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Published: March 21, 2019
Fridays from the Frontline: WBA Presidents Reflect on Gender Equity and Alliance at Kellogg
At many elite MBA programs, like Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, the conversation around gender has seeped into how the curriculum is being designed so MBA graduates from across the entire gender spectrum are better equipped to do business.  Student organizations play a pronounced role, rallying to support female-identified MBAs and give them a louder voice on campus.  In light of this, Ginny Lee and Noelle Bloomfield recently took to the Kellogg Blog to unpack their experiences with gender equity, allyship, and more as part of the Women’s Business Association. The following piece has been republished in its entirety from its original source, the Kellogg Blog. Read more
Published: March 20, 2019
INSEAD Offers 10 Tips for Creating (and Sustaining) Successful Partnerships
Corporate partnerships are vital to success, and the number of companies forming these alliances is growing all the time. Between 2002 and 2011, companies formed nearly 42,000 partnerships, according to Greve Rowley and Shipilov. The reason behind this growth is the fact that partnerships offer significant cost and speed advantages for companies. According to INSEAD director of business innovation Paul Sanders, they bring substantial value. Unfortunately, many partnerships fail—60 to 70 percent according to Jonathan Hughes and Jeff Weiss. So, what can your business do to ensure that your alliance doesn’t just avoid failure, but is highly successful? Sanders discusses the ten stages of successful partnerships in one of the most recent INSEAD Knowledge articles. Here’s what he had to say. Read more
Published: March 20, 2019
Columbia Professor Offers Advice on #MeToo Fallout for Female Leadership
The #MeToo movement has been a good thing, bringing to light many gender issues regarding sexual harassment and assault. And, it’s been particularly valuable for women in the workplace. Unfortunately, while most of the response to the #MeToo movement has been positive, it has triggered a few unexpected negative consequences. As a Forbes article recently explained, there’s a “potential threat to women’s advancement to senior leadership, as some men have become wary of forging professional relationships with female colleagues.” Read more
Published: March 19, 2019
Michigan / Ross MBA Interview Questions: R2 / Alumnus / Off-campus
The interview was rather informal, held in a local Starbucks. My interviewer, an alumnus, was very friendly and started the interview telling me about her career and her experience at Ross. Then, we formally started the interview switching to English (we are from Peru so we speak Spanish). Questions Walk me through your resume Why Ross? Why an MBA now? What are your career goals? What are your best traits? How did you act in certain situations? (e.g. showed leadership, ethical dilemma, work with your team) Tell me about the feedback your manager gave you. The interview went smoothly, we Read more
Published: March 19, 2019
MBA News You Need: Ross Announces Business Challenge Results, NYU Stern Measures Sustainability, Columbia Talks Leadership Lessons from Game of Thrones and More IMD and Yale SOM
Each week we collect all the MBA news that’s fit to print and provide a quick overview of the latest trending topics from top business schools around the world. Here’s your quick MBA News You Need digest for the week of March 18, 2019. Read more
Published: March 19, 2019
Sentence Correction Tip: Cut the Junk
Sentence corrections on the GMAT can be particularly tricky. There are so many rules and goals to keep in mind – not only does the correct selection have to be grammatically correct, but it needs to be concise and clear – at least, according to GMAC standards. The biggest strategy that we find even the best GMAT test takers fail to consider is “cutting the junk” when approaching GMAT sentence correction questions. It is easy for a GMAT test taker, particularly a native English speaker, to heavily rely on how a sentence correction questions sounds to make corrections, then jump Read more
Published: March 18, 2019
DecisionWire Spotlight: Columbia Business School or UCLA / Anderson for Media
In this MBA DecisionWire Spotlight, which highlights MBA candidates’ choices as shared in Clear Admit’s DecisionWire, we take a closer look at a candidate accepted to Columbia and UCLA Anderson.  The candidate is planning a post-MBA career in media and received a $60k scholarship to CBS. A community member kicked off the conversation: Read more
Published: March 17, 2019
Rochester Simon School of Business Leads the Way with STEM-Designated MBA Program
As international applications at U.S. business schools drop, there’s more demand than ever for science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines in MBA curriculum. Why? The new STEM designation program. Created by the federal government to help with the shortage of qualified workers in the STEM fields, the program makes H1b visas far more attractive. If a student attends a STEM-designated education program and gains a STEM job after graduation, they gain an additional 24 months of optional practical training (OPT) time. This lengthens their stay in the U.S. from one to three years, which is very attractive to candidates and a solid reason for schools to consider the STEM designation. And many have. Read more
Published: March 17, 2019
Episode 33: Keith Bevans of Bain & Company Discusses Consulting, Recruiting and More
Bain & Company—widely considered one of the most elite consulting firms in the world—is a coveted post-MBA destination for students at top business schools in every part of the globe.  Our guest today, Keith Bevans, is a partner in Bain & Company's Chicago office and also heads Bain's global consultant recruiting efforts.  The latter involves managing the team that identifies and attracts talent to Bain's offices and ensures that the next generation of leaders continue to make Bain "The best firm to work for." Keith Bevans, Partner and Leader of Corporate Recruiting, Bain & Co. While Bain primarily targets top-20 schools for MBA recruiting, it hires from more than 60 schools around the world and is committed to finding the best talent wherever it can.  Bevans is a Bain lifer.  He started as an associate consultant out of MIT, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering. He left Bain to get his MBA at Harvard Business School but returned upon graduation and has been there ever since. For much of his career, he has been a client-facing partner in the firm’s Performance Improvement practice, with a focus on processes to improve effectiveness and efficiencies. Read more
Published: March 14, 2019
Fridays from the Frontline: What is it like to be a woman in one of today’s top global business schools?
In light of International Women's Day last week and the ongoing Women's History Month, this edition of Fridays from the Frontline features two Forté Foundation scholars from Cambridge / Judge. Forté Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to empowering women in business, offers a Fellows Program, which provides fellowships to “women pursuing a full-time, part-time or executive MBA education at our sponsor business schools.” According to Forté, sponsor schools have given more than $142 million to more than 6,300 Forté Fellows to date. Read on to hear from members of the Judge MBA Class of 2018, Natalia Dziergwa and Rebecca Kilbane, about why women would do well to consider Cambridge Judge. The following piece has been republished in its entirety from its original source, Cambridge Judge Insight. Read more
Published: March 13, 2019
Will the UK Avoid Chaos After Brexit? Wharton Podcast Discusses
With the Brexit deadline looming on March 29, and chaos after Brexit almost expected, there are a lot of unknowns. But thanks to a possible extension and guarantees from the EU to help British Prime Minister Theresa May push her proposal through Parliament, new possibilities are starting to open up. Still, there is a lot of uncertainty over Brexit that’s impacting the UK on a variety of levels, including business. Read more
Published: March 13, 2019
Can IKEA and the Instant Pot Teach Us About Competition? MIT Sloan Thinks So
People purchase IKEA furniture because it’s easy to put together. They don’t want to have to buy a drill; they want holes and pieces that easily fit together like Legos. In fact, according to Harvard professor Theodore Levitt, when someone buys a drill, what they want is what the drill can do. That’s just one reason why MIT professor Sanjay Sarma believes that IKEA is on the cutting edge of business. While other companies are trying to sell solutions to outdated problems, IKEA has figured out how to solve a core problem. “That's what I call inversion,” Sarma said. “You’ve got to wrap yourself around the need and think outwards, rather than limit yourself to your product.” So, what can IKEA and other companies teach about competition? Sarma provides insight from three recognizable brands who are mastering the art of inversion, and one that failed. Read more
Published: March 12, 2019
MBA News You Need: Yale SOM Names New Dean, Harvard Makes Plans to Increase Diversity, IMD Talks Women in Leadership, and More
Each week we collect all the MBA news that’s fit to print and provide a quick overview of the latest trending topics from top business schools around the world. Here’s your quick MBA News You Need digest for the week of March 11, 2019. Read more
Published: March 12, 2019
GMAT Critical Reasoning Tip: Mind the Gap
Let’s start this post with a critical reasoning question: When a group of people starts a company, the founders usually serve as sources both of funding and of skills in marketing, management, and technical matters. It is unlikely that a single individual can both provide adequate funding and be skilled in marketing, management, and technical matters. Therefore, companies founded by groups are more likely to succeed than companies founded by individuals. Which one of the following is an assumption required by the argument? Before we dive into the answer choices, let’s start by wrapping our heads around what this critical Read more
Published: March 11, 2019
Wharton Tops the U.S. News 2020 MBA Ranking And More
As reported here this morning, the Wharton School has claimed the number one spot—for the first time on its own—of the U.S. News and World Report 2020 rankings of full-time MBA programs. Before we get to other noteworthy shifts and positions, here’s a quick rundown of this year’s top 10, in order of their 2020 rank (2019 rank in parentheses): Read more
Published: March 11, 2019
LiveWire Spotlight: Venting Frustration
While MBA applicants usually share good (interview invitations, acceptances) and bad (ding, ding, ding) admissions news on LiveWire, it’s also a communal touchstone for the admissions process in general.  The real-time updates provided by candidates as they move through the admissions process at leading business schools has offered a new degree of transparency into the processes at individual schools—and sometimes those processes aren’t the smoothest. Read more
Published: March 11, 2019
Podcast Episode 32: Key Takeaways from the U.S. News 2020 MBA Ranking
The 2020 rankings of full-time MBA programs are out from U.S. News & World Report, and our admissions experts, Graham Richmond and Alex Brown, have once again been kind enough to help make sense of them. Before they dig into the rankings, here’s a quick rundown of this year’s top 10, in order of their 2020 rank (2019 rank in parentheses): 1 University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (3) 2 Stanford Graduate School of Business (4) 3 Harvard Read more
Published: March 10, 2019
Cornell Johnson MBA Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / AdCom / Ithaca
Cornell Johnson MBA Interview: I came before classes started so I didn’t see many applicants in the waiting room. Chatted with friendly admissions receptionist before being picked up by AdCom. I was with AdCom member and a student interviewer in training so total of two people in the private office of that AdCom member. Questions Asked: “Walk me through your resume” Asked to justify why I had switched companies/job progression Long term and short term goals Why Cornell How would I take advantage of career management center What activities would I take advantage of outside classroom ie, extracirriculuars Asked if Read more
Published: March 10, 2019
NYU Stern MBA Interview Questions & Report: Round 3/ Adcom Off-campus
My interview at NYU Stern was application based and taken by member of admission committee. The interviewer was courteous and attentive. After exchanging pleasantries, straightforward started with the questions based on resume first and then moved on to the application questions. Questions asked Describe career progress as highlighted by resume. Major projects handled and leadership roles. Short term goal – deep dive into why such a goal Back-up plan in case short term goal does not materialize Why Stern How do you plan to utilize the career development resources at Stern Companies you wish to work for What unique experience Read more
Published: March 10, 2019
Q&A with Student Interviewers at Cornell / Johnson
As Cornell / Johnson wraps up initial notifications for its January Round this week, we caught up with a few student interviewers to provide insights into their admissions interview.  At Johnson, the MBA admissions interview may be conducted by an adcom member or a trained second-year student member of the Johnson Admissions Group (JAG).  Two JAG members, Lauren Keithahn and Corey Minerva, shed light on why they became interviewers, what stands out to them in an admissions interview, what advice they have for new candidates and more. Read more
Published: March 9, 2019
UT Austin / McCombs MBA Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / Adcom / Off-campus Hub
My McCombs interview was on January 18th in NYC with adcom member. It was a blind interview, so she had just reviewed my resume before I arrived. Very friendly adcom member, made it easy to relax and take my time answering questions. A lot of behavioral based questions, so have your stories ready, and also do your research on the school and extracurricular offerings. Questions Walk me through your resume What are your short-term and long-term goals? What is your plan b if these goals don’t work out? Why McCombs? Why now? How will you contribute to McCombs? Tell me Read more
Published: March 9, 2019
Yale SOM MBA Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / Adcom / Off-Campus Hub
I had my Yale interview in early March, in London with an adcom. The interview was very structured, and lasted exactly for 30 minutes. The interview was blind-based, so the interviewer had only seen my CV and my quote prior to the interview. Questions Walk me through your resume. Why MBA? Why Yale? What was your greatest accomplishment? What was your greatest mistake? Please explain your quote. Do you have any questions? All in all, a very pleasant interview experience without major surprises. I believe the adcom primarily really wants to get to know you, and assess your fit with Read more
Published: March 9, 2019
Chicago Booth MBA Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / Second-year student / On-campus
My interview at Booth was blind and done by a second year student. While you wait at the lounge area in the admissions office, the first year student will sit down with you and casually chat in order to make you feel relaxed. The interviewer dressed formally so as all candidates. The interview ran for 45 minutes. It was cordial and professional. Interviewer started with a brief introduction of herself. Nothing was surprising. I did my interview as a part of a campus visit. I highly recommend candidates do so if they haven’t already. Questions Tell me about yourself Why Read more
Published: March 8, 2019
Stanford GSB Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / Alumnus / Off-campus
I received interview invite to Stanford GSB on a Monday and had my interview live within a few days after. The interview was very conversational and interviewer took notes using his laptop. After some brief introductions, the interviewer asked a few behavioral questions such as: Tell me about a time when you took on a leadership role Tell me about a time when you faced a difficult challenge, etc. Questions were very typical but I had to prepare 6-7 different stories of my experiences. Clear Admit Resources Preparing for your Stanford MBA admissions interview?  Check out Clear Admit’s other Read more
Published: March 8, 2019
Yale SOM MBA Interview Questions & Report: Round 2 / Adcom / Off-Campus Hub
My Yale SOM interview was at the Hilton Hotel in London in early March, the interviewer was very friendly and followed a structured approach. The interview itself was blind-based and lasted for exactly 30 minutes. CV related questions Why MBA? What was your greatest accomplishment? What was your greatest professional mistake? What will be your contribution to Yale SOM? Please explain your quote I had 5 minutes left to ask any questions that I had. Overall, a pleasant interview experience. Preparing for an upcoming Yale MBA interview? Click here to get the Clear Admit Yale SOM Interview Guide. After your interview, Read more

MBA Applywire

4
November 29, 2024 6:18am ET
Applying: Northwestern / Kellogg, NYU Stern, U. Chicago Booth, UPenn / Wharton
Pre-MBA Career: Investment Analyst Endowment
Post-MBA Target Industry: Investment Banking, Asset Management, inc. HF Companies: JP Morgan , Morgan Stanley , Blackrock , Goldman Sachs
GMAT: 760
GPA: 3.44
Years of Work Experience: 3.5
Location: Chicago
Post MBA Location: Chicago/NYC
Notes:

I currently do direct startup investments and M&A for a healthcare system, and lead coverage of equities in their endowment $15B AUM. I want to peruse an MBA to do a PE secondaries or emerging market research. I have a CFA level 2 so I feel like the former is more doable than the latter.
1
November 28, 2024 10:49pm ET
Applying: Arizona State / W.P. Carey
Intake Year: 2025
Pre-MBA Career: Accountant
Post-MBA Target Industry: Consulting Companies: Booz Allen Hamilton , Ernst & Young
GRE: 311
GPA: 3.22
Years of Work Experience: 2.5
Location: Ghana
Post MBA Location: Accountant/Public
6
November 28, 2024 8:12am ET
Applying: Berkeley / Haas, Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, Northwestern / Kellogg, Stanford GSB, UPenn / Wharton
Intake Year: 2025
Pre-MBA Career: Consulting
Post-MBA Target Industry: Consulting, Technology
GMAT: 645
GPA: 84%
Years of Work Experience: 3
Location: Brazil
5
November 27, 2024 5:44pm ET
Applying: Berkeley / Haas, Duke / Fuqua, MIT Sloan, Stanford GSB, UPenn / Wharton
Pre-MBA Career: Corporate Communication Specialist
Post-MBA Target Industry: Other
GPA: 3.9
Years of Work Experience: 6
Location: Indonesia
4
November 27, 2024 12:00pm ET
Applying: Berkeley / Haas, London Business School, Northwestern / Kellogg, Stanford GSB
Intake Year: 2025
Pre-MBA Career: Eingeneer
Post-MBA Target Industry: Other
GMAT: 675
GPA: 3,5
Years of Work Experience: 4.8
Location: Chile
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MBA LiveWire

November 29, 2024 5:22pm ET
Accepted to NYU Stern
Round: Round 1
Received via email on November 25, 2024
GPA: 3.65
GRE: 339
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Non Profit / Social Impact
Application Location: USA
November 29, 2024 1:53pm ET
Accepted to London Business School
Round: Round 1
Received via email on November 25, 2024
GPA: 3.8
GRE: 333
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Finance
Application Location: New York
November 29, 2024 9:05am ET
Accepted to Cornell / Johnson
Round: Round 1
Received via phone on November 25, 2024
GPA: 3.52
GMAT: 635
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Consulting
Application Location: Northeast
Note:

Received a call on Nov. 26. Prior background is work in communications/marketing.
November 29, 2024 5:15am ET
Accepted to UVA / Darden
Round: Early Decision
Received via phone on October 15, 2024
GPA: 67%
GMAT: 705
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Consulting
Application Location: India
November 29, 2024 2:45am ET
Accepted to Cornell / Johnson
Round: Round 1
Received via email on November 26, 2024
GMAT: 740
Program Type: One Year Program
Target Career: Entrepreneurship
Application Location: India
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