Accepted.com Odds 'N Ends

Those Wacko Questions
If you could be on the cover of any magazine, which magazine would you choose? What would be the headline associated with your photo and why?

If you were a character in a book, who would it be and why? What do you admire most about this character, and how does it relate to you personally and/or professionally?

If you could pick 3 guests for a formal dinner who would they be and why would you choose them?

What well known historical event would you have liked to have been involved in and why? 

You might wonder, "What do these questions have to do with my qualifications for b-school? Or law school? Or med school? Or college?" Very little. But your answer can open a window into you, your interests, and your values-and getting to know you is what these essays are all about.

Of course for these essays to do their job you need to reveal something about yourself and not spray the protective fog of generalities and platitudes that some applicants like to hide behind.  Spraying such a fog is a big mistake. Don't do it. Use these off-the-wall questions to reveal what makes you tick.

These essays provide a great vehicle for discussing the non-professional, non-academic side of you.  So if you love running you can write about being on the cover of Runner's World  and the challenges of breaking a five-minute mile. If you're a history buff, you can write about traveling with George Washington, Charlemagne, or whoever fascinates you.

Keep in mind that your reasons for choosing these particular people, objects, or events are as important as the choices themselves. Tie your reasons to your activities, values and interests by providing a few choice anecdotes and examples that illustrate your interests and show you leading, working on a team, communicating, and/or demonstrating the values and qualities adcoms hold dear.

I am occasionally asked, "What is most important when writing an application essay or personal statement?" I always answer, "You want your essay to reveal what is most important to you and distinctive about you."  Those "wacko" questions can surprise and frustrate, but they frequently provide you with an outstanding opportunity to discuss just that in an interesting way. Have some fun with them.

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Ensuring Consistency in Your Resume
The October 2003 "Resume Tip provides guidance for proofreading your resume, and one of the factors discussed was consistency. This factor warrants separate consideration, because in a resume there are so many decisions to make regarding presentation and writing mechanics. While this is the case to some degree for all writing, resumes require extra attention to consistency because they have so many stylistic components. Resumes that lack consistency appear confused and are confusing, and imply carelessness and lack of attention to detail. A resume making that kind of a impression will fail to do its job.

The following list addresses the main items that can undermine consistency in resumes:

• Use of articles. To save space and avoid extraneous verbiage, many resumes eliminate most or all articles. Whether or not you choose to use articles, be consistent in the usage.
• Punctuation and capitalization in bullet lists. Be consistent in both your use of initial capital letters for the beginning of the bulleted point and the ending punctuation or lack thereof.
• Formatting. Elements such as bolding, italics, underscore, and spacing must be consistent to convey graphic clarity and help the reader quickly "zero in" on specific points she might want to see.
• Serial comma. Given the extensive use of series in resumes, lack of consistency in the use of comma after the second-to-last item in a series can be especially confusing. Either use it in every series, or in none.
• Abbreviations. If you write B.A., write M.B.A. or Ph.D.; if you write BA, write MBA and PhD; if you write Bachelor of Arts, write out other degrees as well. The same goes for other abbreviations.
• Dates. In date ranges, be consistent in all aspects: years only versus months and years, how you present the months, hyphen or dash, space or no space before and after the hyphen/dash.

Finally, in making the above decisions, be guided by simplicity and clarity. Your readers will appreciate it!

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

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Old World MBA Discount
If you live in Europe, Asia, or Africa and want to improve your chances of acceptance or perhaps apply to a dream school where you didn't think you had a prayer, now's your opportunity. You can consult with our experienced admissions professionals or have your essays edited by our seasoned English-language editors at this special Old World MBA Discount rate. Buy now from the Old World and save up to 15% on all Accepted.com services.

Upcoming Chats:

Please note that the chats are scheduled for different times.

USC - December 9 at 6:00 PM Pacific/9:00 PM Eastern/2:00 AM GMT
Michigan - December 11 at 10:00 AM Pacific/1:00 PM Eastern/6:00 PM GMT
UCLA - December 15 at 6:00 PM Pacific/9:00 PM Eastern/2:00 AM GMT
Haas - December 17 at 10:00 AM Pacific/1:00 PM Eastern/6:00 PM GMT
Chicago - December 18 at 10:00 AM Pacific/1:00 PM Eastern/6:00 PM GMT

All these chats are open to anyone interested in these schools MBA programs, but the chats scheduled for 6:00 PM GMT are at that time to make it easier for applicants from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa to attend. Please feel free to join us.

Job Prospects for MBA Grads Improve
BusinessWeek Online reports that a growing number of MBAs in the class of 2003 have found work over the past few months. Until late summer, it looked as though it would be the third dismal year in a row for MBAs, but now, they seem to be among the first to benefit from the thousands of jobs the Labor Department says were created over the last few months, especially as stretched-thin consulting firms and investment banking outfits gear up for increased workloads.

The positive signs in the MBA job market make for a long-awaited dose of optimism on B-school campuses. What's more, for grads who took internships when full-time work was nowhere to be found, many of those summer stints have turned into bona fide jobs! It's a sure sign that the MBA job market is improving overall.

In addition to the BW article discussed above, the career services directors that have participated in recent Accepted.com chats have expressed an optimism that I haven't heard in recent years. Most are reporting over 85-90% of 2003 grads with job offers, and many are revealing higher levels of on-campus recruiting for 2004 grads. For example, Jamie Beline, Associate Director of UT's Career Center said in an October UT chat , "We're seeing the highest levels of recruiting we've seen in three years.Our interview center has 43 interview rooms & they were overflowing to people's offices & conference rooms with additional recruiters throughout October. Things aren't like the heyday years, but they're definitely improving."

Many others at other chats echoed these observations. May the good times roll!

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National Resident Matching Program Agrees To Medical Students' Proposal
The American Medical Student Association (AMSA) , the nation's largest independent medical student organization, has announced that The National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) has agreed to their proposal to increase student choice and negotiating ability in the system widely known as "The Match." Among the many changes, the NRMP voted to require residency programs to disclose, prior to the ranking deadlines, the actual contracts applicants will be expected to sign after matching with the programs. The new rule will take effect for applicants participating in the 2005 Match.

The NRMP has also agreed to:

• Link its website to the publicly available Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education accreditation status to better inform applicants.
• Empower staff to present a proposal for a comprehensive annual evaluation of the Match in order to stay aligned with the changing needs of contemporary medical students.
• Convene committees to examine the composition of the NRMP Board of Directors.
• Evaluate the system for helping unmatched applicants to obtain residency positions.

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Foreign-Student Enrollment Stagnates
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that many fewer foreign students have enrolled at US colleges in the 2002-3 academic year compared to the previous year. According to a study by the Institute of International Education, the number of foreign students studying here grew less than 1%, to 586,323, following a five-year average annual growth rate of 5%. The slight increase this past year is largely due to significant increases in students from countries such as China, India and South Korea, but it masks a serious decline in the number of students from many Muslim countries. In Saudi Arabia, for example, which saw its numbers drop by 25% last year, officials say they have no choice, in light of changes to the U.S. visa process, but to steer university students away from the United States.

A new rule established this summer by the State Department requires U.S. embassies and consulates to substantially increase the percentage of applicants who must complete in-person interviews before being issued a visa. Choosing to avoid this often arduous process, a growing number of students have enrolled at universities in other English-speaking countries, such as Australia, Britain, and Canada, which have not significantly changed their visa requirements.

Current visa difficulties have definitely put a damper on some graduate programs and do not bode well for scientific enterprises in this country, claim critics of the visa restrictions. Irving Lerch, director of international affairs at the American Physical Society, says that "the best students may be beginning to decide they don't want the hassle of trying to come to the US."

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Public-college tuition rise is largest in 3 decades
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the College Board's annual survey revealed that tuition at two and four-year public colleges in the 2003-4 academic year rose 14% over the previous year, while the price of attending a private four-year college increased by 6%. In a companion study of financial-aid levels, however, the College Board found that grant aid also increased to its highest level ever, thus softening the blow of the tuition increases for many students.

For the first time in the survey's history, the College Board also reported a "net price" figure, which shows how much students actually pay, on average, after all grant aid is considered. Thus, students at four-year public college, for example, had to pay net tuition and fees of about $2,300, much less than the gross figure of $4,694. Once grant aid was factored in to gross tuition prices, similar trends were evident at two-year public colleges and private four-year colleges.

According to the report grant aid has grown by 85% since the 1992-93 academic year, while tuition at public four-year colleges has jumped 37.9%, and tuition at private four-year colleges has risen 39.2%. Yet, some of the more specific statistics included in the College Board's reports, such as the percentage of total family income devoted towards paying college tuition, illustrate that poor families still face great hardship in funding a college education.

Higher-education officials also expressed concern about the amount of debt students and their families must assume to pay four years of tuition and other college costs, as more students are turning to the private sector for additional loans to supplement federal loans. Yet, even with the immense costs and upward spiral of debt, Mr. Caperton, the College Board president, reiterated his trademark claim that a college education, though expensive, is cheaper than the cost of not going at all.

The reports, "Trends in College Pricing 2003" and "Trends in Student Aid 2003," are available on the College Board's Web site: http://www.collegeboard.com .

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