The Leading Independent
Resource for Top-tier MBA
Candidates

Posts by Clear Admit

About
Clear Admit is the leading resource for top-tier MBA candidates.
Published: October 27, 2014
ESADE to Launch Dual MBA Program with Beijing’s Guanghua School of Management
Leading European business school ESADE has signed a new partnership with China’s Guanghua School of Management to offer a two-year dual MBA program beginning next fall, the school announced today. Participants will spend the first year of the new program studying on ESADE’s Barcelona campus and the second taking classes at Guanghua’s Peking University campus in Beijing. The two institutions have been collaborating on academic projects for several years, including exchange programs for undergraduate and MBA students, international training programs for MSc students and a jointly organized conference featuring faculty from both schools. The new dual program “confirms ESADE’s commitment to internationalization” and will help strengthen its programs for “executives who aspire to lead the global economy,” ESADE Director General Dr. Eugenia Bieto said in a statement. The institutions share similar program portfolios, similar faculty size and a commitment to innovation, he added. Read more
Published: October 27, 2014
Trivia Tuesday: Experiential Learning at Tuck
Welcome back to Trivia Tuesday, where we explore the special programs and opportunities that differentiate the leading business schools.  Today we’re featuring an except from the Clear Admit School Guide to Dartmouth Tuck School of Business about the school’s experiential learning opportunities. “All Tuck students have an opportunity to gain hands-on ex­perience in business through the required First-Year Project, through which teams of students complete a consulting proj­ect for a business or nonprofit organization. Some students choose to pursue this type of learning in more depth, taking advantage of Tuck’s second-year experiential learning programs. Read more
Published: October 26, 2014
IMD, Tuck School of Business Launch Joint Executive Education Program in Leadership
Switzerland’s IMD and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth earlier this month announced a new collaboration designed to help global organizations develop leadership skills among their management. The Transition to Business Leadership (TBL) executive education program, launched earlier this year by IMD, will be offered in two modules alternating between the two schools, beginning in spring 2015. The program is designed to help prepare experienced functional managers at leading global organizations develop necessary skills and expertise to shift into business leadership positions. Participating executives will examine the challenges and pitfalls that go hand in hand with transitioning into a leadership role. Read more
Published: October 23, 2014
UPenn’s Wharton School to Send Round 1 Interview Invitations October 31st
The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School will send invitations to interview out to Round 1 applicants on Friday, October 31st, according to a recent post on the school’s MBA Admissions Blog. Applicants who snag one of these coveted interview spots will have an opportunity to take part in Wharton’s Team-Based Discussion interviews in a range locations around the globe. For Round 1, off-campus interviews will be held in Dubai, London, Mumbai, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo. Candidates can also, of course, choose to interview on campus in Philadelphia. “All invited candidates are encouraged to interview on-campus or in the off-campus location that is most convenient for you,” the MBA Admissions Team wrote on its blog. Read more
Published: October 22, 2014
U.S. News & World Report Ranks Business Schools by Graduates’ Indebtedness
Rankings of graduate management education programs abound, each with their own particular criteria for assessing which business schools ultimately come out on top. Separate from its overall business school rankings, U.S. News & World Report recently used data collected from schools to determine the top 10 programs from which MBA students graduate with the most debt. The number one spot goes to Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where full-time MBA students from the 2013 class who borrowed for business school had an average indebtedness of $108,186. Fuqua’s full-time MBA students had more debt than any of the other 86 ranked institutions, according to data submitted to U.S. News. Read more
Published: October 21, 2014
Majority of Business Schools Now Accept GRE, But More Applicants Stick with GMAT
A whopping 85 percent of U.S. business schools now accept the GRE as an admissions test alternative to the GMAT, according to a 2014 survey by Kaplan Test Prep. That’s up from only 24 percent of business schools who said they accepted the GRE in 2009, when Kaplan first began tracking the issue. GRE acceptance by business schools has been growing steadily year over year, Kaplan reports. But even as more schools report accepting scores from the GRE, most MBA applicants are still choosing to submit scores from the more traditional GMAT. More than half of the admissions officers surveyed by Kaplan this year reported that only one in 10 or fewer applicants chose to submit GRE scores instead of GMAT scores, representing a slight increase from Kaplan’s past surveys. Read more
Published: October 20, 2014
New Light Installation Commissioned for MIT Sloan School of Management Main Building
When Building E52, the main facility for the MIT Sloan School of Management, reopens after extensive renovations in January 2016, it will feature a new light installation by artist Leo Villareal, the school announced recently. Villareal, who last year created The Bay Lights on the San Francisco Bay Bridge West Span, was recently awarded an MIT Percent-for-Art commission to create a light installation for MIT’s Building E52. His plans for E52 include a light sculpture in the north vestibule of the building as part of a new, glass-enclosed entrance. The sculpture will feature 240 hanging LED rods – each approximately 9 feet tall with 72 individual LEDs – arranged from the ceiling in rows. As part of the work, Villareal will create a software code programming the LEDs to cycle through a randomly generated series of combinations. Read more
Published: October 19, 2014
UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Awards Scholarships to Half of Full-time MBA Class
The Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley set a new record this year, awarding scholarships to a full half of its entering full-time MBA class, the school announced earlier this month. In all, Haas will provide almost $6 million in scholarship aid to students across its three MBA programs, with an average award of $26,000 for students in the full-time MBA program. “It’s a real tipping point, and we plan to continue the trend of providing the highest level of financial support possible to help our students achieve their academic goals,” Daniel Roddick, Haas director of financial aid, said in a statement. Read more
Published: October 16, 2014
Bloomberg Businessweek Unveils Social Media Campaign #WhyMBA
Yesterday, Bloomberg Businessweek launched #WhyMBA, a social media campaign designed to get MBA hopefuls, students, alumni, and business leaders talking about the value of a graduate education in business. The #WhyMBA campaign is part of the run-up to the release of Bloomberg Businessweek’s full-time MBA program rankings on Tuesday, November 11. Every day until the release, Bloomberg will post daily questions on Twitter with the hashtag #WhyMBA, and track the ensuing conversation on the campaign’s website. The Business Education Editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, Francesca Levy, explains that Businessweek created the social media campaign to prompt a wider look at business education. Read more
Published: October 15, 2014
UNC Kenan-Flagler Publishes New MBA Application Guide for Prospective Applicants
MBA@UNC, the online MBA program at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, has just released a new MBA application guide designed to aid prospective applicants in the admissions process. Though produced by Kenan-Flagler, the guide was designed to serve as a resource for students applying to any business school. Through a series of online articles, MBA@UNC has compiled best practices along with tips and advice for preparing the strongest possible MBA application. Articles in the series delve into topics ranging from choosing between the GMAT and the GRE to how to secure strong letters of recommendation. You’ll also find posts devoted to strengthening your resume, writing compelling essays and acing the interview. Read more
Published: October 14, 2014
Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business Announces Semi-Finalists in Inaugural Rural Entrepreneurship Challenge
Entrepreneurship has certainly become a buzz word at business schools, but “rural entrepreneurship” is a term you don’t hear quite as often. Unless you’re at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, where rural entrepreneurship is currently front and center. McDonough yesterday hosted the National Summit on Rural Entrepreneurship, which included the announcement of 10 national semi-finalists in the first-ever Rural Entrepreneurship Challenge. The challenge – a joint venture between the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), McDonough’s Global Social Enterprise Initiative (GSEI) and the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative’s Startup Hoyas – is an opportunity for individuals to showcase innovation taking place in rural regions of the United States.   Read more
Published: October 13, 2014
Harvard Business School to Release Remaining Round 1 Interview Invites Tomorrow
For all those anxious Harvard Business School (HBS) Round 1 applicants still waiting to learn their fate, tomorrow will be a telling day, according to Managing Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid Deirdre Leopold. About 150 additional interview invitations will go out tomorrow, October 15th, adding to the roughly 800 invitations extended last week, Leopold shared in a recent post to her Director's Blog. Another group will also learn tomorrow that HBS wants to “further consider” their applications as part of Round 2. “We anticipate that there will be ~200 applicants in this group,” Leopold wrote, adding that the email communicating this decision will also provide information regarding a timetable and communication plan for this group. Read more
Published: October 13, 2014
Chicago Booth Releases Interview Notification Timeline
Did you apply to the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business Round One this year? Tyler Smith, an Assistant Director of Admissions at Booth, has written a post titled “Behind the Scenes of Round One,” where he provides crucial details of Booth’s admissions process for Round One applicants, including Booth’s timeline for Round One interview notifications. The Admissions Committee at Booth is currently reviewing Round One applications. Applications are read in random order and interview decisions will be made on a rolling basis. Booth will notify candidates whether they have been invited back Read more
Published: October 12, 2014
Survey Finds GMAT Integrated Reasoning Section Scores Unimportant to Most B-School Admissions Officers
A majority of admissions officers from more than 200 U.S. business schools surveyed this fall say that an applicant’s score on the GMAT’s Integrated Reasoning section is not currently an important part of their evaluation of a prospective applicant’s overall GMAT score, according to Kaplan Test Prep, which conducted the survey. Kaplan found that 60 percent of admissions officers surveyed this year said that performance on the IR section was not important, an uptick from 57 percent of those surveyed last year. That said, Kaplan reports that 50 percent of business schools surveyed point to a low overall GMAT score as “the biggest application killer.” For its 2014 survey, Kaplan polled admissions officers from 204 business schools from across the United States, including 11 of the top 30 MBA programs as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. Read more
Published: October 12, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Grace Kim of the USC Marshall School of Business
Grace Kim is senior associate director of MBA admissions at the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business. She was generous enough to make time recently to answer our questions about the admissions process at Marshall, and we thank her! In the interview that follows, Kim shares new developments planned for the school, including the creation of several half-semester electives as part of the curriculum. These new, shorter courses are designed to add greater breadth of content and allow students to better prepare for highly specialized careers. Read more
Published: October 8, 2014
Yale School of Management to Host Online Career Panels for Prospective Applicants
The Yale School of Management (SOM) admissions team will kick off a new series of online events later this month designed to showcase for prospective applicants the many MBA career paths the school’s students choose to follow. The live events will each focus on a different industry and will feature relationship managers from the Career Development Office joined by current SOM students. Read more
Published: October 8, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Maryellen Lamb of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School
Maryellen Lamb was named deputy vice dean of Wharton MBA Career Management, Admissions and Financial Aid last fall, and she tells us that she absolutely loves the role. “I have a great job because I get to see both the comings and goings. I see Wharton students from when they just start thinking about an MBA through their time here as students and then as they advance in their careers,” she says. “It is so fun to watch really high-performing individuals reach even higher.” Philadelphia born and raised, Lamb began her career in Princeton as a currency trader, but she found that the more successful she became, the farther away from Philadelphia she was forced to move. About 10 years ago she decided she wanted to return to Philly, and when she got a call from Wharton to come work in the Career Office as an advisor to students looking into investment banking, she jumped at it. “Over time, I have loved being at Wharton even more than I ever thought I could,” she says. Read more
Published: October 7, 2014
LinkedIn Launches New University Rankings Tool Charting Career Placement Success
LinkedIn has launched an innovative new rankings system that analyzes career and education data shared by its more than 300 million users to rank undergraduate institutions according to where their graduates land jobs. Violà! You can now use LinkedIn not only to network for jobs following graduation, but also to assess which schools will best position you for the jobs you want before you even reach the job search phase. Using its vast troves of employment data, LinkedIn analyzes the patterns of individual career choices to define the most desirable jobs, the most desirable companies within professions and the most relevant graduates for those jobs. It then uses these data points to rank universities based on the percentage of relevant graduates who have obtained desirable jobs. Read more
Published: October 6, 2014
Harvard Business School Professor Launches U.S. Cluster Mapping Tool
Renowned Harvard Business School (HBS) Professor Michael Porter has launched a new tool that provides data on the presence of “clusters” – regional groupings of related industries – and regional economies throughout the United States. By providing a view of economic development through the lens of clusters rather than specific types of companies, industries or sectors, the new U.S. Cluster Mapping tool can help identify important links and potential synergies between technology, skills and information. Porter launched the new tool, based on his path-breaking research, as part of a two-day conference called Mapping the Midwest’s Future, held late last month at the University of Minnesota. The conference drew business leaders, policymakers, economic development officials and academics from multiple Midwest states and Canadian provinces. Read more
Published: October 5, 2014
New Loan Program Launches for International MBA Students at U.S. Schools
A new pilot loan program will provide expanded options for international MBA students at a number of top programs in the United States, according to a recent report in Poestandquants. The program, offered by Prodigy Finance, will extend to international students and U.S. residents with non-permanent status who are studying at 16 top schools, including Harvard Business School, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and MIT Sloan School of Management. Especially in recent years, banks have been reluctant to lend to students who are studying internationally. Prodigy Finance seeks to fill this need using a “community finance” model. Basically, alumni from participating schools fund loans for current students, banking on the value of a degree from their alma mater and the likelihood that future alums will repay. Interest rates on the loans vary between 6 and 12 percent, depending on the school, the individual borrower’s profile and current rates. Read more
Published: October 5, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Itziar de Ros of IESE
Itziar de Ros has been leading the charge since 2011 as MBA admissions director and president of the MBA Admissions Committee at IESE in Barcelona, Spain. She is responsible for global marketing, student selection and administration of scholarships for the IESE MBA class of 280 students. No stranger to the school, de Ros herself obtained an IESE MBA in 2006. She worked as a marketing and sales consultant at DuPont before returning to IESE in 2007, where she held roles in admissions, marketing and communications and development before stepping into her current role. Read more
Published: October 1, 2014
Kellogg School of Management Launches New “Inspiring Growth” Brand Strategy
The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University wants to be known for educating leaders who inspire growth, and it’s rolling out a new brand strategy with this in mind, the school announced earlier this month. Part of a larger strategic plan launched four years ago, the new “inspiring growth” theme is intended to capture both what the school has achieved since the overarching Envision Kellogg plan was first implemented and what’s still ahead. Kellogg Dean Sally Blount noted in a statement that while growth is a challenge faced by every organization, bigger is not always better. "Sometimes growth means pulling back to attain greater clarity and focus,” she said. Kellogg’s new brand strategy – “brave leaders inspire growth in people, organizations and markets” – is intended to spotlight this focus on developing growth-minded leaders, which Kellogg believes sets it apart from its peers. Read more
Published: September 30, 2014
GMAC Reports Application Volume Growth for Full-Time Two-Year MBA Programs  
The number of people applying to full-time two-year MBA programs increased for the third consecutive year, according to recent data from the Graduate Management Admissions Council. GMAC’s 2014 Application Trends Survey, released earlier this week, showed that as two-year programs enjoyed application volume gains, other graduate management programs saw flattening or decreasing numbers of applicants. The survey also revealed an increasingly global applicant pool, with GMAT testing trends showing that more students are seeking to study outside their country of citizenship. According to GMAC, these candidates make up a sizeable portion of the applicant pool for many MBA and non-MBA graduate management programs. Read more
Published: September 29, 2014
UPenn’s Wharton School Welcomes Exceptionally Entrepreneurial Class
Students entering the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School this fall bring with them record levels of entrepreneurial experience and aspirations, according to a recent blog post by Nadine Kavanaugh, associate director of Wharton Entrepreneurship. “We’re especially excited because the Class of 2016 is already incredibly entrepreneurial,” wrote Kavanaugh. “We can’t wait to see what amazing startups they’ll start.” Read more
Published: September 29, 2014
Trivia Tuesday: The Entrepreneurship Initiative at Harvard Business School
It’s time again for another edition of Trivia Tuesday, our weekly examination of the programs and opportunities that differentiate the leading MBA programs.  This week we take a peek into the Clear Admit School Guide to Harvard Business School to share an excerpt on HBS’s Entrepreneurship Initiative. “Harvard offers students an array of opportunities to study entrepreneurship. In addition to analyzing cases on varied startup enterprises during the RC year, all RC students are required to take the course titled “The Entrepreneurial Man­ager.” In their second year, students may choose from over 30 courses and field study opportunities offered on the topic. 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
View or Submit Entries
Live
Wire