The ERAS ( Electronic Residency Application Service) is now open for the 2013 match applications, so it’s time to get cracking on those residency essays. The key difference between your residency personal statement and your AMCAS essay is that with the former, you should show that you have specific direction towards a chosen specialty…
Curing Addiction: A New Medical Residency
Specialists have long debated whether alcoholism is a psychological illness requiring counseling and therapy or a physical disease that demands continuing medical treatment. A recent article in The New York Times (“Rethinking Addiction’s Roots, and Its Treatment”) looks at the reasons behind both arguments and the growing belief that addiction should be treated with…
UCLA Trains Spanish-Speaking Doctors to Help Underserved Communities
A recent Daily Bruin article highlights a unique medical program at UCLA, the International Medical Graduate Program. This retraining program recruits recent medical graduates from Spanish-speaking countries and prepares them for the U.S. medical board licensing exams. It also helps them apply to family medicine residency programs. The program was established in 2006 as an…
Internal Medicine Residents Need to Focus More on Primary Care
According to a Medical News Today article, doctors with training in internal medicine are unprepared for primary care positions. Research shows that medical training focuses too much on inpatient care and not enough on outpatient care, “the bread and butter of any physician.” (90% of doctor visits are outpatient visits.) This means that residents graduate…
A Few of the Mostest at Accepted.com
This is the time of year to look back at the most, best, (worst), etc. I am going to stick to the positive. Top Ten Most Visited Accepted Admissions Almanac Posts of 2010: In a nutshell, rankings and application tip posts rule. (I am only listing the current tip post when last year’s tip post…
Thanksgiving Thoughts and Thanks
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, and indeed, one of my favorite posts on this blog is a post I wrote several years ago for Thanksgiving. It is a favorite because I like the topic/story and because it illustrates many of the techniques I teach and preach. I have linked to it several times…
Residency Personal Statement: 7 Don’t Do’s
In honor of September 1, we are posting this tip for your residency match personal statement. Your personal statement is your first and best opportunity to put a personal face to the scores and evaluations that each residency program receives. Like the AMCAS (or AACOMAS) essay you wrote to get into medical school, the residency…
Personal Branding in Admissions
The term “personal brand” is bandied about a lot in admissions. I don’t claim to be an expert on branding, but after fifteen years editing essays and advising applicants, I know a bit about admissions. I see the concept of “personal brand” as a threat and opportunity for applicants. Want to know more? See this…
Plagiarism in Residency Essays: Just Don’t
The WSJ’s Health Blog recently posted “Study: Medical Residency Applicants and Plagiarism” which cites a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine by a team of researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The researchers found “evidence of plagiarism” in 5.2% of residency application personal statements by comparing the essays to publicly available material…
Application Boxes Should Do the Heavy Lifting
For one of Accepted’s first forays into video, I decided to focus on application boxes, the mundane, pedestrian elements of an application that frequently are not given appropriate attention. Please watch the video to see how you make the ordinary into extraordinary, value-added elements of your application. Since this is our first attempt at providing…
What Should I Write About? Making a Difference
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…
Surprise! How It Can Help You Get Accepted
“My visit to the cemetery last Friday gave new meaning to ‘Black Friday’ for me.” Actually it didn’t. But if it had, that line would have provided a strong opening to this post on the second of Made to Stick’s six principles of memorable, persuasive communication: Unexpected. You expect me to post about writing and…
Personal Statement Tip: A Core Concept is Central to Essay Success
I am almost finished reading Made to Stick by the brothers Chip and Dan Heath. I recommend it highly to those of you in sales, communications, or teaching. Quant jocks? You probably don’t need it. The authors researched and identified the factors that cause communications to succeed or fail. They boiled their research down to…
Healthcare-Related Career Options
The November 2009 issue of Money magazine ranks physician assistant and nurse practitioner among the 50 best jobs in America. In fact, physician assistant ranks second and nurse practitioner fourth. The study rated jobs on flexibility, benefit to society, satisfaction and stress, and PA and NP received identical scores in three of the four categories: …
Favor Please
When you buy or register for our services or products, please: Triple-check your email address. Include a phone number. Someone registered today, provided academic and other background information, but gave an invalid email and no phone number. If it’s you, please email onlinesupport AT accepted.com with the correct email address and a phone number, so…
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…
Personal Statement Tip: Too many topics, too many words
I just got back from an almost two-week vacation crowned by our younger son’s joyous wedding to a wonderful young woman. We couldn’t be happier. My husband once again faced the challenge of speaking at the wedding, and after the wedding commented on the difficulties inherent in covering a number of different topics (praise for…
Happening @ Accepted.com
On Friday I promised a whole new Accepted.com,and it’s up! Please check it out. We know there a few items to clean up, but please let us know what you like and dislike. You can let us know in comments below or just by contacting us. We have also implemented a change that many of…
Write Your Way to a Residency Match
Write Your Way to a Residency Match is Accepted’s Featured Ebook this Month, and you can save 20% off the full price of this instantly downloadable ebook during the month of June. But why wait until the end of the month? You’ll forget…you’ll get busy. Get your hand on this 40-page guide today to explore: …
Personal Statement Tip: Less is More
Most of us have heard the saying “less is more,” but how many of us put it into practice when it counts? Your graduate-school essays are the perfect forum for reaping the benefits of this deceptively simple principle. First, what does “less is more” really mean? It’s the idea that we must resist our…
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