Jeanette Brown, Author at Clear Admit

Published: March 10, 2016

Fridays from the Frontline: HBS MBA Shares the Skinny on On-Campus Living

If you are heading to Harvard Business School in the fall, you’re thinking about where to live, yes? This week’s Fridays from the Frontline—from first-year HBS student Gil Gerstl—sheds light on why he chose to live on campus and the multiple advantages it has presented for him. Thanks to Gerstl for granting permission for us to share his views here! The following post has been republished in its entirety from its original source, “MBA Voices,” the HBS Admissions Blog. Living in an Apartment at HBS HBS is 40-acre residential campus, one that was built on the understanding that Read more

Published: March 7, 2016

MBA LiveWire Lights Up with Stanford GSB Dashed Hopes

MBA LiveWire has shown interview invitations trickle in from Round 2 applicants to Stanford Graduate School of Business over the past couple of days. But it was today when the flood gates opened to let a wave of disappointed applicants spill forth sharing their news of rejection. Despite some grumblings about how mean it was of Stanford to reject people on March 8th—International Women’s Day—the school, in fact, was simply adhering to the date it had always said it would release Round 2 applicants from consideration. Had that date been a week later, applicants of Irish descent might just as well have grumbled, and a week earlier could have upset the Welsh. Read more

Published: March 3, 2016

Fridays from the Frontline: Kellogg Student Reflects on MBA Recruiting Process

This week’s Fridays from the Frontline comes to us from Kellogg School of Management second-year MBA student Rohan Rajiv, a regular contributor to Kellogg’s full-time MBA student blog. In a series called MBA Learnings, Rajiv has chronicled his progress through Kellogg’s MBA program. In today’s post, he shares candidly about MBA recruiting, which he says “is probably the single hardest piece of the graduate school puzzle.” Peer pressure and self doubt can combine to make the process of landing a post-MBA job fraught with stress. Read on to learn some of Rahiv’s tips for staying cool under pressure. Read more

Published: March 2, 2016

MBA LiveWire Data and Comments Provide Round 2 Revelations

We know that many of you are still in the throes of Round 2, whether you’re interviewing, awaiting a decision or—as in some cases at some schools—still holding out for an interview invitation. The waiting is hard at any stage—we wish you patience, strength and hope! But for other Round 2 applicants, it’s already time to celebrate. We’ve seen reports of Round 2 acceptances from close to 200 of you to places including Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, INSEAD, Oxford’s Said Business School, UNC’s Kenan-Flagler, UCLA Anderson and NYU Stern, among others. Just within the last few hours there’s been a flurry of submissions from triumphant applicants to Emory’s Goizueta Business School. Congrats to you all! Read more

Published: February 25, 2016

Fridays from the Frontline: Goizueta MBA Student Shares Emory’s Many Healthcare-Focused Opportunities

Earlier this week, we featured an article highlighting some of the best MBA programs for students interested in the intersection between business and healthcare. In reporting that piece, we came across a terrific recent blog post by a student working concurrently toward her MBA at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and her Master of Public Health (MPH) at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health. Claire Cooper (MBA/MPH ’17) with classmate on a trip to visit Genentech That student, Claire Cooper, has generously given us permission to republish her piece here for the Clear Admit audience. Read Read more

Published: February 18, 2016

Fridays from the Frontline: Ross MBAs Get Investment Tips from Warren Buffett

How would you like to trade investment tips over lunch with Warren Buffett? A group of MBA students from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business had just that opportunity last month. Two of them, Cazzie Palacios Brown (MBA/MS ʼ18) and Michelle Gross (MBA/MS ʼ17), shared their experiences and some of what they learned from the value investing giant in a recent post on the Ross Student Voices blog. They have generously allowed us to repost their piece here for the benefit of Clear Admit’s readers. Read on to learn how Buffett classifies investments, his views on social impact investing, Read more

Published: February 17, 2016

Waiting for Bolton: Applicant Anxiety Lends Itself to LiveWire Creativity

We know, Tom Petty, waiting is the hardest part. And some schools—cough, Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), cough—certainly aren’t making things easy on Round 2 applicants. The stress is high, the updates are few and the results are pure poetry. For anyone who’s completely befuddled, we’re talking about the creative ways candidates have taken to LiveWire to let off steam as they wait anxiously for interview invitations from schools that have yet to share them. Though Stanford GSB has provoked the greatest outpouring of silly LiveWire posts, UC Berkeley’s Haas School has also elicited a few, and there have been some general grumbles about MIT Sloan thrown in as well. Read more

Published: February 17, 2016

NYU Stern’s Center for Sustainable Business Launches with $1 Million from Citi Foundation

New York University’s Stern School of Business today launched its new Center for Sustainable Business, aided by a $1 million investment by the Citi Foundation. With leading environmentalist and former Rainforest Alliance president Tensie Whelan at the helm, the center will work to educate a new generation of business leaders capable of and committed to doing well by doing good. Stern and the Citi Foundation have collaborated for more than a decade on programming to educate students on ways the private and public sectors together can help tackle some of the greatest challenges facing the planet today while driving sustainable economic growth. The new center’s launch promises to expand these efforts through coursework; thought leadership and research; and stakeholder engagement and projects. Read more

Published: February 11, 2016

Fridays from the Frontline: An MBALauncher Shares Her Round 2 Application Process

Today’s Friday from the Frontline features an interview with Lisa Atufunwa, a 29-year-old Denver native who submitted applications to five schools as part of Round 2. Business school has always been a part of her plan, and she’s hoping the MBA will help her pivot her career. Currently working in communications for a range of tech companies, startups and public holding companies, Atufunwa is targeting schools with strong programs in marketing. Her post-MBA goal is to become an assistant brand manager in the personal beauty sector, working for a company like L'Oréal, Sephora or Estée Lauder. “That’s always been a personal passion of mine,” she says. Read more

Published: February 4, 2016

Fridays from the Frontline: Kellogg MBAs Gear Up for Super Bowl Ad Review

It’s time for the Super Bowl—and at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, that means it’s also time for the Super Bowl Ad Review. Brands spend more than $2 billion each year to advertise their products through Super Bowl commercials, some more effectively than others. For the 12th year running, Kellogg marketing students will apply their unique framework for evaluating an ad’s brand-building potential as part of the 2016 Kellogg Super Bowl Ad Review. As the players take the field on Sunday, more than 50 Kellogg MBA students will team up with marketing professors Tim Calkins and Derek Rucker to determine the winners and the losers in the battle of the brands. They’ll us the ADPLAN framework to evaluate each ad according to six critical criteria: Attention, Distinction, Positioning, Linkage, Amplifications and Net Equity. Read more

Published: February 3, 2016

LiveWire Analysis Reveals Strength of Rejected HBS Round 2 Applicants

Harvard Business School (HBS) sent out the second and final wave of interview invites for Round 2 candidates yesterday. A quick analysis of the status updates received on MBA LiveWire in the past 24 hours suggests that the rejected HBS applicants are incredibly impressive. Of the 114 candidates who shared a status of rejection, the average GMAT was 722 and the average GPA was 3.51. Of course, lessons from the MBA LiveWire data in Round 1 tell us that those making the cut for interviews and ultimately admission do not look terribly different where the raw statistics Read more

Published: February 1, 2016

Tuck Students Attend December’s Paris COP21, Bring Climate Talks Back to Campus

Four MBA students from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business sat front and center for the climate talks in Paris (COP 21) that grabbed the world’s attention in December. Now those students are back on campus sharing what they learned with their classmates. In fact, students from Tuck have attended five of the past seven climate summits—in Copenhagen, Cancún, Doha and Warsaw in addition to Paris’s COP21—with Professor Anant Sundaram. “Honestly, it continues to surprise me that more schools don’t do this,” he says. But to his knowledge, Tuck is alone in having MBA students attend. He suspects part of it is inertia—the United Nations doesn’t make it easy to take part, requiring that those who want to attend formally apply for non-governmental organization (NGO) observer status. Additionally, only a handful of slots are awarded to each NGO, and he suspects that they have gone to students outside of the business schools at places like Harvard, Columbia or Yale. Read more

Published: January 28, 2016

Fridays from the Frontline: Yale SOM MBA Student Tests His Mettle on Shark Tank

This week in Fridays from the Frontline we’re featuring an exclusive interview with Shaan Patel, a 26-year-old, second-year MBA student at Yale School of Management (SOM) who tonight will appear on ABC’s Shark Tank. Patel, who is taking a two-year leave of absence from medical school to get his MBA, also runs a company on the side that helps high school students prepare for the SAT and ACT college entrance exams. The Las Vegas native launched the company—called 2400 Expert SAT Prep—to teach others the strategies that helped him achieve his own perfect 2400 SAT score. In the interview that follows, he shares how business school prepared him for Shark Tank and why he thinks the MBA is a valuable path for entrepreneurs. He also offers tips for business school students who want to try their hand at getting on the show. (Even thought he had to wait in line for nine hours for the casting call—missing a pitch competition taking place back on campus as a result—he thinks it was worth it.) Read more

Published: January 26, 2016

LiveWire Data Provides Insights into HBS Interview Invitation Results

With Round 2 interview invitations imminent at Harvard Business School (HBS), we decided to look back at what happened in Round 1 for a little perspective. Clear Admit LiveWire reports gave us the following insights: Roughly one-third of Round 1 applicants to HBS who reported results on LiveWire shared that they received an invitation to interview. Among those, reported GPAs ranged from 3.0 to 3.8, with an average of 3.6. The GMAT score range was from 560 to 760, with an average score of 735. Notably, the ranges and averages were much the same for those who got a ding. (The GPA range was 3.09 to 4.4, with an average of 3.56, and the GMAT score range was 630 to 780, with an average of 735.) Read more

Published: January 21, 2016

Fridays from the Frontline: Triumphant Reapplicant Gains Admission at UCLA Anderson

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Our Fridays from the Frontline contributor this week took these words to heart, reapplying in fall 2015 after an unsuccessful application process the year before. A young female Indian engineer, she had relatively strong scores and grades, but not a ton of experience under her belt. Read on to learn some of the steps she took to strengthen her application the second time around—gaining admission at UCLA Anderson. While happy to share her story with the Clear Admit audience, she wants to remain anonymous until she actually matriculates. So until then, we’ll just refer to her as the Pull That MBA Trigger blogger. Read more

Published: January 19, 2016

HBS Hypes Gender Initiative Launched Last Spring

Harvard Business School (HBS) today took to its MBA Voices Blog to introduce the HBS Gender Initiative to those who may not be familiar with it. Established in fall 2014, the initiative’s public launch took place in May 2015, coinciding with the release of interesting research coming out of HBS related to gender issues. That research included a study published last spring by HBS Professor Kathleen McGinn that pinpointed advantages enjoyed by children of working mothers. Surveying 50,000 adults in 25 countries, she and her colleagues found that the daughters of working mothers completed more years of education, had higher rates of employment and were more likely both to supervise others and earn higher incomes than those of moms who stayed at home—in a staggering 24 of the 25 countries studied. Sons of working moms, while their careers were not measurably impacted, were found to contribute more time each week to childcare and housework—which research has shown to increase women’s involvement in the workforce and perhaps impact the stability of marriages. Read more

Published: January 14, 2016

New MBA DecisionWire Feature Debuts on Clear Admit

For all the devoted LiveWire followers out there, we’ve got some exciting news to share. Clear Admit this week has added a new feature designed to let MBA applicants, students and alumni share more information with their peers—specifically where they decide to attend business school based on where they applied and were accepted. This new tool, called MBA DecisionWire, provides profiles and school selection information updates in real time from your peers as they make the all-important decision of where to actually pursue their MBA. Users can filter others’ submissions by the schools applied to, admitted to and enrolled at, as well as by application year. Read more

Published: January 14, 2016

Fridays from the Frontlines: Kellogg MBAs Take Silicon Valley

Welcome back to Fridays from the Frontlines, where each week we feature the perspectives of current MBA applicants, students and recent alumni wherever they are in the trajectory of business school. Today we’re pleased to feature a post from Luke Murphy, a first-year MBA candidate at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, who recently led a group of fellow students on a trek to San Francisco startups. He was a good one to help organize the trip, having grown up in the Bay Area and worked there for years before business school, most recently as director of business development at Nasdaq in San Francisco. But as you’ll see in the post that follows, even he was surprised by some of what the trip revealed. Read more

Published: January 12, 2016

PepsiCo CEO Endows Yale SOM Deanship with Landmark Gift

PepsiCo Chairperson and CEO Indra K. Nooyi this week became the most generous lifetime benefactor in the history of her alma mater, the Yale School of Management (SOM), endowing the deanship of the school and kicking off the Fifth Decade Innovation Fund, the school announced yesterday. “My experience at the Yale School of Management forever altered the course of my life,” the 1980 Yale SOM graduate said in a statement. “My gift to this wonderful institution pales in comparison with the gift that Yale gave me—the fundamental understanding that leadership requires an expansive worldview and a deep appreciation of the many points of intersection between business and society,” she continued. Read more

Published: January 7, 2016

Fridays from the Frontline: Juggling Motherhood and the MBA at HBS

How many times have you heard someone liken pursuing an MBA to drinking from a fire hose? Between the coursework, student clubs, networking, recruiting—there aren’t enough hours in the day. Now imagine doing it as mom to a three-year-old. Katie Colgary is a second-year student doing precisely that—juggling motherhood and the MBA at Harvard Business School (HBS). She graciously agreed to share this recent blog post with Clear Admit’s readers, in which she reveals how she does it, as well as what resources are in place at HBS to help make doing it possible. Read more

Published: January 3, 2016

Average GMAT, GPA Scores for Round 1 LiveWire Entries: How Do You Measure Up?

While entries continue to trickle in, the volume on Clear Admit’s LiveWire has slowed—no real surprise given where we are in the MBA admissions cycle. The vast majority of applicants in Round 1 have received decisions from their target schools. Round 2 applicants, meanwhile, are focused on wrapping things up with their applications as deadlines fill the days and weeks ahead. The relative lull has given us a chance to dig into the data submitted by applicants over the course of Round 1, which we thought the Clear Admit audience might find interesting. For starters, we’ve computed average reported Read more

Published: December 31, 2015

Fridays from the Frontline: The HEC Paris MBA Experience with Footnotes

Happy 2016 everyone! Today in Fridays from the Frontline, we’re featuring a post submitted to us by Prashant Khorana about his HEC Paris MBA experience. On Twitter, Khorana (@prashantkhorana) describes himself as a data scientist/mathematician who is passionate about analytics, economics, finance, leadership and investing and who hates unproductive activities. Titled “Brief Notes on the HEC Paris MBA Experience,” the post is nonetheless longer than we generally publish here—especially with the footnotes, which Khorana doesn’t want you to miss. So we’ve offered you a taste to whet your appetite and encourage you to follow the link below to read the post in its entirety. He covers everything you’ve ever wondered about HEC Paris, from getting in to settling in, from learning French to surviving St. Cyr and triumphing at MBAT. Many thanks to Khorana for sharing his experience with the Clear Admit audience. Read more

Published: December 24, 2015

Fridays from the Frontline: Forté MBALauncher Shares Her Round 1 Application Experience

Natalie Neilson learned about the Forté Foundation’s MBALaunch program—a 10-week, hands-on workshop for promising female applicants to business school—in a somewhat backwards fashion. It all began with an interest in looking into business schools abroad, with the MBA program at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School sparking her curiosity. After researching, she realized that Oxford did not come to many events in DC, but she saw that the school would be participating in an upcoming Forté Forum, and so she went. At the forum, she saw people wearing name tags with a special ribbon that said “MBALauncher,” so she asked to learn more. Before long she would be wearing an MBALauncher ribbon herself. Read more

Published: December 17, 2015

Fridays from the Frontline: A Successful Round 1 Applicant Shares His Tips on Managing the Process

This week we are delighted to feature the following post from Preston Landers, a senior consultant for Deloitte Digital who has just completed the application process for business school. As you’ll read, he applied to seven leading MBA programs, got interviews at six and has now been admitted at three. He humbly calls himself an amateur, but we think the advice he offers is spot on. Our thanks to Landers, whose frequent posts on Reddit’s MBA thread spurred us to ask him to contribute something here on Clear Admit. And a hearty congratulations for a job well done! We Read more

Published: December 16, 2015

Who Got In, Who Got Waitlisted, Who Got Dinged: LiveWire Results for HBS and Chicago Booth

Clear Admit’s MBA LiveWire has been ON FIRE these past two weeks with Round 1 applicants sharing their triumph and defeat in the MBA admissions process at top schools. With 18 schools releasing decisions this week—Wharton, Darden, MIT Sloan, Ross and Tuck among them—we expect record activity to continue, and we’ll be keeping tabs on the decisions as they roll in. In the meantime, we’re digging into some of the data shared last week, specifically with regard to how applicants fared at Read more

Posts by Jeanette Brown

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