One way to conserve words in your application essays and short-answer responses is by pluralizing nouns whenever possible. Singular words often require an article such as “a,” “an,” or “the.” These words can add unnecessarily to your word count, thereby cluttering your page without contributing to your argument or style. Consider the following example: Read more

Taking the GRE for your graduate school application? You’re in luck. Each month, we are featuring a series of admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.

You have a high GRE score and a 3.75 GPA. You have made solid career progress and procured glowing recommendations. You have been actively volunteering in your community for years. You worked hard on your application and landed an interview at your target school, where you felt you did well. But you still did not get in. You must have done something terribly wrong in your interview or unwittingly made a mess of your essays, right? Not necessarily. Read more

Taking the GRE for your business school application? You’re in luck. Each month, we are featuring a series of MBA admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.

Virtually all the top business schools offer applicants the opportunity to address anything unusual or problematic within their profiles, using either the additional information section of the application or the optional MBA essay. This way, MBA candidates can proactively explain any irregularities or inconsistencies so that the admissions committee understands the circumstances behind these issues and is not left to guess or make assumptions. Commonly, applicants will write an optional MBA essay to explain or reveal one of the following kinds of issues: Read more

Taking the GRE for your business school application? You’re in luck. Each month, we are featuring a series of MBA admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.

By being proactive and doing some advanced planning, aspiring MBA candidates can remove a great deal of stress from the business school application process and substantially bolster their candidacy. We have several big picture recommendations for applicants to consider to help them be as competitive and prepared as possible when admissions season begins in earnest.

Few candidates realize that starting to visit campuses as early as late winter or early spring is a great way to learn about and establish interest in specific schools. Campus visits are not just opportunities for you to “register” with a program’s admissions committee but are also a time for you to gain a deeper, firsthand understanding of various academic methodologies and social environments. Such visits can also prepare you to write far more targeted and informed essays when the time comes. After all, you can only learn so much about a school from its website. Read more

Each week, we are featuring a series of MBA admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.

The MBA application process is really more of a marathon than a sprint, but many candidates make things harder on themselves than necessary by ignoring certain tasks until late in the game. Here we will cover some pragmatic and practical steps you can take to avoid feeling rushed and to ensure that all the parts of your MBA application are as strong as you can make them before you submit. With some foresight and planning, when the schools start releasing their essay questions in June and July, you will be able to focus solely on them, without the distraction and demands of some of the other parts of your MBA application.
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Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

I have been fortunate enough to sit on a grad school admissions committee as part of my training as a graduate student in social psychology. This view from the inside gave me some interesting information about what the GRE means to the most important people: the ones reading your application.

To start off, it’s important to understand exactly how admissions committees work. Admissions committees, especially for small programs, are not as organized or as consistent from year to year as you might think. This is because there is often a high degree of turnover in the grad school admissions committee staff from year to year. While with business schools there may be a fully-staffed admissions committee with only a handful of academics sitting in, in other programs the admissions committee consists entirely of professors and graduate students, many of whom are serving for their first time. What this means is that there is no secret formula for a winning application, since the committees change drastically from year to year.

However, there are certain aspects of your application that are sure to get you noticed by the grad school admissions committee. Read more

Taking the GRE for your business school application? You’re in luck. Each month, we are featuring a series of MBA admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.

As the MBA application season nears its end, candidates find themselves in one of two positions. Either they were successful in their efforts and must now choose where (or whether) to enroll, or they are left wondering why they were not offered admission to their target program(s). To help those applicants who find themselves in the latter category, we will pinpoint some of the areas where many unsuccessful applicants tend to have fallen short. Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

Writing your grad school essay is a big step. This process usually breaks down into creating two documents: the personal statement and the statement of purpose. It can be daunting to know that, according to recent admissions committee evaluations, the personal statement is one of the most important components of your application. Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

Grad School applications have risen in record numbers in the past few years.  A higher education study conducted from 2004-2014 showed a rise in enrollment by over 150,000 students. Last year, over 2 million people applied to grad school in the US.  Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

More than half a million people take the GRE each year. The admissions committees for hundreds of grad schools and thousands of grad programs accept the GRE. Read more