I promised a screen shot of Accepted.com in 1996 and here it is. I feel like I’m displaying my high school year book picture. How dorky and dated can you get? Fortunately, Accepted.com wasn’t created to advise on graphics or web design. Its mission was, is, and will be to enable applicants to achieve…
GRAD SCHOOL ADMISSIONS
Personal Statement Tip: What’s Memorable?
I went to my daughter’s awards ceremony last night. She’s graduating high school, and the school has a separate ceremony a couple of weeks before the graduation so that the graduation isn’t too terribly long. In any case, I watched a lot of girls get awards for leadership, excellence in a particular academic subject, theater,…
Personal Statement Tip: Umbrellas, Passion, and Resilience
Two unconnected events catalyzed this blog post: I had lunch yesterday with Rahul Choudaha , the Admissions Manager at the Indian School of Business. (That lunch will have its own post in the next few days.) He mentioned that ISB wants applicants with a passion for what they are doing, have done, and want to…
Latest US News Grad Rankings for 2007
The latest US News rankings are out. Here are the top 10 in a few categories: Business: Harvard Stanford Wharton Sloan (Tied with Kellogg) Kellogg (Tied with Sloan) Chicago Columbia (Tied with Haas) Haas (Tied with Columbia) Tuck Anderson Law Yale Stanford Harvard Columbia (Tied with NYU) NYU (Tied with Columbia) Chicago Penn UC Berkeley…
NYU Received $200 Million Gift
This seems to be the week for $200 million gifts in the Big Apple. NYU announced yesterday that it has received a $200 million gift to create the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. The gift from the Leon Levy Foundation will fund the "graduate research and Ph.D. degree-granting center with its own…
Personal Statement Tip: Dealing with Hardship
A friend of mine was recently going through a hard time. Things were going wrong, seriously wrong in her life. She wryly labeled these experiences "character building." It is a sad truth that tragedy and trial build character strength and develop wisdom. Most of us would rather be weaker and stupider than have character building…
Ordinary Things Extraordinarily Well
Stanford’s Graduate School of Business frequently says that it seeks applicants who "have excelled by doing ordinary things extraordinarily well." While Stanford GSB uses this phrase frequently, many other programs seek that quality too Last week I saw the excellent documentary, Paperclips. It tells of a seemingly ordinary middle school principal and two of her…
Metaphors in your Personal Statement and Application Essay
You can use a metaphor as a phrase in your essay or as a whole theme that envelopes your essay. In either case, if used well and thoughtfully, metaphors will add color to your essay and anchor it with concrete images. I wrote previously about using metaphors in phrases as well as other techniques to…
Personal Statement Tip: Topic Choice
Up and down. Up and down we went. My husband and I huffed and puffed up a ridge, down into a lovely canyon, and then back up and down, descending and ascending over 1500 feet during our 6 mile hike last weekend. It was a spectacular, clear day. From the high points we could see…
Troubling Trends in Academic Medicine
A study of job satisfaction and well-being among medical academicians shows a high level of dissatisfaction and depression among faculty at four medical schools. The study blames Increased pressure for clinical and research productivity and decreased control over the work environment. For the details, please see “The Impact of the Changing Health Care Environment on…
Cost of Student Debt To Go Up
Congress passed a spending bill that will significantly raise the cost of student aid programs. According to the CollegeJournal, the fixed rate on Stafford loans, the most popular kind of financial aid, will climb from 4.7% to 6.8% on July 1. The rate on PLUS loans will be fixed at 8%.
Personal Statement Fatal Flaw #4: Superficiality
(Continuing my series on essays that sound like baby talk and are frequently application killers.) When you write superficially you tend to blend into the great mass of applicants who on a superficial level are very much like you. They have the same goal. They have prepared similarly to gain acceptance. Of course, blending in is…
Personal Statement Fatal Flaw #1: Lack of Substance
At the end of last month I compared certain personal statements and application essays to my grandson’s efforts at expression and identified 5 fatal flaws in your essays: Lack of substance – nothing demonstrating the qualities claimed. Failure to answer the question. Clichéd. Superficiality. Muddled thinking. Let’s explore them over the next several days one…
Admissions Essay Tip: 5 Fatal Flaws to Avoid
A little over six months ago I wrote about my lousy mood after the departure of my daughter, son-in-law, and worst of all, one and only grandchild. I’m in the same funk now for the very same reason. After a wonderful four-week visit in Los Angeles, where I live, my children had the audacity to…
Letter of Recommendation: You-Write-It-I’ll-Sign-It Dilemma
Your boss, mentor, and good friend has agreed to write letters of recommendation to three business schools on your behalf. You shrewdly have prepared a package of information for her: your resume, a summary of each program’s values, excellent quotes from reviews, the questions she will respond to for each school, and the deadlines for…
MIT Sloan, Starting Bloc Help Young Applicants
Starting Bloc and MIT Sloan have set up a program were six Starting Bloc Fellows (college seniors) are accepted to MIT Sloan’s MBA program for deferred admission. The Starting Bloc fellows will work in social or private enterprise for one to two years before matriculating at Sloan. The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at…
The Two Levels of Your Application
When we interact socially, we talk on two different planes. With people that we are meeting for the first time, we try to find common ground. We exchange information and try to discover what links us – an alma matter, profession, acquaintances, hobby – something we share. On the other hand, when we are with…
Judith Koffler Joins Accepted.com
It gives me great pleasure to announce that Judith Koffler is joining the Accepted.com staff. She is a gifted writer and delightful individual with outstanding credentials. Here are a few highlights from her lengthy CV: LLM from Harvard. Fulbright Scholar who recently returned from teaching at Wuhan University in China Extensive experience teaching law at…
“These are really good essays!”
As a result of my being quoted in that front-page Wall St. Journal article yesterday, (OK. OK. I’m milking it.) I received a call from a client I worked with in 1996-97. We haven’t spoken in several years, and it was great hearing from him. We worked closely on his application, and he was accepted to several schools,…
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