I am taking time off for family this week, and as a result I decided to air an encore of one of our most popular shows ever, Focus on Fit. I chose it not only because of its popularity, but because the topic is relevant to so many, if not all, specialties. A solid understanding…
How Personal is Too Personal?
The personal statement serves as a terrific opportunity to share with admissions committees an interesting and unique aspect of your life. How much should you tell, and how much is too much? When I applied to college, I wrote a personal statement describing some challenging family circumstances I’d had while growing up. I can still…
How to Use Powerful Details to Create Strong Essays
To really draw your readers into your goal-focused essay, you’re going to want to lay the scene for your future accomplishments. After all, what better way to convince the adcom of your ambitions than to illustrate them in your essay? First, identify your goal. When you begin your essay, try showing yourself having reached your…
Admissions Tip: BE YOURSELF!
One of the things admissions committee members tell us again and again is that they wish – really, truly wish – that applicants would not try to write what they imagine the adcom wants to hear, and instead would just be themselves. Admissions committee members time and time again say they wish applicants would answer…
Generic-itis Prevention [Warning: If Untreated, Can Cause Rejection]
Each year, Accepted consultants are witnessing a recurring epidemic. And it’s worse than you can imagine: Generic-itis. What generic-itis looks like Here is an example of a severe case of generic-–itis that I drafted based on several different examples I recently read, along with 25 years of experience in this business: I find Top Choice’s…
Two Grad School Applicants Walk Into a Bar…
This might be a great opening line for a comedy night at a university student center, but can you use humor in a graduate school application essay? Should you even try? The answer is…maybe. If you have a funny bone, use it If you can use humor effectively, it will help you stand out from…
Review Your Essays Like an Admissions Consultant and Use the Editing Funnel
Most of you are now — or will be soon — editing your critical application essays and personal statements. When Accepted consultants review and edit your essays, they go through a process I call the editing funnel. When you edit your own essays, you should follow a similar process. How the editing funnel works Here’s…
How to Stay Within Essay Word Limits by Reducing Verbal Verbosity
Most applicants – whether applying to med school, law school, business school, or any other grad school or college program – need to deal with rigid character or word limits when writing their application essays or personal statements. You may start out thinking that you have nothing to write, but generally, once applicants begin writing,…
5 Tips for Your Law School Personal Statement
Writing a law school personal statement can be daunting task. Below are five tips to help you craft a unique and eye-catching personal statement. Focus less on what you write and more on how you write about it. Don’t feel that your essay needs to be about a particular kind of experience. There’s no one…
Your Law School Personal Statement Needs to Be Personal!
When writing your personal statement for law school, it’s a good idea to include a few school-specific sentences about why each of the schools you are applying to is interesting to you. You shouldn’t be addressing “Why do I want to go to law school?” but rather “Why do I want to go to this…
Why is It So Hard to Write Your Law School Personal Statement?
Why is the personal statement so hard to start? How do you put your heart and soul, and 20+ years of life, into a two-page double-spaced document? The personal statement is often a source of many starts and stops for the law school applicant. I imagine the writer, in a non-digital world, with a wastebasket…
Writing Your Career Goals Essay
In our How to Write Exemplary Application Essays blog series, you’ll learn how to create exemplary essays by analyzing sample successful application essays. A career goals essay, similar to the graduate school statement of purpose that we talked about in a previous post in this series, demands a laser-like focus. Unlike personal statements, which may discuss career goals…
How to Add Detail to Your Social Enterprise/Community Service Goals
Whether you’re applying for an MBA, a PhD in Public Policy (or many other doctoral fields), or a Masters in Social Work, you’re likely to talk about social enterprise or community service goals in your application. For some, this will be your primary objective – those of you seeking careers in the non-profit sector, for…
4 Tips for Writing About Last Minute Extracurricular Activities
You want to write about all your fantastic non-school and non-work endeavors so that you really stand out from your competition, but when you start to think about it…you draw a blank. There must be SOMETHING you can show for how you use your free time, but what? Have you found yourself in a last minute…
Your 5-Item Checklist for Submitting Your Applications
Whether you’re applying to b-school, law school, med school, grad school, or college, this checklist will be the same. Don’t hit that “Submit” button until you’ve checked off the following 5 to-do’s: You’ve made sure that your application presents a holistic, multi-dimensional picture of you. Each section of your application should not just present you…
Application Essay Tip: The Devil is in the Details
You can argue about the devil, but certainly the substance, distinctiveness, and success of your essays depends on the details. Bringing Out Your Uniqueness in the Details Many applicants tend to bury their uniqueness and success under vague assertions. You don’t want to hide your achievements; you want to trumpet them loudly and clearly. For…
Writing About Your Experiences Abroad
You studied, worked, or volunteered abroad and now you want to include part of this in your personal statement. Maybe you want to show that you’ve experienced a different culture or that you’ve managed to go outside of your comfort zone. Maybe you’ve had interesting experiences – met people, climbed mountains, or lived without air-conditioning….
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 application essays are the perfect forum for reaping the benefits of this deceptively simple principle. What does “less is more” really mean? It’s the idea that we must resist our natural tendencies…
5 Tips to Write a Law School Personal Statement that Gets You In
While there’s no getting around the fact that LSAT scores and GPA matter a great deal in law school admissions, the personal statement is the one place where law school admissions faculty get to know you and your reasons behind studying law. Below are 5 tips – based on real-life scenarios – that have successfully…
What Do Law Schools Look For? 5 Things Adcoms Love to See
What are the law school admissions committees looking for when reviewing applications? They’re looking to build a class consisting of strong students who will join together to create a solid class and an impressive crop of future lawyers. In particular, they’re looking for these 5 things when they look at your application: People who like…
