Josh is the Senior Editor at Knewton, where he helps students rock their GMAT preparation and offers guidance about the B-school admissions process.

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Lots of students write in asking questions about the personal statement. And for good reason: This is your one shot to really introduce your personality to an admissions board. It’s like you’re running for President and you’re speaking at the convention. You get a podium and only a few minutes to present your case to the voters.

With that in mind, here are some time-worn Do’s and Don’ts of personal statement writing.

Don’t: Talk about the school so much. Admissions officers already know how great their institutions are (or aren’t). Customization is important, but two or three sentences about the school should suffice.

Do: Talk about yourself a good amount. The school’s library isn’t awesome; it will be awesome for you to study in it. Create a narrative in your statement and place B-school within it. Something like undergrad –> work experience –> learned a ton –> ready to learn even more –> afterward will move on to even greater aspirations.

Don’t: Dwell on the negatives. No need to mention that D+ in Italian History (was Michelangelo his first name or his last?). It’s okay that you couldn’t find a job for 4 months after graduating from college. Your GMAT score is what it is. The personal statement is like a first date; let her know about the credit card debt months later, after you move in.

Do: Accentuate the positives, especially when it comes to your work experience. Be specific: You didn’t just work for Goldman Sachs; you streamlined their derivatives platform which ushered in a period of 3x growth (assuming that’s true, and if it is: good for you).

Don’t: Make your statement too precious. No need for shtick. You don’t have to write like a Flaubert scholar (though you should proofread your essay several times).

Do: Play by the rules, lay out your narrative, and deliver the facts. Shoot for safe over sorry. A risky personal statement is just that—a risk.

This is the first post from our friends at Word-Nerd.com. Vocabulary study is a big part of our SAT prep course, so we were excited to hear their thoughts on the subject.

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How important is vocabulary study on the SAT? This simple question has recently become the subject of a great deal of debate in the world of SAT prep. When analogies and antonyms were dropped from the SAT, vocabulary became directly relevant to just Sentence Completion questions. Since Sentence Completion comprises only one-third of the Critical Reading section, the prevailing wisdom turned against vocabulary study.

“Big Test Prep” (you know who they are!) declared that vocabulary preparation was a waste of valuable student time. This opinion has since trickled its way down to classrooms, guidance counselors and college admissions gurus, but it only makes sense if a student starts thinking about the SAT just a week before test day, when time is of the essence. If you are reading this post, you are not that person! You’re already planning ahead and motivated to earn a high score. There are some very good reasons why you should add vocabulary to your arsenal for the SAT:

#1 One-third of the Critical Reading section is based on vocabulary. Approximately 300 points are directly related to vocabulary, with about 200 of those points coming from moderate to hard sentence completions. You may encounter some difficult words like “xanthous.” Do you know what xanthous means? Probably not, but you should if you study vocabulary. It is that simple. Don’t leave those 200 points on the table!

#2 Your English teacher would rather teach “War and Peace” than vocabulary. As a result, you may not be learning enough vocabulary in school. Many schools have bought into the idea that vocabulary preparation is not important, and therefore you may not be doing enough to learn new words. Of course, if you come across a word you don’t know, you should look it up, but for most students, that will not be enough preparation to score well on Sentence Completion questions.

#3 The person sitting next to you on test day probably has not been studying vocabulary. That person is not going to answer those tough Sentence Completion questions correctly. For you, this is an opportunity to get a leg up on the competition. Most students will have little trouble with the easy questions, but those same students will miss the hard ones. Therefore, if you answer a difficult question correctly, you will receive crucial points that most students will not. The good news is that deducing which words fill in the Sentence Completion blanks is usually easy — if you know the vocabulary. Studying vocabulary gives you an edge and the opportunity to score in the higher ranges.

#4 Love is a battlefield, and so is college admissions. What can those extra points do for you? It should go without saying, but it can mean the difference between being admitted into the college of your choice, or not. It can mean the difference between earning a great scholarship, or not. And to take it even a few steps further, admission to a better school can mean a better job down the line. That should be enough to convince you!

So now that you are on board – and I know you are – what’s next? Don’t waste your time on mind-numbing activities like reading the dictionary or looking for long lists of words on the internet. Your brain learns best when it is able to associate new words with words it already knows. Word-Nerd’s vocabulary prep is based on that theory; it groups over 1,500 of the most commonly tested words into meaningful categories, like “color” and “eating,” so that they are easy to remember.

By the way, xanthous means “yellow-hued.” By upping your vocab study, you’ll make sure you know that on test day!

Our friends at GMAT Club released a handy iPhone app a few months ago.  If you’re on the go, you can still get extra Quantitative questions, time your practice tests, and learn from their detailed user forums. Last week it was in the App Store’s “What’s Hot” List, so it’s a great time to get on board…

We’re getting closer and closer to the launch of our SAT prep course. In the meantime, here’s a real-life tip: You have to learn SAT vocab words, but you don’t have to use them.

This post is from Linda Abraham, founder and president of Accepted.com. Also check out the Accepted team’s first post on our blog for tips on law school personal statements.

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I have just finished reading Made to Stick by the brothers Chip and Dan Heath. I recommend it highly to those of you in sales, communications, or teaching. Quant jocks? You probably don’t need it.

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

This post will focus on the first principle you should apply to your application essays: Simplicity.

Your B-school 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 essay, you still need a driving concept; you just have more choice as to what your 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 themes 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 B-school 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. MBA essays 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 and is not easy, but it is highly effective.

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Accepted.com’s staff has been checking clients’ work for the essentials of great B-school application essays since 1994. Visit accepted.com/mba for professional advising and editing services as well as sample essays, tips, free ecourses, webinars, and more.

I’ve been writing more on the Huffington Post recently, and my latest piece is a history of the standardized test prep industry. What started with one man became a massive, international business, and my experience in that business is what motivated me to found Knewton.

Here’s the full story:

The test prep industry began in Stanley Kaplan’s Brooklyn basement just after World War II. The son of Jewish immigrants, Stanley believed standardized tests were some kind of elitist plot to keep minorities out of the Ivy Leagues. His philosophy was that anybody could improve at standardized tests. The testing industry and larger education establishment loudly proclaimed that idea to be wrong, foolish, and practically immoral. But Stanley, standing alone for a long time, was proven right.

(more…)

This piece is from Andrew at CollegeEssayOrganizer.com. He’s been in the SAT game for years, and he’ll post here from time to time with college essay tips.

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A lot of the time, the hardest part of a college essay is just getting started. Too many schools, too many questions, not enough time. Not to mention, the way the essay prompts are written, they make it seem like you need to know what your life’s work is before you even graduate high school.

The name of the game for starting your college essay isn’t so much knowing exactly what you’re going to write, but which prompts you’re going to have to deal with in the first place. Once you have those assignments figured out, whittling down the amount of work you actually have to do can be a pretty easy job.

First, do yourself (and your parents) a favor and make a list of the schools you’re most interested in applying to, and try to identify your top choice. If you can’t pick a number one school just yet, that’s fine, you can worry about that later.

Then, once you’ve identified the schools you’re interested in, see how many of your essays ask similar questions. With a little organization, you can actually minimize the amount of work you have to do: think three essays instead of seven, five essays instead of twelve, that sort of thing.

We developed College Essay Organizer to help you see all your essay requirements in one place and show you how you can write as few essays as possible to answer all your required questions.

Doing this kind of work takes just a few minutes all together, and it helps you get your head off your desk and makes the whole essay process seem a lot more manageable than it used to be. Plus, when your parents come knocking on your door to find out if you’ve done anything with those gosh darned essays you’ll be able to say yes, thank you, please get me a beverage.

Anya Kamenetz's DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education

The Edupunks are back. And we’re punkier than Punky Brewster (or does that reference disqualify us?).

Expanding on her piece on How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education, which also gives Knewton a shout out, Fast Company writer and author Anya Kamenetz has written an entire book on Do-It-Yourself Education.

Jose will be quoted and we’ll be featured in the reference guide for self-learners.

The book comes out April 1 (no joke), but you can pre-order it now.

That is all.

Love to get a higher GMAT or LSAT score? Until Sunday, Feb. 14, save $100 on a Knewton LSAT course or GMAT course. Plus, if a friend you refer enrolls by Sunday too, you’ll each get another $150 back!

It’s easy to share the love. Just fill out our referral form, and make sure you and your friend enroll by Feb. 14 — use promo code LUV-GMAT or LUV-LSAT and save!

David Kuntz developed the algorithm for Knewton’s GMAT prep course, and this is the final installment in his CAT FAQ. For more info, check out part 1 and part 2.

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How can my overall percentile be higher than both my quantitative and verbal percentiles?

Your overall score is calculated separately from your section scores, so you can score in the 99th percentile on the GMAT even if you didn’t score in the 99th percentile on either of the sections. For example, you could get a 48 on Quantitative (86th percentile), a 45 on Verbal (98th percentile), and a 760 overall (99th percentile).

Are the quantitative and verbal sections weighted equally in the total score?

Technically, yes — the estimates of your quantitative and verbal abilities that the CAT produces contribute the same amount to your overall score. However, the verbal section has a greater effect on your percentile rank because it is generally more difficult. If, for example, you scored a 40 on both the Quantitative and Verbal sections, your percentile rank for Quantitative would be 61st, but for Verbal it would be 91st. Your overall score (650) would be in the 84th percentile.

Why are scores above 51 rare? Why does the scale go up to 60? Can anyone get a 52?

For psychometric reasons, GMAC has truncated the scale at 51 (they do not report section scores higher than 51).

Why is it so difficult to create a good CAT?

A CAT needs to do many things well in order to reliably and accurately estimate your ability. It requires a robust algorithm to estimate your ability, a complex but speedy mechanism to identify the best question for you to see next, a rich pool of questions from which to select the questions, and a powerful scoring algorithm that translates the ability estimate into something meaningful. Each test question has many characteristics that need to be simultaneously considered in the selection. The statistical characteristics of the questions all need to be determined beforehand through a process known as pretesting. Many, many questions are needed in order to be able to provide accurate assessment for all ability levels. And all of those questions need to be carefully constructed, reviewed, and statistically aligned so that they contribute meaningfully to your ability estimate.