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Accepted.com Odds 'N Ends
In this Issue:
- What's New: MBA Essay Special, MBA Telethon, Featured Ebook, Residency & Fellowship Special, AIGAC Conference
- Blog Posts of Interest
- Essay Tip: The Most Important Element in Your Application
- Resume Tip: How to Include Independent Work on Your Resume
- Wrap Up: Accepted.com Services; Newsletter Subscription Management
What's New at Accepted.com
Aiming for the MBA class of 2011? Come to Accepted.com's FREE MBA Admissions Telethon to kick-off your 2009 applications. On Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 between 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM PT/4:00 PM - 6:00 PM ET / 10:00 PM - 12:00 AM GMT), six seasoned MBA admissions consultants will be available to answer your individual questions via telephone.
Note: This is the last telethon for 2009 applicants. Don't miss it.
Submit an application that's a hit with the fellowship admissions staff using the techniques taught in Write Your Way to a Fellowship Match. And if you buy it in July, you'll save 20% off the regular purchase price.
Get experienced, expert editing for your match documents and save 10% on all essay services in July. Please enter "RF10" at checkout to receive your discount.
AIGAC Conference
I am proud to report that eight Accepted consultants participated in the first ever professional conference of graduate admissions consultants sponsored by AIGAC. Accepted's presence, the largest by far of any consultancy at the conference, reflects our commitment to excellence and professional development.
Participants in the conference visited Chicago's Graduate School of Business and the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern. We heard presentations from Rose Martinelli of Chicago's GSB, Beth Flye of Kellogg, Christie St. John from Tuck, Peter Johnson from Haas, Tamsin Shiltoe from London Business School, and Sherry Wallace from UNC Kenan-Flagler. We also attended panel discussions on Best Practices in Admissions Consulting, and I was one of the panelists for this session.
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| Blog Posts of Interest |
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Check out the posts:
Enjoyed these posts? Sign-up for Accepted Admissions Almanac blog posts updates and begin receiving admissions tips and the latest news on college and graduate school admissions. On the sign-up page, you can choose to receive all the blog posts via email (using Feedblitz) or RSS feeds. |
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| Essay Tip |
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The Most Important Element in Your Application
I am occasionally asked to rank test score, GPA, experience, etc. by order of importance in admissions decisions.
I realized that any attempt to rank elements of an application for all applicants is flawed, even for law and medical school, which are the most numbers-driven of the major admissions categories. Why? No element always outweighs all others. No score, essay, GPA, or experience will guarantee your admission at top schools. On the other hand, many scores, GPAs, experiences, and essays virtually guarantee rejection, certainly at top schools.
But there is at least a partial answer to the question I am occasionally posed: The most important element of your application is the weakest one. It can cause your rejection. It can keep you out. It is the factor that the rest of your application must overcome.
For example, when we moved into our current home, Laurie, the daughter of a new neighbor, had just applied to medical school. Her mother confided one winter day that Laurie -- with a mid-30's MCAT, a dazzling GPA at an Ivy League college, and truckloads of research experience -- had only been waitlisted at several schools. Her impressive stats had not earned her an acceptance at even one of the top medical schools to which she had applied. I asked about clinical or volunteer experience, and her mother said that Laurie hadn't had the time.
Lack of clinical exposure was the Achilles heel of her application. I encouraged Laurie to volunteer in a clinical setting or shadow a physician and then inform the schools that had wait-listed her of this new element in her experience. She did, and when I ran into her mother again on a beautiful spring morning walk, Laurie had been accepted at a leading medical school.
Implication for you: Put your best foot forward. Trumpet loudly and articulately your achievements and qualifications for your program. But also take the time to eliminate or reduce the impact of your weaknesses. |
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| Resume Tip |
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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, marketers, and healthcare professionals.
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.
Senior Editor, Accepted.com
Member, Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants |
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| Wrap Up |
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Please forward this ezine
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Copyright
Copyright 2008 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.
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