It is with great pleasure that I welcome Natalie Grinblatt to Accepted's staff. Natalie previously served as:

• Assistant Dean at Arizona State University's W P Carey School of Management.
• Director of Admissions and Financial Aid at Cornell's Johnson School
• Director of MBA Student Affairs and Enrollment Management at the University of Michigan (where she also earned her MBA).

Yesterday I met with a LAMP client who is shrewdly starting now to prepare for his fall application. We went over his profile, and I made several suggestions as to what he can do between now and this fall to improve his chances of acceptance next year. He found the session very valuable. And again, I commend him for starting early to work on his application. I want to be able to commend and mentor and help prepare more of you.

For years I have encouraged MBA applicants to lay the foundation for their MBA application in the months before applications come out. That's why I wrote Best Practices for MBA Admissions, a featured ebook this month. That's why Accepted has hosted MBA Admissions Telethons and teleseminars. And that's why Accepted is introducing a new subscription form of MBA Admissions Consulting: Start Smart ™.

With Start Smart, you can meet up to one hour per month with your adviser, an experienced Accepted consultant and editor who for years has seen what works and what doesn't. Our experienced staff shares my frustration when talented but flawed clients come to us in September wanting to apply in Round 1 and hoping that a magic wand will make them competitive. We don't have that wand. We do have decades of collective experience that we would like to share with you on an individual basis through Start Smart.

With Start Smart, you can have a mentor guide you in:

• Identifying the core stories for your application.
• Focusing on specific schools.
  
• Strengthening your application and ameliorating weaknesses.
• Choosing recommenders.

We can even help you work out an application time table.

In addition, Start Smart is something that rewards your early-bird-gets-the-worm approach to your applications:

• You will pay less per month when you sign up for more months.
• Your credit card is billed on a monthly basis for the exact number of months you want. You do not pay for the entire service up front so it is more affordable.
  

Two years ago I attended Tuck's first Conference of International Educational Advisors. I went with the purpose of  learning more about Tuck. And I did learn a lot about Tuck, as expected, but I discovered that I enjoyed meeting my competition and professional colleagues much more than I anticipated. The networking was great! 

I have also watched the educational advising industry explode over the roughly 13 years that I have been in it. When I first started Accepted, most people thought I was crazy. Today, new "consultancies" are popping up like mushrooms after it rains. This growth has fueled  concerns about quality and integrity in the industry.

As an outgrowth of the Tuck conference and the growth of the admissions consulting industry, in late 2005 I proposed to GMAC that it host a panel about admissions consulting. GMAC accepted my proposal, and last June I was part of a panel presentation at the GMAC Conference entitled "Admissions Consultants: Love 'em, Hate 'em, Use 'em." On the panel with me were Ricardo Betti of MBA Empresarial, Maxx Duffy of Maxx Associates, and Graham Richmond of Clear Admit.

In response to feedback at the conference and in recognition of a need for a professional graduate admissions consultant association, the four panelists from the GMAC conference have founded the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants (AIGAC):

• To establish standards of practice for top graduate admissions consultants.
  
• To create a recognized emblem of professional quality and integrity -- AIGAC's Stamp of Excellence -- for applicants and the larger admissions community.
  
• To provide a forum for member networking and professional development.
  
• To offer schools a convenient conduit for communication with consultants and a means for distinguishing between consultants who adhere to the standards and those who don't.

On behalf of the AIGAC board, I am proud to announce that AIGAC is open for business. As its first president, I join the other board members in inviting admissions consultants who share its vision, meet its requirements, and adhere to its standards to become members. Join the board, other AIGAC members and me in taking our industry to improved levels of service and professionalism. If you have any questions about AIGAC, please feel free to call me at the AIGAC office (916) 446-3670. If I am not available, please leave a message and some times when I can call you back. Please also feel free to email me with your questions.

I also invite applicants, as you approach the 2008 season, to look for AIGAC's Stamp of Excellence. Those  consultants who display it have met AIGAC's membership requirements and agreed to operate in accordance with AIGAC's Principles of Good Practice. That emblem means professional quality for you.

Schools, in general, are supportive of our efforts. Here are a couple of responses that we have received:

• From Rose Martinelli, Associate Dean for Student Recruitment and Admissions, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business: "candidates may need guidance in exploring career options, identifying appropriate programs and determining the best way to position their candidacy. An organization like AIGAC assures both schools and candidates that there are industry standards in place and consulting firms linked to this organization are following ethical practices."
• From Dawna Clarke, Director of Admissions, The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth: "At Tuck, we embrace relationships with educational advisors around the world. The advice they provide to prospective students is mutually beneficial to the students as well as the schools they represent....I applaud the current effort of this group to come up with ethical standards of behavior."

For more on AIGAC's birth, please see the press release and the post on Clear Admit's blog.

The CareerJournal reports on a trend, previously mentioned in this blog: a growing shortage of PhDs who want to teach business at the country's universities. B-school deans are having to deal with growing numbers of retiring faculty at the same time that the number of new PhDs is declining...and many of the newly minted PhDs don't want to go into academia.

 What does this mean for MBA applicants? More online courses. Larger classes. Higher tuition as competition pushes up faculty salaries. And more lecturers coming from business, as opposed to academia.

For more thoughts on the topic, please see my Q&A with Dean Mark Rice of Babson . He foresees an innovative response to the PhD shortage.

I took a peek at our subscriber stats this morning. And the Accepted Admissions Almanac has over 2000 subscribers to its various feeds. Thank you for your interest, attention, and support!

I also want to thank those of you who have posted questions or comments to my posts. You are adding to the value of this blog by sharing your thoughts and concerns. Thanks for your participation.

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