Much is happening on Accepted and in the MBA admissions world  these days. Here goes:

• Birthday Ebook Sale. May 9-13  In honor of my birthday, I am giving you all 50% off all MBA admissions ebooks including:

Best Practices for MBA Admissions: Take advantage of the super advice captured in this transcript of a one-of-a-kind teleseminar.  Find out what are the 4 Pillars of a Successful Application, and most importantly, discover the concrete steps you can take to strengthen your pillars.

MBA BlastOff: 45 Terrific Tips to Launch Your MBA Application to Acceptance: Learn how to create a winning MBA application package including advice on writing your application, crafting your resume, working with recommenders, and preparing for your interview. 

The Consultant's Guide to MBA Admissions: Invest in the one resource written for YOU. Transform yourself from "just another consultant" into a distinctive, exciting prospect. Learn to mine your experiences and project the qualities schools value. This ebook has sample HBS essays.

The Finance Professional's Guide to MBA Admissions: If you are in investment banking, corporate finance, venture capital, or any financially related field that sends oodles of applicants to top business schools, this ebook can teach you how to distinguish yourself from your competition and improve your chances of admissions. 

The Techie's Guide to MBA Admissions: Attention Techies: Are you afraid of being just another IT applicant. If so, The Techie's Guide to MBA Admissions is for you! Learn how to highlight your individuality and unique qualifications to create a distinct, exciting MBA application. 

MBA I.V.: Mainline to Top MBA Programs -- MBA Interview Questions and Tips: Invest in an ebook that provides the questions that have been frequently asked during recent MBA admission interviews at the top business schools as well as the advice you need to prepare for your interview. Exactly the information you need to ace your interview.

The Nine Mistakes You Don't Want to Make on an MBA Waitlist: Discover how to avoid the mistakes that doom so many on an MBA waitlist and make the right moves that increase your chances of acceptance. 

Create a Better Sequel: Reapply Right to B-School: Determine what went wrong and how to change the outcome. Get the information you need to navigate the MBA admissions maze and transform those thin rejections into fat acceptances. Buy this 28-page ebook today to propel your reapplication.  

• MBA Admissions Telethon on Tuesday May 13 at  10:00 AM – 12:00 PM PT/1:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET (5:00 PM – 7:00 PM GMT). Sign up for FREE 15-minute consultations. Ask your most important MBA application questions.
• IMD admission chat with Janet Shaner, IMD's Director of MBA Marketing, and with an IMD participant. They will participate in this online chat where you can learn more about IMD's outstanding, international MBA program.
• Best of Blogging 2007-08 Winners. Congratulations to winners of Clear Admit's Best of Blogging contest. And thank you to Clear Admit for inviting me to be a judge. It was fun, but surprisingly difficult to evaluate and rank them.
  
• Chicago GSB's monthly admissions newsletter has two timely articles: "Stay Engaged this Summer," on using the summer months to prepare for fall applications, and "Getting the Most Out of Your Campus Visit." For more on these topics, please see "Visiting Schools: Myths and Reality" and Best Practices for MBA Admission.
• MBAPodcaster's last two segments are winners. Check out "One Year MBA Programs," which focuses on Cornell's, Kellogg's,  and USC IBEAR's one-year MBA programs, and "Business School Admission's Panel: Top Schools Answer Your Application Questions," which presents admissions directors from  Columbia, NYU Stern, and Wharton discussing their respective admissions processes. If you are interested in any of these programs, you owe it to yourself to either listen to the podcast or read the transcript. 

  

Accepted editors were recently debating the full-time versus part-time MBA options. I thought the brief discussion was quite interesting and am excerpting  the comments of Cindy Tokumitsu and Sachin Waikar.  Cindy has worked with many, many successful applicants to part-time and full-time MBA programs since she started with Accepted ten years ago.  Sachin, a former McKinsey consultant who has a Ph.D. in psychology, has received rave reviews from clients during the two years he has been part of the Accepted staff. Both Cindy and Sachin draw on both their broad professional experience and specific illustrative personal anecdotes.

They were responding to these questions:

• What is your overall feeling about the value of the part-time MBA?
  
• Does the networking/brand pay off reasonably well? Is the quality of education  well considered?
  
• Do participants really have the chance to build their skills?
  

Cindy Tokumitsu wrote :

It's hard to answer those questions in the abstract -- for a person who really wants a regular MBA, [part-time] might not be a great option, for various reasons.  For such people, it's a compromise they make because they can't get into a top school's full-time program (and they'd rather have the name than a lesser ranked full-time degree) or because their life just doesn't allow them to take off 2 years.  For some people, on the other hand, it's the exact right fit for their needs -- often these are people working in a company or industry they want to stay involved in and who would benefit from being able to apply classroom lessons "as they go."  Such people also often are on the cusp of advancement into business manager role, and the MBA studies boost their credibility/profile internally.

This anecdote may be relevant: my daughter's good friend (and a Princeton grad) is completing the top-ranked NYU part-time program; he values the actual education  but is disappointed that he does not have access to the recruiting he'd hoped for -- not so much that NYU prevents it but that top finance companies simply aren't recruiting from the part-time program (and he's atop student in his class and also serves in leadership roles).

Overall I think the quality of education varies depending on the part-time program -- for some it is equal to that of the full-time MBA; for others it may be less rigorous.

Also anecdotally, from clients/former clients I've heard that (a) it's harder to handle the school + work than they expected, (b) it's really interesting to apply the concepts/learning on the job, and (c) it's stimulating to interact with classmates engaged in all kinds of interesting work while frustrating to lack the time to really interact as much as they'd like.

Not a black-and-white picture -- but hopefully it helps!

Sachin Waikar responded:

Cindy raises a lot of good points, especially the recruiting challenges that part-timers face. For example, a ton of people enter McKinsey, BCG, and other consulting firms from Kellogg's full-time program, but those in the part-time have to really fight/network their way to such opportunities. Banking is probably even tougher.

Full-time is more immersive, not surprisingly, so students get to know each other better and leave with a more cohesive network. My wife's best friend started in Kellogg's part-time program and then transferred to full-time, so through her we got to see both. The cultures, diversity, and recruiting opportunities were the biggest differences. You have people from all over the world in the full-time program, and people from all over the world who now live and work in the Chicago area in the part-time program (though I know more people are commuting to it now, especially the Saturday program). The full-time program was more like a second set of college years, with late-20-somethings partying their way through late-night team sessions (and ill-fated romances; though some get married!), while the part-time program was more serious, with late-20-somethings struggling to even make it to class and team sessions between work and family obligations.

Bottom line seems to be that career-changers are best served (by far) with the full-time program, and those looking to advance within their general career track benefiting from the part-time, especially the financial aspects (no lost income; work sponsorship, etc.). There are always exceptions (e.g., the part-time student who ends up at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey), but as I always say to clients, "Why aim to be one of those?"

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.