• Round 3 MBA Special: Save $100 on all orders over $1,000 placed by February 22, 2010. Can be used for MBA essay editing, waitlist letters, and mock interviews. Use coupon code R3100.

• In the State of the Union address, President Obama urged colleges to “get serious about cutting their own costs.” To assist in the goal of making higher education more affordable to the greatest number of students, Obama plans to increase federal support for education by 6% in 2011. Obama also supports the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act which, if passed by Congress, would eliminate bank-based federal student loans. This bill, according to the presdient, “will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that go to banks for student loans.”A more lenient payback plan is also being discussed. (The Chronicle)

• According to The Chronicle last week college endowments have declined by about 23% in the last two years. In fact, the investment return for 2009 was the worst return recorded in the history of the endowment study, at -18.7%. According to John D. Walda, president of the National Association of College and University Business Officers, however, “the picture for endowments is a lot cheerier than it was a year ago.” Optimism for the future, though, doesn’t help the fact that certain schools that had been dependent on endowments are now in pretty bad shape, especially considering the sizable loans they’re now forced to take out. The only reason why these schools didn’t go under was because of fortunate investment returns from previous years.

• The Moscow Times reports that “Russia’s business education market was among the world’s worst hit in 2009.” In some cases, admissions fell about 50% from last year. Some schools are even dipping into their own funds to create lending programs for students in order to maintain adequate student enrollment. Besides the fact that students (or their sponsoring companies) can no longer afford to pay for business schools, students in general seem to have lost interest in pursuing an MBA, at least for the time being. However, despite the decrease in MBA program enrollment, interest in EMBA programs in Russia is on the rise.

• Women are equally represented in medical and law schools, but still lag well behind in numbers in the b-school sphere. “Business Schools Sweeten Lures for Women,” a recent article from WeNews, suggests that in order to increase female enrollment in America’s business schools, MBA programs are forced to lure women in by their sweet teeth, both figuratively and literally. Recruitment events for female MBA prospects are popping up all over the country, including a private party at New York City’s Dylan’s Candy Bar.

• Do students benefit from being in a diverse educational climate? Is affirmative action, or "race-conscious admissions," justified? Will diversity improve education? These are questions raised by Peter Schmidt, author of a recent Chronicle article on campus diversity. The answer: It depends (of course). If situations are handled optimally then educational benefits will increase and the inherent problems of affirmative action will decrease. Most agree that affirmative action is not a policy that can be accepted on its own, but most be implemented along with other educational and diversity initiatives and even at that, with caution. Still, many universities are skeptical of the educational benefits derived from race-conscious admissions and believe that accepting more qualified students will benefit the students and the school, both long- and short-term, more than were they to focus on boosting classroom diversity.

Accepted.com ~ Helping You Write Your Best

In my non-admissions life, I recently went to a lecture given by a biographer whose work I admire. In the course of his talk he mentioned that while writing about genius has merit, writing about typical folks and their extraordinary achievements is more valuable. The compelling story -- the inspiration, and attention grabber -- resides in the tales of "ordinary people who made a difference."

Bingo! That's relevant to applicants. One of the most commonly asked personal statement questions I see on Twitter is "What should I write about?"

You need to write about when YOU made a difference.

So if you are a Michelangelo, Einstein, Gates, or Buffett, you may be able to write about your incredible talents and how they propelled you to achieve, although you may appear arrogant if you take this approach. In any case, you geniuses can stop reading this post.

For the rest of you, please continue.  Think about those times when your participation in a project, organization, business, team, or club made a difference.

• What was the situation? the problem? the challenge?
• What was your role in meeting that challenge?  What did you do?
• What was the result?

You may or may not want to tie this story explicitly to your educational and professional goals. That decision will depend on many factors, but one evergreen topic for your personal statements and application essays remains: times when you made a difference.

Related Resources:

• "PAR" or "CAR" Anyone?
• MBA 5 Fatal Flaws
• Med 5 Fatal Flaws
• Law 5 Fatal Flaws
• Grad 5 Fatal Flaws
• College 5 Fatal Flaws

  By Linda Abraham, President and Founder of Accepted.com.

Are you an applicant who is still waiting for your first interview offer in mid-January?  If so, there are a handful of actions you can take at this time to help yourself get accepted to medical school.  First, if you have not sent an update letter recently (or at all since you applied) you definitely want to do so.  You should write a brief -- not more than 1 page -- letter summarizing what you have been doing for the past 6 months and forward it to all pending schools.  Ideally you will share several “new” experiences such as: (i) A new clinical position that gives you exposure you may have been lacking, (ii) Additional service work in a soup kitchen, shelter, local church, or as a Big Brother that has allowed personal growth (iii) Building of leadership skills as a lab teaching assistant, tutor, mentor of high school students, and/or underclassman, (iv) Significant advancement in a current research position, such as a recent publication or the chance to present your work at a conference or seminar, or (v) Advancement of academic credentials such as receiving your EMT licensure, additional “hard science” coursework, or other certifications.

Sending an additional letter of recommendation is also a good idea if your recommender can add something “new” to your application.  Sending another letter from a science professor when you already have three similar letters in your application is not “new” and does not add value, but if you have a new experience that is unique or at least different from what you have done previously, then by all means have someone write about. 

So, ask yourself - What is different about my application NOW that makes me a better applicant?  If you have a good answer to that question, then yes go ahead and share this information with each school where your application is still pending. Yes, it is late in the application season, but many schools are still holding interviews through February, and some schools even interview through March.  Don’t give up. Be proactive.  You never know if your update or recommendation letter will be enough to get you that desired first interview offer.

By guest blogger Theresa Davies-Heerema, Ph.D., who has advised many medical and dental school applicants during her career in post-graduate education.

The blogger of MBA on the Horizon recently noted the irony of her situation: after devoting months to prepare for her MBA applications, including attending information sessions, reading blogs, and  researching through other means, she ended up cramming all her essay writing for Wharton into a single weekend. A Saturday marathon writing session produced a career vision essay that, in her words, ended up "horrible."

While she credits her boyfriend's good editorial eye and a lot of Red Bull to seeing her to a better result by the end of the weekend, I'm sure she would rather have worked without this stress, and the echo of the clock ticking loudly and relentlessly.

As an editor at Accepted.com, I advise clients to allow several weeks for the process of writing their essays – even for a single school. Most applicants already hold down full-time jobs, leaving only evenings and weekends for the focused work required to get the essays right. Allowing enough time will help you produce essays that are compelling, genuine, substantial, thoughtful, well considered, and polished.

For those still looking ahead to their MBA or other grad essay applications, here are five tips to make the process more manageable:

1. Map out a strategy for what experiences you will highlight in each essay, making sure that you are choosing your strongest experiences while not repeating yourself. Your goal is to show a variety of professional and extracurricular experiences that reveal your leadership, innovative spirit, and personality.  

2. If you are applying to three or more MBA programs, allow a month or more for the entire process. While you can recycle some material from school to school, it still takes time to tailor the content for each school's specific questions and space limitations. Even in the "career vision" essay common to nearly all MBA programs, there are differences in how the questions are phrased, questions within questions, and the lengths of these essays vary by as much as a few hundred words.

3. Let your essay drafts "rest" for a day, especially after an intensive writing session. This will allow you to return to it and edit with fresh eyes. You'll be surprised and pleased at how many improvements you can make on a draft that you thought was in pretty terrific shape only 48 hours earlier.

4. Be yourself in your essays. It's easy to sound canned or stiff when trying to make the "right" impression on an adcom. But the "right" impression is the one that reveals not only your strengths and focus, but also the winning personality that will make the adcom feel you are a good fit for their school. Allowing the writing process enough time will make it far easier to write in a natural voice; writing under the gun can drown out that voice under a blanket of stress. 

 5. A good editor is invaluable. Naturally I'm biased on favor of editors, but a skilled editor will help you ensure quality content, polish and trim your essays to fit the tight space requirements, and also help you catch errors that can be difficult to flag on your own. Repeating certain words or phrases too often, making a claim about your qualifications or achievements without backing it up, and simple spelling, grammar or syntax errors are only a few of the distracting errors that a good editor can help you avoid.

Award-winning author Judy Gruen has been an editor with Accepted.com since 1996. She is also the co-author with Linda Abraham of the ebook, MBA Letters of Recommendation That Rock.



As you prepare for the med school application process, you may be wondering whether applying Early Decision (ED) is appropriate for you.

The (frustrating) answer is, “It depends.” Schools with ED programs usually consider only the strongest candidates for ED; scores and grades which are acceptable for regular applicants won’t cut it.

There’s some risk involved in ED, too. ED applicants may not apply to other schools until either (1) they are rejected for ED; or (2) October 1 passes with no word from the school.  Although early October is technically not too late to begin the application process at other schools, it’s far from ideal. This was somewhat less problematic when the MCAT was offered only in April and August and the August scores weren’t released until late September/early October. Now, with many more MCAT administrations, applicants have the opportunity to take the test twice if necessary and still have their applications completed before October.

If you believe you have the “numbers” for ED and want to give it a try, a state school in your home state is a better bet than a private school. You’ll have an advantage because state schools are eager to attract top-notch state residents, and it may be that the public schools in your state are losing strong candidates to the big-name institutions.

To make the best-informed decision possible, contact the admissions office at your ED school to discuss your qualifications. No one will tell you that you’re sure to be accepted, but you should learn whether applying ED is or is not appropriate for you.       

By Joan Davis, who served for 18 years as a pre-medical adviser at the University of Rochester.