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Published: April 2, 2015
USC’s Marshall School of Business Debuts Online MBA Program
Beginning this fall, the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California will roll out a new online MBA program, featuring a curriculum designed specifically for the online learning environment, the school announced today. The new program will take a close look at emerging business topics of particular relevance to online business, such as internet analytics, social media, virtual teams and entrepreneurial thinking. The cost of tuition is slated at $93,502. The curriculum for the new program was developed specifically for online delivery – this is not just a regurgitation of traditional in-classroom content slapped up online, the school notes. As such, it will incorporate live action cases, interactive exercises and virtual teams. Read more
Published: April 1, 2015
MIT Sloan Gears Up for April Ambassadors Days
MIT Sloan School of Management features its interactive, customizable Ambassadors Program each fall and spring for prospective students, hosted by current students. The Ambassadors Program runs on Mondays and Thursdays throughout MIT Sloan’s spring semester, giving visiting prospective students the chance to choose from a range of options to design the visit that best fits their schedule and interests. A full Ambassadors day beings with registration, followed by coffee with current students, attendance in a class, an information session with an Admissions representative, a second opportunity to attend a class, and then two campus tour options. Those who register are invited to pick and choose from the available sessions as they like. (Note, visitors are asked to attend only one class, but are given two time slots for ease of scheduling. Classes available to visitors change each day, and visitors may select the time of their class visit, but not the specific class.)   Read more
Published: March 31, 2015
UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Joins Reaching Out LGBT MBA Fellowship Program, Names First Fellow
Yesterday, Reaching Out, a nonprofit devoted to empowering LGBT MBA students to champion equality in business school and beyond, announced that the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School has become the latest school to join its fellowship program. Kenan-Flagler becomes the 15th MBA program to join as a founding school of the Reaching Out LGBT MBA Fellowship, which provides scholarship funds and networking and other opportunities to LGBTQ MBA students and their allies. “Not only that, but Kenan-Flagler has already awarded its first Fellowship!” wrote Reaching Out excitedly on its blog. Read more
Published: March 30, 2015
One in Four HEC Paris Graduates Sets Out to Launch a Startup
Entrepreneurship is big and growing at HEC Paris, according to a recent survey of more than 8,500 graduates. The inaugural HEC Entrepreneurship Barometer, published last week, reveals that almost 25 percent of HEC graduates today are entrepreneurs, up from just 10 percent a decade ago. HEC Paris has been increasingly promoting entrepreneurship over the past 30 years, through teaching, research, mentoring and resources like the HEC Incubator. To measure the impact of these initiatives, HEC Paris devised its new Entrepreneurship Barometer, which surveyed a representative panel of 8,500 alumni from the past decade from across HEC’s various programs. Read more
Published: March 29, 2015
Columbia Business School Admissions Gears Up for J-Term Applications
While Columbia Business School (CBS) admissions is still busy reviewing applications for students hoping to secure a spot for fall 2015, it is also preparing for applicants to the January Accelerated (J-Term) program, which provides an innovative opportunity for candidates whose career goals don’t require a summer internship. Columbia’s J-Term condenses the entire academic program of the two-year MBA into 16 months. Beginning in January, candidates study straight through the summer, foregoing the summer internship that is part of the traditional two-year MBA. For those who can achieve their career goals without a summer internship—entrepreneurs or those who plan to return to a family business, for example—the J-Term’s condensed schedule presents a significantly lower opportunity cost than the two-year MBA. Read more
Published: March 29, 2015
Admissions Tip: Addressing Academic Strengths
While we devoted time last week to advice on addressing weaknesses in one’s academic record, today we wanted to explore the other side of the issue: the strengths that lie in your undergraduate record. Beyond issues of aptitude or previous achievement, there are a number of other things that your academic profile might say about you.  For instance, if you have a range of quant-focused classes in your record, this might create the impression that you are well prepared for the sort of coursework you would undertake in business school.  Meanwhile, if you have pursued extensive coursework in an area beyond the more traditional disciplines of economics, business administration or engineering, this could indicate some unique interest or perspective that you would bring to the classroom. Read more
Published: March 26, 2015
Leading Admissions Consultants Converge in France, England for AIGAC Annual Conference
Leading graduate management admissions consultants are gathering this week in Europe for the eighth annual Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants (AIGAC) members’ conference, where they will share best practices and speak directly with admissions officers from many of the world’s top business school. Almost 30 attendees representing admissions consultancies from 12 different countries are scheduled to attend the seven-day conference, which takes places at London Business School (LBS) and includes visits to INSEAD, HEC Paris and Cambridge Judge Business School.  Read more
Published: March 25, 2015
Economist, GMAT Tutor Launch $25,000 Scholarship Competition for MBA, EMBA Applicants
The Economist and test prep firm GMAT Tutor have once again partnered to offer a $25,000 scholarship to the prospective MBA or EMBA student who scores highest on a simulated GMAT exam. Called the Brightest Minds MBA Scholarship Contest, the competition is open to prospective MBA or EMBA students anywhere in the world. The first competition ran in 2014, drawing more than 4,500 entrants, The Economist reported. To take part in the contest, applicants simply complete The Economist GMAT Tutor simulation test, which uses adaptive technology similar to the real GMAT so that the difficulty level adjusts according to the test-taker’s ability. The simulation test requires the completion of a 75-minute Verbal section and a 75-minute Quant section. Participants should have the available time to complete the test in a single sitting and will not be able to pause once they begin. Read more
Published: March 24, 2015
London Business School Announces Four £30,000 Scholarships for Female MBAs
London Business School has partnered with Lloyds Banking Group for a second year to offer four £30,000 scholarships to female MBA students, the school announced this month. The scholarships are part of the school's continuing effort to encourage women to pursue post-graduate management education. The Lloyds Scholarships for Women program launched in 2014. Through it, scholarships will be awarded to MBA candidates who have been accepted into LBS’s full-time program for its 2015 intake. They are available to female candidates who have lived in the United Kingdom for three years or more. Read more
Published: March 23, 2015
Round 2 Decision Day at UPenn’s Wharton School, Harvard, Stanford
The fate of many hopeful MBA applicants hangs in the balance, with the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School scheduled to release Round 2 decisions today and Harvard Business School (HBS) and Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) scheduled to release Round 2 decisions tomorrow. We know from the Clear Admit LiveWire that lots of applicants have already gotten the good word from Wharton and Stanford via phone today, so a hearty congrats to those of you who fall into this category! Don’t expect early calls from HBS, says Admissions Director Dee Leopold. “While we love to give happy news, we don't want to create an anxiety zone where you are watching your phone constantly,” she wrote in a post to her Director’s Blog today. All notifications from HBS will go out via email at 12 noon Boston time tomorrow. “We know you've been out-of-control throughout much of this process - we can give you the control of where you are and with whom when decisions go out,” Leopold added. Read more
Published: March 22, 2015
UVA’s Darden School of Business Launches New Asia Initiative
The University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business earlier this month announced its strategic Asia Initiative at Darden, part of the school’s continuing investment in globalization. One of the initiative’s main objectives will be to advance the understanding of the dynamics of Asian markets as a critical component of business education. Through its expanded engagement in Asia, the school also hopes to enhance its expertise and resources in the region, facilitate greater collaboration and new partnerships and improve communication between faculty, students and alumni from Darden with business leaders and policymakers in Asia. Read more
Published: March 22, 2015
Admissions Tip: Addressing Academic Weaknesses
To follow up on last month’s advice about GMAT preparation and timing, we wanted to offer some general comments about the role of academics in the admissions process.  Many candidates considering business school focus on the credentials they will hold and the network that they will join upon graduation, but it is important to keep in mind the academic experience at the heart of any MBA program.  Because a business school is, after all, a school, it makes sense to begin your consideration of your profile by thinking about your academic aptitude and track record to date.  Your performance in your educational endeavors up to this point will be treated as a predictor of your success in business school. Read more
Published: March 19, 2015
Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management Welcomes New Admissions Director
The S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management has named a new executive director of admissions and financial aid and further strengthened the admissions office with several other new hires, the school announced this week. The reinvigorated admissions team complements a recent re-launch of the school’s two-year MBA curriculum, Johnson reports. Judi Byers, formerly admissions director at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington, DC, brings more than 10 years of admissions experience to her new role at Johnson. She joined Kogod, where she received her undergraduate degree in business, in 2004 as a marketing admissions coordinator, advancing to lead the admissions team by 2013. Read more
Published: March 19, 2015
Fridays from the Frontline: “How I’m Handling the Wharton Waitlist”
Welcome back to Fridays From the Frontline, the column in which we highlight the experiences of MBA bloggers. The following is a guest post from TopDogMBA with valuable advice for other applicants about handling business school waitlists that originally appeared on his blog. TopDogMBA has 12 years of experience in corporate investment banking, and he was admitted to MIT Sloan and INSEAD and waitlisted at Wharton. Follow TopDogMBA for more top-notch advice, MBA application stories, and photos of TopDogMBA's adorable dog Beatrice.  I’ve thought a long time about whether to post this since it puts me way out there, but I tried real hard to think how a Wharton student would deal with it. My conclusion is that the collaborative Wharton spirit would prevail and they’d share their insight with others in the same situation so here goes… As you probably know, I got waitlisted by Wharton in R1 and, despite getting admitted by the two other schools I applied to, Wharton remains my top choice. Being on the waitlist is a strange existence though, where you know you came within a hair’s breadth of being admitted yet didn’t quite make the cut. Read more
Published: March 18, 2015
Another Shake-Up in the Works for Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s MBA Rankings
When Duke’s Fuqua School of Business shot to the top of Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s 2014 rankings, Fuqua celebrated, but many others in the admissions world scratched their heads. How could a school ranked 22nd in student satisfaction kick long-standing, top-ranked schools to the curb? (FYI : Duke had only ever finished in BW's top five once, 14 years ago, when it came in fifth.) Amid widespread questions of credibility regarding the new methodology that led to the 2014 results, Bloomberg BW this week (March 16) emailed business school officials to say that it has plans for yet another overhaul of its rankings methodology and plans to publish a new ranking incorporating new and differently weighted core metrics next October. It also announced that beginning with the October publication, its MBA rankings will now be published annually, a major shift from the biennial schedule it has upheld since the BW rankings launched in 1988. Read more
Published: March 18, 2015
#MBA Top Tweets of the Week: the US News MBA Rankings
Welcome back to #MBA Top Tweets of the Week, in which we share selected tweets about important MBA Admissions News.  US News & World Report just released its 2016 Ranking of Top Business Schools, and journalists, schools, applicants, alumni, and even cities took to Twitter to discuss the news. Twitter lit up with the news that the 2016 Top Business School rankings were out: Aspiring CEO? Set your sights on these #BestGradSchools for MBAs: http://t.co/tbD5ETuaaj pic.twitter.com/X83l7nPdFT — U.S. News & World Report (@usnews) March 14, 2015 Read more
Published: March 17, 2015
Clear Admit Becomes All Content All the Time, Announces Plans to Expand Media Property
Clear Admit today announced plans to expand its presence as a leading source of high-quality content about MBA admissions and top-tier MBA programs through its digital media property, ClearAdmit.com, and its suite of digital publications. To focus exclusively on creating valuable content resources for graduate business school applicants, Clear Admit will exit the MBA admissions consulting space. Founded in 2002 by Wharton graduates, Clear Admit.com has been recognized by Google, the Economist and leading industry associations like the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) for its superb coverage of MBA admissions and leading MBA programs. Hundreds of thousands of prospective applicants have relied on Clear Admit digital content each admissions cycle to help them navigate the admission process. Throughout, Clear Admit has worked closely with leading business schools, including UVA’s Darden School, Cornell’s Johnson School, HEC Paris and Georgetown McDonough, among many others, to ensure that the information posted about MBA programs is accurate and timely. With this expanded focus on content, readers of Clear Admit’s website and publications should expect even greater depth and breadth in the coverage provided. Read more
Published: March 16, 2015
UPenn’s Wharton School Announces New Partnership for Student-Led Impact Investing
Students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School will have new opportunities to gain hands-on experience with impact investment thanks to a innovative partnership with an online crowdfunding platform and an investment firm founded by Wharton MBAs, the school announced earlier this month. The Wharton Social Impact Initiative (WSII), which coordinates the school’s social impact activities, research and opportunities, has partnered with equity-based online crowdfunding platform OurCrowd and investment firm Locust Walk Impact Partners to create what the school touts as the “largest and most active student-run impact investing fund in the world.” The new collaboration greatly expands the student-run Wharton Social Venture Fund (WSVF), which is operated under the WSII. Read more
Published: March 15, 2015
Admissions Tip: Feedback Sessions for Denied Applicants
As many of our readers know, a small number of leading MBA programs offer admissions feedback sessions to applicants who did not make the admissions cut in a given season.  Though we’ve touched upon this subject before, we’d like to use today’s blog entry to underline the importance of these feedback sessions for those of you who are considering reapplication. Read more
Published: March 15, 2015
SXSW Conference Spotlights Business School Students’ Embrace of Design
Student-led design clubs can be found at 70 percent of the top-ranked MBA programs both in the United States and globally, an indicator that MBA students are embracing design wholeheartedly as part of their general management education, according to a presentation yesterday at the SXSW Conference in Austin. The presentation, entitled “Design in Tech,” was delivered by John Maeda, former president of the Rhode Island School of Design who last year joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) as its first “Design Partner.” As part of the presentation, Maeda provided a data-driven examination of the intersection of design and technology. Reporting on the findings of his inaugural “Design and Technology Trends Report,” Maeda highlighted the rising importance of design in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, noting the acquisition of design firms by tech companies like Facebook and Google, as well as the trend toward venture capitalists funding startups that have designers as co-founders. Read more
Published: March 12, 2015
Yale School of Management Announces New LGBT Scholarship
Class of 2017 students at the Yale School of Management who demonstrate both strong academic skills and a capacity for leadership within the lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender and queer (LBGT) community will now be eligible for a new scholarship opportunity, the school announced this week. Through its partnership with Reaching Out MBA, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering LBGT MBA students, Yale SOM will award two Reaching Out LGBT MBA Fellowships to incoming Yale SOM students.   Recipients of the fellowships will receive a minimum of $10,000 in scholarship aid for each academic year, as well as access to a range of Reaching Out programming, mentoring and leadership opportunities, including some developed especially for the Fellows. Read more
Published: March 11, 2015
Applicants to UMichigan’s Ross School of Business Begin to Receive Admissions Decisions
Some of those anxiously awaiting word from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business began to receive phone calls yesterday letting them know they’d been accepted, which we saw reflected on the Clear Admit LiveWire. Ross Admissions Director Soojin Kwon confirmed in a post to her Admissions Director Blog that she and her team were set to begin calling U.S. applicants yesterday and will make international calls today. “All decisions will be posted online at 12 p.m. EST on Friday, March 13th,” she wrote. Kwon didn’t share updates sooner, she says, because her team was making final decisions right up until the last minute in a year when choosing who to admit proved particularly tough. “Not only did we receive more apps, the quality of the apps was higher all around,” she wrote. “I’m not just talking GMAT scores, but also the experiences and skills that applicants have. It was extremely hard to not admit more than we did.” Read more
Published: March 10, 2015
Stanford GSB Edges Out HBS, Wharton in 2016 U.S. News & World Report Rankings
Stanford’s Graduate School of Business took the number one spot in the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings of the nation’s best MBA programs, released yesterday, knocking Harvard Business School (HBS) to second and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School to third. Last year, the three powerhouse schools tied for first place, but slight differences on core metrics caused HBS and Wharton to slip this year. U.S. News uses multiple core measurements to compile its rankings, with the greatest weight given to quality assessments by deans and MBA directors at peer schools and corporate recruiter survey scores. Wharton’s scores slipped in both these regards, as well as in average pay for its MBA graduates, precipitating its drop this year in the rankings. Read more
Published: March 9, 2015
UPenn’s Wharton School Names Insider as New Director of MBA Admissions
The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School has named a new director of admissions, the school announced to students last week. Frank DeVecchis will work closely with existing Deputy Vice Dean of Wharton MBA Admissions, Financial Aid and Career Services Maryellen Reilly Lamb to oversee the entire application process, from recruitment through matriculation. DeVecchis knows the Wharton MBA program like few others. He joins the Admissions team from Wharton’s MBA Program Office, where he served most recently as director of MBA Academic Operations. In this role, he led all operations and daily management of the MBA program, including successfully implementing Wharton’s new Course Match course registration program. He also advised more than 800 students during his tenure as the senior member of the MBA academic advising team and helped plan and implement Wharton’s three-week orientation for incoming students. Read more
Published: March 8, 2015
Who Makes a Good Applicant to Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management?
With the Round 3 deadline for applications to the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University just a few days away, are you busy putting the finishing touches on your application? Maybe you are just beginning to consider applying in the year ahead. In either case, if Johnson at Cornell is on your radar, read on to learn more about just what the school is looking for in its applicants. We recently spoke with Eddie Asbie, Associate Director of Admissions and Financial Aid, who joined Johnson in 2013 to help develop the Two-year MBA in Ithaca class. In our interview, Asbie took time to share some of what makes a good applicant in the eyes of the Johnson Admissions Committee, beyond the obvious solid entrance exam scores and strong academics that are par for the course with a top-tier Ivy League school. Read more

MBA Livewire

November 18, 2024 11:24am ET
Interview Invite to Dartmouth / Tuck
Round: Round 1
Received via email November 18, 2024
GPA: 2.77
GMAT: 760
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Finance
Application Location: Cambridge, MA
Note:

Consortium Applicant
November 18, 2024 10:57am ET
Interview Invite to Duke / Fuqua
Round: Round 1
Received via email on November 13, 2024
GRE: 318
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Finance
Application Location: Canada
November 18, 2024 9:48am ET
Rejected at Columbia
Round: Round 1
Received via portal on November 14, 2024
GPA: 3.54
GMAT: 740
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Other
Application Location: USA
November 18, 2024 9:03am ET
Accepted to Toronto / Rotman
Round: Round 1
Received via email on November 14, 2024
GPA: 3.72
GRE: 324
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Consulting
Application Location: Canada
Note:

Received entrance scholarship of $40k. They asked for deposit by Dec 6.
November 17, 2024 2:39pm ET
Interview Invite to Duke / Fuqua
Round: Round 1
Received via email on November 11, 2024
GPA: 3.79
GRE: 321
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Finance
Application Location: Chicago
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