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A Typo in Your Application: Harmless Mistake or Deal-Breaker?

When I led business school admissions, I enjoyed reading applications. I looked forward to learning about individuals who might be joining our community each year. However, not every application submitted was perfect – after all, candidates are humans, and humans make mistakes. When I ran into a mistake in a person’s application, I would categorize …

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Can You Use the Same Essays for Different Schools?

As admissions consultants, we often hear college and graduate school applicants ask, “I’m applying to multiple schools, and each one requires essays/personal statements. Can I use the same essay for different schools?” Understandably, applicants want to maintain the quality of their essays and avoid burnout when having to write so many drafts. We can sympathize. Even …

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Writing an Engaging Essay Introduction

In today’s world, where everything moves at lightning speed, we’re constantly making fast decisions.  This applies to admissions committees, too. The pressure of their job forces them to make very quick decisions about whose applications they will invest more time in and whose will merit only an obligatory but cursory review before being set aside.  …

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How to Project Confidence, Professionalism, and Positivity in Your Essays

So you’ve sat down and brainstormed, and you’re now ready to hit the ground running with your essays. Great! You might be wondering how to best convey your reasons for pursuing graduate school to the admissions committees. What kind of tone or approach should you use? A good rule of thumb is to project three …

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First Drafts of Residency Personal Statements: Let Yourself Go

For many residency applicants, writing the first draft of their personal statement is the most difficult part of the entire application process. And the most difficult part of composing that first draft is often getting the first few words on the page. Don’t fret – even accomplished novelists and famous journalists struggle to get started …

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Starting Your Application Essay: Three Tips

If you haven’t yet read the other blog posts in this series, go ahead and check them out: Once you have reflected on the questions that helped you identify and develop your essay theme, you should have a clear path to writing an effective essay. Here are three essential steps to help you achieve that …

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Bring Your Personal Statement to Life With Vivid, Active Verbs

Bring your personal statement to life with vivid action verbs

Your personal statement is an essential element of your application and allows the adcom great insight into who you really are aside from your stats. However, no matter how extensive your experience or how accomplished you might be, all that can be lost in prose that does not do a good job of profiling who …

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9 Secrets to Telling an Attention-Grabbing Story

9 secrets to telling an attention grabbing story

You’ve completed most of your application. Now it’s time to write your personal statement. You want your statement to stand out from the rest, and the way to do this is to tell a compelling story – the tale of your greatest achievements, dreams, and challenges.  You can tell a compelling story by tying together …

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10 Tips for Better Essay Writing

10 Tips Essay Writing Apr 2022

Let’s take your writing up a notch–or two!  Ready to up your game in the writing department? Since you’re probably eager to show the adcom that you’ve got the “write” stuff and can relate your significant experiences and insightful ideas eloquently, these 10 tips are for you:  Think about writing as a conversation on paper. …

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‘Twas the Night Before Deadlines: A Cautionary Tale of Cliches

cautionary tale of cliches

‘Twas the night before deadlines, and all through the world, Our consultants sat cramming, coffee brewing, brows furrowed; Though the essays were written with effort and care, There were still a few things that were cause for despair! The clichés! Oh, forsake! Terrible, were they – That all our consultants could think was “oy vey!” …

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6 Tips for Getting Started on Your Application Essays

6 tips for getting started on your application essays

Sometimes the hardest part of writing a personal statement or application essay for college or grad school is finding the discipline to sit down and focus. Often, once you accomplish that, the ideas begin to form and the words begin to flow.  The following 6 tips will help motivate you to start writing, and then …

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How to Get Started on Your Personal Statement with One Easy Technique

how to get your personal statement started

Okay, you’ve calmed down after your initial essay-writing anxiety, and you still don’t know where to begin. How do you capture your whole life in the meager number of characters allotted? What is clustering? Whether you’re feeling stuck or feeling overwhelmed by all the ideas bouncing around in your head, a stellar technique to start …

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