle for self-marketing. Instead of a dry list of job functions, you will have to become comfortable communicating your accomplishments with active, even powerful words while, of course, remaining truthful and accurate. 

Paul Bodine
Senior Editor, Accepted.com
Member, Professional Association of Resume Writers

Back to top

New Chat Transcripts
Insead with Johanna Hellborg
2004 MBA Admissions Chat

Book Recommendation - First Prize
How to Get Into the Top MBA Programs -- Second Edition by Richard Montauk

An exhaustive study of MBA admissions, this book includes everything: GMAT preparation, essay writing, interview tips, even dealing with the outcome -- acceptance or rejection. Montauk also provides information on applying to the top European schools. For insight into current adcom thinking and a great reference on MBA admissions, Montauk's book, both in its depth and breadth, is tops. I recommend it highly.

Honorable Mentions:
Getting the MBA Admissions Edge - US edition. Includes in-depth profiles of 10 top schools: Berkeley, Columbia, Chicago, Harvard, Kellogg, Insead, MIT, NYU, Stanford, Wharton.

BusinessWeek Guide to The Best Business Schools An encyclopedia of the different business schools.

Back to top

Book Recommendation - First Prize
Medical School Admissions: The Insider's Guide by Zebala

An excellent introduction to the medical school admissions process, this text contains 50 personal statements that should give you a sense of the wide variety of style and content that contributes to successful medical school applications.

Honorable Mentions:
Medical School Admission Requirements: 2002-2003 United States and Canada. Admissions, financial, and program information on every medical school in the United States.

Back to top

Book Recommendation - First Prize
How to Get Into the Top Law Schools by Richard Montauk

A thorough, in-depth study of law school admissions, this volume covers criteria for choosing a school, marketing strategies, essay writing with excellent samples, letters of recommendation, interview tips, even dealing with the outcome -- acceptance or rejection. Montauk also provides information on financial aid, study abroad options, and transfer tactics.

Honorable Mentions:
How to Get Into Harvard Law School by Epps. While this book only discusses Harvard admissions, it has great insight into the application process at other law schools as well.

ABA LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools, 2003 Law school directory. Don't leave home without it.

Back to top

Book Recommendation - First Prize
The Grad School Handbook by Jerrard & Jerrard

The Jerrards provide a thorough discussion on grad school admissions with a refreshing, much-needed focus on non-professional programs. Although they do not ignore future MDs, JDs, and MBAs, this is a great book for aspiring academics.

Honorable Mention:
Graduate Admissions Essays -- What Works, What Doesn't, and Why by Asher. Asher presents an overview of the graduate school admissions process, an approach to writing your personal statement, sample essays, and an excellent section of writing letters of recommendation with samples.

Back to top

Book Recommendation - First Prize
On Writing the College Application Essay: Secrets of a Former Ivy League Admissions Officer by Harry Bauld

• Don't be "sweaty" or boastful.
• Don't feed them b.s. or fill your essay with "empty buzzing."
• Don't begin with a sentence like this: "The aspect of college I'm anticipating the most is the chance to continue to refine my interpersonal skills."

Harry Bauld's definitive book on writing the college application essay is full of such negative instruction, but his honesty splashes cold water in the faces of high schoolers approaching their college essays, waking them up to how awful teen writing can be. Thankfully, the negative is balanced by positive encouragement and instruction. A former admissions officer at Brown and assistant director of admissions at Columbia, Bauld left admissions in 1981 to teach high-school English. His book shows not only what constitutes a good application essay, but what makes for honest, effective personal writing for any occasion. He does it with humor, flair, straight talk, loads of useful examples, and a snappy pace.

Before examining how to write an essay, Bauld provides background on college admissions. He explains that most applicants are "just folks" who can use the essay to make themselves three-dimensional to the admissions committee, to emerge from "the gray shadows of sameness and into the sunlight of acceptance." Next Bauld launches into a dramatic fictional dialogue between two overworked admissions officers as they slog through huge stacks of admissions files at the height of application season. His point: to show what goes on behind the admissions curtain - who reads the essay, what happens in admissions committee meetings, who makes the final decision, and what role the essay plays in the decision.

After describing some common "snooze potion" essays (for example, "the trip," "the autobiography," or "pet death") and giving examples of the type of dull, formulaic language that they inspire ("I had to adjust to a whole new way of life"; "As I watched Buttons' life ebb away, I came to value the important things in this world."), Bauld systematically discusses how to prepare for and write a personal essay, covering such useful topics as:

• Exercises to warm-up, find your voice, and discover and explore potential topics.
• Techniques to enliven a story: anecdotes, dialogue ("a fragment of dialogue in a college essay-how rare it is!-is like catnip to an admissions officer"), sensory detail, metaphor, strong verbs.
• Revision and tinkering to shape effective leads and endings; stabilize the essay's tone; smooth transitions; and trim the fat.

Bauld also offers a view of an essay's evolution, as well as typical essay questions and how to approach them. By providing several student essays and actual admissions officers' responses to them, he shows how admissions officers are humans with sometimes differing responses to the same essay. He uses this section to point out "how senseless it is to ask 'What are they looking for?' They as a group, as a college-don't always know themselves." Bauld ends the book with an anthology of personal essays by well-known essay writers, from E.B. White to Ellen Goodman.

At only 138 pages, including the brief anthology, On Writing the College Application Essay is short and entertaining. Students would benefit from reading it during the summer before their senior year, then dipping into it during the fall as they attempt to solve the puzzle of the college essay.

(In his capacity as English Department Head at the Putney School in Vermont, Bauld has also written a short, snappy on-line handbook of English usage that will give you a sense of his style. Even if you're not in need of grammar lessons, it's an entertaining read.)

Reviewed by Alison Condie Jaenicke

Honorable Mentions:
The Truth About Getting In by Katherine Cohen. A great how-to on college admissions.

The Gatekeepers by Jacques Steinberg. Portrait of actual admissions officers at work.

Back to top

Forward This Issue
Please forward this issue to friends interested in graduate school admission. 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 in our catalog . If you have any questions please feel free to contact us at info@accepted.com or 310-815-9553.

We look forward to serving you.