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…
Passionate Optimism: It’s Nice, but Will it Land You a Job?
A few weeks ago we reported on the bleak career future for humanities PhD holders. Our post concluded on a rather pessimistic note, sharing the advice of Thomas H. Benton who warns humanities students against pursuing higher degrees in the humanities. Recently The Daily Pennsylvanian expressed a glimmer of hope on the otherwise rather depressing subject…
Ivy League Schools Experience Application Increases
While top Ivy universities Columbia and Harvard saw a 4% and a 5% rise in applications (respectively) this past year, other universities in this category saw a higher than 15% jump in the number of applicants applying to their undergraduate programs. University of Pennsylvania experienced a 17% increase, Brown came in at 20%, and Princeton…
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…
Stanford Wins First Place for Forbes’ “The Most Satisfied MBAs”
Forbes took its survey findings from “The Best Business Schools” and compiled a second rankings report: “The Most Satisfied MBAs.” Stanford won top slot for both rankings. It is #1 for providing the best return on investment for its graduates, as well as for churning out MBAs who are extremely satisfied with their current jobs…
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)…
Surviving the Scramble
March 19th—Match Day—is just around the corner, and many residency hopefuls are biting their nails as the NRMP’s algorhythms work their magic. There’s not much else to do, after all the applications are submitted and interviews concluded and thank you notes written. Now it’s just a waiting game. The majority of applicants will hear “Congratulations,…
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…
Your law school personal statement…it needs to be, well, personal!
When writing your personal statement for law school, it’s a good idea to include a few school specific sentences about why each of the schools to which you are applying is interesting to you. This is not “why do I want to go to law school?” but rather “this is why your law school is…
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…
