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: November 2, 2014
Wharton MBA Class of 2014 Career Report Reveals Record Job Offers
A whopping 98.2 percent of Wharton MBA Class of 2014 students seeking employment received full-time offers, according to a career report released today by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. That’s an improvement over last year’s 97.8 percent, which was itself the best number the school had seen in more than 10 years. Read more
Published: November 2, 2014
Admissions Tip: The Long Essay
Essay content you’ve polished for one school often serves as a great starting point for the next application, but as we’ve often said, customizing this text for the school in question is key.  One particular challenge we see applicants struggle with each year is effectively expanding a short essay they’ve written for one program in responding to a question on the same topic but with a longer limit.  With this in mind, we’d like to offer some pointers on converting condensed comments to more extensive remarks. 1) Expand in proportion When taking an existing response as a starting point for crafting a longer document, one good rule of thumb is to build upon each subject to more or less the same extent.  While elaborating on your work to date might involve less time and work than the more research-intensive “why School X” discussion, it’s generally prudent to maintain balance among subjects and provide all of the major pieces of information a school requests in equal measure. Read more
Published: October 30, 2014
Stanford Graduate School of Business Calls It Quits for MBA Admission Blog
Don’t look for future posts on the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) MBA Admissions Blog. In a final entry earlier this week, the school announced that it was saying goodbye to its blog. All prior blog content will remain accessible through mid-December, after which prospective applicants will need to keep up with news and developments regarding Stanford MBA admissions via other means. “Our blog has begun to resemble a Tesla at a gas station,” wrote admissions staffer Victoria Hendel De La O as part of a final post on October 29th. She attributed the decline of the blog to the school’s increasing reliance on other forms of social media to communicate updates. Indeed, posts to the Stanford MBA Admissions blog have grown increasingly infrequent over the past year – with the last post going up back in June. Read more
Published: October 29, 2014
Dean’s Speaker Series Draws Janet Napolitano, Biz Stone to UC Berkeley’s Haas School
Two big names will visit the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley next week to address MBA students as part of the school’s Dean’s Speaker Series. Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California system and the former United States Secretary of Homeland Security, will share leadership lessons on November 4th, and Biz Stone, co-founder and CEO of Jelly Industries and co-founder of Twitter, will talk about his experiences on November 6th. Speaking on Election Day, Napolitano is scheduled to answer questions about the political climate in both California and the nation as a whole. She will also address the challenge of getting more young people involved in politics and public service, as well as her own leadership approach, her experiences as a female in leadership and more. Read more
Published: October 28, 2014
Stanford Graduate School of Business Launches New International Policy and Business Dual-Degree Program
The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) has partnered with the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences to offer a new dual MA/MBA program for students who wish to study international policy and business, the schools announced this week. Interested candidates may apply to the new program beginning this fall. Students who complete the three-year program will be awarded two degrees, an MBA from Stanford GSB and an MA from the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies (IPS) at the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. Read more
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

MBA Livewire

December 17, 2024 3:47am ET
Accepted to USC / Marshall
Round: Round 1
Received via email on December 14, 2024
GPA: 8.52/10
GMAT: 715
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Finance
Application Location: India
Note:

Admitted with $$
December 16, 2024 9:52pm ET
Accepted to NYU Stern
Round: Round 1
Received via phone on December 05, 2024
Program Type: One Year Program
Note:

9/6 - Applied
10/21 - Interview Invite
11/11 - Interview
12/6 - got a call but missed it, email and portal updated by end of day.
No scholarship but beyond excited!

Wishing you all the best!
December 16, 2024 9:50pm ET
Accepted to USC / Marshall
Round: Round 1
Received via email December 16, 2024
GPA: 3.6
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Consulting
Application Location: Bay Area
Note:

While the deadline was yesterday, I received email about admission today! Granted full-tuition scholarship via Consortium. Hold on to hope for the folks awaiting decisions!
December 16, 2024 9:45pm ET
Waitlisted at Dartmouth / Tuck
Round: Round 1
Received via portal
GPA: 4.0
GMAT: 655
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Application Location: Houston
December 16, 2024 9:43pm ET
Accepted to Northwestern / Kellogg
Round: Round 1
Received via portal
GPA: 4.0
GMAT: 655
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Application Location: Houston
View or Submit Entries
Live
Wire