Jeanette Brown, Author at Clear Admit

Published: September 27, 2016

Student Perspectives: Jake Doroshow’s Path to Goldman Sachs

Jake Doroshow, 28, graduated from Stern in May 2016 and started a job at Goldman Sachs as a private wealth advisor in July. An undergraduate finance major who spent his pre-MBA career first at BlackRock and then at First Niagara Bank, thought he might like to stay in the finance industry. But he also knew he loved working with clients and wanted more direct work with people, which maybe could manifest itself in a consulting role, he reasoned. Jake Doroshow, NYU Stern MBA ’16 That said, Stern’s proximity to Wall Street and its strength in finance definitely played into Read more

Published: September 26, 2016

The Freedom That Comes With an MBA from a Top School

Welcome back to our 10-part series, in which we share an excerpt from the recently published book Becoming a Clear Admit: The Definitive Guide to MBA Admissions, with added commentary from its author, Alex Brown. In this eighth part of the series, we look at one of the benefits of an MBA from a top business school, the notion of “freedom.” Book Excerpt: In general, an MBA degree from a top school will offer you more independence, more control over your career, and the ability to make your own choices, rather than being at the whim of the Read more

Published: September 26, 2016

HBS R1 Interview Invites Will Begin to Roll Out on October 4th

Harvard Business School (HBS) Managing Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Chad Losee took to his Direct from the Director’s blog today to share details about upcoming interview invitations for aplicants who applied as part of Round 1. According to Losee, interview invitations will go out in three batches, on October 4th, October 6th and October 12th. “Try not to read into which date you hear from us—being invited to interview on October 4 vs. October 12 does not mean you are more likely to be accepted,” he stressed. “We spread out interview invitations to avoid congestion on the interview sign-up pages.” Read more

Published: September 26, 2016

Admissions Director Q&A: Sue Oldham of Rice University’s Jones School of Business

“What a breath of fresh air,” Sue Oldham wrote in an email after we spoke recently. “It’s evident that you love your job.” Indeed, I do love the parts of my job that involve great conversations like the one Oldham and I shared. Read on, and it’ll be just like you were there listening in. Oldham went to Rice for undergrad, where she majored in English, before spending a couple of years working in marketing. Business school beckoned the St. Louis, Missouri native and off she went to Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management to get her MBA. A jet-setting IT consulting career followed, one that involved stints in Los Angeles, Charlotte, Dallas, Richmond and Houston and exposed her to industries ranging from healthcare to CPG to transportation to insurance. After 10 years of that, she went in-house at Enron and expanded her breadth of knowledge to the energy industry. Read more

Published: September 22, 2016

Real Humans of MBA Admissions: Harvard Business School’s Chad Losee

Harvard Business School (HBS) made waves in the graduate management admissions arena last fall with the announcement that Dee Leopold, who led admissions at one of the most selective business schools in the world for the past decade, would be leaving her post. Then, spring brought the announcement that she would be succeeded by an HBS grad just three years out of school. Chad Losee, 32, is that fresh-faced alumnus. And indeed, just a couple of years as a consultant at Bain & Company stand between him and his last stint on campus. Losee has kept something of a low media profile since assuming his new role in May—which HBS Director of Media and Public Relations Jim Aisner takes responsibility for. “I wanted to give Chad some time to do the things that he has to do as he assumes this role,” Aisner said, adding that the first few months should not be taken as any kind of sign that Losee will be inaccessible going forward. Read more

Published: September 22, 2016

Fridays from the Frontline: A CBS First-Year MBA Student Reacts to Police Shootings

Columbia Business School (CBS) was one of the first schools to join students at Wharton earlier this week in response to the recent deaths of black men at the hands of police in two U.S. cities. Soon, students at six or more schools had come together, dressed in black, both to mourn the losses but also to let those deaths serve as a rallying cry for dialogue both at business school and in the business world beyond. Adding to the dialogue, this week’s Fridays from the Frontline is a thoughtful, candid essay from CBS first-year MBA student Lyndon Mouton. In it, Mouton provides the poignant and at points painful perspective of an African-American male faced with continuing issues of race and policing that interfere with the business school education he is working so hard to obtain. Before matriculating at CBS over the summer, he worked in private equity in Chicago and New York. Our thanks to Mouton for sharing his thoughts here with the Clear Admit audience. Read more

Published: September 22, 2016

Police Shootings Galvanize Students at Wharton, Stern, CBS, Kellogg, HBS, Haas

In the wake of police shootings in Tulsa and Charlotte—leaving two fathers dead—African-American business school students and their allies have come together at leading MBA programs to grieve the loss of life and invite discussion around issues of race and policing. A small group of students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School gathered Tuesday evening (Sept. 20th) following the release of video of Terence Crutcher, 40, being shot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on September 16th. In the video, Crutcher appears to be walking away from police with his hands in the air. Read more

Published: September 19, 2016

Developing a Personal Inventory

Welcome back to our 10-part series, in which we share an excerpt from the recently published book Becoming a Clear Admit: The Definitive Guide to MBA Admissions, with added commentary from its author, Alex Brown. In this seventh part of the series, we look at the importance of developing a “personal inventory,” a document that you can then use for each of your applications. Book Excerpt: To develop and implement your application strategy, it will be helpful to create a working document that you can refer to throughout the admissions process. We will call this document a “personal Read more

Published: September 19, 2016

GMAC Application Trends Survey Reveals Mixed Picture for Business Schools

Almost half (49 percent) of graduate business programs saw an uptick in application volume in 2016, according to the 17th annual Applications Trends Survey, released today by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). The gains, though, were chiefly among European programs, full-time one-year MBA, executive MBA and online MBA programs. Full-time two-year programs, along with part-time and flexible MBA programs, in fact, reported declines compared with 2015. GMAC President and CEO Sangeet Chowfla put a positive spin on the news, underscoring that business degrees continue to be among the most desirable educational credentials. “With the creation of more tailored business programs such as the Master in Data Analytics, the demand for entrance into business school is spreading across a growing supply of programs,” he said in a statement. “With the competitive landscape changing, applicants have more options from which to choose, creating a mixed picture for business schools today.” Read more

Published: September 18, 2016

Real Humans of MBA Admissions: Kellogg School of Management’s Melissa Rapp

With the Round 1 deadline approaching for Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management later this week, we're pleased to feature the school's Melissa Rapp as our Real Human of MBA Admissions this week. Rapp joined Kellogg in 2012. She most recently served as director of admissions for the Evening and Weekend Program before becoming director of full-time MBA and Master of Science in Management Studies (MSMS) admissions in January 2016. She loved the Evening and Weekend MBA Program, including being on its Chicago campus, but she jumped at the opportunity to head to Evanston and head up Full-Time MBA admissions because it presented an opportunity to have new challenges as far as recruitment goals and to work with a new population of applicants, she says. Read more

Published: September 15, 2016

Fridays from the Frontline: Chicago Booth Admissions Director on the Impact of Booth’s Flexible Curriculum

Last week we featured a student blogger from Harvard Business School (HBS) explaining why, for him, that school’s required curriculum provided the business foundation he believes will best prepare him for a seat at any business table. This week, our Fridays from the Frontline comes from Kurt Ahlm, associate dean of student recruitment and admissions at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. On the “Booth Insider” blog, Ahlm recently extolled the virtues of that school’s extraordinarily flexible curriculum—though the timing was simply to coincide with Booth’s upcoming Round 1 deadline and was certainly not Read more

Published: September 11, 2016

Real Humans of MBA Admissions: Dawna Levenson of MIT Sloan School of Management

If you’ve got the MIT Sloan School of Management in your sights for the coming application season, you’re very likely busy putting the finishing touches on your Round 1 application—due Thursday. What better time to get a glimpse into the woman who heads MBA admissions for the school? Dawna Levenson has been in her current role as director of MIT Sloan Admissions since March 2013, but she’s been at the school for much longer than that. When she arrived in November 2007, it was as associate director of academic programs for the School of Engineering, and she had been reading MBA applications for the past year. She moved over to admissions in 2012, where she’s since stayed, but her combined experiences really help her know the MBA program inside and out. She also knows the school as a student, having obtained her B.S. in management science at MIT and her M.S., also in management science, at MIT Sloan. And she spent 18 years working for Andersen Consulting, now Accenture, as a consultant. All that experience gives her amazing insight into the goals and aspirations of prospective Sloan applicants and helps her know who will fit best with the school’s signature MBA program. Read more

Published: September 8, 2016

Fridays from the Frontline: Everything You Need to Know About the HBS Required Curriculum

As Stefan Coburn, Harvard Business School Class of 2017, looks back on what he learned in his first year of business school, it’s clear that he is a satisfied customer. “I never could have imagined the extent to which the required curriculum (RC) would deliver so much knowledge in nearly every essential aspect of business, from marketing to finance to operations to leadership,” he writes. If you have HBS in your sights, don’t miss this comprehensive analysis of the school’s signature first-year required curriculum. And if you just hit submit in time for the Round 1 deadline, best Read more

Published: September 5, 2016

Book Excerpt: The Importance of a Candidate’s Goals in the MBA Application

Welcome back to our 10-part series, in which we share an excerpt from the recently published book Becoming a Clear Admit: The Definitive Guide to MBA Admissions, with added commentary from its author, Alex Brown. In this fifth part of the series, we look at the importance of a candidate’s goals. Book Excerpt: Goals Your career goals are important for the success of your application. Four aspects of your goals will be examined: Articulation of goals: Are your goals focused or are they under-developed Read more

Published: September 5, 2016

Prodigy Finance Launches New International MBA Scholarship Program, Five Students to Qualify for $20,000 Each

International community lender Prodigy Finance recently announced a new scholarship program for students accepted to study at U.K. and U.S. business schools. Open to all students who use Prodigy Finance to help fund their postgraduate degree in either the United States or the United Kingdom, the scholarship will provide five students with $20,000 each in funding toward their studies. To be eligible, students need to take a loan from Prodigy before November 30, 2016. “Applying to study at one of the world’s top universities is daunting, and at Prodigy Finance we are committed to making this worthwhile investment Read more

Published: September 1, 2016

Fridays from the Frontline: Darden MBA Student on Google’s Great Perks

This week’s Fridays from the Frontline post comes to us from Jimmy Figueroa, a second-year MBA student at UVA’s Darden School of Business just back from his summer internship at Google in San Francisco. A veteran of New York’s financial services sector prior to business school, Figueroa had a no-nonsense view of what to expect from a job and an employer. “It was always a no frills environment where you work hard, work long and perform,” he writes. And if you do well, you’ll get rewarded monetarily. Free cafes, gym classes, game rooms—the companies that have those don’t Read more

Published: August 31, 2016

Bloomberg Contributes $32 Million to Launch New Initiative at Harvard for City Leaders

Michael Bloomberg—three-term New York City mayor, philanthropist and Harvard Business School (HBS) alumnus—has committed $32 million to Harvard to design a comprehensive leadership program for mayors and senior aides to advance leadership, management and innovation in cities across the United States and around the globe, the university announced last week. On August 25th, Bloomberg Philanthropies and Harvard University jointly announced the launch of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, a unique collaboration between the HBS and Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Executive Education programs designed to equip city leaders to confront the increasingly complex challenges facing city governments. Read more

Published: August 30, 2016

Leading Business Schools Pilot GMAC’s Common Letter of Recommendation

Asking your supervisor or former supervisor to take time out of his or her busy schedule to write a letter of recommendation on your behalf is one of the most challenging aspects of the MBA admissions process for many applicants. Now try asking that person to write five different letters, answering five different sets of questions, for the five different schools you’re applying to. Sounds insane, right? And yet it’s precisely the position many prospective MBA applicants find themselves in. Recognizing the burden that letters of recommendation place on applicants and recommenders alike, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) this year is piloting a common letter of recommendation (LOR). Read more

Published: August 29, 2016

Book Excerpt: The Importance of an MBA Candidate’s Profile

Welcome back to our 10-part series, in which we share an excerpt from the recently published book Becoming a Clear Admit: The Definitive Guide to MBA Admissions, with added commentary from its author, Alex Brown. In this fourth part of the series, we look at the importance of an MBA candidate’s profile. Book Excerpt: Your attributes determine the overall strengths of your candidacy. Meanwhile, your personal profile determines, to some extent, who you compete with in the applicant pool and provides the broader context for your experiences as the adcom attempts to craft a diverse class. Schools want Read more

Published: August 28, 2016

Real Humans of MBA Admissions: David Simpson of London Business School

This week’s Real Humans of MBA Admissions takes us across the pond to London. In some of the answers that follow, David Simpson’s British roots shine through—which makes sense for the admissions director of the MBA and Masters in Finance programs at London Business School (LBS). Simpson has been at LBS for almost a decade, and he’s always made time to keep Clear Admit in the loop on goings on at the school. In case you missed it, here’s a recent piece detailing the school’s decision to reduce its number of required application essays and the importance of the alumni interview in the admissions process. But he’s certainly not all business all the time—read on to learn more about his love of seeing live music, watching rugby and binging on House of Cards, among other things. Read more

Published: August 28, 2016

Wharton Offers Veterans Application Fee Waiver

The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School will be waiving its application fee for all veterans who apply, according to a recent post on the Wharton MBA Admissions blog. “This opportunity is the result of the efforts of our dedicated and passionate MBA Veterans Club, led this year by D.J. Faldowski and Vince Kuchar (WG17), partnering with our office to help ensure we continue to attract the military’s top talent,” wrote Maryellen Reilly Lamb, deputy vice dean for MBA admissions, financial aid and career management. Last year, 224 active duty and honorably discharged Read more

Published: August 25, 2016

Fridays from the Frontline: Five Questions with Kellogg Professor Blake McShane

As we wait for students to get into the swing of things at campus enough to begin blogging and applicants to really dive into the application process, we’re taking a bit of a departure from our regular Fridays from the Frontline routine to share the perspective of a business school professor. Blake McShane, an associate professor of marketing at Kellogg, teachers courses in customer analytics, marketing research and data analysis. A statistical methodologist, McShane has developed statistical models for fields ranging from online advertising and neuroscience to paleoclimatology and baseball. Below, McShane talks about this marketing research course and what he hopes students get out of it, what he loves most about teaching at Kellogg and his own research. Read more

Published: August 24, 2016

Yale SOM Class of 2018 Shows Increasing Diversity, GMAT Scores

Up, up, up might be the best way to describe the incoming class at Yale School of Management (SOM) this year. The median GMAT score jumped to 730, up from last year’s 720, and the average GMAT rose from 722 last year to 725 this year. Women make up 43 percent of the Class of 2018, up from 40 percent last year. U.S. students of color comprise 28 percent of this year’s incoming MBAs (including 13 percent underrepresented minorities), compared to 22 percent (and 10 percent URMs) a year ago. And close to half (46 percent) of the Class of 2018 hold passports from a country other than the United States. (The school changed how it defines international students this year to include U.S. dual citizens and permanent residents, believing that to be more in line with how other schools are reporting this number and with guidelines issued by the Graduate Management Admission Council, DelMonico notes.) “The group that arrived on campus is as diverse and accomplished as any we have welcomed to New Haven,” wrote Bruce DelMonico, assistant dean for admissions, in a post to the Yale SOM MBA blog last week welcoming students to orientation. Read more

Published: August 23, 2016

ENTREPRENEURSHIP@ NYU Stern: $1 Million Alumni Gift Will Create Summer Immersion Program for Entrepreneurs

MBA students at NYU Stern School of Business interested in entrepreneurship will now have an opportunity to take part in a new summer immersion program in lieu of a traditional internship thanks to a generous gift from an alumnus and his wife, the school announced today. NYU Stern alumnus David Ko (BS '93) Technology executive David Ko (BS ’93) and his wife Jennifer Ko have donated $1 million to establish the NYU Stern Venture Fellows Program. Incoming MBA students can apply this fall for a spot in the program, which will begin in summer 2017 and provide financial support, mentorship, workshops and access to New York City and Silicon Valley tech companies. Read more

Published: August 22, 2016

A Fond Farewell to Stanford’s Long-Time MBA Admissions Czar Derrick Bolton

Next week marks the end of an era. Derrick Bolton, who has led MBA admissions at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) since 2001, is moving on. Though he’s not going far—he’s headed across campus to become the inaugural dean of admissions at Stanford’s recently launched Knight-Hennessey Scholars Program—he leaves a lasting legacy and a gaping hole at the world’s most selective business school. Something of a shock to the graduate management admissions community, Bolton’s departure came as no surprise to Madhav Rajan, Stanford GSB senior associate dean for academic affairs, who has been his supervisor for the past six years. Read more

Posts by Jeanette Brown

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