AMSA’s monthly magazine, The New Physician, has a couple of excellent articles on the Match and choosing your speciality. Although neither article is online, the "Choice of a Lifetime: Picking a career is one thing they don’t teach us." is particularly valuable because it gives concrete suggestion on researching different specialties. If you are looking…
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%.
GMAC Convention: San Francisco Here I Come!
This past summer I submitted a session proposal to the Graduate Management Admissions Council for its next annual convention in San Francisco this June. I proposed a panel discussion on admissions consulting that will discuss what admissions consultants actually do. There is an incredible amount of ignorance, especially among those who are critical of the…
California Bar Bites
Law school is only a prelude to legal practice for most pre-laws. And on the way is the bar exam, a hurdle that has to be surmounted. The Wall St. Journal reports today that California’s bar frequently bars the way to legal practice, or at least causes even the talented to stumble. According to today’s…
DeansTalk Blog Discusses Rankings
The BizDeansTalk blog has a fascinating exchange on b-school rankings between a number of b-school deans, including Tuck’s Paul Danos, and Della Bradshaw, Business Education Editor of the Financial Times. In this exchange, Dean Danos provides a succinct and measured viewpoint on the rankings from an institution that does extremely well in them. Dean Thomas…
MBA Admissions Interview Feedback: HBS and Kellogg
Lots of MBA Admissions Interviews taking place these days for many, many schools. Here are a few interview tidbits: 1) Per the recent MIT Sloan chat, interview invitations should start going out in late November. When I look at my calendar, that’s between now and very soon. 2) Kellogg strongly encourages all applicants to interview,…
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…
Beyond Gray Pinstripes Ranks MBA Programs
The Aspen Institute and World Resources Institute last week released "Beyond Grey Pinstripes," their biannual ranking of MBA programs on criteria related to teaching environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and business ethics. The top 10: 1. Stanford, USA 2. ESADE, Spain 3. York (Schulich), Canada 4. ITESM, Mexico 5. Notre Dame (Mendoza), USA 6. George Washington,…
Low Undergrad GPA for Non-traditional Law School Applicant
Blawg Wisdom posts an inquiry from a low school applicant, "Doc," who struggled academically during his undergrad, but has excelled academically since then, earning a masters and PhD in English since with a high GPA . He also anticipates a 170+ LSAT. He wonders if law school admissions is so numbers driven that it won’t…
Chicago GSB 2006 MBA Essay Questions
Chicago’s 2006 MBA essay questions have a new succinct look: Essay 1: Complete all parts below (1500 words maximum) Explain the path that has led you to pursue an MBA as the next step in your professional personal development. Describe your short and long term post-MBA career goals. What or who influenced your choice of…
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…
A Different Kind of Ranking
According to the Washington Monthly, colleges should " be engines of social mobility, they should produce the academic minds and scientific research that advance knowledge and drive economic growth, and they should inculcate and encourage an ethic of service." With these criteria and publicly available data, they ranked US colleges and universities as follows: MIT…
Forbes MBA Rankings: ROI Rules
Forbes published yesterday its biennial MBA rankings, based entirely on ROI five years after graduation. The top full-time programs on this basis: The Top Ten Dartmouth Pennsylvania Chicago Columbia Yale Stanford Harvard Virginia Cornell Northwestern (If you are going to use this data at all, please also read Forbes’ ranking methodology.) Forbes’ data show that…
From our Inbox
From : XXXX XXXXXXX To : Linda Abraham ; Cindy Tokumitsu Hi Linda, I am really glad I chose your service. Working with Cindy has been great! She really is helping me think about myself and an MBA; and she is especially making me feel comfortable in the very stressful experience of applying for an…
Parents Tucking in College Students?
The Wall St. Journal has a great article today on (some) parents’ changing view of their role as children start to leave the nest: Follow the baby birds. See “Tucking the Kids In — In the Dorm: Colleges Ward Off Overinvolved Parents.”
Secondary Applications for Medical School
They are out! And the Student Doctor Network — a fantastic resource BTW — has collected the secondary essay questions for many medical schools in this thread. Rely on the wording you receive from the schools to be on the safe side, but for an advance peak, check out this thread.
MBA Admission: The Great Round 1/Round 2 Fight
“On my right, now entering the ring is Round 1. A perennial favorite with those who have stratospheric GMATs, patents, Noble Prizes, and the like. And on my left, waving to the crowd is Round 2. He is favored by those with more average, but still respectable scores, grades, and experience.” So goes the fight…
“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,…
