graduate school applications

The personal statement essay, your opportunity to sell yourself in the application process, generally falls into one of two categories:

1. The general, comprehensive personal statement:

This allows you maximum freedom in terms of what you write and is the type of statement often prepared for standard medical or law school application forms.

2. The response to very specific questions:

Often, business and graduate school applications ask specific questions, and your statement should respond specifically to the question being asked. Some business school applications favor multiple essays, typically asking for responses to three or more questions.

Questions to ask yourself before you write:

What's special, unique, distinctive, and/or impressive about you or your life story?
What details of your life (personal or family problems, history, people or events that have shaped you or influenced your goals) might help the committee better understand you or help set you apart from other applicants?
When did you become interested in this field and what have you learned about it (and about yourself) that has further stimulated your interest and reinforced your conviction that you are well suited to this field? What insights have you gained?

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Students at the University of Michigan are among the brightest and most competitive students in the nation. Upon graduation many of them will secure employment with coveted organizations while others will continue their studies at prestigious institutions of higher learning. The ability of UM students and graduates to market themselves successfully and competitively is linked, in part, to the efforts of UM faculty and staff who support their application processes by writing reference letters on their behalf. For some students, possessing a high quality reference letter may be an essential factor in the admission to a school of their choice.

To facilitate the collection and transmittal of reference letters, The Career Center offers a Reference Letter Service and other custom writing services for housing letters for all UM students and graduates. A file of original reference letters is maintained five years from the date the file was opened and letters are forwarded to schools and employers at the file holder’s request. Each year, The Career Center’s Reference Letter Service processes approximately 6,000 new letters and sends 10,000 files to graduate schools and employers. As the official repository of reference letters for all UM students and graduates, we receive numerous inquiries from faculty, Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs), and staff members in regard to legal and ethical issues surrounding reference letter writing and transmittal. Our sustained relationships with graduate and professional schools’ admissions officers and recruiters keep us informed about what these parties expect to read in reference letters. Our consultations with UM General Counsel provide the legal and ethical parameters that should be observed in crafting high quality letters.

These guidelines were written by The Career Center and reviewed by the Office of General Counsel. The Career Center is a unit in the Division of Student Affairs. The publisher’s written permission is required to reproduce or transmit all or part of these guidelines. ©1992, revised 2005, 2007, and 2010.

Undergraduate Writing Center

There are many campus resources available to students who are looking for help with resumes preparation.

A good place to start is your college's Career Services office. Many offer resume-writing workshops as well as one-on-one help, and have detailed handouts on how to format and shape your resume.

The Sanger Learning and Career Center has a library of resume writing materials that you can browse.

You can visit a consultant at the Undergraduate Writing Center, who can offer one-on-one resume help. They also have many of their handouts posted on their website, and the Virgil Project as a through section on resumes.

All students are also strongly encouraged to attend an Internal Transfer information session. The College of Communication Prospective Student Advisor leads these sessions, and offers some insight into what the committee looks for on an applicant's resume.

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“The chief business of the American people is business.” So it was back in 1925 when President Calvin Coolidge offered that now famous aphorism about America’s fevered, overreaching economy in the roaring 1920’s. Coolidge didn’t foresee the coming crash and depression, nor could he possibly have foreseen the degree to which the American business acumen he so admired would come to dominate a global economy by the end of the century.

As we prepare to enter the 21st Century, we live in the age of “Transcendent Capitalism.” Competing systems of controlled economies are in disrepute and full flight, vanquished by that particularly American combination of capital investment, free markets and representative democracy. The United States is enjoying booming equity markets and a robust economy that—despite serious income and wealth inequities—have made fervent believers of a citizenry now invested as never before in stocks and bonds as essay writing companies said.

Earlier in this decade, there was even a burgeoning faith that capitalism alone could solve all ills: The free market system, left unfettered, could feed the poor, shelter the homeless, and provide cheap and easy health care for all. That radical notion is waning, though, and the pendulum is swinging back to a more moderate construct that views American market-based business as a partner with government and public trust institutions—universities, philanthropies, newspapers, etc.—in shaping a strong, equitable society.

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How to write a professional resume
A well-written resume should summarise your qualifications, skills and qualities and help you get a job interview.

Tailor your resume to the job. Create different resumes for jobs that are academic, casual, graduate, postgraduate, voluntary, vacation, industry-based learning or in the creative industry.

What to include
Personal details
First and last names
Current address (and postal address if different)
Home and mobile phone numbers (recorded messages should be business-like)
Email address (avoid using unprofessional email addresses)
Citizenship or residency status (only if requested by the employer)
Don't include personal information such as your date of birth.

Education
Course dates (eg 2009 - current)
Full course name
Educational institute
Subjects that are relevant to the job (use no more than 3)
Achievements and awards

The New Jersey =)

New York had a mixed lot of religious sects: Dutch Reformed, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Quaker, Moravian, Baptist, and many others. The establishment of the Anglican Church was nominal at best, and disappeared with the outbreak of the war. The Constitution of 1777 made the break complete. New Jersey had no established church but had almost as many vigorous groups as New York, and its Constitution of 1776 provided for complete freedom of religion. Students in search of cheap essay writing services enjoy a great choice!

The situation in Maryland was unique. The Anglican Church was established by law. There were many dissenters, but there were also many wealthy Catholic leaders in the colony, and fear of the latter kept the dissenting sects quiet on the subject of the Anglicans, despite the fact that Anglican preachers in Maryland had a universally bad reputation. They were well paid out of public taxes, appointed by the governor, and often lived a life of riotous enjoyment. There was little objection to the disestablishment provided for by the bill of rights in the Maryland Constitution of 1776 which declared that no one could be compelled to go to other than a church of his own choice.

The Constitution

The result was that the towns taxed one and all, and dissenters found it difficult to get their share. Congregationalist town fathers, especially in rural districts where Calvinist orthodoxy was to hold sway for many years to come, found it easy to avoid such payments. This was entirely in keeping with the narrow Calvinism of such men as Sam Adams who helped draft that part of the Constitution. This company sells professional essay editing service for students worldwide

New Hampshire followed in the steps of Massachusetts, but Connecticut held out much longer against what its citizens regarded as the forces of iniquity. They allowed dissenters to escape payment of taxes to the established church if they presented the clerk of the local church with a certificate of church attendance signed by an officer of the dissenter's own church.

should be written by reliable writers with advanced abilities In New England the Congregational clergy had been leading propagandists for revolution.

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In New England the Congregational clergy had been leading propagandists for revolution. This gave them strength in maintaining their privileged position in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. In Massachusetts the church was tax-supported by all citizens except Baptists, Quakers, and Episcopalians, who were required by law to support their own churches. Yet the Baptists led the opposition to this system. When the Constitution of 1780 was written it included an article dealing with religion that was confused if not self-contradictory. It declared that every man had the right to worship in the way and time most agreeable to his own conscience, and yet it insisted that all men must worship publicly at stated times. It declared that no sect should ever be subordinated to any other by law, yet it required that towns should tax for the support of ministers, leaving it up to the town fathers to grant taxes to dissenters for their own churches.

The Loyalists

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. There were only a half dozen Anglican ministers in North Carolina and most of them were Loyalists. The Constitution of 1776 declared that no church should be established in preference to any other and that no one could be compelled to pay for the upkeep of a church. The Georgia Constitution of 1777 provided religious freedom for all people in the state. The Anglican clergy in South Carolina were able men and most of them were Patriots, but there too the dissenters demanded and got the church disestablished. The Constitution of 1778 provided for civil and religious equality for all peaceable members of Protestant sects.

Then, in 1779, Jefferson wrote a bill calling for the separation of church and state.

Then, in 1779, Jefferson wrote a bill calling for the separation of church and state. This was countered by a proposal that the state take over the support of all churches within its bounds. Patrick Henry, who had won much fame in fighting established churches, was now equally ardent for the "establishment" of all churches in the state, and Jefferson's bill was defeated. The fight went on until 1786 when James Madison was at last able to steer Jefferson's bill of 1779 through the legis lature. The law was a striking achievement for its day and at the end of his life Jefferson regarded it as one of his three greatest services to his country.
The disestablishment of the Anglican Church in the remainder of the South was an easy matter, for it was a sickly institution. The laws favoring it were strong but the dissenters were vastly superior to the Anglicans in numbers, tenacity, and courage. You can rely on professional paper writing service because they are tailored for students.

Japan in 19th century (organizational theory)

In 1897 there were seventy-four cotton spinning companies in Japan. But from the 1890s through the First World War plant sizes and capital requirements increased rapidly and after passing through a cartel phase (the 1906 export cartel) five huge firms dominated the cotton industry at the end of the First World War. The Japanese industry largely depended on imported (mainly British) textile machines and the high cost of foreign imports led to an emphasis on full utilisation of capital based on continuous running and twelve hour shifts. The 1916 Factory Law enforced eight hour shifts, and this change in work practices, combined with the development of large corporations, stimulated an interest in Taylorism. Management sought more direct control over work standards and 'stretch-outs' (increasing the ratio of machines per worker) were common. 

Additionally, job analysis, standardised procedures, and time and motion studies were applied to the young girl textile workers. What this implies is that in an industry where the work was seen as simple and requiring little skill and in which there was a high turnover of workers, with a consequent low attachment to the employing organisation, Taylorite techniques were seen as a potential strategy and were used in Japan. However this is still only half the picture and in order to complete the story we need to turn to the second wave of labour rationalisation in Japan. 
The second wave of rationalisation in Japan, from the mid-1920s to the end of the 1930s, was associated with a serious recession and the main ideas stemmed from the German Rationalitzierung movement. The main innovations at this time included more automatic machinery, assembly line production, and the standardisation of products. In cotton textiles the movement resulted in the establishment of standardised job classifications, promotion hierarchies, and systematic training which became linked to the widespread development of welfare measures such as improved work conditions, health care, housing, better education facilities and so on in order to stabilise the labour force. In other words, even in cotton textiles, with a labour force consisting of 90 per cent young females, high turnover rates, a low educational level of recruits and low skills, labour rationalisation and efficiency engineering were linked to paternalism. But this linkage was not simply a matter of ideas and ideology. There had been efforts towards cutting down labour turnover and increasing commitment based on paternalistic measures in cotton textiles before the First World War, but they were short-lived and foundered in the face of the wartime economic boom which resulted in intense competition for labour, especially older female workers. It was not until the 1920s and the active encouragement and regulation of the Government that the competitive barriers to setting up welfarism, which involved initial increased labour costs for long-term benefits, were broken. Seek resume editing service? Editing-services.org provides individual resume editing services at low prices. Our editors are responsible and available 24/7! Overall, Japanese industry did absorb some Taylorite ideas, but Taylorism was adapted and diluted to fit in with existing work practices and values and with the increased diffusion of paternalism and internal labour markets as an employer strategy.

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Mexican Religious Festivals

The general population responded well to governmentsponsored spectacle, even to the inquisitorial trials in which the public was known to shout disparaging remarks at individuals who refused to correct their ways and accept Catholic orthodoxy. Other festivals such as the entrance of Corpus Christi, briefly suspended the toils and hardships of daily life. Festivals attracted large numbers of visitors from the hinterland and usually coincided with market day. In the case of large urban areas, it appears as though out-of-town visitors acted very much like tourists, seeing the marvels of the celebration as well as the wonders of the city itself such as palaces and shops filled with luxurious imported items. Additionally, festivals also represented a boom to taverns and pulquerías as well as the popular theatrical performances. Spontaneous popular entertainments and activities such as dance parties continued into the night and well after the official events were finished, all to the chagrin of some religious leaders, who pointed out the large number of scandalous and sinful acts that were committed and the large quantities of alcohol consumed. This lively ex-officio street fun was connected to almost all major public festivals including religious activities, except for Easter. Feasting, dancing, merrymaking, and drinking were integral parts of the events for spectators and blurred the line between the sacred and profane.

These festivals also had economic ramifications. Businesses were closed but only after a boom of economic activity as city officials commissioned cloth, tapestry, clothing, fireworks, bleachers, platforms, and arches from musicians, dancers, artists, carpenters, bakers, architects, and manual laborers. Festivals amounted to a large transfer of wealth from municipal and royal government (since much of the funds actually were borrowed from Crown accounts) back to tributeand taxpayers. Eventually, the local authorities developed a system of economic patronage with a variety of artisans and artists. This was also a way for these citizens to obtain privileges in political or other matters from the authorities.

Religious Festivals and Authorities

Although municipal and royal authorities primarily concentrated their resources on civic displays, they also participated and partially funded a number of religious festivals. These included the feast of the patron saint of the village or, in the case of larger urban areas, a prominent citywide devotion such as the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The festival of Corpus Christi demonstrates how civil authorities could patronize and effectively affiliate themselves with and come to control even an ostensibly religious celebration. During the procession, participants reenacted the Second Coming of Christ. Dancers dressed as devils, giants, and big heads preceded a famous tarasca (dragon) representing sin. This was usually followed by decorated carts from which actors reenacted scenes from the lives of saints, extolling the spectators to follow their good Christian example. All confraternities and parishes, carrying their patron saints, and regular and secular clergy came next. Finally, the Sacred Host appeared accompanied by the archbishop and the viceroy; the city councilmen held the canopy over the displayed Eucharist. Corpus allowed civil authorities to show their piety and augment their prestige; after all, they walked in the most coveted location, next to the Eucharist. The fact that they funded all the outdoor aspects of the celebration such as plays and dances, which were very popular with the public, also added to their reputation as pious and powerful men. Officials in small towns also did the same in their communities, especially during times of floods, drought, or epidemics. Officials funded large portions of these events and held a prestigious place next to the statue of the saint in the procession. The ruling elite consistently associated themselves with the most important community symbols of piety, sanctity, and power.

The clear line between civic and religious ritual blurred when the government patronized religious festivals. This was also the case with the Autos de Fé, or public penitential trials of the Holy Office of the inquisition, events not immediately associated with civil authority. During this somber spectacle, inquisitors proclaimed the sins and punishment of each penitent before a large crowd. Those who had not recognized their errors and sought forgiveness were given one last opportunity to do so and, if they remained recalcitrant, were burned at the stake. Autos de Fé sought to anticipate the Last Judgment, placing the unrepentant to the left of the platform and the good Christian faithful to the right, as Christ would do according to the Bible. The viceroy, not a member of the Inquisition, had a prominent role to play before the crowd; he sat center stage and oversaw the event and symbolically took the place of the Christ. Thus, the governor, representing secular power, approved and officiated over the condemnations and the final sentences of the guilty.

Civic Festivals in Mexico

The civic festivals of greatest importance in the viceroyalty commemorated the monarch. These included public events honoring the sovereign's birthday, his marriage, the birth of an heir to the throne, or his death. The grandest Crown festival celebrated a new monarch's ascension to the throne. Known as the Jura del Rey (Oath to the King), this three-day celebration was the quintessential festival of submission and obedience and was celebrated in all main towns (cabeceras) in the colony. In this royal ritual, the three pillars of the Novohispanic ruling system—the city government, royal government, and the church—publicly swore allegiance to the new king. The citizenry also shouted vivas and acclamations and in this way swore allegiance. The Jura included an array of entertainment, feasting, and especially planned fireworks displays that lauded the Spanish Empire. In Mexico City, the event was conducted in Spanish and Nahuatl and included the participation and public oath of the Indian leadership, dressed in traditional indigenous finery, of the major indigenous sectors of the city. They were asked to pledge allegiance to the king before their subjects as well as the general inhabitants of the city. Indian commoners then presented flowers to their nobility as part of the ceremony. In addition, the major entertainment during the evening was the Fiesta de Gremios (Festival of the Guilds). The guilds presented large thematic floats honoring the king and empire and dressed in costumes. Although not initially the case, the Jura became, under eighteenth-century Bourbon officials, the largest and most celebrated civic festival. In the case of the capital and Puebla, it consumed much more revenue than the entrance of the viceroy. This change coincided with the Bourbon emphasis on the monarch and the implementation of new policies that sought to strengthen Crown control in the viceroyalty.

Various Mexican Traditions

The municipal and royal authorities instituted a number of traditions similar to the Conquest festival; the largest of them was the entrada del virrey (the inaugural entrance of a new viceroy or governor). The arrival of a new viceroy to the colony was great cause for celebration and demanded the introduction of a large number of rituals dictated by protocol. A new viceroy, appointed by the Spanish Crown, assumed office approximately every six years. In the viceregal political system, the governor was considered the monarch's representative, a powerful minister who had tremendous authority, although it was limited by the vicissitudes of bureaucratic overlays and colonial politics. As European cities celebrated the visits of kings, so it became customary for colonial capitals to honor the "vice-king" who governed in the sovereign's name. The inaugural entrance of a viceroy into a town or city was the major civic ritual of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was an elaborate and costly version of smaller investiture ceremonies for installing local officials into new office. These smaller local investiture ceremonies entailed an oath of office, authorities dressed in regalia, a parade, much pomp and circumstance, feasting, and entertainment such as music and fireworks. The same was done for the entrance of a viceroy, but only on a much larger and more costly scale. The entrance did not directly affect all towns in the viceroyality but impacted upon villages along the route as the viceroy traveled from Veracruz to Mexico City and stopped for extended stays at Tlaxcala, Huetjotzingo, and Puebla. This was the grand fête, more expensive than all other municipal government expenditures and all other official events combined, causing local hosts to scramble for funding, sinking more into debt with each entrance.

Although imported from Europe, the entrance ceremony eventually came to reflect and even celebrate colonial realities. In both Mexico City and Puebla, the two largest urban areas visited by the viceroy, the celebration became a particularly sumptuous affair that lasted for weeks and included ephemeral triumphal arches, bullfights, plays, jousts, and great pageantry. The cathedrals in both cities also erected arches and staged their own fanfare within the walls of the church. The festivals posited the ideals of good governance and the virtues of the new minister. However, encased within the festival were political commentary and even criticism of previous administrations. For example, ritual and accompanying imagery on the triumphal arches allowed Mexico City entrance sponsors to criticize past viceroys for their lack of diligence and commitment, and also allowed them to stage a massive event that included the meticulously planned participation of Africans and Native Americans. Thus, it served two purposes: 1) to laud and counsel the viceroy, and 2) to awe the heterogenous spectators while presenting a message of acculturation, integration, and submission. In Puebla, city organizers heralded their city as a uniquely Spanish New World cultural entity but went one step further and asserted their city's superiority to Spanish urban centers.

Ritual, Religious and Civic in Mexico Colonial

Ritual, religious or civic, and particularly large-scale public spectacle, dominated life in colonial Mexico. The sixteenthcentury Spaniard faced a newly conquered territory composed of ethnically and linguistically diverse peoples. The primary goal of this initial period was to maintain and consolidate European control and recreate or perfect Europe in the Americas. From a purely political perspective, the pivotal issue of control brought about such institutions as the labor draft, the local militia, slavery, the reduction of Indian villages, the caste system, and the integration of indigenous nobility into the Spanish governing system. A cultural policy in the form of elaborate ritual sought to showcase and emphasize Spanish superiority. Europeans imported their own ritual forms and imposed them upon the general population; ritual became the last act of taking possession of the New World. Festivals, certainly civic ones, became tools of hegemonic control. No small wonder that one of the first festivals celebrated in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, namely the Conquest festival or the feast of San Hipolito, commemorated the fall of the Mexica (Aztec) capital to the Spanish.

Sponsored by the municipal government of Mexico City, the Fiesta de la Conquista consisted of displays of prowess, horsemanship, jousting, mock battles, and dramatic performances honoring the feats of Fernando (Hernán) Cortés and associates. The event paid tribute to the fallen Spanish conquistadors who died during the Noche Triste (Sad Night) when the Europeans were driven from the Indian capital; the festival exalted the European skills and technology that theoretically brought victory against the Mexica empire. However, this fiesta never recognized the contribution of the many Indian allies of Cortés who actually ensured that Spanish victory. Although mock battles between men (both Indians and Spaniard) dressed as either Christians or Muslims (Moors or Turks) were staged frequently in Tenochtitlan and in smaller towns, the battle for the capital never was reenacted. Officials certainly must have thought better than of reminding Indians of their defeat on an annual basis. The festival presented the Conquest in an almost mythical manner, as though the Spaniards did not wish to overemphasize an event that could prove divisive, especially considering that Indians always outnumbered Spaniards in the viceroyalty. A reenactment also would have necessitated the cooperation of thousands of Indians who would have played both the vanquished Mexica and the victorious Tlaxcalans.

Human Sacrifices in Mexico

Feasts and the distribution of goods generally would accompany human sacrifices conducted by other groups in Mexican society as well, ranging from the tlatoani (Mexica ruler) himself to warriors, pochteca, and craftsmen. Feasting served to revive ties within the community and between the community and the gods. The menu always was ritually determined: depending on the occasion, guests would dine on the flesh of the gods in the form of human sacrifices, effigies made of amaranth seeds, or first fruits, which were believed to contain the spirit of the deity.

One of the most important rituals was the "New Fire" ceremony held at the close of the calendar cycle every 52 years. The Mexica believed that unless the ceremony was held the sun would lose its strength and fail to emerge from the world beyond. All fires were extinguished and all cooking vessels smashed. At the close of the ceremony a new fire was lit in the chest cavity of a sacrificial victim, heralding the survival of the world. The ceremony took place on the Hill of the Star east of Tenochtitlan and was attended by priests dressed in the regalia of several gods. It was hoped that the ceremony would fix the Pleiades in the heavens in order to reignite and distribute the new fire throughout the kingdom.

The tlatoani used public ritual to reinforce his power over the Mexica and subject peoples. Although such ceremonies as the dedication of new temples and religious monuments or the anointing of the tlatoani were ostensibly dedicated to one of the gods, they also celebrated the strength of a victorious people. Indeed, the anointing of a new ruler could not take place until he had demonstrated his valor in battle and sacrificed captives to Huitzilopochtli. Part of the pact between the Mexica and Huitzilopochtli established during the people's long journey from Aztlan to Tenochtitlan called for human sacrifice and the construction of temples. However, the tlatoani's responsibilities went beyond fulfilling the pact with Huitzilopochtli. He supervised the rituals that ensured that the sun would continue to shine, the maize to grow, and the Mexica people to fulfill the destiny assigned to them by the gods.

Ritual Ceremonies

Campesinos also conducted ceremonies individually in their fields, which also were governed by the calendar and complemented official ceremonies held in the temples. It appears that most varieties of maize were planted between February and March, but the main ceremonies in honor of Cincotl and Chicomecoatl, the gods of maize, were held in the month of Huey Tozoztli. Before the rainy season began and while the stalks were still small, campesinos would carry mats made of maize stalks cut in the eighth month to the temples in the city, and during the rite of Etzalcualiztli campesinos would offer food and pulque to their tools. In the month of Huey Tecuilhuitl rites were performed in honor of Xilonen, another god of maize, and in the tenth month, Ochpaniztli, when the maize had begun to ripen, the entire population fasted in the afternoons and pieced their ears, wiping the blood on their foreheads. In the most important maize ritual a young woman was consecrated as an image of the goddess Chicomecoatl (Seven Serpent), who was subjected to a complicated series of rituals leading to her sacrifice. The following day a "living image" of the goddess Toci was offered by doctors and midwives but was accompanied by the priests of Chicomecoatl. Other rites associated with maize would take place later that month, coinciding with the autumnal equinox, consisting of a procession of young priestesses who bore seven maize stalks on their backs accompanied by priests dressed in the skins of sacrificial victims who threw four different colors of maize kernels toward the four cardinal points of the universe.

Although ceremonies in honor of many other gods were held in the temple of Huitzilopochtli, the patron of the Mexica, the three most important were in honor of Huitzilopochtli himself. Perhaps the most important of these was held by the pochteca (merchants) to commemorate Huitzilopochtli's birth. The ritual required a great deal of advance planning, including a series of rituals in which the pochteca had to demonstrate that they had sufficient funds to carry out the sacrifice. They were required to conduct a pilgrimage to Xicalanco, near present-day Ciudad del Carmen in the southeastern state of Campeche, and they also needed to hold four banquets in which they distributed goods to the guests.

Different Mexican Rituals

A different set of rituals were held for human sacrifices who were slaves rather than captives of war. If prisoners were offered up to the gods individually by their captives, slaves were offered collectively by different social groups: peasants, flower growers, salt miners, hunters, stone masons, scribes, gold and silver smiths, craftsmen who specialized in feather work, doctors and midwives, merchants, domestic servants, and even the ruler. Slaves destined for sacrifice would be purchased well in advance, consecrated as "living images of the gods," and shortly before the sacrificial rite subjected to a series of rituals that would make possible the total deification necessary for the sacrificial exchange of energy.

The most important public rituals were those associated with the sun, water, and maize, which were determined by the sun's position on the horizon. The ritual cycle associated with water began in the first month of the Mexica solar calendar (February in the Gregorian calendar) and was marked by a series of rituals to ensure favorable rainfall and please the gods of maize. An important part of these rituals was the sacrifice of children; older children were used as the maize matured. The children were sacrificed at the temple of Tlaloc, the god of rain, and on certain hills around Tenochtitlan.

The most important rite associated with Tlaloc was conducted in the month of Etzalcualiztli (June in the Gregorian calendar), which coincided with the height of the rainy season and the summer solstice. Priests dedicated to Tlaloc were confined to the calmecac for eight days. They would prepare for their confinement by going out to pick special twigs to make mats that they would use to hang offerings and to sleep on during their confinement. They would fast until midnight of the fourth day, performing autosacrifices each night to the sound of trumpets and conch shells. Using obsidian blades to cut their ears, they would gather their blood on maguey spines, which then would be offered to Tlaloc. On the fourth day they would lead a procession to the four temples known as the "houses of mist," playing instruments and singing. They would immerse themselves in the lake and, at the signal of one priest, would all begin to imitate the sounds of waterfowl. In the afternoon they would decorate the sanctuaries with fir branches and reeds.

The ceremony culminated with a feast in which the population ate a mixture of beans and cornmeal known as etzalli. The following day priests and acolytes marched to a spot on the lake known as Teotecco, bringing images of the gods made of rubber and copal pyramids, which they burned on the lake shore. Later they returned to the temple to hold four more days of fasting, concluding with a final ceremony in which they painted their head blue and their faces with a mixture of honey and ink before offering captives and later slaves to Tlaloc. The hearts of victims and other offerings were then carried by a group of priests in a boat into the lake and thrown into a whirlpool.