It's a winner. The Admit Weekend supplement is a must-read for anyone applying to or interested in applying to the University of Chicago's MBA program. You can use the information contained here if you are buckling down to craft a round 3 application, researching schools for 2008, preparing for an interview, or stewing on the waitlist. A few noteworthy articles in the supplement:  

• Lay the Groundwork Now -- A Message from MBA Career Services
  
• Demystifying Financial Aid for International Students
• Why I Chose Chicago GSB
• Get Involved at the GSB

The Daily Pennsylvanian reports that Dr. Andrew Porter, formerly head of Vanderbilt's Learning Sciences Institute, will become Dean of Penn's Graduate School of Education on August 1. He succeeds previous GSE Dean Susan Fuhrman, who announced last May that she will leave Penn and assume the presidency of Columbia University's Teachers College.

Professor Michael Santana of Legal Writing Prep wrote me about a scholarship his organization is offering to incoming law students, and I thought I would pass along the information:

In 2007, Legal Writing Prep (www. legalwritingprep.com) is awarding scholarships worth $250 through its Entering Law Student Scholarship to help first-year law students with their living expenses.

One (1) scholarship will be awarded at random for every fifty (50) eligible applicants, with a minimum of one (1) scholarship and a maximum of twenty (20) scholarships to be awarded, and applicants can register only once for the scholarship.

To be eligible for the Entering Law Student Scholarship, applicants must:

1. Be an entering first-year law student during 2007's fall semester or quarter.

2. Rely on loans to cover at least fifty percent (50%) of the applicant's cost of education during the first-year of law school.

3. Send an email expressing interest in the scholarship to michaelsantana@legalwritingprep.com by 11:59 p.m. PST on August 1, 2007.

4. Respond to a September 10, 2007 email from Legal Writing Prep using their law school email account by 11:59 p.m. PST on September 24, 2007.

Each scholarship recipient will be notified September 25, 2007 by an email message sent to the recipient's law school email account. Once notified, the recipient has until October 15, 2007 to mail a copy of the following two documents to Legal Writing Prep to receive the scholarship.

1. 2007 law school acceptance letter.
2. Law school financial aid award letter.

The USC waitlist chat transcript is now online. I would like to spotlight a couple of brief exchanges in the chat, because for schools that permit contact, these exchanges reveal what you should and should not do if you want to move from the waitlist to the accepted list:

Linda Abraham (Feb 22, 2007 12:01:45 PM)
What should waitlisted applicants do to enhance their chances of acceptance?

KelleeScottUSC (Feb 22, 2007 12:03:09 PM)
At this point, your application is complete, but you can send in supplemental information to enhance. In the past, candidates have sent in an additional letter of recommendation, results of any projects they have been working on, and an additional essay to demonstrate leadership skills. If you are on the cusp of the GMAT 80% range, the lower end, some candidates may choose to re-test in order to improve their score.

Linda Abraham (Feb 22, 2007 12:36:18 PM)
What are some mistakes waitlisted applicants make that hurt their chances of acceptance?

KelleeScottUSC (Feb 22, 2007 12:38:54 PM)
Linda, great question! Waitlisted candidates who come in unannounced and demand an interview show a lack of maturity as an example, However, in general, candidates who do not demonstrate their continued interest in Marshall don't necessarily stay high on the ADCOM radar.

Linda Abraham (Feb 22, 2007 12:39:29 PM)
Would it be fair to say that intelligent, substantive, periodic communication is the way to go?

KelleeScottUSC (Feb 22, 2007 12:40:04 PM)
Linda, I would agree with that enthusiastically.

There is much more to the chat than these exchanges, but they reveal much about what a school that encourages contact wants to see and does not want to see from its waitlisted candidates.  Be mature. Don't drown them in meaningless drivel. But do demonstrate your continued interest while taking advantage of the opportunity to trumpet recent achievements.

This week we have a waitlsit chat with Cornell Johnson on Wednesday February 28 at 12:00 PM PT/1:00 pm ET/8:00 PM GMT. Please feel free to join us if you are on Johnson's waitlist. If you would like waitlist assistance and are on another school's list, please check out:

• Accepted.com's individual waitlist advising.
• The Nine Mistakes You Don't Want to Make on an MBA Waitlist, an ebook.
  
• 2007 Waitlist Chat Transcript.
  

The MBA Interview Feedback Database  (MBAIFDB) is one of the most valuable and popular sections of our site. Thanks to your generous sharing of interview experiences, it has grown and grown and grown. Furthermore, the feedback we are getting lately is far more comprehensive and still focused. And thanks to the improvements we made last summer, you can filter the information and drill down to the nuggets you are most interested in. Quantitatively and qualitatively, the MBAIFDB is just getting better and better.

This week, Accepted's webmaster sent me the following report about this rich resource.

109 unique schools
381 new ones in the last 365 days
 
204 Northwestern Kellogg
137 Wharton
103 Duke Fuqua
97 Columbia
96 UC Berkeley Haas
93 Chicago
87 Dartmouth Tuck
82 UCLA Anderson
66 Michigan Ross
64 Harvard HBS
62 CMU Tepper
60 UNC (Kenan-Flagler)
59 NYU Stern
56 UVA Darden
52 INSEAD
50 Yale SOM
45 Stanford
32 Cornell Johnson
31 Emory (Goizueta)
31 Georgetown (McDonough)

Thanks to the MBAIFDB, no one should go into an MBA interview without a good idea of what to expect.  Prepare for your MBA interviews by reviewing the feedback and then contribute your own feedback after you interview.

Ah yes, I almost forgot.: sharing your feedback before March 31, 2007 will immediately enroll you in Accepted's It's a 10! contest. When the contest is running,  every response in the MBAIFDB is eligible to win up to a $20 gift certificate at Amazon.

And since we are really in the mood to lighten up the admissions scene by adding fun and games to the process, remember to snap a few pictures when you visit a b-school campus. You can then compete in the Beautiful B-School Photo Contest where you could win an Amazon gift certificate of up to $200.