As we say good-bye to 2008 and welcome 2009, I want to thank you all for your loyal following of this blog, your participation in Accepted.com events, and of course, your patronage.  Accepted  has enjoyed its best year ever. Thanks to all of you.

Looking ahead to 2009, we plan to make this web site and our services even better. We will roll out changes on the site throughout 2009.

We are currently wrestling with a question:  Whether or not to continue publishing recent posts from this blog on the Accepted.com home page.  What do you think?

We would really appreciate your taking a minute to answer a quick, 3-question survey and help us design this site in a way that suits you -- or at least a majority of you. Thank you very much for your time.

Best wishes for a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year!

According to the UVA web site:

Paul G. Mahoney, a University of Virginia law professor, has been appointed the 11th dean of the School of Law, UVA President John T. Casteen III announced today.

Mahoney, 49, an expert in corporate law who joined the law faculty in 1990, will serve as the Arnold H. Leon Professor of Law. His appointment will be effective July 1.

As academic associate dean from 1999 to 2004, Mahoney administered the school's curriculum and academic policies. He has won an All-University Outstanding Teaching Award, the Law School’s Traynor Award for excellence in research, and the Corporate Practice Commentator’s award for top corporate and securities law articles. Mahoney also is one of only five faculty members to hold the most eminent chair at the Law School, the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professorship, and the youngest to have the title. Mahoney will be the ninth of 11 deans to be selected from the Law School's faculty

For more on Mahoney's appointment, please see "Paul G. Mahoney—Scholar, Teacher, and Corporate Law Expert—Named University of Virginia Law School Dean."

Two years ago I attended Tuck's first Conference of International Educational Advisors. I went with the purpose of  learning more about Tuck. And I did learn a lot about Tuck, as expected, but I discovered that I enjoyed meeting my competition and professional colleagues much more than I anticipated. The networking was great! 

I have also watched the educational advising industry explode over the roughly 13 years that I have been in it. When I first started Accepted, most people thought I was crazy. Today, new "consultancies" are popping up like mushrooms after it rains. This growth has fueled  concerns about quality and integrity in the industry.

As an outgrowth of the Tuck conference and the growth of the admissions consulting industry, in late 2005 I proposed to GMAC that it host a panel about admissions consulting. GMAC accepted my proposal, and last June I was part of a panel presentation at the GMAC Conference entitled "Admissions Consultants: Love 'em, Hate 'em, Use 'em." On the panel with me were Ricardo Betti of MBA Empresarial, Maxx Duffy of Maxx Associates, and Graham Richmond of Clear Admit.

In response to feedback at the conference and in recognition of a need for a professional graduate admissions consultant association, the four panelists from the GMAC conference have founded the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants (AIGAC):

• To establish standards of practice for top graduate admissions consultants.
  
• To create a recognized emblem of professional quality and integrity -- AIGAC's Stamp of Excellence -- for applicants and the larger admissions community.
  
• To provide a forum for member networking and professional development.
  
• To offer schools a convenient conduit for communication with consultants and a means for distinguishing between consultants who adhere to the standards and those who don't.

On behalf of the AIGAC board, I am proud to announce that AIGAC is open for business. As its first president, I join the other board members in inviting admissions consultants who share its vision, meet its requirements, and adhere to its standards to become members. Join the board, other AIGAC members and me in taking our industry to improved levels of service and professionalism. If you have any questions about AIGAC, please feel free to call me at the AIGAC office (916) 446-3670. If I am not available, please leave a message and some times when I can call you back. Please also feel free to email me with your questions.

I also invite applicants, as you approach the 2008 season, to look for AIGAC's Stamp of Excellence. Those  consultants who display it have met AIGAC's membership requirements and agreed to operate in accordance with AIGAC's Principles of Good Practice. That emblem means professional quality for you.

Schools, in general, are supportive of our efforts. Here are a couple of responses that we have received:

• From Rose Martinelli, Associate Dean for Student Recruitment and Admissions, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business: "candidates may need guidance in exploring career options, identifying appropriate programs and determining the best way to position their candidacy. An organization like AIGAC assures both schools and candidates that there are industry standards in place and consulting firms linked to this organization are following ethical practices."
• From Dawna Clarke, Director of Admissions, The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth: "At Tuck, we embrace relationships with educational advisors around the world. The advice they provide to prospective students is mutually beneficial to the students as well as the schools they represent....I applaud the current effort of this group to come up with ethical standards of behavior."

For more on AIGAC's birth, please see the press release and the post on Clear Admit's blog.

Law.com reports that Supreme Court clinics at top law school are growing in number and impact in "Law Schools' Supreme Court Clinics Make Their Mark".  Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Northwestern, UVA and UT law schools have all launched Supreme Court clinics in which top students work with faculty and seasoned Supreme Court litigators to write briefs in a clinic setting for Supreme Court cases.

According to the article the clinics have the following benefits:

• Enable cases that may never have received Supreme Court review to receive it by improving presentation and lowering costs.
  
• Expose students to the thrill of working on a Supreme Court case, as well as the demands of writing a clear, coherent, well-argued brief.
• Perhaps serve as a gateway to a Supreme Court clerkship.