Clear Admit, Author at Clear Admit

Published: April 18, 2013

Boston Manhunt Closes Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, Cancels Sloan AdMIT Weekend

As a search for the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings continues, area business schools have closed and are urging students to “shelter in place” – that is, remain wherever they are – as instructed by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick early this morning. Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan School of Management both have cancelled classes, and MIT Sloan has also cancelled its AdMIT weekend for accepted students, according to websites and Twitter accounts from each school. Read more

Published: April 18, 2013

Fridays From The Frontline

Hello and welcome to Fridays From The Frontline, Clear Admit's weekly blog post that follows the frenzied lives of MBA applicants and student bloggers. This week newly admitted students and those targeting the 2013-2014 cycle elaborated on school choice and studied for the GMAT. Many current students wrote on the topics of travel and recruiting. MBA Over 30 got a taste of the Wharton community's sense of humor when he was "roasted" for declaring the CBS Follies performance funnier than Wharton's own event by current Wharton students. Sassafrass thought it might be worthwhile to reiterate his reasons for choosing to pursue an MBA given his non-profit background. HammO continued to discuss additional schools he plans on targeting for the 2013-2014 application season. The Poetic Quant took advantage of free software and practice tests to begin his GMAT prep, which resulted in a base GMAT of 640 but confidence that with additional study that score would increase. Read more

Published: April 17, 2013

Boston Consulting Group MBA Diversity Scholarship Deadline Approaches, April 21st

As part of a commitment to attracting talent from different backgrounds and ethnicities, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) features an MBA Diversity Scholars program, which awards outstanding minority MBA applicants with funds to support their graduate management education as well as a summer internship at BCG between their first and second years at business school. The deadline to submit applications is Sunday, April 21st. “We believe that a diverse organization—in terms of people, perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences—differentiates us and drives our advantage. Consequently, we place tremendous emphasis on attracting, developing and retaining diverse talent at BCG,” reads the BCG website. Read more

Published: April 16, 2013

Dean of UPenn’s Wharton School to Step Down in June 2014

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania becomes the latest top business school to embark upon a search for a new dean, the school announced today. Dean Thomas S. Robertson, who has led the school since August 2007, will step down as of June 30, 2014. In a letter to the Wharton community, Robertson shared that he will not seek reappointment next year when his term expires but will instead return to the marketing faculty to teach and pursue his research interests. Read more

Published: April 16, 2013

Demand for Full-Time, Two-Year MBA Increases Slightly Among Prospective Applicants, GMAC Survey Finds

After several years of declining application volumes to full-time, two-year MBA programs, prospective applicants are showing a slight increase in interest in these more traditional offerings, according to the results of a recent survey from the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC). Overall, graduate management education programs are attracting a wider range of applicants, with prospective students more likely to gravitate toward either an MBA or a non-MBA master’s degree, rather than expressing interest in both programs, GMAC reports. Read more

Published: April 15, 2013

Indian School of Business Celebrates First Graduation under “One School, Two Campus” Model

The Indian School of Business (ISB) hosted consecutive graduation ceremonies last week on different campuses for the first time since beginning to deliver its Post Graduate Program in Management (PGP) concurrently in both Hyderabad and Mohali, the school announced. ISB began delivering its PGP concurrently at two locations in April 2012 after establishing its second campus in Mohali in 2007. The school credited the Class of 2013 with helping to fulfill the philosophy of “One School, Two Campuses,” noting that students from both campuses worked actively to help integrate activities and foster intercampus exchange through virtual learning and other new initiatives. Read more

Published: April 14, 2013

Round 3 Interview Update from Harvard Business School Admissions

Decision day is approaching for Round 3 applicants to Harvard Business School (HBS), and Dean of Admissions Dee Leopold outlined what to expect in a recent post to her Director’s Blog. “On Monday, April 22nd, probably at noon Boston time, every Round 3 applicant will get an email from us," she wrote. The email will contain either an invitation to interview or a “Sorry, we can’t offer you a place in the class,” notification, she continued. Read more

Published: April 11, 2013

UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Spotlights Student Startups

An MBA student at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business made the case for why business school can be an ideal place for entrepreneurs to get startups off the ground as part of an article in Forbes this week. At the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley many students have the same idea, and in acknowledgement the school has launched a new series to spotlight student ventures. Andre Marquis, executive director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, underscored how valuable time at Haas can be for budding entrepreneurs. “The best way to create entrepreneurial leaders is to give them the experience of building startups while they are here,” he said in the latest issue of BerkeleyHaas magazine. Read more

Published: April 11, 2013

Fridays From The Frontlines

Welcome to Fridays From The Frontlines, Clear Admit's weekly blog feature focused on the b-school applicant and student experience. With the majority of this year's application deadlines behind us, a few new bloggers joined the applicant ranks targeting the 2013-2014 cycle while students continued to check in on their progress through the change from winter to spring. Poetic Quant explained why he was glad he waited a year to start his application process and officially revealed his list of schools. HammO also elaborated on his list of business schools and the reasoning behind his choices. Sassafrass pondered whether having a work history that included both 'big name' and 'no name' nonprofits may have helped or hindered his application at different schools. Future Anderson '15 Dwight discussed how public transportation could work to the advantage of Anderson students while acknowledging that LA traffic can truly be awful. INSEAD '13 Patrick explained how attending INSEAD opened his eyes to all the different ways the school's diverse student body would further prepare him for a range of cultural business contexts in the future. Said '14 Srinivas reflected on being halfway through his degree program and outlined the top five experiences that marked his first six months on campus. Read more

Published: April 10, 2013

Columbia Business School Launches New Website for Current and Future Students, Alumni

Columbia Business School (CBS) this week launched Notes to the Next Class, a new online space where current and past students can share their experience with future CBS classes through photos, videos, advice and more. The website is organized into sections corresponding to major milestones CBS students will experience in the course of their graduate management education, from acceptance and orientation to academics and campus life to graduation and post-MBA careers. With more than 41,000 alumni around the world, the school hopes the online repository will help connect students across the globe and across the decades. “With Read more

Published: April 9, 2013

Current Chicago Booth Student Touts Value of MBA for Entrepreneurs

An MBA student at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business this week shared her perspective in Forbes on why an MBA makes sense for entrepreneurs. Stella Fayman, who is concurrently launching a startup while pursuing an MBA at Booth, wrote in part in response to an op-ed earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal advising startups not to hire MBAs. Rattling off 12 successful companies all started by MBAs from top business schools – Angie’s List, GrubHub, Warby Parker and Yelp, just to name a few – Fayman offers three main arguments in favor of the MBA: They attract top talent, they can be a "sandbox" for starting a company and they provide structured support. Read more

Published: April 8, 2013

Columbia Business School Admissions Committee Shares Waitlist Advice

Were you waitlisted at Columbia Business School (CBS) as part of a recent admission round? Stay positive! Members of the Admissions Committee assure applicants that CBS admits some waitlisted candidates every year, so there is definitely still a chance that you’ll be admitted. Matthew Moll, CBS associate director of MBA admissions, provided a range of waitlist-specific advice in response to questions Clear Admit asked recently, so read on to learn whether and how waitlisted applicants should contact the Admissions Committee, what type of updates to an application might be relevant to submit and more. Read more

Published: April 7, 2013

INSEAD Expands International Reach with New Abu Dhabi Module

INSEAD, with campuses in France and Singapore, boasted a global MBA program well before many other top business schools began to establish satellites for their programs in regions around the world. Having now added a new Abu Dhabi module to its core MBA program, INSEAD is expanding its international reach even farther. The Abu Dhabi location got its start as a research center in 2007 and grew into a full-fledged campus in 2010, offering executive education and executive MBA programs. As part of the new module rolled out this year, students can now spend a week in January, a week in February and a concluding weekend in March as part of the core MBA program, enjoying lectures, guest speakers, field trips to and group projects with local companies, alumni networking and visits to recruiters. Read more

Published: April 4, 2013

University of Chicago Booth School of Business Dean Reminds MBA Students the Internship Isn’t Everything

Sunil Kumar, dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, is quick to remind his students not to shortchange their actual academic experience during the first year of their MBA program in furious pursuit of a summer internship, according to a recent Economist article. Acknowledging that competition is fierce and that successful internships are among the most important stepping stones to securing a job upon graduation, they are still just a “low cost experiment” for firms and students to feel the other out, Kumar told the Economist. “The truth is that a lot of people don’t stay in their first job very long but go on to have great careers,” he said. Read more

Published: April 4, 2013

Fridays From The Frontline

Hello and welcome to Fridays From The Frontline, Clear Admit's weekly blog feature that peeks into the world of the b-school applicant and student. This week applicants were sharing their thoughts on how to determine a school list or blog handle while many students provided photographic evidence of international journeys. HammO explained how he expanded and then pared down his list of schools from an initial four to a high of twelve before settling on a list of six. Sassafrass, safely accepted, turned his attentions to the topic of marriage equality in the U.S. Poetic Quant introduced himself and explained the origins of his choice of name as well as his b-school aspirations. After a significant absence Pyrapopat checked in to explain that after receiving a Kellogg acceptance he also was given the opportunity to grow at work ... but after having spent another year in the workforce he revealed his intention to attend Kellogg next fall. Read more

Published: April 3, 2013

Harvard Business School Celebrates Fifty Years of Women with the W50 Summit

Today and tomorrow, April 4th and 5th, Harvard Business School (HBS) is hosting a summit designed to help accelerate the advancement of women leaders who make a difference in the world. Called the W50 Summit, the two-day event is part of a year-long celebration marking the 50th anniversary of women being admitted to the two-year MBA program. Read more

Published: April 2, 2013

Columbia Business School Admissions Officer Debunks Common Application Myths

A Columbia Business School (CBS) admissions officer devoted a recent post on Voices -- a blog co-written by current CBS students and admissions officers to help provide a student perspective -- to debunking some of the myths prospective applicants often seem to believe about the CBS admissions process. For starters, CBS Admissions Officer Matthew Moll encourages prospective applicants to let go of the idea that they must seek out a recommender with the highest possible title. Instead, urges Moll, choose recommenders who know you best. “It is tempting to seek a recommender with a senior title, but if the CEO of your organization doesn't work with you directly, he/she will not necessarily be able to speak to the recommendation questions asked by the admissions committee,” Moll advises. “It is in your best interest to find those business professionals who are invested in your career and want to see you succeed.” Read more

Published: April 1, 2013

Wharton | San Francisco Students to Host 2nd Annual Social Impact Conference

Later this week, students at Wharton | San Francisco, the West Coast campus of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, will host the Wharton San Francisco Social Impact Conference. The event, which will take place on April 4th, marks one of the first times students at the San Francisco campus have organized and run their own conference. The event this week builds on an inaugural conference students organized last year jointly with the Wharton Social Impact Initiative, the Baker Retailing Center and the Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership. “The half-day event was attended by more than 120 Wharton students, alumni and friends and was a great success,” wrote Raghavan Anand in a Wharton Magazine blog post. “So we decided to continue the tradition, except to organize and run it ourselves this time around,” he continued. Read more

Published: March 31, 2013

Carnegie Mellon University Establishes New Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)’s Tepper School of Business and School of Computer Science will partner to establish a new, joint Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) in an effort to help transform university research and projects into commercial enterprises, the university announced last month. The new CIE will combine Tepper’s Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship and the School of Computer Science’s Project Olympus, continuing the successful programs of each while also growing an extensive network of alumni entrepreneurs. Read more

Published: March 31, 2013

Chicago Booth MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 2 / Second-year student / On campus

I’m a round two applicant. I attended the Booth Live event on Friday. The event was awesome! I recommend that every applicant attend this event–before completing the app if possible. It gives you much better insight into the Booth culture, admissions process and committee members, and student personalities. Try your best to engage with as many of the Booth students and admission members as possible–they may remember you and fight for you during their review process. I had my interview the following day at 1pm. There was a first-year student or two hanging around the lobby talking to interviewees and Read more

Published: March 26, 2013

Exclusive GMAT Insights and Advice for MBA Hopefuls From Top GMAT Community Leaders

Each year thousands of individuals begin journeys that they hope will ultimately lead to an acceptance offer from top-tier business schools around the world, and for the majority of these applicants one of the first steps on the b-school path is studying for and taking the GMAT exam. With the 2012-2013 application season wrapping up, a whole new cohort of aspiring MBA students are beginning to get serious about their own school choices and application materials. Most schools won’t be releasing their updated application requirements until later in the summer, so one concrete element of their application that they can start working on now is properly preparing themselves for taking the exam. We sat down with the founders of the major online GMAT communities (Beat The GMAT and GMAT Club) as well as the Director of Academic Programs at leading GMAT test prep firm, Veritas Prep. These individuals have a combined wealth of experience to draw upon when providing helpful tips and insights to share with anyone contemplating an application to business school in 2013-14. In the article that follows, readers will have the opportunity to learn about common misconceptions many test takers have about the exam, successful approaches to creating a study schedule, specific tips that can help those who struggle with either the verbal or the quant sections, and valuable insights on how to approach retaking the test. We additionally have checked in with the official information provided by GMAC, the organization that creates and administers the GMAT exam. Read more

Published: March 25, 2013

Clear Admit Co-Founders Quoted in National, Local Press on Group Interviews for MBA Admissions

Clear Admit co-founders Graham Richmond and Eliot Ingram contributed to articles this week in both the national and local press, sharing their expertise in the MBA space and advising prospective applicants on how to prepare for the group interview component that some top schools are choosing to include as part of the admissions process. Richmond’s comments appeared in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article entitled, “How to Stand Out in an MBA Group Interview.” The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business is the latest top MBA program to require applicants to work as a group as part of the application process, joining Switzerland’s IMD and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Bloomberg BW notes. Though the schools are taking this step in an effort to elicit more off-the-cuff responses from applicants, there are still ways to prepare for these new exercises. Read more

Published: March 18, 2013

Tips for Telling Your Boss You’re Headed to Business School

For those happy applicants who now hold acceptance letters from their target business schools, there still may be important work ahead: namely, breaking the news to your current employer. In a post to the Forté Foundation’s Virtual Campus website, a Forté Fellow at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business shares some tips for telling your boss you're headed to business school. Tricia Felice, Chicago Booth MBA 2014, tells us her best practices for how to approach this task with tact and technique – maintaining valuable relationships that could serve you in the future. Felice left a full-time job in Los Angeles to start her MBA program. She is the recipient of a fellowship through the Forté Foundation, an organization dedicated to increasing the number of women in MBA programs and business leadership. “Telling my boss about my decision was difficult, but it helped to remain focused on the personal progress I knew I would experience through my MBA,” she wrote. Read more

Published: March 11, 2013

Admission into Harvard Business School with a 570 GMAT Score? Clear Admit’s Graham Richmond Shares How It Might Happen

Harvard Business School (HBS), which publicly discloses the range of GMAT scores by enrolled students every year, got folks in the MBA admissions world talking when it revealed that a student with a score of 570 will be part of next year’s class. How could someone who scored 160 points below the class median on a test considered by many to forecast business school success possibly still get in? To HBS, of all places, where only 13 percent of the close to 9,000 eager applicants this year secured a spot? PoetsandQuants (P&Q) posed the question to the HBS admissions staff, which declined to shed any light on the successful candidate. So P&Q then turned to MBA admissions consultants, Clear Admit’s Graham Richmond among them, to guess about just what might be going on in the offices of HBS MBA Dean of Admissions Dee Leopold. Read more

Published: March 11, 2013

Clear Admit’s Kevin Chen Gives Advice to Asian MBA Applicants Targeting Top Business Schools

Navigating the MBA admissions process in the United States and Europe is a tricky task, even for applicants familiar with the expectations of the Western academic and corporate cultures. However, the process presents special challenges for East Asian applicants, who often possess cultural assumptions that can work to their disadvantage. Clear Admit admissions counselor Kevin Chen has nearly a decade of MBA admissions consulting expertise, and has worked extensively with Asian applicants to help them overcome these cultural hurdles and gain admission to top MBA programs including Harvard Business School, Stanford GSB, Wharton, Chicago Booth, INSEAD and London Business School. Chen, who is fluent in English, Chinese and Taiwanese, has been a successful applicant himself: he holds master’s degrees from both Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He also has a wealth of relevant professional experience, as a consultant, marketing professional and writer for firms including McKinsey & Company, the National Basketball Association and Reuters, the largest global news agency. Last week, Clear Admit spoke with Chen about the common missteps and trends he observes in Asian MBA applicants. Read more

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