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…
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…
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: …
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
“I’m Smart, Really I Am!” How to Prove Character Traits in Essays
When you write an application essay or statement of purpose, you’re trying to accomplish several goals at once: You are trying to prove your worthiness to be accepted to your target school, while also trying to impress upon the adcom that you have desirable character traits that your program values. But how do you prove…
Weakness, What Weakness?
I saw it. The question was looming in an essay and hiding behind a corner in the brain and/or instruction sheet of my interviewer. “So Natalie, tell me about your weaknesses and what you did to overcome them”? Gosh, there are so many, I don’t even know where to begin. Ding! What do you do…
Personal Statement Tip: Choosing an Essay Topic
My assistant Deborah is helping me with a new ebook — a compilation of Accepted Admissions Almanac tips from the last 3-4 years. She came upon “Personal Statement Tip: Topic Choice” and felt that I needed to be more specific. I’m going to write this tip as an addendum to that one from two years ago. Besides,…
The Importance of Obstacles
When my clients write about their accomplishments, whether in personal statements for graduate school or b-school essays that ask for greatest accomplishments, challenges, and the like, they almost always come up with real accomplishments: driving innovations that led to revenue boosts for their firms, conducting original and meaningful research in their fields of study, or…
Write Killer Openings
On June 18th, 2006, I was pronounced dead for just over one minute. Want to read more? Good. That was the idea: to grab you from the start. Luckily, on June 18th, 2006, I wasn’t dead—to my knowledge. But if I had been, presumably as the result of some kind of horrible and quite possibly…
Personal Statement Tip: Pick Yourself Up and Applaud
Essay questions dealing with failure, risk, mistakes, and difficult interactions or conflict cause applicants to cringe, squirm, and bite their nails. After all, you want to show yourself succeeding and conquering the world in your application essays and personal statements. Not falling down. Schools ask these questions because they want to see how you get…
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…
Admissions Tip: Thanksgiving Appreciation
I could write now about the aspects of my life I am thankful for: my husband, five healthy children, two delightful, adorable grandchildren, my daughter’s recent engagement, a thriving business, work that I enjoy, and good health. I have done so in the past as I wished you a Happy Thanksgiving, a US holiday that…
Admissions Tip from Dr. Pausch’s Last Lecture (Part 2)
In my last blog post I discussed some of the ways Dr. Pausch enlivens his lecture and engages the reader, but his presentation is not just a collection of spiffy techniques, it has profound content and substance. Let’s look at the substance, not in the context of his tragic circumstances — he has cancer of…
