|
|
 |
Accepted.com Odds 'N Ends
In This Issue:
|
| |
|
What's New at Accepted.com |
| |
|
Save 20% on the Featured Book of the Month:
Best
Practices for MBA Admissions updated for 2007. It contains:
Upcoming Chat
We are excited to host "The Right Way to Use the Rankings" with Dean Paul Danos of the Tuck School of Business; Kim Keating, Tuck's Director of Public
Relations, and Della Bradshaw, Business Education Editor at the Financial Times.
Although directed primarily at business school applicants, it will contain
information of interest to all applicants. Mark your calendars to attend the
chat on May 4 at 9:00 AM PT/12:00 ET/5:00 PM GMT.
All chats will take place in the
Accepted.com chat room.
If you would like to sign-up for automatic chat reminders, please visit our
chat subscription page. Latest Chat Transcripts
Blog Posts of Interest
Back to top
|
| |
|
Essay Tip |
| |
Personal Statement Flaw #5: Muddled Thinking
(Continuing my series on
essays that sound like baby talk and are frequently application killers.)
I am not sure why I made muddled thinking the last flaw of this series.
Good writing starts with good thinking and ends with lots of editing,
but editing is a topic for another series. Let's stick with thinking in
this post.
One of the biggest causes of muddled thinking in application essays:
Writing what you think the admissions committee wants to read as opposed
to what you want them to know. In fact, most admissions committee
members believe this is the most common mistake applicants make.
I am occasionally surprised by people who call me up and say they want
to be a management consultant but their experience in IT supports
continuing to work in IT. So they intend to apply to schools with strong
general management programs and say they want to return to IT. If you
are in that camp, you're not being honest with the school or yourself,
and the readers may just decide that your goals don't match their
program or that you don't need an MBA to achieve your goals.
Do you honestly believe that you can convince a consulting recruiter
that your experience combined with your education is valuable when you
can't convince the school of that proposition? If you can't convince the
school, what makes you think you can convince a recruiter? The thousands
of dollars you spend on your education won't impress him or her.
Before you put pen to paper or finger to keyboard, think about what you
want to say clearly and critically. Your dreams are important. As I said
in "Lack of Substance," examine your head and your heart. Just make sure
your head is in good working order when it listens to your heart.
Back to top
|
| |
|
Resume Tip |
| |
How to Include Independent Work on Your Resume
Whether as a brief stint between "regular" jobs, or as an
important career phase, working as an independent contractor is
growing more common. Perhaps you have expertise in an in-demand
profession and sometimes consult in that field, even if you are
not a full-time consultant. Perhaps you are a consultant for
large businesses and consult for start-ups on your own. Other
professions and fields that lend themselves to independent work
include accountants, lawyers and legal assistants, teachers and
tutors, programmers and other IT specialists, and marketers.
How do you best present this type of work on your resume?
-
If it is your sole employment for a
given time period, include it in your overall chronological
employment. Give the dates for the period as you do for other
employment, and write a relevant title for your employment and
job description, e.g., "Independent Marketing Consultant."
Then, in the first bullet point, describe the consulting in
general; for example, "Consulted for retailers in the New York
metropolitan area on developing, implementing and improving
Internet marketing strategies." Then follow that with bullet
points giving specific projects and accomplishments from the
independent work. In doing so, follow the general "good
resume" rules: be specific, quantify.
-
If you did independent work alongside
your regular job, there are several options, depending on how
important the independent work is to your presentation and to
your potential employers. If it is very relevant and
substantive, one option is to use the same approach as above,
but clarify that you did this work part-time, so that the
overlapping dates do not confuse the reader. Alternatively,
you can divide your employment into two categories, such as
"Professional Experience - Employment" and "Professional
Experience - Independent." In that case, it is still important
to indicate the work is part-time, to avoid confusion over
dates. If the work is not that important or relevant, but you
want it on the resume, you can include it as a bullet point in
the "Additional Information" section.
By
Cindy Tokumitsu
Senior Editor, Accepted.com
Member, Professional Association of Resume Writers
Back to top
|
|
|
|
| Wrap Up
|
|
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
our services page.
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.
**To subscribe to Odds 'N
Ends please visit http://www.accepted.com/newsletter/subscribe.aspx .
Copyright
Copyright 2004 Accepted.com. All Rights Reserved.
Please do not reprint or host on your web site without explicit permission.
However, if you found this newsletter helpful, we encourage you to e-mail it to
a friend or colleague. Thank you.
Information provided in this document
is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied,
including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and
fitness for a particular purpose.
Accepted.com --
helping you write your best!
Application essay editing and advising
Resume
writing and editing
http://www.accepted.com
310-815-9553
info@accepted.com
Accepted.com
PO Box 67423
Los Angeles, CA 90067
|
|
| |
|
|  "I know for a fact that my essays were materially better as a result of your involvement."
|
|
|
|
|
|