Paul Bodine, Accepted's Senior Editor and author of Great Application Essays for Business School and other fine admissions books, just emailed me the following news:

1. Great Application Essays for Business School is available again on Amazon. You can also buy it from Accepted's bookstore, if you are in the U.S., and you will receive a free bonus ecourse.
2. Great Application Essays for Business School has been translated into Chinese.

A Korean version is in the works.

It's an excellent and very practical book. If you are drafting essays or thinking about drafting them, check out Great Application Essays for Business School.

As I huffed and puffed on a StairMaster recently, I listened to the first three podcasts produced by Law School Podcaster, and I was impressed.  Very impressed. I am please to recommend this resource highly to law school applicants seeking reliable information about law school admissions.

So far Law School Podcaster has produced four shows:

• Law School Strategic Admission Plan: What You Can Do Now To Help You Get Accepted Next Year
• Creating the Killer Law School Application: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating the Best Application
• Choosing the Right Law School: Understand the Factors That Will Affect Where You Want To Go To School
• The LSAT: Everything You Need To Know About The Test

I have heard all but the last one. I found them to be interesting -- although I am a little nuts when it comes to admissions -- and well presented with knowledgeable guests. I particularly appreciated the comprehensive way Law School Podcaster and the guests dealt with each topic.

Upcoming segments include:

• Financing Your JD
• The Current Economic Environment
• Deciding Whether to Pursue a JD and/or an MBA

You may think, "Linda isn't objective -- especially when she talks about the guests! After all, she is a guest on the show 'Choosing the Right Law School,' and Paul Bodine, Accepted's Senior Editor and author of Great Personal Statements for Law School, is a guest on 'Creating the Killer Law School Application.'" You may be right. But, if you are applying to law school, I invite you to see, or more accurately, hear for yourself. 

AAMC just opened its 2010 medical school application, and you will be able to submit your application "on or about June 2, 2009."

We have two new resources to help you with your medical school application:

• Write Your Way to Medical School, our brand new, hot-off-the-virtual-presses ebook. Cyd Foote and I are collaborating  once again to help you ace the AMCAS app. Here are a few of the topics covered in this succinct, instantly downloadable guide:
  • Avoiding common application mistakes.
  • Mining your experiences for the gems that humanize and distinguish you.
  • Developing a thesis to unify your personal statement.
  • Using examples that maximize credibility, interest, and persuasion.
  • Engaging your readers.
  • Editing for clarity and brevity.
  • Choosing the best examples for the post-secondary experiences section.
• Med Magic, a free online chat with authors and Accepted.com editors Paul Bodine and Cydney Foote. Paul and Cyd both have years of experience working with medical school applicants on the writing required to gain acceptance to medical school. In addition. Paul is the author of McGraw-Hill's recently released Perfect Phrases for Medical School Acceptance. Cyd and I have co-authored Write Your Way to a Residency Match, Write Your Way to a Fellowship Match, and the just mentioned Write Your Way to Medical School. Please mark your calendar and bring your questions to this online chat on May 7 at 5:00 PM PT/8:00 PM ET.

Competition is intense, and we're here to help you. Please check out the ebook and join us for the free chat.

We have a couple of great chats coming up:

• INSEAD MBA Admissions tomorrow  Sept. 11 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/5:00 PM GMT with Cassandra Pittman, Assistant Director of Marketing for INSEAD’s North American Office. Whether you are a North American, Asian, South American, European, or simply a homo sapien interested in this leader in global management education, this chat provides a convenient opportunity for you to learn about, interact with INSEAD representatives, and ask your own questions. In Accepted's chat room.
  
• Wharton MBA Admissions with Jackie Zavitz, Senior Associate Director in the Office of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid, and Tiffany Gooden, Associate Director. Our guests will answer your questions about the University of Pennsylvania's renowned business school. Maybe even a few students will join us too. This Monday September 15, 2008 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/5:00 PM GMT in Accepted's chat room. Mark your calendar.
  

The transcript from our recent chat with Paul Bodine on Great Application Essays for Business, also the title of his excellent book, was an enlightening chat.  A little less frenetic than some of other our chats, but filled with good tips on writing those critical essays. The transcript should be posted by the end of the week.

Finally, stay tuned, our new version of Consultant's Guide to MBA Admissions should be available any day. It's updated and contains advice for Harvard's 2008-09 application.

No B-school application essay may be harder to write than the ethics essay. For most applicants, one challenge is simply identifying an appropriate story. Many applicants assume that the ethics essay is designed to put their morals to some stringent litmus test. They brainstorm for examples that show them proudly refusing bribes, pointedly excusing themselves from insider-trading deals, or sternly rejecting other blatantly illegal schemes. They misunderstand the ethic essay’s purpose.

Admissions committees use the ethics essay to see how you analyze and propose solutions to thorny problems that lack black-and-white answers. Managers who expect to lead organizations well must be comfortable with ambiguity and have the emotional intelligence to find their way to solutions that balance complexities. Essays in which you pat yourself on the back for resisting an obviously illegal scheme (which admissions officers would expect you to reject outright) tell them nothing about your ability to balance ambiguous alternatives or conflicting values.

To inventory your own experience for possible ethical stories, look under every rock, including your community, academic, and personal experiences. The key is to search where ethical issues are usually arise: at the intersection of competing interests, such as public versus private, individual versus organization, shareholder versus employee, labor versus management. You're hunting for gray areas, moments where your loyalties and instincts feel conflicted or collide.

The heart of the ethics essay is your analysis of the alternative decision paths open to you and their potential costs and benefits. Remember that schools don't pose ethics questions to poke around in your scruples but to see how you tease out a course of action where all your alternatives seem poor. You should explain clearly whom your decision will affect and dispassionately weigh the pluses and minuses of each "solution," without appearing to judge the various participants or predetermine the outcome.

You should always try to draw the “moral” from the story, the lessons you learned and have applied in similar situations since. This is where you extract the particulars of your ethical challenge into a larger insight or principle. If the best you can do is, "honesty is the best policy" or "do onto others as you would have them do unto you," you need to keep digging.

By Paul Bodine, author of Great Application Essays for Business School, Perfect Phrases for Business School Acceptance, Perfect Phrases for Law School Acceptance, and Perfect Phrases for Medical School Acceptance.