MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
Published: March 22, 2017
Real Humans of MBA Admissions: Carlson School of Management’s Linh Gilles
Earlier this month, we had the pleasure of getting to know Linh Gilles, director of admissions and recruiting at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. She’s been in admissions at Carlson for the past decade and in the director’s role since 2012, but she also knows the school from the student’s perspective. That’s because she is currently enrolled in the full-time executive MBA (EMBA) program herself—all while working full time and raising two kids. “I suppose at some point working for an MBA program for 10 years, you do just drink the Kool-Aid,” she says with a laugh. But
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Published: March 21, 2017
The Potential Impact of Brexit on U.K. Schools
British Prime Minister Theresa May has announced plans to invoke Article 50 of the European Union Lisbon Treaty on March 29th—triggering the start of the United Kingdom's two-year process of exiting the bloc of nations it has been part of for four decades. Given this, it seems a good time to look at the impact of Brexit on U.K. schools. According to a 2017 GMAC Brexit-U.S. Survey, 45 percent of respondents claimed that Brexit would make them less likely to study in the United Kingdom. But what does that figure mean? Are U.K. schools expecting fewer applications from top international talent, or is everything well?
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Published: March 21, 2017
HBS Admissions Director Encourages Reapplicants
With Round 2 applicants anxiously awaiting the imminent release of decisions from Harvard Business School (HBS) today, this post from January seemed worthy of a reprise. Of course, we know you are all very hopeful that Chad Losee’s words below encouraging rejected applicants to reapply to HBS will prove moot when you get your acceptance at noon. But since that unfortunately simply can’t be the case for everyone, maybe it’s nice to be reminded that one in 10 students in HBS’s class didn’t get in on the first try? Best of luck to you all—whether you’re awaiting word from
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Published: March 20, 2017
Wharton Admissions Dean Weighs in on Topping U.S. News Ranking
Last week, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School tied for first place with Harvard Business School (HBS) in U.S. News & World Report’s closely watched annual ranking of top MBA programs in the nation. Though Wharton has only claimed the top spot once before in the ranking’s 28-year history, it has traditionally been considered part of the “holy trinity” of schools, behind only HBS and Stanford Graduate School of Business in many people’s eyes. That made last year’s fourth-place finish after the University of Chicago Booth School of Business a real blow and this year’s strong showing an important rebound.
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Published: March 20, 2017
Published: March 19, 2017
New Entrepreneurship Opportunities at UW’s Foster School
Entrepreneurship plays a vital role in the U.S. economy. Forbes estimates that approximately 543,000 new businesses are launched each month and, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, three million jobs were created in 2015 by businesses less than a year old. So, it makes sense that entrepreneurship is assuming a more prominent role in business school courses and programming.
Samantha Ogle, the assistant director of the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, reports that roughly 40 percent of that school’s incoming full-time MBA students indicated that they chose UW “because of our reputation in entrepreneurship.” This high level of student interest is one of the reasons that the Foster School introduced a new degree program—the Master of Science in Entrepreneurship—that will open on June 19, 2017.
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Published: March 16, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: MBA Mama and Stanford GSB Student Valerie Rivera
This week's Friday from the Frontline comes to us via our content partner, MBA Mama, an online platform designed to share the stories of women successfully navigating both motherhood and the MBA. As its January Mama of the Month (MotM), MBA Mama featured second-year Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) MBA student Valerie Rivera. Mom to 11-year-old twin boys, Rivera is also a 15-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force, where she held various leadership positions.
Don't miss MBA Mama's exclusive interview with Rivera, below, in which she talks about why she chose Stanford for her MBA and what she's liked most about her time there, some of the time management strategies she employs to keep up with family, school and career, and her plans to open a consulting firm after she graduates. Our thanks to MBA Mama for allowing us to share this interview with the Clear Admit audience.
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Published: March 15, 2017
Exceed Your Expectations with a Georgetown McDonough MBA
Sponsored Content For many people, business school is an additional investment that you have to make to switch careers, obtain the job you want or earn a promotion. But those reasons only skim the surface of the true power of an MBA degree. At Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, earning an MBA is about more than the result; it’s a transformational experience. Discover Your Strength Have you ever wondered what you’re capable of or how much you could achieve? That’s what the Full-time and Evening MBA programs at Georgetown McDonough set out to demonstrate
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Published: March 15, 2017
The Foster School Ranks Highly as Research-Focused Business School
Research universities ask questions, generate knowledge and solve problems. According to the Association of American Universities, research-focused universities perform more than half of the nation’s basic research, the results of which are applied to real-world problems every day.
Why does a school’s research agenda matter for MBA candidates? According to a 2014 Financial Times article by Paul Danos, then-dean of Dartmouth's Tuck Business School, it’s one thing that all great MBA programs have in common: a strong representation of outstanding researchers. The reason for this is that part of the value of earning an MBA from a leading school is the expertise that students glean from their professors.
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Published: March 15, 2017
Round 2 Interviews Complete, HBS Gears Up for Round 3
Harvard Business School (HBS) Managing Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Chad Losee took to his Direct from the Director’s Blog this week to look ahead to Round 3. For any anxious Round 2 applicants out there—don’t worry, you didn’t miss any important announcements! Losee simply shared that his team wrapped up Round 2 interviews last week and loved having the chance to get to know you in person—or at least via Skype. “We are in the midst of the (tough) final decisions and will be back in touch soon—March 22nd at noon Eastern Time via
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Published: March 14, 2017
What Bain & Company Looks for in MBA Hires
Bain & Company—widely considered one of the most elite consulting firms in the world—is a coveted post-MBA destination for students at top business schools in every part of the globe. Headquartered in Boston with 53 offices in 34 countries around the world, Bain employs more than 7,000 people and counts as its clients leading Fortune 500 companies, as well as nonprofit and government organizations. And business is booming. According to Keith Bevans, global head of consultant recruiting, the company has grown at a rate of 15 percent a year for the past 20 years, with no slowdown in
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Published: March 13, 2017
7 Takeaways from the 2018 U.S. News Business School Ranking
The schools making up the top 10 in this year’s U.S. News & World Report ranking of the nation’s best MBA programs—released today—were exactly the same as last year. That said, there are a smattering of surprises in terms of how top schools rose and fell relative to one another—and in movement among schools outside of the top 15. At quick glance, here are this year’s top 10, in order of their 2018 rank (2017 rank in parentheses): 1 Harvard Business School (1) 1 University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (4) 3 University of Chicago Booth
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Haas Women in Leadership Conference Draws New Audience: Men
When the Women in Leadership (WiL) organization at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business hosts it annual conference tomorrow, things will be different than in years past. This year, every fifth person in the audience is expected to be male—up from the five to 10 men who have historically attended.
“When we got together to decide what we wanted the conference to be about, we just starting writing things down that were important to us—and collaboration and the involvement of men were both very high on the list,” says WiL Conference Co-Chair Shipra Agarwal (MBA ’17). Both she and the conference’s other co-chair, Chiaki Nakajima (MBA ’17), feel that they are where they are today because they had strong male support. “We thought, ‘Let’s make that the focus of the conference because we want men to be part of it as well and to understand how to be better allies,” Agarwal says. The theme they settled on was “Power of Us: Collaborate. Inspire. Lead.”
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Fridays from the Frontline: NYU Stern Student Shares a Recruiting Road Less Taken
Are you considering the luxury retail industry after business school? If so, don’t miss this week’s Fridays from the Frontline, which comes to us from NYU Stern School of Business second-year MBA student Nina Dudhale. New Jersey-native Dudhale worked in digital acquisition marketing at American Express OPEN before coming to Stern, where she has chosen to specialize in luxury marketing and finance. Nina Dudhale, Stern MBA ’17 As she shares in the post below, folks at Stern warned her at the get-go that recruiting in the luxury retail space is less structured than industries like consulting or
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Cambridge Judge Empowers Women to Become Rising Leaders
Currently, only 26 women serve as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies—roughly 5 percent—and only one in six board members are women (17 percent). While the numbers are up from 12 years ago when there were no women CEOs and only 10 percent of board members were women, there’s still a lot of work to be done. Cambridge University's Judge Business School is among the MBA programs working to further bridge the gap with its Cambridge Rising Women Leaders Programme.
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Social Impact at the Marshall School of Business
When talking about career paths one might pursue after an MBA, most people think of areas like finance, consulting or marketing. Over the past several years, however, MBA students have grown increasingly interested in the business of social impact; according to Business as Unusual, a 2014 Net Impact survey, 88 percent of MBA students report that they’re interested in learning about businesses with social missions and environmental emphases. That’s one reason why the USC Marshall School of Business recently hosted its second annual Social Impact Careers Panel.
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Chicago Booth Names Stanford GSB Professor as Its Next Dean
The path from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business is becoming well worn, as Chicago Booth prepares to welcome its second consecutive dean from the Palo Alto campus. Madhav Rajan, who chairs the accounting department at Stanford GSB and served as senior associate dean for academic affairs from 2010 to 2016, will take the helm at Booth on July 1st, the school announced yesterday.
Sunil Kumar, who served as Chicago Booth’s dean from 2011 until leaving to become provost of Johns Hopkins University in July 2016, also came from Stanford, where spent 14 years, ultimately in the role of senior associate dean. Since his departure, Douglas Skinner, also an accounting professor, has served as interim dean as Chicago Booth conducted a global search for a successor.
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What Women Want in an MBA: Financial Aid and Flexibility
In honor of International Women’s Day, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) today released a new report entitled “What Women Want: A Blueprint for Change in Business Education.” For readers who may be too young to remember the 2000 romantic comedy also called “What Women Want,” it starred Mel Gibson as a chauvinistic advertising executive who suffers a blow to the head that renders him suddenly able to hear everything women around him are thinking. Though first instinct would be to assume that the two—Gibson’s rom-com and GMAC’s research—have nothing at all to do with one another, that’s not
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DecisionWire Data Suggests a Tiered Business School Ranking
As many of our readers know, U.S. News & World Report is scheduled to release its annual ranking of leading MBA programs next week. We wanted to use this time—ahead of the ranking’s release—to highlight some key insights from our MBA DecisionWire data, which we think will provide context for the upcoming rankings and perhaps even foretell some of the results. Our analysis of DecisionWire data yielded some fascinating findings that we believe support a tiered ranking system for schools, one in which the peer group a school finds itself in serves as a better indicator of
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Which Business Schools Produced the Most Unicorn Founders
Billion-dollar startups, affectionately coined “unicorns,” have become a benchmark that business schools around the world use to boast overall success. But which business schools actually produce the most successful startup founders? Earlier this year, U.K. software research firm Sage compiled data on billion-dollar startups, which also included the schools from which company founders graduated. The research, unsurprisingly, found two business schools standing taller than the rest of the competition: Harvard Business School (HBS) and Stanford University Graduate School of Business. HBS alumni produced 23 of these unicorn startups, as reported by Fortune. These
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Data Science Courses Increasingly Find Their Place in MBA Curriculums
Five years ago, MIT Sloan School of Management debuted a new course its professors believed to be the first of its kind. Called “The Analytics Edge,” the course gave students access to large quantities of real data that they could use to hone their analytic skills. “Our focus is on the application and the story, and how to use it in real life,” Allison O’Hair, one of the course’s co-instructors, said as part of a news article on the school’s website at the time. “To our knowledge, this is a new way of teaching ... the only class here that teaches analytics through applications. We let students get their hands dirty with real data and applications of analytics.”
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Fridays from the Frontline: HBS Student Offers Advice for Prospective Latino Students
Today’s Fridays from the Frontline contribution comes to us from Karla Mendez, a first-year MBA student at Harvard Business School (HBS). Born in Mexico, Mendez moved to Fresno, California, when she was five with parents who wanted to build a better life for her family. In the thoughtful post below, Mendez shares some of her experiences as a Latina American, including the tension between wanting to maintain a strong connection to her Mexican American roots while not having them define her completely. She also describes the pressure so often felt by immigrants, and sometimes even more so their
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Top Student Trading Competition Returns to Rotman School
For the 14th consecutive year, the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management last month hosted one of the world’s top student trading competitions. The Rotman International Trading Competition (RITC) is an annual event that draws students and faculty from 52 universities worldwide—including from China, Iceland, India and South Africa—for a three-day simulated market challenge.
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Published: February 28, 2017
New Smith School of Business Program Inspires Fearless Leadership
The development of leadership skills is heavily emphasized by many MBA programs. In fact, it’s often a selling point. At the University of Maryland R.H. Smith School of Business, leadership development is a core part of the UMD Smith MBA experience, reflected in the recent launch of a new program to help encourage fearless leadership in its students.
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Published: February 27, 2017
Black Business Leadership in Focus at Harvard Business School
“Entrepreneurship is a synonym for liberation because those who have success with it—it provides them the freedom to be whoever they want to be,” said Steven Rogers, a senior lecturer on entrepreneurial finance at Harvard Business School (HBS), as part of recent video promoting his latest project. “But more importantly to me is that it provides them with the freedom to uplift others.”
Linking entrepreneurship with freedom in this way provides the perfect set up for Rogers’ new course, “Black Business Leaders and Entrepreneurship.” New this semester, it is the first of its kind at HBS.
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