Clear Admit, Author at Clear Admit

Published: December 29, 2013

Latin Americans Flock to Spain to Pursue an MBA

In growing numbers, Latin Americans are turning to top business schools in Spain – notably ESADE, IE and IESE – to obtain their MBAs before returning to careers in Latin America, the New York Times reports. Spain’s own economy is still faltering, but business schools there say they are attracting more and more Latin Americans, many with international career experience, who plan to return to Latin America when they graduate, according to the Times report. They are drawn to Spanish MBA programs, according to the report, because the classrooms are more diverse than at schools in the United States and the business culture is a more familiar one. Read more

Published: December 26, 2013

Teamwork, Listening Skills Essential for MBAs – and Prospective Applicants

Team assignments have become de rigeur as part of the MBA curriculum at many leading business schools, with some schools assigning students to teams when they first arrive and requiring them to work together in multiple classes and others having students shift between several different teams as part of a single course or semester. Why such a focus on teamwork? Experts believe that learning to work in small groups will pay off when the students graduate and look for jobs, according to a recent article in U.S. News & World Report. Read more

Published: December 26, 2013

Fridays From The Frontline

Hello and welcome to another edition of Fridays From The Frontline, Clear Admit’s ongoing dive into the depths of the b-school blogopshere. This was an especially lean week for b-school students checking in, perhaps due to the recent holiday or the winter break. Sarah shared her ideas and approach to making sure that she keeps her sanity while working on a big project. Domotron sadly reported receiving a zap from Booth, but still held out hope for his Tuck application. HammO decided where he would be attending b-school after having a mixed week of Read more

Published: December 23, 2013

Trivia Tuesday: The Berkeley MBA Leadership Development Series at Haas

Welcome to our weekly edition of Trivia Tuesday, in which we take an in-depth look at the specific offerings that differentiate the leading MBA programs from their peers. This week we’re taking a peak into the Clear Admit School Guide to the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business to share with you an excerpt about the Berkeley MBA Leadership Development Series. "As part of its BILD program (Berkeley Innovative Leader Development), Haas has implemented a series of on-campus events that offer students the opportunity to fine-tune their leadership skills outside of the classroom. The Berkeley MBA Leadership Development Series is comprised of a number of non-credit workshops and seminars, all of which allow students to gain further insight into three key areas of awareness: Self, Team and Organization. "Each of these areas of competency has its own focus and set of goals. Read more

Published: December 22, 2013

Round 2 Update from Harvard Business School Admissions

As Harvard Business School (HBS) Admissions prepares to close for the holiday season, Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Dee Leopold shared some updates and reminders for Round 2 applicants working toward the January 6th Round 2 deadline. All offices at HBS will be closed from tomorrow, Tuesday, December 24th, through Wednesday, January 1st, re-opening at 9 a.m. EST on Thursday, January 2nd, Leopold shared in a post to her From the Admissions Director’s Blog. Read more

Published: December 19, 2013

MIT Sloan School of Management to Offer Data Analytics MOOC

MIT’s Sloan School of Management will offer its first massively open online course (MOOC) free to the general public in the spring semester, a data analytics class called Analytics Edge, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports. The online course will feature the same curriculum as the popular on-campus offering, which includes case studies of the Oakland A’s “moneyball” strategy, dating site eHarmony and the 2012 presidential election, according to the Bloomberg BW report. Students in the new MOOC will watch prerecorded lectures and submit assignments online. Read more

Published: December 19, 2013

Fridays From The Frontline

Hello and welcome to Fridays From The Frontline, Clear Admit's weekly round up of the latest happenings in the b-school blogosphere. This week applicants continued to get news about how their R1 applications fared while current students were finishing up their studies and jetting off to far flung destinations for their winter breaks. TimBob questioned how he would be able to get married, decorate a house, and emigrate in only six months' time. Poetic Quant happily reported a Kellogg acceptance and generous scholarship. Sarah felt that her work creating her Fulbright application really helped her tackle her Fuqua essays. Domotron turned his attentions to Booth after getting a zap from Wharton. ExpectingMBA thought about the actions she took and choices she made that may have helped her gain an acceptance at Stanford. MBATheNonprofitWay pondered adding a few more R2 schools to her docket, including UC Davis and Ross. Read more

Published: December 18, 2013

Anonymous $6 Million Gift to Fund Student Scholarships at USC Marshall School of Business

An anonymous gift to the University of Southern California (USC)’s Marshall School of Business will support scholarships for both undergraduate and MBA students, the school announced earlier this month. The Marshall School will receive $6 million, part of a $20 million gift to the university made by a married couple described as longtime USC supports but whose identities were not revealed. The Marshall School portion of the gift will go to the James G. Ellis Endowed Scholarship Fund, a challenge fund established by Tyler Muse ’07 and his family and named for Marshall’s current dean. Read more

Published: December 17, 2013

UNC Kenan-Flagler, AACSB to Co-Host Seminar for Business Schools on Leadership Curriculum Development

The University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, together with business school accreditation organization the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB), will take the lead in helping business schools think about how best to develop a leadership curriculum as part of a seminar in late January. The Curriculum Development for Leadership seminar, which will take place January 23rd and 24th in Chapel Hill, will prepare participants from a range of business schools to tailor leadership development experiences according to their schools’ specific capabilities and resources. Read more

Published: December 17, 2013

The Opportunity Cost of Hiring an MBA from the Employer Perspective (Part 2)

Last week’s column considered the relative value-add of hiring full-time MBA candidates, as opposed to high-achieving undergraduates or Executive MBAs. The goal in adopting a wider horizon regarding the recruiting playing field and a greater appreciation of the alternatives and constraints employers face when hiring MBAs, is not to draw inferences about which professional profile or type of degree program is better, but to help MBAs understand employers’ decision drivers better, and thus to be more effective in the job search process. In my experience, one area in which MBAs often have a blind-spot is the extent to which companies weigh their per-school or per-capita costs of the recruiting process as part of the expense of bringing an individual student on board. Business school students, primed by their negotiation classes, by news stories about gender wage disparities in the job marketplace, and by the ever-present feeling that another student may be getting a better deal, often take it as a given that they must negotiate their job offers … that they will be doing themselves a disservice if they don’t “drive a hard bargain.” This perspective might be tempered somewhat by an appreciation of the fact that by the time an MBA student receives a full-time offer, the company hiring him or her has already spent roughly the equivalent of a full-time MBA salary to identify, evaluate, and narrow the pipeline down to that single person. Read more

Published: December 16, 2013

Tuck School of Business Professor Ranks Year’s Best and Worst CEOs

For the fourth year running, a professor of strategy and leadership at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business has released his picks for worst CEOs – adding a new twist this year by also sharing the five CEOs he deems the best of 2013. Tuck Professor Sydney Finkelstein has become an expert on CEO failures. Since 2010, he has provided an annual roundup of the world’s five worst top executives, and he has also published a book on the same topic, Why Smart Executives Fail: And What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes. Read more

Published: December 15, 2013

Job Market Looks Good for MBAs, GMAC Employer Survey Finds

More than three-quarters of employers that plan to hire business school graduates in 2014 expect to maintain or increase their hiring levels over last year, according to a year-end survey conducted by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). Annual base salaries will also rise, GMAC reports. “Actual hiring for 2013 and projected hiring for 2014 are much improved from a few years ago, despite persistent uncertainty in the global economy,” GMAC Survey Manager Rebecca Estrada said in a statement. “In addition, between 45 percent and 58 percent of employers plan to increase annual base salaries at or above the rate of inflation, another indicator that demand for talent remains strong.” Read more

Published: December 12, 2013

Try a Taste of UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School with A Class in Portuguese or Mandarin

The University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School will offer two new online courses for business professionals and MBA students, on in Portuguese and another in Mandarin, the school announced last month. “Working Portuguese” and “Working Mandarin,” each taught at the beginner level, will be offered Jan. 27-April 7, 2014. The fee for MBA students will be $575; working professionals will pay $775. The cost will cover 10 weekly online sessions with the professor and a weekly online conversation hour with native speakers of the languages being studied. For prospective applicants with an interest in languages who are Read more

Published: December 12, 2013

Fridays From The Frontline

Hello and welcome to Fridays From the Frontline, Clear Admit's weekly blog post focusing on the frights and triumphs of the b-school admissions and student experience. This week found applicants reporting even more news from their R1 schools, both positive and negative. Poetic Quant didn't have to wait long to learn his LBS fate, which was a place on the waitlist. Expecting MBA received a Stanford acceptance and knew that she and her family would be heading west, but planned on waiting to make a decision until after her Haas interview and hearing back from Anderson. With no news of his own, Domotron's latest post simply congratulated other bloggers on their latest MBA news. TimBob also received positive news from HBS, but planned on completing his MIT LGO application because it was the one school that might take precedence over Harvard. Sarah discussed some of the challenges she faced in scheduling a GMAT in a foreign country when also asking for additional accommodations for her dyslexia. HammO advised friends and family of MBA applicants not to call them during the 24 - 48 hour period when they were expecting school news ... and got a Johnson admit! MBA The Nonprofit Way described the anxiety and feeling of not being in control that comes with a waitlist notification, which she experienced firsthand when hearing from Yale. FromGMATtoMBA reported two zaps from Wharton and Columbia respectively. Read more

Published: December 11, 2013

Columbia Business School Announces New Dong-Bin Shin Fellowships

Columbia Business School (CBS) has announced four two-year, full-tuition fellowships open to international students entering in August 2014. Announced late month, the Dong-Bin Shin Fellowships will be awarded, one each, to students from four different regions: the Middle East or Africa, Europe, Latin America and South Korea. Applications are due by January 6, 2014. The fellowships are named for CBS alumnus Dong-Bin Shin ’81, chairman of the Lotte Group, a diversified company based in South Korea and Japan that includes more than 70 companies across a range of industries. Shin, who also serves as a member of the CBS Board of Overseers, recently made a $4 million gift to the school, part of which will support the fellowships. Read more

Published: December 10, 2013

McKinsey Outpaces All Other Employers in Hiring MBAs from Kellogg, Chicago Booth

Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. hired more 2013 MBA graduates from both Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business than any other employer, Crain’s Chicago Business reports. Forty-six of Kellogg’s 750 graduates headed to post-MBA jobs at McKinsey, and 41 of Booth’s 579 graduates did the same, Crain’s reported, citing annual employment records from the schools. McKinsey has been the largest employer of Booth graduates for five years running. Kellogg can almost make the same claim, except that Boston Consulting Group hired three more graduates than McKinsey in 2010. Read more

Published: December 10, 2013

The Opportunity Cost of Hiring an MBA, from the Employer’s Perspective (Part 1)

Last week’s column highlighted the extent to which having a ‘hard work’ ethos and a mindset focused on seeking out tough challenges after graduation (rather than expecting immediate gratification and a big payout from one’s business school efforts) can be a driving factor in students’ post-MBA success rates. As part of that focus on appropriate mindset, it’s worthwhile to expand MBA candidates’ awareness and field of vision to include some of the opportunity costs of recruiting MBAs that play a role in employers’ decisions and expectations with respect to hiring business school candidates. There are, of course, other 'flavors' of MBA than the traditional two-year programs that often comprise a company’s recruiting mix and serve as additional competition for full-time MBAs. (See The Best Business Schools of 2013: Part-Time and Executive MBA for BusinessWeek’s latest ranking of leading programs.) It’s noteworthy that as business schools have grown and diversified their service portfolios to reflect their own competitive landscape (e.g., by offering specialized, one-year degree programs, in addition to undergraduate business degrees as well as Executive MBA and Part-Time degrees), they’ve created attractive pools of candidates that, from an employer’s perspective, bear the same educational imprimatur and can offer distinct advantages. For example, one advantage of specialized programs is that they can provide employees with deeper technical expertise, something not always associated with the general management focus of most full-time MBA programs (see The Business of Zeroing In and The Booming Market for Specialized Master’s Degrees for additional perspectives). Read more

Published: December 9, 2013

Yale School of Management Expands EMBA to Include Asset Management, Sustainability Focuses

Students in Yale School of Management (SOM)’s Executive MBA (EMBA) program will soon be able to select asset management or sustainability as a focus for their studies, the school announced yesterday. Yale SOM is now enrolling students interested in either of these specialties for fall 2014. The EMBA program at Yale launched in 2005, initially targeting students from the healthcare sector. The program is designed to provide students with a strong business foundation complemented by in-depth study of a particular industry or sector. Read more

Published: December 8, 2013

Updates from Ross School of Business Director of Admissions Soojin Kwon

Prospective applicants to the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business are busy working toward Round 2 and 3 deadlines, and Director of Admissions Soojin Kwon has been sharing lots or relevant information on her Director’s Blog recently. In a post late last week, she reminded second- and third-rounders not to miss a Webinar she and her colleague, Senior Associate Director Diana Economy, hosted online on December 4th. Anyone can access the recorded presentation, which includes a range of advice and tips on the Ross MBA application, including specific information useful Read more

Published: December 5, 2013

Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School Begins at Arthur Rock

The Wall Street Journal this week featured an article focused on the ways top business schools are touting how many successful start-ups they spawn. At Harvard Business School (HBS), the success of entrepreneurial MBAs is credited in great part to the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship. The Rock Center provides a range of support and resources to would-be HBS entrepreneurs, including the Rock Accelerator Program and the New Venture Competition, which both offer guidance and funding to promising ventures. The Rock Center also provides students with early-stage feedback and features an Entrepreneurs-in-Residence program. Read more

Published: December 5, 2013

Fridays From The Frontline

Hello and welcome to Fridays From the Frontline, Clear Admit’s ongoing blog post that seeks out the freshest news and experiences of the b-school blogosphere. This week was another relatively quiet week for current students, though a few checked in with updates. Applicants were more heavily represented, discussing R2 application strategies and considering other facets of a b-school application process. Domotron descended into a state of lethargy with most of his interviews behind him, though he did realize he’d have to finish up his Kellogg application before becoming entirely sloth-like. MBA The Nonprofit Way submitted her Johnson app Read more

Published: December 4, 2013

Cornell’s Johnson School Unveils Curriculum for New One-Year MBA Program on NYC Tech Campus

Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management yesterday unveiled the curriculum for its new one-year MBA program, which it will offer on its New York City tech campus beginning in May 2014. The full-time program will include condensed courses, company-hosted projects and a January global trek to Israel. The new degree has a strong technology focus, and 90 percent of the roughly 20 applicants who have been admitted to date have strong quantitative backgrounds or hold science-related degrees, said Christine Sneva, Johnson executive director of admissions and financial aid. Read more

Published: December 3, 2013

Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business Sends Student Delegation to Climate Change Conference

Four of the past five years, Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business has been the only business school to send a delegation of students to an annual summit focused on climate change. Three second-year Tuck MBA students traveled last month to Warsaw, Poland, for the 19th Annual Conference of the Parties (COP19), sponsored by the United Nations. “Climate change is not only one of the central issues of our time, but it’s one in which businesses are front and center, both as the cause and the solution,” finance professor Anant Sundaram, who teaches the Business and Climate Change elective at Tuck, said in an article on the school’s website. Recognizing this, Tuck believes it is crucial to bring MBAs into the conversation and expects other business schools will follow its lead, Sundaram added. Read more

Published: December 3, 2013

The Key to a Successful Post-MBA Career

Welcome to the first in a series of guest columns focused on career strategy in the MBA context … a topic that should be squarely in your sights whether you’re considering applying to business school or are currently in the thick of the admissions process. A Wharton professor of mine was once asked in a public forum what he thought the key success factor was for MBAs pursuing the most highly competitive and rewarding job opportunities. He observed that the critical variable that seemed to predict long-term success was the extent to which a student understood and expected the 5-7 year time span beyond business school to (also) be one of intense work and sacrifice, every bit the equal to the process of applying to and undertaking the MBA in terms of calories burned and mental energy expended. Regardless of what jobs students pursued or how much they were compensated upon graduation, those whose careers truly took off – the ones who now lead their respective organizations – were preparing, it seems, for an additional, non-trivial phase of concerted effort and toil during the post-MBA phase of their professional lives. In contrast, he felt, those students who felt they should be rewarded more speedily – whether in terms of title, status, or pay – for their admittedly considerable investment in graduate school, or for their previous experiences, were at greater risk of disappointment and of erring in the quest to find solid footing, a good match, and the right launching pad for a career that would result in progressively greater amounts of responsibility, compensation, satisfaction, and, ultimately, the ability to ‘job sculpt’ and integrate one’s professional life with personal interests and family needs. Read more

Published: December 2, 2013

New York University Names New Global Research Professor to Teach at Stern School of Business

Political scientist and foreign policy expert Ian Bremmer has been named a Global Research Professor at New York University (NYU) and will teach at NYU ’s Stern School of Business, the school announced today. Bremmer is president and founder of Eurasia Group, which provides political risk analysis to financial, corporate and government clients. In his new role, he will teach courses at Stern on the intersection between political science and business. He will also organize lectures and seminars at both the business school and the Center for Global Affairs at the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies. Read more

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