MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
Real Humans of MBA Admissions: Haas Dean Rich Lyons
Though we usually feature admissions officers in this space, we recently had a chance to sit down with Dean Richard Lyons of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and couldn’t resist learning a little bit more about who he is as a person and how that influences the school he leads. Lyons took over as dean of Haas in July 2008 after taking a leave between 2006 and 2008 to serve as chief learning officer at Goldman Sachs in New York, overseeing leadership development for the firm’s managing directors. He originally joined
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Fridays from the Frontline: A Wharton MBA Techie Shares Six Strategies for Recruiting
Recent Wharton/Lauder graduate Victoria Cheng left Philadelphia for Hangzhou, China, where she’ll complete a one-year rotational program at e-commerce giant Alibaba. She came to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School MBA program and Lauder Institute East Asia program with the goal of working in China upon graduation. But that doesn’t mean this MBA techie hasn’t lost sight of her longer-term interest in self-driving cars. In a recent “Wharton Stories” feature on the school’s website, writer Kelly Andrews shares more of Cheng’s story, as well as Cheng’s own astute strategies for recruiting—which seem to have served her
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Kellogg Admissions Director Dishes on Essay Questions, Application Volume, More
Mugs and glasses clinked all around and the smell of bacon and freshly brewed coffee was enough to awaken even the sleepiest of senses as Melissa Rapp, director of admissions for the full-time MBA and MSMS programs at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and I sat down to breakfast last month at Dottie’s True Blue Café in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood. We were both in town for the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) annual conference but decided to venture a little farther afield in hopes of finding something a bit more memorable
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Making the Most of MBA Admissions Events? Ross Adcom Director Shares Dos and Don’ts
If you’ve met Soojin Kwon, who leads admissions at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, you know that she doesn’t pull punches. She’s whip-smart, no nonsense, and gets right down to business, whatever the business at hand happens to be. Most recently, on her Admissions Director’s Blog, she offered advice to prospective applicants on dos and don’ts for attending MBA admissions events. In our opinion, her tips are worth heeding whether you’re applying to Ross or any other top school. Soojin Kwon, Ross managing director for full-time MBA admissions
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Johnson Admissions Director Weighs in on Recently Released Application Essays
Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management recently posted essay topics for the 2017-18 MBA application season, revealing some new twists as well as some old favorites. We caught up with Judi Byers, executive director of admissions and financial aid, to learn more. New this year is a novel fill-in-the-blank goals statement designed to help applicants convey their short- and long-term career goals. “A statement of your goals will begin a conversation that will last throughout the admissions process and guide your steps during the MBA program and experience,” reads the prompt, which
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Real Humans of MBA Admissions: INSEAD’s Virginie Fougea
We were delighted at last month’s Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) annual conference in San Francisco to catch up with admissions directors from top business schools from around the globe. Among them was Virginie Fougea, INSEAD director of MBA recruitment and admissions, who we hope racked up plenty of frequent flier miles in exchange for her journey from Fontainebleau, France, to Northern California. Though Fougea is somewhat new to leading admissions at INSEAD—she was promoted from associate director of admissions in October 2016—she is not at all new to the school. “I have been with INSEAD for
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Babson Expands Entrepreneurial Opportunities for Women MBAs
While more women than ever are earning MBAs, there’s still a lot to be done to advance the role of women in business. Though the average enrollment of women in full-time MBA programs at 36 top business schools climbed from 32 percent to 36 percent between 2011 and 2015, that growth hasn’t necessarily been reflected in the workforce yet. Women occupy only 22.9 percent of board positions for Fortune 500 companies and only 6.4 percent of CEO positions.
The Women Innovating Now (WIN) Lab at Babson College’s F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business is part of that school’s effort to bridge this gap and increase the number of women leaders in business.
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Fridays from the Frontline: So You Want to Be a Social Entrepreneur at Kellogg
Today’s Friday from the Frontline post comes to us from Saumya, a recent graduate of the two-year MBA program at Kellogg School of Management. With her MBA degree, Saumya’s plans are to return to India, where she worked as a social entrepreneur before coming to Kellogg for business school. Prior to Kellogg, Saumya ran a startup called YellowLeaf in her native India, whose mission is to save migrant blue-collar workers from exploitation. While at Kellogg, she had the opportunity to incubate a second social enterprise, an agri-tech venture called Kheyti, whose low-cost,
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Admissions Director Q&A: Simon School of Business’ Rebekah Lewin
Last week we got to know a little about the person heading admissions at the University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business when our Real Humans of MBA Series spotlighted Rebekah Lewin. Today we’ll delve deeper into just how the admissions process unfolds at the school. As we shared last week, if anyone knows the Simon admissions process inside and out, it’s Lewin. Not only has she worked at the school for almost 20 years, including in the lead role as assistant dean of admissions and financial aid for the past two, she also applied
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Rice Jones Graduate School Announces New Online MBA Program
Technology has transformed almost every aspect of our world, and that includes MBA programs. While just a few years ago, the only way to earn an MBA was to attend classes in person, that’s drastically changing, even at top-tier schools. For example, just last year five more schools were added to the annual Financial Times Online MBA Ranking. Even more telling, enrollment in online programs rose on average 7 percent for the 15 schools in the 2016 ranking.
“Nearly everywhere you look, demand by students for online education has exceeded supply,” Matt Robb, managing director at Parthenon-EY—an education industry consultancy—told the Financial Times. “The question has never been whether there is a market but whether there is sufficient supply.”
Now, the Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, in partnership with 2U Inc., is joining the online revolution. Starting in 2018, the school plans to launch a new online MBA program.
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Clear Admit Launches New MBA ApplyWire Tool to Help Applicants Seek Feedback on Target Schools
We are pleased today to announce the launch of MBA ApplyWire, the latest in Clear Admit’s growing arsenal of tools for prospective MBA applicants considering top-tier business schools. ApplyWire was designed to help applicants develop their MBA application strategy by drawing on the collective wisdom and input of the active Clear Admit applicant community.
As simple to use as its predecessors—MBA LiveWire and MBA DecisionWire—ApplyWire allows applicants to share the schools they are considering applying to along with some detail about their credentials and goals. The community can then chime in with feedback on how the applicant might refine his or her list of target schools. For example, fellow applicants might provide constructive commentary on how realistic a given school may seem based on background or suggest additional schools an applicant may not have considered that could also make sense given stated goals.
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Real Humans of MBA Admissions: UCLA Anderson’s Alex Lawrence
An alumnus of the UCLA Anderson School of Management, Alex Lawrence knows the school and its admissions process inside and out. He’s served as assistant dean and director of MBA admissions for the past five years. Before that he spent eight years as executive director of Anderson’s Riordan Programs, a series of opportunities for diverse individuals from all over the country to receive leadership and management training through mentorship, workshops, and community service. Lawrence himself is also a Riordan alumnus. After graduating from Anderson with his MBA in 1999, he spent four years working as a management consultant
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Fridays from the Frontline: Two UCLA Anderson MBA Alums Discuss Running a Company
Entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing career choices; Forbes estimates that approximately 543,000 new businesses are started each month. That said, the truth is that 90 percent of startups eventually fail, which makes it vital for budding entrepreneurs to learn from their predecessors.
Recently, Erik Basu, a UCLA Anderson School of Management MBA alum and founder/CEO of Sentek Global, and John Tabis, Anderson MBA ’06 and co-founder of the Bouqs Company, shared their advice about running a company. And while both company founders offered different perspectives, their advice is valuable for any potential entrepreneur. We thought it made perfect fodder for today's Friday from the Frontline.
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New GMAC Report: Is the GMAT Getting Easier?
Is the GMAT getting easier? That’s the question that the Graduate Management Admission’s Council (GMAC), a non-profit organization of leading graduate management schools, set out to answer in their recent market intelligence report: The GMAT Exam Is Not Getting Easier: The Fallacy of Score Increases and the Impact of Score Preview. The 26-page white paper is the first in an annual series that will serve as a sort of quality assurance (QA) report for the GMAT.
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Stanford GSB Taps Oxfam Global Program Head Darius Teter to Lead Stanford Seed
Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) today named Darius Teter to serve as the new executive director of the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies, known as Stanford Seed. Led by Stanford GSB with university-wide support, Seed seeks to promote global economic prosperity by taking the GSB’s signature leadership and innovation training to aspiring entrepreneurs and senior business professionals in developing economies. Launched initially in Accra, Ghana, in 2011, Seed expanded east in Africa to Nairobi, Kenya, in 2016. Then, just last month, Stanford GSB announced its plans to expand the program farther, to Chennai, India. Teter takes the helm at an exciting time for a program poised for continued growth and expansion.
Teter brings a range of international development experience to the role. He comes to Stanford Seed from Oxfam America, where as vice president of global programs he oversaw the organization’s humanitarian response team and regional development programs in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as research, learning, and evaluation. Before that, he also developed expertise in financing large-scale infrastructure projects for both the Asian Development Bank and independent U.S. government foreign aid agency Millennium Challenge Corporation.
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2017 Forté Foundation MBA Women’s Leadership Conference
Every year, hundreds of women MBA candidates from around the United States gather before their first semester to attend the Forté Foundation MBA Women’s Leadership Conference. This year–the 10th anniversary of the event–the sold-out conference took place in Seattle, Washington on June 16th and 17th.
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Oxford Saïd Offers Six New MBA Scholarships
Earning an MBA from a leading program typically isn’t cheap. In fact, the average cost of an MBA when you total tuition and living expenses is between $100,000 to $200,000 for two years. For that reason, MBA scholarships can be invaluable for many candidates, and now the University of Oxford Saïd Business School is offering six new scholarship opportunities for incoming MBA students.
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Real Humans of MBA Admissions: Rebekah Lewin of the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School
It’s early summer, which means that admissions directors have emerged from reading applications for a brief window of time before hitting the road to recruit the next batch of candidates. And that’s afforded those of us here at Clear Admit the opportunity to connect with many of them and reprise our Real Humans of MBA Admissions series. Today, we’re pleased to feature Rebekah Lewin, assistant dean of admissions and financial aid at the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School. Lewin—pictured above with her son, Ryan—has spent her entire career in higher education and has been at the University of
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Fridays from the Frontline: Why David Washer Pursued a Dartmouth Tuck Joint MBA/MPH Degree
For David Washer, who knew he wanted to pursue a career serving the social sector and striving for social justice, a joint MBA/MPH (Master of Public Health) degree seemed like just the ticket. In the post that follows, he shares why the Dartmouth Tuck Joint MBA/MPH degree made the most sense for him—as well as why he believes adding the MBA is a valuable option for social justice advocates considering graduate study. This following post has been republished in its entirety from its original source, the Tuck 360: MBA Blog. Why I Pursued
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Interview with the Dean: SMU Cox School of Business
Since 1997, Albert W. Niemi, Jr. has served as the dean of the Edwin L. Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University (SMU Cox) in Dallas. He is also currently the Cox School’s Tolleson Chair in Business Leadership, as well as the William J. O’Neil Chair in Global Markets and Freedom.
During his tenure, the Cox School has undergone many changes. He has helped to expand the degree offerings at the business school—expanding the school’s offerings to include four specialized master’s programs as well as multiple interdisciplinary program opportunities and a new Fast-Track MBA—and has also grown the school’s endowment from $78 million to more than $200 million.
This past August, Niemi announced his intention to step down as dean after serving the Cox School for more than 20 years. He will continue to remain in his faculty position but will pass on his administrative responsibilities to Matthew B. Myers, a global marketing and strategy expert with expertise in Latin America who currently serves as dean of the Farmer School of Business at Miami University, Ohio.
To mark the occasion, we took the opportunity to interview Niemi about his tenure as dean and to gain his insight into what the future of the Cox School could look like.
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New GMAT Feature Offers Test-Taking Personalization
For hopeful business school students taking the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT), a significant change will be going into effect on July 11, 2017. Previously, those taking the GMAT tackled exam sections in a set order: Analytical Writing Assessment, Integrated Reasoning, Quantitative, and finally the Verbal section. The amendment made by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) offers considerably greater flexibility, giving test-takers some choice in the order in which they complete these tasks. The new GMAT feature, officially titled the Select Section Order, was implemented based on research from GMAC. “GMAC is committed to continuously improving the GMAT
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