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Posts by Jonathan Pfeffer

About
Jonathan Pfeffer joined the Clear Admit and MetroMBA teams in 2015 after spending several years as an arts/culture writer, editor, and radio producer. In addition to his role as Contributing Writer at MetroMBA and Contributing Editor at Clear Admit, he was also a co-founder of the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. He holds a BA in Film/Video, Ethnomusicology, and Media Studies from Oberlin College.
Published: February 20, 2020
Fridays from the Frontline: Oxford Saïd GOTO – A Lesson in Sitting in the Discomfort
Oxford Saïd Business School’s Global Opportunities and Threats: Oxford (GOTO) program brings together small teams of MBA students to develop solutions to large-scale sustainable development problems. Current Oxford MBA student Saskia Rotshuizen took to the Oxford Saïd blog to share insights from this year’s GOTO program, which targeted the climate crisis. Oxford Saïd Global Opportunities and Threats: A Lesson in Sitting in the Discomfort Saskia Rotshuizen, Oxford MBA 2019-2020 What happens when you place a group of solution-oriented MBAs in front of a seemingly insurmountable challenge? Welcome to the GOTO experience. Read more
Published: February 13, 2020
Fridays from the Frontline: Student Perspective – Global Immersion@Anderson
The Center for Global Management at UCLA Anderson offers MBA students several opportunities to expand their cultural horizons as well as learn about distinct business environments firsthand. In particular, the Global Immersion Courses introduce MBA students to international companies and cultures, first on campus through three courses, then in-country for a week filled with guest speakers, panel discussions, company and startup visits and more. Current Anderson MBA student Kevin Ma took to the UCLA Anderson blog to share takeaways from his experience in India as part of the Global Immersion Program.  Read Read more
Published: February 6, 2020
Fridays from the Frontline: Vanderbilt Owen’s Tech Trek
Before joining the workforce, business schools prepare students with hands-on experiences across popular industries.  When it comes to the tech sector, Vanderbilt Owen’s annual Tech Trek gives MBA students first hand exposure to the day-to-day operations of some of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley. In this edition of Fridays from the Frontline, we hear from three current Owen MBA students about their takeaways from this year’s Tech Trek. Tech Trek Helps Students Network at Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and More Students visited 12 tech companies in San Francisco Read more
Published: January 30, 2020
Fridays from the Frontline: Duke Fuqua Client Consulting Practicum
The consulting industry is one of the most popular career choices of MBA candidates. Business schools like Duke Fuqua stay on top of new and innovative ways to train their graduates to address real-world consulting problems. Case in point: the Fuqua Client Consulting Practicum (FCCP). Current second-year student McCallen Moser MBA ’20 took to the Duke Fuqua blog to offer a snapshot of her FCCP experience.  Read on for her work on a project for the U.S. Polo Association (USPA) to increase its marketing outreach to women. Gaining Consulting Experience with Fuqua Read more
Published: January 23, 2020
Fridays from the Frontline: Diving into the Bustling MIT Ecosystem – Reflections from the Core Semester
During the first semester of business school, students are thrown into the deep end of diverse opportunities to explore their interests. At MIT Sloan in particular, the sheer number of clubs, groups, conferences, and activities tailored to various professional interests are so vast it’s referred to as an “ecosystem.” Current student, energy industry enthusiast, and “Texan at heart and in mind,” Pervez Agwan, took to the MIT Sloan blog to reflect on how the Sloan ecosystem informed his first semester.  Read on for his rich account about business school life at MIT Read more
Published: January 16, 2020
Fridays from the Frontline: Sell Day – Chicago Booth Talks What Happens After the Offer
At some point, all of those sleepless nights agonizing over GMAT/GRE prep, admissions essays, and campus visits eventually yield the moment a company extends an offer to recruit you. This part of the MBA process is arguably one of the reasons you may have entertained the idea of applying to business school in the first place. When the time comes, companies often employ a variety of tactics to entice MBA students from elite schools like Booth Chicago to come work for them. Current Booth second-year student Nicole Newman ’20 took to the Read more
Published: January 9, 2020
Fridays from the Frontline: How Cornell MBAs Pitched Three Stocks in 13 Hours
Hard quant skills are essential to the careers of any future consultants, analysts, and financial managers, but one aspect of the business school experience that often goes unsung is its role as a concentrated period to help young MBA students develop their intuition as investors. The annual MBA Stock Pitch Challenge is an excellent platform for outstanding finance students from top MBA programs, including Cornell Johnson, to “prepare and present buy/hold/sell recommendations and vigorously defend them [before] a panel of investment industry experts.” Current Cornell Johnson MBA students Alex Hess ’21 and Ronald Song ’21 took Read more
Published: January 2, 2020
Fridays from the Frontline: Moving to the States with My Daughter to Pursue an MBA at HBS and Switch Careers
The MBA is a vehicle for change, especially for those looking to switch careers and refine their professional trajectory.  The transition to business school comes with its own changes, such as location, lifestyle and more. For Yaping Wang, current Harvard MBA student and former product innovation researcher at Mars Foods, it seemed as though everything had to change in order to pursue her dream.  She took to the HBS blog to discuss the reflections that led to her choice of an MBA, all the way through to her experience uprooting from Beijing Read more
Published: January 1, 2020
Vanderbilt Owen Outlines How to Finish an MBA Application in 7 Days
The MBA application deadlines are fast approaching, so the admissions team at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management recently offered strategic tips for completing an MBA application in just seven days.  Read on for their daily advice. Day 1 Gathering information and create a comprehensive checklist of what you will need to complete your MBA application. Be sure to order transcripts, test scores, and communicate with recommenders early. Day 2 Build your CV. Kim Killingsworth, director of international recruiting and relations at Owen says, “Keep in mind that the resume is the first thing that the Read more
Published: January 1, 2020
Real Humans of UCLA Anderson MBA Class of 2021
We are pleased to continue our Real Humans: MBA Students series with a trip to L.A., which is home to the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Their new Class of 2021 is a diverse cohort of students, including 34 percent women, 33 percent international students, and 29 percent ethnic minorities of the 360-student class. During their undergraduate years, 26 percent of the latest class had studied business.  Engineering was the second most popular major, claiming 22 percent of students.  Seventeen percent had majored in economics with another 13 percent pursuing humanities.  Ten Read more
Published: December 31, 2019
MBA Essay Tips for Round 2 from Dartmouth Tuck
As the Round 2 deadline approaches, Dartmouth Tuck’s Executive Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Luke Anthony Peña recently took to the Tuck 360 Blog to offer prospective students advice on admissions essays. Luke Anthony Peña, Executive Director of Admissions and Financial Aid at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business As Peña has shared before, the ideal Tuck MBA is smart, aware, accomplished and nice, and the essays provide a vehicle for showcasing some of these qualities.  While he and his team have expanded Read more
Published: December 26, 2019
10% of Full-Time MBAs Got Low-Rate Student Loans from LeverEdge
Many 2020 presidential candidates have made student debt a major talking point—and for good reason. According to Forbes, 45 million Americans currently owe over $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. In the realm of business school, Bloomberg Businessweek notes that nearly 30 percent of MBA students at top MBA programs report taking on a minimum of $100,000 in debt. When one stops to consider that the median starting pay for MBAs from top schools ranges from $80,000 to $140,000, it doesn’t take much math to see what debt means for most graduates. If this predicament hits Read more
Published: December 26, 2019
Fridays from the Frontline: Dartmouth Tuck Students “Venture” to Boston
Like most high-stakes industries with dizzying highs and crushing lows, the field of venture capital has become a smarter and more streamlined operation in the past decade.  At this crucial juncture in the evolution of VC, current Tuckies Claire Dalman T’21 and Ross Klosterman T’20 took to the Tuck 360 Blog to share takeaways from their tour of Boston’s VC scene. Tuck Students “Venture” to Boston by Claire Dalman T’21 and Ross Klosterman T’20 Claire Dalman, Tuck MBA ’21 In early November a group of Tuck students interested in venture capital Read more
Published: December 25, 2019
Chicago Booth Addresses How to Finance Your Booth MBA
The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business recently offered prospective MBA students advice on planning for tuition and other anticipated expenses while they pursue an MBA. The Value of the Booth MBA Within the first three months, 96 percent of the Class of 2018 received job offers. This year, Forbes ranked Booth America’s Top Business School.  While Booth alumni also consistently assert that the Booth MBA pays dividends continuously after graduation, the schools understands opportunities associated with the Booth brand offset tuition costs. Expected Expenses & Beyond In addition to tuition, Read more
Published: December 23, 2019
UNC Kenan-Flagler Launches STEM-Designated MBA Concentration in Business Analytics & Management Science
In January 2020, UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School is slated to launch a new STEM-designated MBA concentration in business analytics and management science as part of its full-time MBA program. Townsend Family Distinguished Professor of Marketing, Rajdeep Grewal, says of the new program, “Our focus is on strategic decision-making to prepare our graduates to use analytics to lead companies…Today, managers are inundated with data that comes in large volume at immense velocity and in diverse, structured and unstructured forms. Through the concentration, our students will develop a deep understanding of business problems and the analytics skills to Read more
Published: December 19, 2019
Beyond the Bio Podcast by Bain & Company
Sponsored Content Bain & Company is one of the most highly regarded firms in the management consulting industry. One of the “Big Three,” Bain provides services to organizations around the world and across the public, private, and non-profit sectors. With an annual revenue of $4.3 billion, Bain commands by far the largest market share of private equity consulting, employing 10,500 people in 2019, and operating from 61 locations around the world. There’s plenty of information floating around on the exploits of Bain & Company as a firm, but what about the people inside Bain? How did they make their own Read more
Published: December 19, 2019
Fridays from the Frontline: What STEM Certification Says About Booth And What It Means For International Students
Whether or not an MBA program is STEM designated can make or break an international student’s Stateside career. International students who pursue STEM designated programs receive an additional 2 years of optional practical training (OPT) once they graduate, which is a critical period that helps international students transition from student to proper work visas. Chicago Booth recently announced that its Business Analytics and Analytic Finance concentrations are now STEM-certified. Richa Goya, MBA ’20, President of the Rockefeller Cohort and an officer in the Graduate Business Council, took to the Booth Experience blog Read more
Published: December 18, 2019
MBA News You Need: INSEAD to Open First North American Hub, Rice Jones Hosts 20th Women in Leadership Conference, and more from Carnegie Mellon Tepper, Georgetown McDonough, and UCLA Anderson
Each week we collect MBA news from leading business schools to give you a quick overview of the latest trending topics. In your MBA News You Need digest for the week of December 16th, INSEAD plans to open a San Francisco location in February 2020, Rice Jones hosts a Women in Leadership Conference in February 2020, Carnegie Mellon Tepper MBAs dish their application tips, Georgetown MBAs excelled in the National Real Estate Challenge, and UCLA Anderson rounded up international applicants most common questions. INSEAD Set to Open First North American Hub Slated for February 2020, INSEAD Read more
Published: December 18, 2019
Texas McCombs Hosts Annual Women’s Weekend for MBA Students
The Texas MBA program at the McCombs School of Business in Austin hosted 55 MBA students along with alumni and faculty for their annual Women's Weekend. The event seeks to support the empowerment of women in business, and as current student, Jessica Reese-White MBA '21, said, it really gives a sense of the supportive culture at McCombs: Read more
Published: December 16, 2019
Real Humans of Texas McCombs’ MBA Class of 2021
We are excited to bring you another edition of Real Humans: MBA students in which we introduce some of the newest members of the Texas MBA Class of 2021.  The West End of Austin, Texas, earned its nickname the “Silicon Hills” during the US dot com boom of the 1990s and has since grown to house some of the country’s largest and fastest-growing names in the tech sector. University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business has been both a contributor to and beneficiary of the city’s economic evolution, boasting several Read more
Published: December 12, 2019
Fridays from the Frontline: Duke Fuqua Latin American Student Association Provides Valuable Support
The Latin American Student Association (LASA) is one of the most popular student clubs at Duke Fuqua, with 100+ members representing nearly 20 countries.  By helping North American students build careers in Latin America and supporting Latin American students as they pursue careers in the U.S. and Europe, LASA is well-positioned to help preserve professional and cultural bridges with economies that continue to grow. Current student Ariadne Sabatoski took to the Duke Fuqua blog to discuss the critical role that the Latin American Student Association (LASA) plays in admissions, recruiting, external relations, Read more
Published: December 11, 2019
Real Humans of USC Marshall’s MBA Class of 2021
We head to sunny California for our latest profiles in Real Humans: MBA Students. The University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business boasts both the oldest entrepreneurship program in the U.S. and the first immersive international MBA experience of its kind. They were also the first top-tier MBA program to reach gender parity. Moreover, the USC Trojan brand is a powerful professional asset to both its current students and alumni, making USC Marshall a stand-out choice for MBA education. The 214 members of Read more
Published: December 9, 2019
Real Humans of Georgetown McDonough’s MBA Class of 2021
In our latest edition of Real Humans: MBA Students, we get to know students pursuing their business management studies at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.  This leading school attracts students who wish to immerse themselves in the highly connected and influential environment of Washington, DC, as well as a culture of ethical and principled leadership. 271 candidates chose to enroll in the Class of 2021 at McDonough.  Twenty-nine percent of the new students are international, and the same percentage are women.  Meanwhile, U.S. minorities represent 37 percent of the class.  During Read more
Published: December 5, 2019
Fridays from the Frontline: Diving Into Internship Recruiting at MIT Sloan
For b-school hopefuls and current students alike, the first-year internship is often discussed in terms of how to get one’s foot in the door at an elite consulting firm or Silicon Valley tech titan. The version of this narrative that seems to fly under the radar is that companies both large and small have to find innovative ways to vie for the affections of each new crop MBA talent. As MIT Sloan second-year Valerie Zhao explained in a recent blog entry, MBA students at schools like Sloan have numerous opportunities at their Read more
Published: December 4, 2019
Real Humans of SMU Cox’s MBA Class of 2021
It’s time to meet another cohort in our series, Real Humans: MBA Students, and this time we’re heading south to Texas. There, Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business is known for its tight-knit community and world-class faculty. Located in the dynamic business hub of Dallas, Texas, SMU Cox draws students from a variety of backgrounds seeking personalized attention as part of their MBA experience. The 115 members of the Class of 2021 arrived on campus with an average of 4.5 years of work experience.  Thirty-four percent of the new students are Read more

MBA Livewire

December 17, 2024 10:44pm ET
Accepted to UPenn / Wharton
Round: Round 1
Received via email on December 09, 2024
GPA: 3.52
GMAT: 750
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Application Location: Mexico
Note:

So excited! Dreams do come true! Interviewer emailed me shortly after the decision. Got some money as well.
December 17, 2024 9:13pm ET
Rejected at UT Austin / McCombs
Round: Round 1
Received via email December 17, 2024
GPA: 8.33/10
GRE: 331
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Entrepreneurship
Note:

To be honest, it came as a shocker because this was my safety school. But I got accepted to higher-ranked schools on my priority list, so it is okay. I will most likely enrol at Harvard if they are generous with FinAid. Wishing everyone the best for R2
December 17, 2024 7:29pm ET
Accepted to UT Austin / McCombs
Round: Round 1
Received via portal December 17, 2024
GRE: 325
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Note:

Missed the call from a 2Y student, and received 20K/year. Very grateful for the result.
December 17, 2024 6:54pm ET
Rejected at Berkeley / Haas
Round: Round 1
Received via email on December 11, 2024
GPA: 3.7
GRE: 326
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Technology
Application Location: Intl.
Note:

Will have 3.5 YoE by matriculation.
Applied days before the deadline.
The adcom left me to die and waited until the last day for R1 decisions to let me know of my rejection.
Anyways, I'm pleased about my rejection and knowing I'm not going to a woke school. I still got an acceptance at 2 higher ranked schools.
December 17, 2024 2:58pm ET
Accepted to UT Austin / McCombs
Round: Round 1
Received via phone December 17, 2024
GPA: 3.3
EA: 151
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Consulting
Application Location: Brazil
Note:

I got a call today from a student I connected with during the application process! 13y Background: operations, product management, and leadership positions.
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