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…
GRAD SCHOOL ADMISSIONS
Reject Rejection!
The holidays are over, and so is the “honeymoon” for many grad school hopefuls. Fortunately, I’m hearing good news from lots of clients: admissions to top schools. But I know it has been a tough year for many of you: maybe Harvard Business School gave you a precious interview invite, the interview went great, and…
5 Tips for Essay Writing: Plan With a Calendar, Not an Egg Timer
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…
Grad Admissions: Helicopter Parents
The New York Times published an article this week “Letting Your Grad Student Go “ on the phenomenon of helicopter parents in graduate schools admissions. Yes, I mean graduate, not undergraduate, admissions. I have a dual perspective on helicopter parenting. I have been working in graduate admissions as a private consultant for the last fifteen…
Financing Your Future: New Ebook
Financing Your Future: Winning Fellowships, Scholarships and Awards for Grad School, by Linda Abraham and Rebecca Blustein, shows you how to get the financial support you need to attend the graduate school of your choice. In Financing Your Future, an instantly downloadable ebook, you’ll learn about: Different types of scholarships. When to apply for financial…
MBADiversity City Forums Events & Accepted.com Test Prep Scholarship
It’s been a rough year financially for most people. So it’s nice to see when others are reaching out to help, and we at Accepted are trying to help out too. GradPrep, in conjunction with MBADiversity, will be awarding an Accepted.com $450.00 scholarship* to a GradPrep or MBADiversity City Forum registrant who attends one of…
Coming Soon to Accepted.com!
Coming soon to your local, handy-dandy computer screen: A whole new Accepted.com. Yes folks, Accepted.com will have facelift. (I decided I didn’t want one. May be needed, but too painful. I’m chicken.) Check back on Monday morning, maybe even Sunday, and you will find a brand new and improved Accepted.com with: Improved navigation and ease of…
What Does It Mean to Write from the “Inside Out”?
After devoting many days and countless revisions to his 250-word Stanford GSB Reliance Fellowship essay, the blogger at MBAdreamz concludes: “The mantra for writing essays should be bringing one’s ‘INSIDE OUT.’ The more one knows and reveals (about himself) in the essays, the more comfortable and confident he would be with the essays.” Having worked…
Rankings (Part 5 of 5): 8 Flaws in Rankings
How NOT to use the rankings Don’t give them too much importance. Don’t replace research and self-reflection with school ranking to determine where you apply or attend. Using them mindlessly could contribute to an expensive, time-consuming mistake. Blinding yourself to the rankings’ flaws leads to poor decisions. Consider this partial list of limitations: They…
US News Grad Rankings Are Out!
The US News just released its 2009 Grad School Rankings. I’m going to list the top ten for business school, law school, and medical school (research) and provide links to the ranking methodology for each category. For other graduate specialties, please visit the US News site. Business School Rankings and methodology 1. Harvard2. Stanford3. Northwestern Kellogg…
A Writing Lesson from President Obama
Take a writing lesson from President Obama. Newly sworn in, he ended his inauguration speech with these paragraphs: So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying…
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…
Maclean’s Magazine Issues Latest Canadian Rankings
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Maclean’s released its 18th annual Canadian University Rankings aiming to provide essential information that will help students find undergraduate and graduate programs that will best suit their needs. Some interesting highlights: For the fourth consecutive year, McGill University was #1 in the medical-doctoral category. The University of Toronto…
Getting Closer to Your Material: “This is a story about….”
When you need to remember the images and details of an experience, it can be helpful not to worry about chronology and narrative as you begin writing, because fresh to the page, you might become stymied wondering how to fit everything together. In that state, you may inadvertently start squelching details so you won’t have…
The Many Faces of Leadership
“I figured it all out.” That’s how I would paraphrase the essays many of my clients—MBA applicants and others—write in response to the ubiquitous “Describe a leadership experience” question. Now of course “figuring it all out,” my shorthand for “I came up with a creative solution to a tricky problem” or “I developed a killer…
Innovation and Leadership
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…
Personal Statement Tip: Once Upon a Time…
Once upon a time there was a wedding (actually yesterday). The father of the bride wanted to give a speech. His wife (me) worried that he would bore the guests. Mildly insulted and not wanting to forgo an opportunity to praise the bride, his new son-in-law, his son-in-law’s parents, and to share a few words…
What is an Accomplishment?
Accomplishments constitute the bread and butter of personal statements and application essays. Nothing too exciting in that statement. However, a fascinating brainstorming session on Accepted’s Editor Mailing List reveals that applicants don’t always know what an accomplishment is. What goes into this application staple? The bread: Impact. Your accomplishment must show you as a contributor…
Personal Statement Tip: Failure Questions
Facing a failure question? Keep in mind this maxim from Michael Josephson of the Josephson Institute: "Find the lesson in every failure, and you’ll never fail." That concept is the key to successfully answering failure questions on applications and in interviews.
Personal Statement Tip: History vs. Memory
Over the weekend I went to a talk focused on the difference between history and memory. The two are clearly related, but not the same. History is what you read in an encyclopedia or newspaper timeline. It is facts, dates, statistics, and data, impersonal and frequently very dry in isolation. Memory consists of vignettes, stories,…