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Rebecca Blustein 4 days ago
Diction, voice, tone, style: the elements of writing. For many of you, we know, sitting down to that blank page can be intimidating, and even talking about terms like “diction” can make you glaze over. But your style—the clarity and readability of your writing—is fundamental to how you communicate. Some of you may fret that your vocabulary won’t be advanced enough to dazzle the adcom. Some of you might be used to writing in a very technical style (or not writing at all). For others, English is not your first language, and you feel uncertain about expressing yourself in it. All of this anxiety leads some people to write in a formal, stilted style. You might recognize the markers: passive sentences; long, convoluted clauses; repetitive constructions. This artificially formal style tends to be impersonal, passive, and indirect. It hides your voice, and can be difficult, obscure, or even boring to read. What’s the solution? Focus on fundamentals. Your goal is to communicate ...
Linda Abraham 4 days ago
Since first starting the Accepted blog in March 2004. I have personally authored 2-3,000 posts on admissions, writing, school news, and occasionally something of a more personal nature, but still with relevance, however tangential, to applicants and admissions. My favorite post is my 2007 Thanksgiving post, a story of appreciation and gratitude. The importance of appreciation hit me over the head last week when I received a call from a father whose son is graduating Stanford with a stellar GPA in a high demand field. (I have changed details in this story for confidentiality.) The father called because his son has 6 job offers and wanted to know which one I thought would be better from an MBA admissions perspective. The job offers were from companies that many would give their eye teeth to work for-- fantastic opportunities for growth and professional advancement with "brand" companies or boutique firms. BUT, the job that the son really wanted wasn't among ...
Linda Abraham 5 days ago
#7 in a series of Q&A's with representatives of leading LSAT companies. Kelly Baker, Director for Inspirica in Boston, offered me info on her company. How long have you been offering LSAT prep? Twenty-six years, as long as we’ve been in business. Where are you located? We have offices in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Please describe your traditional in-class courses? We actually don’t do any courses. We only do one-on-one, in-home tutoring. Please describe your online options? What we do is we hand-match each student to one tutor, so they could do the interface—we call it Inspirica Anywhere—where they can learn with a tutor via the internet, but it’s all through skype, so they’re seeing the tutor, it’s the same tutor every time, they’re really building that rapport, and the program is customized to each student. Do you offer a self-study option or study guides? Yes, there’s homework, there’s everything that the student needs to complete ...
Linda Abraham 10 days ago
The New York Times published an article this week "Letting Your Grad Student Go " on the phenomenon of helicopter parents in graduate schools admissions. Yes, I mean graduate, not undergraduate, admissions. I have a dual perspective on helicopter parenting. I have been working in graduate admissions as a private consultant for the last fifteen years, and I also am the mother of five children ranging in age from 21-28. As the article reports my baby-boomer peers, the mothers and fathers of millenials, are playing more and more of a role in the application process. As a consultant I have no problem with parents calling for information, footing the bill for Accepted's services, and providing advice and input to their adult children when the children request it. As a parent, however, I cringe when parents insert themselves into the admissions process and attempt to control it in a misguided attempt to protect their children from possible disappointment or perhaps even ...Sachin Waikar 11 days ago
To apply or not apply. That is the question many of you are asking yourselves as admissions deadlines approach. Is it time to go for the MBA? The JD? MD? PhD? Here’s the answer: it depends. I know that’s a cop out, but it’s true. It really depends on you, your circumstances, and your goals. I’ve seen too many people—clients, friends, and others—target degrees that ultimately don’t make sense for them. And with today’s unprecedented (in our lifetimes) economic challenges, making the right decision about how to spend the next one to eight (PhD’s can take that long) years of your life is even more crucial. As someone on his fourth career—counting at-home dad—I should know. My full bio’s elsewhere on this site, but I went straight from undergrad to a PhD program in clinical psychology. It took six years to complete the degree and less than six months for me to leave the field, afterward. Do I regret doing my PhD? Not really: it helped me secure a management consulting position ...
