I would like to invite all 2009 MBA applicants to sign up for the second 2009 MBA Admissions Telethon on Tuesday, May 13th between 10:00 AM and 12:00 PM PT (1:30 PM ET - 3:30 PM ET; 6:00 PM GMT - 8:00 PM GMT). What is the MBA Admissions Telethon?

Two hours when 6 MBA admissions experts will be available to answer your individual questions via telephone. Prior to calling in, you will receive a brief, 6-question questionnaire and submit it along with your resume to a designated email address. (No essays, please.) When you call in, your consultant will review the information you provide, and you will have 15 minutes to discuss with him or her your most pressing MBA admissions questions.

Oh, by the way, the 2009 MBA Admission Telethon is free.

You can learn more details and sign up at 2009 MBA Admissions Telethon.

The US News released its 2008 Grad School Rankings today. I'm going to list the top ten for business school, law school, and medical school and provide links to the ranking methodology for each category. For other graduate specialties, please visit the US News site.

Business School Rankings and methodology 
1. Harvard
1. Stanford
3. Wharton
4.  MIT Sloan
4. Northwestern Kellogg
4. Univ. of Chicago
7. Dartmouth Tuck
7. UC Berkeley Haas
9. Columbia
10. NYU Stern

Law School Rankings
1. Yale
2. Harvard
2. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. NYU
6. UC Berkeley
7. Univ. of Chicago
7. Penn
9. Northwestern
9. Univ. of Michigan
9. Univ. of Virginia

( I am not including a link to the law school methodology because as I am writing the link provided is a bad link.)

Medical School Rankings (Research)  and Methodology
1. Harvard
2. Johns Hopkins
3. Washington U (St. Louis)
4. Penn
5. UCSF
6. Duke
6. Univ. of Washington
8. Stanford
9. UCLA
9. Yale

A few caveats: My strong recommendation is to use the rankings as a library of raw data  conveniently compiled in one location and not as a tried and true guide of educational quality. They are not the latter. They are the former. To the extent you are going to use the rankings as a guide to school reputation and brand value, you must understand the methodology behind them and what they are measuring. Be cognizant of the differences between what is important to you and what is important to the rankings.

A few observations on the rankings themselves:

1. There are many ties in the rankings, which implies that the differences in reputation are almost imperceptible when talking about closely ranked programs. For example the difference between being "in the top ten" and out of the the top ten (i.e. #11) for MBA programs is 1 point,  for the top law schools is 2 points, and for the top medical schools is 1 point. Don't get hung up on these differences.
2. The "top ten" changes little from year to year. In most cases, if you compare these rankings to the 2007 version, it looks as if US News just reshuffled the deck a little.

For more on rankings, please see:

• Rankings: Controversy and Magazine Sales
• Thoughtful Dean Looks at Rankings
• Law School Admissions: Study Says Rankings Influence Decision Makers

Yesterday I met with a LAMP client who is shrewdly starting now to prepare for his fall application. We went over his profile, and I made several suggestions as to what he can do between now and this fall to improve his chances of acceptance next year. He found the session very valuable. And again, I commend him for starting early to work on his application. I want to be able to commend and mentor and help prepare more of you.

For years I have encouraged MBA applicants to lay the foundation for their MBA application in the months before applications come out. That's why I wrote Best Practices for MBA Admissions, a featured ebook this month. That's why Accepted has hosted MBA Admissions Telethons and teleseminars. And that's why Accepted is introducing a new subscription form of MBA Admissions Consulting: Start Smart ™.

With Start Smart, you can meet up to one hour per month with your adviser, an experienced Accepted consultant and editor who for years has seen what works and what doesn't. Our experienced staff shares my frustration when talented but flawed clients come to us in September wanting to apply in Round 1 and hoping that a magic wand will make them competitive. We don't have that wand. We do have decades of collective experience that we would like to share with you on an individual basis through Start Smart.

With Start Smart, you can have a mentor guide you in:

• Identifying the core stories for your application.
• Focusing on specific schools.
  
• Strengthening your application and ameliorating weaknesses.
• Choosing recommenders.

We can even help you work out an application time table.

In addition, Start Smart is something that rewards your early-bird-gets-the-worm approach to your applications:

• You will pay less per month when you sign up for more months.
• Your credit card is billed on a monthly basis for the exact number of months you want. You do not pay for the entire service up front so it is more affordable.
  

We have two great MBA admissions chats scheduled for this week:

• Consortium on Tuesday November 13 at 5:00 PM PT/8:00 PM ET. Jackie Olden, the Consortium's Director of Recruiting, and representatives of different Consortium schools will be available to answer your questions about researching schools and the steps you should be taking at this point in the application process.
  
• Wharton on Thursday November 15, 2007 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/6:00 PM GMT. Thomas Caleel returns to answer your questions, joined by three current Wharton students. You will have plenty of opportunity to ask your questions about Wharton interviews, culture, and admissions.
  

Several excellent articles and interviews, along with other noteworthy factoids, have appeared during the last few days:

• Businessweek's Expo interviews are now online. The Expo focused on demonstrating fit in your MBA applications. BW Editor Phil Mintz examined this theme in interviews with Clear Admit's (and AIGAC's) Graham Richmond,  Chicago's Rose Martinelli, Haas' Pete Johnson, and Michigan Ross' Soojin Kwon Koh. I strongly recommend you review these interviews, but in the meantime, here is an excerpt from Pete Johnson's comments on fit:

The subject of today's discussion is finding the best-fit business school. What's the first thing you do at Haas to determine if a student is a good fit for the school?
Well, one of the first things that we look at is the level of knowledge that an applicant has about our program. There are a number of characteristics that would make for a good fit, and one of the ones that I feel is most important is that the applicant knows about the program and what things it offers that fits their personal and career goals. So I would look for evidence that they had information about things like particular specialization areas that were consistent with their career goals and that they know something about our student culture.

• The Wall St. Journal published its interview with Tuck Dean Paul Danos, who was recently reappointed for a fourth four-year term as dean of Dartmouth's business school.  The interview highlights Dean Danos' plans for Tuck: increasing the faculty so that Tuck will "create theory-to-practice seminars with eight to 12 M.B.A. students getting direct exposure to the research process and learning more about the faculty's methods of solving the riddles of the business world." Dean Danos is a big believer in business schools balancing theory and practice, research and experience as evidenced in the Q&A that resulted from my meeting with Tuck's dean last year.

• GMAT registration and test-taking volume continues to climb. "Year-to-date GMAT registration volume through September 30 shows an 11.64% increase over the number of registrations recorded during the same period in 2006" according to GMAC. Actual test-taking volume climbed 13.20% over the same period last year. Since GMAT volume tends to be a "leading indicator" of application volume, whispered concerns about the sub-prime mess affecting MBA hiring have not yet dampened the ardor of would be MBAs around the world.