You read that correctly. There is a medical school promising full-tuition scholarships to all its students.

The Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University is offering all its students full tuition scholarships, beginning with this July’s incoming class. The students will pay living expenses and non-tuition educational expenses.

The Cleveland Clinic is a small medical school dedicated to training "graduates who will have a solid combination of clinical and research skills and a passion for scientific inquiry. Graduates earn a medical degree (M.D.) with Special Qualification in Biomedical Research."

If you are interested in clinical medical research or academic medicine, check out this program, but it's not easy to get into. And if it's free, it will be even more difficult to gain acceptance. "The Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine enrolls 32 students annually and drew 1,423 highly qualified applicants this past year."

Harvard Business School's 2009 deadlines, essay and recommendation questions are now available on the HBS web site. The essay questions are:

Deadlines 

                    Application Submission         Notification Date

Round 1     October 15, 2008                             January 21, 2009
Round 2     January 6, 2009                                 April 2, 2009
Round 3     March 11, 2009                                   May 13, 2009

Essay Instructions and Questions 

All applicants must submit answers to four essay questions. The first two questions are required of all applicants. The remaining two essays may be in response to your choice of the next four sub-questions.

Joint program applicants for the Harvard Medical School, Harvard Law School, and Kennedy School of Government must provide an additional essay.

Essays  Questions:

1. What are your three most substantial accomplishments and why do you view them as such? (600-word limit)
2. What have you learned from a mistake? (400-word limit)
3. Please respond to two of the following (400-word limit each):
1. What would you like the MBA Admissions Board to know about your undergraduate academic experience?
2. Discuss how you have engaged with a community or organization.
3. What area of the world are you most curious about and why?
4. What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you?

Joint degree applicants:

1. How do you expect the joint degree experience to benefit you on both a professional and a personal level? (400-word limit)

 I'll post tips in the not-too-distant future. Let the season begin!

I want to thank those of you who submitted entries to the Beautiful B-School Photo Contest. this year. We had a rush of submissions at the end.  The judges are going to have a tough time narrowing down the choices to the three best pictures.

Speaking of judges...

We have asked those MBA bloggers on Clear Admit's Best of Blogging nominee list for both applicants and students to be judges for the Beautiful B-School Photo contest, provided we could find contact information for them and they accepted our invitation to judge.

 The judges are:  

1. Graham Richmond – Co-Founder and CEO of Clear Admit; Co-founder of AIGAC
2. Iday (Chicago) - Author of etc, etc. and currently an MBA student at the University of Chicago.
3. Necromonger  Author of Let me wear a Suit. Please! and an MBA student at INSEAD.
4. Achilles - Author of Experiences- My Life and an MBA applicant.
5. MBA Runner Girl - Author of MBA Runner Girl  and  an MBA applicant joining Columbia's class of '08.
6. Christof Meyer - Author of Square Method Design and an MBA student at Darden 

All the students and applicant judges were winners or nominees in Clear Admit's 07-08 Best of Blogging contest. Congratulations to you all and thanks for volunteering to judge the photo contest.

We will announce the winners as soon as the Accepted staff  receives the responses and tallies them. Stay tuned. 

Today is a big day at Accepted:

1. My birthday ebook sale ends tonight at midnight. You can still save 50% on all ebooks and info-products today.
   
2. The 2009 MBA Admissions Telethon starts today at 10:00 AM PT (1:00 PM ET, 5:00 PM GMT) and runs for two hours. You still have time to register for your free, 15-minute MBA admissions consultation. But do so ASAP.

I just read McKinsey Consulting's fascinating interview with director Brad Bird. While McKinsey's focus was on the lessons one can learn about innovating from one of the world's most innovative companies, Brad Bird's story was also a story of laudable leadership.

Many applicants find "leadership" the most difficult of the MBA qualities to demonstrate in their applications. It is not just about managing a team; it is about generating exceptional results from it. So the first thing I recommend to you all right now is to read this interview. Through the examples that Mr. Bird shares, we can understand the essentials of good leadership and recognize examples from our own experiences that – we can only hope! – measure up to Bird's standards.

Many of my clients are official team leaders, but when they share examples of their leadership, I push them for more depth and greater detail to spotlight that leadership for the admissions committees. For example, if Bird were writing his own HBS leadership essay (#3) in 400 words, he might have just talked about the morale of the team and his dedication to improving it. What made Bird's leadership example truly memorable was the way he conducted that discussion, and any HBS essay that omitted such detail unfortunately might not have earned even a highlighting mark from the adcom reviewing team.

For example, Bird describes the moment he sat 30 Ratatouille developers down and told them that the past year's work was off the mark – the computer and artistic work were well done but would not connect audiences with the growth and development of the movie's main character.

"I stopped and thought for a second. I thought, these guys have been sent down blind alleys for a couple of years. They want to know that I’m not doing anything lightly and that if I’m going to make them do a bunch more work, it’s for a reason. So I said, “This movie is about a rat who wants to enter the human world. We have to make that a visual choice for the character. If you have all of the rats walking on two legs, there’s no separation between him and the other rats. If we have this separation as a visual device, we can see the character make his transformation and choose to be on two legs, and he can become more or less ratty, depending on his emotional state. That brings the audience into the character’s mind.”

I spent six minutes saying all this and the guy was initially scowling. But gradually the scowl went away, and he said, “OK.” Once I gave that answer, everyone felt, “OK, we’re on this ship and we’re going toward a definite destination.”

That story immediately grabs the reader: it shows introspection, vision, and true leadership. Bird obviously understands what it takes to motivate people to excel, and that talent is a fundamental ingredient to innovation. His ability to translate motivation and morale into action and results transform him into a truly exemplary leader.

The details in Bird's thought process and the implementation of his ideas make his Ratatouille experience a truly compelling story. Similar details comprise the best application essays. They present that connection between thought, action, and impact that demonstrates the applicant is worthy of a place in the top programs.

Accepted.com editors are writers and editors with extensive experience pulling out the details from their clients to demonstrate exemplary leadership. Contact an Accepted.com editor to gain that insight and make your essays truly memorable.