As I followed this first African World Cup, I marveled at how close many of the games were, and how relatively minor plays decided the outcomes. Spain beating Germany on a header off a corner kick was all that mattered. Then there were the refereeing mistakes and questionable judgment calls that seemed to affect whether a team advanced or was eliminated. Did that obvious goal by England against Germany that was missed affect the player’s spirits, thus contributing to their eventual loss? What really was the impact of that clear offside by Argentina against Mexico, or the phantom American foul on a US goal against Slovenia?

As exciting as the games have been, you might be wondering what they have to do with the admissions process. Several parallels strike me.

First, being heavily favored going into the games doesn’t mean making it to the final one. Germany, Brazil and Spain were favored by many at the beginning of play; Spain is the only one that survived. Essentially they had “good stats.” Similarly, a candidate might have outstanding credentials and qualifications for admissions, but the application process seeks people of achievement, leadership, initiative, and impact. Stats are not enough and may not determine the winners.

Second, the ability to take full advantage of opportunities is crucial. Spain’s goal against Germany showed the importance of being fully prepared to use an opportunity to score, just as making it to an interview round in the application process demands that a candidate be fully prepared to beat out other closely qualified candidates in that crucial step of the process.

Finally, each of the 32 initial World Cup teams was talented and well qualified, but each had to prove it had the ability to make it to the final game. Applicants must similarly understand that admission decisions are made by people doing their best to put together a class that is balanced among many different metrics. Using your application, especially your essays, to showcase why you are qualified to “win” can make all the difference.

P.S. Having lived in the U.S., Japan and Mexico – none of whom made it to the final – and having good friends and relatives in both Spain and The Netherlands, I claim neutrality regarding Sunday’s game.

Robbie Walker is a writer, columnist and editor who received her MBA from Chicago Booth. She is happy to assist you in targeting the right schools and identifying the details that best highlight your candidacy.

All were rejected by Harvard.

In a Wall Street Journal article of March 24, 2010, these (and other) thought and business leaders discuss being rejected by their first choice university. Obviously, none of their lives ended when they did not get into Harvard. On the contrary, several of them can draw a solid line between the rejection and their subsequent successful careers. Indeed, Buffett and Vieira, who both admit to being utterly devastated by the rejection, met life-changing mentors at the schools where they ended up (Columbia and Tufts, respectively.) And McNealy finally got into Stanford –after applying three times– where he met his Sun co-founder.

Others learnt to turn the rejection into a success by attending lesser-known universities where they could thrive. Bollinger, who came from a small town in Oregon, says the rejection by Harvard “cemented his belief that it was up to him alone to define his talents and potential.” He ended up at the University of Oregon and later graduated from Columbia Law School. And John Schlifske, president of insurance giant Northwestern Mutual, who was rejected by Yale, went on to receive a “phenomenal” education at Minnesota’s Carleton College. “Being wanted is a good thing,” he says. Four years ago, when his son was rejected by his own first choice school, Schlifske Sr. told him, “Just because somebody says no, doesn’t mean there’s not another school out there you’re going to enjoy, and where you are going to get a good education.”

And then there is Ted Turner. Rejected by both Princeton and Harvard, but accepted to Brown, Turner left college after his father cut off his financial support. He joined his father’s billboard company and built it into the media empire that became CNN. He pointed out that even though having a degree may be better, “I did everything I did without a college degree.”

With a 2009-2010 admissions season shaping up to be another record-breaker, and acceptances to the top b-schools hovering at 8-15%, this means that 85-92% of applicants will be rejected from their first choice schools. And perhaps their second -and third- choices as well. This shouldn’t be the end of your dream. Whether it means looking at a school with a lower slot in this year’s rankings, or recognizing that rejection is a sign that you might not be ready, or have to work harder, don’t let the rejection control your life. To “allow other people’s assessment of you to determine your own self-assessment is a very big mistake,” says Columbia’s Bollinger. According to him, the question really should be: “Who at the end of the day is going to make the determination  what your talents are, and what your interests are? That has to be you.”

Tanis Kmetyk has been helping clients get into their dream schools for well over one decade.  If you are already thinking about reapplying to your dream school, or are ready to look into how other schools can help you reach your dreams, it’s never too early to get started.

The third of Made to Sticks six key principles, concreteness, doesn’t seem to apply to intangibles like leadership, achievement, teamwork, or character – the topics you typically need to cover in your essays. Yet, even when discussing abstractions, if your essays are concrete they will communicate more effectively and more memorably.

Here are five tips to make your personal statements and application essays concrete:

1. Use sensory language when appropriate. Write in terms of sights, sounds, smells, touch, and taste.
2. Break down large ideas into smaller sub-topics and concepts. (For more on this idea, please see “Fatal Flaw #4: Superficiality.” ) The grand summary or platitude won’t cut it.
3. Quantify when possible. Did you increase membership a lot when president or did you increase membership by 50%? Did you lead a team or did you lead a 10-person team?
4. Without using clichés, relate events, entities, and concepts to ideas that the reader already knows and trusts. For example if I say that “Accepted is the McKinsey of admissions consulting firms,” clients will expect top-notch work and a strategic approach to admissions.
5. Think about the human beings you are addressing in your essays. You have read interviews of and met with admissions committee members. Perhaps create a character that represents Chris Adcom for you. For me, Chris is usually smart, professional, and hard-working. Typically a “people-person” with a genuine interest in others, she also has a well–practiced nose for baloney and doesn’t like the odor. She is always short on time and consequently ends up skimming essays if they are boring or don’t answer the question, even though she doesn’t like to do so. She is dedicated to helping her school create a diverse, talented class of students who will be happy to attend her school, contribute to campus life as students, and add to the school’s reputation as alumni. That’s her job. Write your essays for Chris.

Use these five keys to concreteness when crafting your essays to make them more compelling.

Additional Resources:

• MBA 5 Fatal Flaws
• Med 5 Fatal Flaws
• Law 5 Fatal Flaws
• Grad 5 Fatal Flaws
• College 5 Fatal Flaws

By Linda Abraham, President and Founder of Accepted.com.

* In the State of the Union address, President Obama urged colleges to “get serious about cutting their own costs.” To assist in the goal of making higher education more affordable to the greatest number of students, Obama plans to increase federal support for education by 6% in 2011. Obama also supports the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act which, if passed by Congress, would eliminate bank-based federal student loans. This bill, according to the presdient, “will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that go to banks for student loans.”A more lenient payback plan is also being discussed. (The Chronicle)

* According to The Chronicle last week college endowments have declined by about 23% in the last two years. In fact, the investment return for 2009 was the worst return recorded in the history of the endowment study, at -18.7%. According to John D. Walda, president of the National Association of College and University Business Officers, however, “the picture for endowments is a lot cheerier than it was a year ago.” Optimism for the future, though, doesn’t help the fact that certain schools that had been dependent on endowments are now in pretty bad shape, especially considering the sizable loans they’re now forced to take out. The only reason why these schools didn’t go under was because of fortunate investment returns from previous years.

* The Moscow Times reports that “Russia’s business education market was among the world’s worst hit in 2009.” In some cases, admissions fell about 50% from last year. Some schools are even dipping into their own funds to create lending programs for students in order to maintain adequate student enrollment. Besides the fact that students (or their sponsoring companies) can no longer afford to pay for business schools, students in general seem to have lost interest in pursuing an MBA, at least for the time being. However, despite the decrease in MBA program enrollment, interest in EMBA programs in Russia is on the rise.

* Women are equally represented in medical and law schools, but still lag well behind in numbers in the b-school sphere. “Business Schools Sweeten Lures for Women,” a recent article from WeNews, suggests that in order to increase female enrollment in America’s business schools, MBA programs are forced to lure women in by their sweet teeth, both figuratively and literally. Recruitment events for female MBA prospects are popping up all over the country, including a private party at New York City’s Dylan’s Candy Bar.

* Do students benefit from being in a diverse educational climate? Is affirmative action, or “race-conscious admissions,” justified? Will diversity improve education? These are questions raised by Peter Schmidt, author of a recent Chronicle article on campus diversity. The answer: It depends (of course). If situations are handled optimally then educational benefits will increase and the inherent problems of affirmative action will decrease. Most agree that affirmative action is not a policy that can be accepted on its own, but most be implemented along with other educational and diversity initiatives and even at that, with caution. Still, many universities are skeptical of the educational benefits derived from race-conscious admissions and believe that accepting more qualified students will benefit the students and the school, both long- and short-term, more than were they to focus on boosting classroom diversity.

Accepted.com ~ Helping You Write Your Best

Bingo! That’s relevant to applicants. One of the most commonly asked personal statement questions I see on Twitter is “What should I write about?”

You need to write about when YOU made a difference.

So if you are a Michelangelo, Einstein, Gates, or Buffett, you may be able to write about your incredible talents and how they propelled you to achieve, although you may appear arrogant if you take this approach. In any case, you geniuses can stop reading this post.

For the rest of you, please continue.  Think about those times when your participation in a project, organization, business, team, or club made a difference.

• What was the situation? the problem? the challenge?
• What was your role in meeting that challenge?  What did you do?
• What was the result?

You may or may not want to tie this story explicitly to your educational and professional goals. That decision will depend on many factors, but one evergreen topic for your personal statements and application essays remains: times when you made a difference.

Related Resources:

• “PAR” or “CAR” Anyone?
• MBA 5 Fatal Flaws
• Med 5 Fatal Flaws
• Law 5 Fatal Flaws
• Grad 5 Fatal Flaws
• College 5 Fatal Flaws

By Linda Abraham, President and Founder of Accepted.com.

Some people appreciate the challenge; some people despise it. Some people don’t have much to say and never need to worry about writing too much; some will have to spend hours trimming their thoughts and words down to stay within the limits. Some people naturally write clearly and concisely; others need constant editing to rid their writing of abundant verbiage.

However, most applicants who hit the “word count” button are surprised to find that they’ve exceeded the word limit. “How is that possible?” they’ll muse. “Didn’t I start this essay with no clue as to what I would write?”

So how do you deal with the challenge of word limits when editing your MBA application essays, law school personal statements, college essays, and graduate school statements of purpose?

The following is a list of resources that provide helpful tips about tightening language and trimming down your word counts:

•    UGH! THOSE @!#$* WORD LIMITS!!!, a blog post.
•    Personal Statement and Application Essay Tip: Tightening Language, a blog post.
•    Yikes! My Essay is Too Long!!!, a blog post.
•    Submit a Stellar Application: 42 Terrific Tips to Help You Get Accepted, an instantly downloadable ebook.
•    5 Fatal Flaws in Your Application Essay, a free email course.
•    The Roadmap to Bold and Brilliant Essays, a free webinar.
•    Application Essays Do’s & Don’ts, an article.

A Beautiful Mind, we hope you successfully cut your essays down. We wish you (and all Round 2 applicants) the best of luck!

• The debate continues over the value of an MBA versus a one-year Master’s in a business-related field. The Wall Street Journal reports that many students are switching their plans to include the shorter, less expensive, M.A. alternative, rather than pursing an MBA. Specialized business degrees require only one or two years of prior work experience, run only 12 months long, and often cover a lot of the same material covered in a two-year MBA program, although usually more focused on the technical and less on general management. In the post-graduate job search, an MBA (for now) is still preferred among most businesses, although the edge an M.A. holder provides for being highly skilled in a particular subject is quickly gaining recognition and respect in the job search.

• How much is a college diploma worth these days? The Wall Street Journal tackled this hotly debated question as well this week. As tuitions become more and more pricey every year, students and parents are growing increasingly wary about the value of the college experience and the college degree. There are, however, still benefits to holding a B.A., despite the high price tag that comes along with it, says WSJ reporter Sue Shellenbarger. These benefits include a higher paying job (up to 60% higher) upon graduation, the benefits that a rich, well-rounded education contribute to a rich, well-rounded life, and building a strong network.

• College, graduate, and MBA students: You may be paying more than you need to for your education! Learn a little about new tax codes and you could be the proud owner of a lower tax bill, advises BusinessWeek. There are education deductions and credits available to students that few know anything about; even the “quant jock[s] by trade…still might want a little help with [their] taxes.”  Students should look into a wide range of deduction, credits, and funds options, including the Student Loan Interest Deduction, Hope and Lifetime Learning Credits, and Section 529 Funds.

• Another BusinessWeek article of interest this week covers the top business school stories of 2009, a sort of year-in-review piece about how the global financial crisis affected MBA programs and MBA students. The ten most popular topics in MBA news this year according to BW were: Job Market, Loan Crisis, MBA: Public Enemy No. 1?, GRE vs. GMAT, The Best Part-Time B-Schools, The Harvard MBA Oath, GMAT Cheating in China, College Affordability, Deans Wanted, and B-School Cutbacks.

Accepted.com ~ Helping You Write Your Best

“My visit to the cemetary on Friday gave new meaning to ‘Black Friday’ for me.”

Actually it didn’t. But if it had, that line would have provided a strong opening to this post on the second of Made to Stick’s six principles of memorable, persuasive communication: Unexpected.

You expect me to post about writing and admissions, not about cemetary visits with intrinsic hints at the macabre. As the authors of Made to Stick argue, surprise seizes attention.

Once you have your readers’ attention, they are more likely to read out of interest, pay attention to your message, and remember what you write.

Corollary: The expected, the routine, and the ordinary bore. Essays with these traits are likely to be skimmed, yawned over, and forgotten. The ding pile acts like a magnet to pedestrian writing.

Given that you aren’t Shakespeare,  how can you apply this principle to application essays and personal statements?

Here are a few suggestions:

• Start in the middle of the action. Don’t turn people off with a long introduction that people don’t have the patience to read and you don’t have the word count to write.
• Start with a question to trigger curiosity and maybe build a little suspense.
• Avoid common openings “I want to do X because…” “I was born in…” “My parents come from…” Other common openings: rephrase the question (worked well in sixth grade) or borrow heavily from the school’s web site.

One caveat: Stay away from gimmickry. Surprise, the unexpected, suspense … they will help you engage your reader provided that the unexpected is “postdictable.” By relating to your core message in an unexpected way, but still supporting it, your personal statement or application essay will grab attention and build credibility while conveying your core message.

Now if I could just connect my visit to the cemetary on Black Friday to using the Unexpected in writing for acceptance…

By Linda Abraham, president and founder of Accepted.com.

In Financing Your Future, an instantly downloadable ebook, you’ll learn about:

• Different types of scholarships.
• When to apply for financial aid.
• How to assemble a strong application.
• Applying for high-prestige scholarships.
• Specific program tips and interview advice.

Check out Financing Your Future: Winning Fellowships, Scholarships and Awards for Grad School.

The authors researched and identified the factors that cause communications to succeed or fail. They boiled their research down to “six principles of stickiness.”

1. Simplicity.
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotions
6. Stories

Over the next several weeks I am going to explore these SUCCES principles and apply them to personal statements and application essays. For today let’s talk about Simplicity.

Your personal statement or application essay needs a core idea. That essence or central point becomes the driver of all content for that essay. When responding to specific questions, your core must directly and elegantly answer the question. When writing a less-directed personal statement, you still need a driving concept; you just have more choice as to what that concept should be. Everything else in the essay should support that concept.

If writing multiple essays for one application, each essay has to have a core. Those concepts should mesh and complement each other, but not duplicate.

The remaining principles of Making It Stick are means of effectively relating your core idea, but first you need to have a core. Unfortunately, many applicants treat their essays like many teenagers treat their bedroom closets — as a place to put all kinds of “stuff” that may be useful or perhaps once was useful. There is no logic or organizing principle, no driving force. These messy closet essays then read like the mishmash they are.

Essays that are resumes in prose or that attempt to tell your entire life story descend into the mishmash category. Personal statements replete with irrelevant detail stray from their central mission.  They are not engaging or persuasive. In fact they bore.

When you write your essay, start with a central idea and then make sure that everything else supports it. That elegant simplicity is not simplistic. It is not even easy. It is highly effective.

By Linda Abraham, founder and president of Accepted.com.