Law School applicants: Trying to decide on an LSAT prep company and need some guidance? Accepted.com has interviewed representatives from the leading LSAT prep courses in the country and are now presenting you with “LSAT Prep Companies: In Their Own Words,” so you can discern the differences among them and select the best course for…
Grad Application Preseason 4: Your Skills
As I’ve been discussing, part of the pre-application thought process involves honest analysis of your achievements and abilities, along with your future interests. Grad school will give you the opportunity for deep, advanced study in your field—including theoretical/methodological approaches undergrads are rarely exposed to. As you prepare to apply, consider how to present your skills/accomplishments…
Playing the Waiting Game
In the days of paper applications, I had buckets lining the walls of my dining room. I’d add the unread applications and review them based on geographic area, or the division to which the students had applied, or sometimes, simply the top twenty in the stack. A twelve-hour reading day wasn’t uncommon. With the advent…
12 Secrets to the Good Life at HBS: Tips and Advice
The HBS cheerleaders at the Harbus newsletter tip off future HBS students about student life at one of the world’s best business schools. If you want to get to campus and already be in the know, read on for our interpretation of “12 Things You Should Know About Life at HBS”! Harvard Business School will…
It’s Wordy, It’s Awkward, It’s… Correct!
Like a salesperson trying to fool you into purchasing an expensive item by appealing to your emotions, the makers of the GMAT try to trick test-takers into both “buying” grammatically incorrect answer choices by making them concise, and eliminating answer choices that are grammatically correct by making them appear awkward and clumsy. How do we…
Reflecting Back on 1970s Women’s Colleges
On the importance of attending a women’s college, 40 years ago, by an alumna: “At a certain age, it’s appropriate to stop thinking of boys as playmates and start relating to them as potential boyfriends and husbands. It’s easier to make the transition if you’re not in each other’s hair all the time.” In a…
Attitude Problems on the LSAT
Attitude questions—you know, those pesky problems that pretty much ask you how the author feels about something—may be the trickiest questions on the Reading Comp section of the LSAT. If only those authors would just come out and say how they felt about the topic (for ex, I think that Yeats’ poetry is crap)! Luckily…
New “No-Co-Signer” Loans Aid Foreign MBA Students
According to BusinessWeek, Chicago Booth, Northwestern University, Rochester’s Simon School, and UCLA Anderson are among the six universities and 15 graduate programs that have joined the Affiliated Loan Program for Students (ALPS), a solution to the international student loan crisis. In 2008, just as admissions season was approaching, a few major international student loan lenders…
American Students Lazy? True or False
Is it fair to accuse all American students of being lazy? Inside Higher Ed chronicles an interesting discussion sparked by Babson College faculty member, Kara Miller, about the nature of American students. Her claim, which she presented in the Boston Globe last month, was that American students are lazy, especially when compared to their international…
College Early Admissions: The Early Bird….
For those college seniors who decided to apply under one of the early admission plans for the fall semester of 2010, last week was a big week. As my high school sophomore noted, “Everyone on campus (of his college prep school) is tense and freaking out.” A little less so after Monday, when Columbia, Brown,…
Digging Deep – 2: Kellogg’s MMM Program
Several weeks ago I posted about a hypothetical client –let’s call him Wonderman– with sterling stats, extra-curriculars and long-term goal. He wants to transition into Strategy Consulting as preparation for a VC or PE career. As an applicant from a developing economy experiencing a boom in infrastructure and manufacturing activity, Wonderman dreams of identifying local…
Personal Statement Tip: Story Time (Part 1)
The moment I found the lump, I suspected my life was about to change—in a big way. Good enough for an opening line? Want to read more? I hope it’s yes on both counts. Because I’m going to tell you a story. A short one. A true one. Not so much for the sake of…
Dig Deeper to Find the Buried Treasure – Part 1
Bear with me as I describe the beginning of a typical day. I open an email from a new client from, say, a country in Southeast Asia. I scan his essays for a top US business school: Engineer. Graduated from a top-3 engineering schools. Strong extra-curriculars, high GMAT. Project manager for an international software firm….
Tips for Medical School Applicants with a Low GPA
Did you decide on a medical career late in undergraduate career? Were you immature, undisciplined, and unfocussed in your study habits?Did you find the transition from high school classes to undergraduate coursework challenging? Were you overwhelmed by moving to a new area or newly acquired independence? Did you have personal issues that took your focus…
Tips For Applicants With A Low MCAT Score (Part 1)
Options Without Retaking the Exam All medical school applicants (or any other professional school applicant) must assess their credentials realistically in order to present themselves best during the application process. Since applicants are evaluated based on specific academic (undergraduate and graduate GPA and MCAT scores) and non-academic (research and clinical exposures, leadership skills, mentoring experiences)…
The Three Essential Components of Successful Wait-List Letters
Effective wait-list letters often contain three key components. First is an “update” section informing the school of recent professional and nonprofessional developments since you submitted your application. This section is your ostensible reason for writing, so it should be substantial and full of as many significant changes as you can think of (promotions being the…
Exercise to Quiet the Critic
Most of us carry a very large critic inside our heads when we sit down to write. I have an exercise that helps writers defeat this critic who keeps them from writing. Dialogs to Diffuse The Power of Critical Voices Years ago, I was flying Southwest Airlines from Seattle to Tucson where I was going…
Duke Law School 2009 Application Tips
Most law schools will ask for a personal statement that reflects who you are and why you want to go to law school. Resist the temptation to make this a one-essay-fits-all-schools personal statement. The more specific you can be about each school, the more interested your admissions readers will be in your application. For Duke,…
College Admissions: The Value of Visits
Every August for the past six years, I have gone online and pre-ordered my black and tan executive desk diary planner, which is delivered to my doorstep every September. I find it a little annoying that I have to wait that long, but that’s the first date that it becomes available. I plan my vacations…
MBA Admissions: Approaching the “wild card” essay questions
Every MBA candidate expects to write a goals essay. Everyone expects to tell a leadership story. These are the “flagship” pieces of any application–the essays that will help the admissions committee figure out what you’ve achieved and how you approach your professional life. But then, there are the “wild card” questions–these are almost always very…
