MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
Coding Finds Its Way Into Top Business School Curriculums
Harvard Business School (HBS) plans to offer a computer programming elective within the next couple of years, and other top business schools may be moving in the same direction as more companies seek MBAs with strong technical skills, according to a recent report in Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Paul Gompers, who chairs the MBA elective curriculum at HBS, notes that MBA students there have formed coding clubs or head across to Harvard’s Cambridge campus to take introductory computer science, but that a course specifically tailored to business students is needed at the school.
“This is the changing nature of the workforce, and this is what our graduates are going on to be doing in the next five to 10 to 20 years,” Gompers told Bloomberg BW.
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MBA Students from Leading Global Business Schools to Help Child Cancer Charity
A United Kingdom charity focused on helping children with cancer in developing countries will receive an infusion of expertise and energy this summer as more than 40 students from top business schools in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas develop plans to tackle business problems faced by the organization.
The students, working in teams as part of the Financial Times MBA Challenge, will assist the FT’s seasonal appeal partner, which this year is World Child Cancer (WCC). Seven teams of students – who hail from schools including Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, Oxford Saïd Business School, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, London Business School, ESADE and IE Business School, among others – will each be partnered with a mentor and required to submit a business plan in September on a set topic.
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New Johnson Graduate School of Management Application Permits LinkedIn Submissions
Applicants to Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management can now incorporate their LinkedIn profiles as part of the school’s redesigned application.
Johnson is using LinkedIn’s open platform to allow MBA applicants to pre-fill employment history, educational background and other parts of their application with information from their LinkedIn profiles. Candidates who submit information in this way are asked to grant the school access to their full LinkedIn profiles as part of the application process.
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Alumni Gift to Fund Construction of New Conference Center at Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School (HBS) last month announced plans to build a new center on its Boston campus that will serve as a place for students, faculty, alumni and business leaders to convene and share ideas. Called Klarman Hall in recognition of a generous alumni gift, the new building will feature a large conference center, a performance space and a community gathering space and is expected to open in 2018.
A gift from Seth Klarman (MBA 1982) and his wife Beth will make the construction of the new facility possible. Klarman is president and CEO of Boston-based investment management firm the Baupost Group, his wife is president of the Klarman Family Foundation and both serve as members of HBS’s Board of Dean’s Advisors.
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The MBA Tour Summer 2014 Events
If you’re considering pursuing an MBA, attending an MBA fair is a great place to start. The MBA Tour is hosting nine events across the U.S. this July, starting in Chicago on July 16.
What are the benefits of attending an MBA Tour conference? Hear from students who have attended here!
COLLECT INFORMATION AND EASILY COMPARE PROGRAMS
MBA Panel Presentations cover valuable business school admissions topics and answer a wide range of MBA applicant questions. The panels are hosted by professionals with expertise spanning several topics, including: Preparing Your MBA Application, Financing Your MBA, and GMAT Strategy.
School Presentations highlight unique program features in a 30-minute session given by admission representatives. These presentations are ideal for candidates to learn detailed information, compare different programs, and prepare for speaking with representatives during the MeetUp Sessions or MBA Fair.
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UCLA’s Anderson School of Management Becomes Self-Supporting
Beginning today, the University of California at Los Angeles’s Anderson School of Management will give up state funding and instead become self-supporting, the school announced. Anderson’s dean last week signed a three-year deal with the university provost through which the school’s full-time MBA program will turn down state subsidies in exchange for greater control over faculty recruitment and salary levels and the ability to determine its own tuition, among other things. Anderson hopes to make up for the loss in state funding through donations and likely higher tuitions, reports Inside Higher Ed. In recent years, only about 18
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McDonough School of Business Admissions Director Reveals New Essay Question to Clear Admit
The Fall 2015 MBA application for Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business will feature only one required essay, Clear Admit learned today as part of an interview for our Admissions Director Q&A Series.
Though the new application has not yet gone live – it will be available to applicants early next month – McDonough Associate Dean of MBA Admissions Shari Hubert shared that her team has decided to reduce the number of required essays to just one. The question will be as follows:
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Some Business Schools Adopt Tracking Software in a Bid to Increase Yield
A number of top-tier business schools have begun to use software to track prospective applicants’ interactions with their school in an effort to gauge how interested they are in attending, according to a recent article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The data points – which can include whether a student has emailed admissions staff, how many admissions events they’ve attended and whether they requested program information – are now included in candidate profiles alongside test scores and essay responses, Bloomberg BW adds.
Most schools report that student interest isn’t a main factor in admissions decisions, but the fact that increasing numbers of schools are using the tracking programs suggest that the data gathered counts for something.
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A Glimpse Inside the Lives of Nine Stanford Graduate School of Business MBAs
You can learn what it’s like to be an MBA student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) straight from students themselves thanks to a cool feature earlier this month on the school’s MBA Blog.
Called, aptly, “A Week in the Life,” the feature includes nine profiles of students from the Class of 2015 sharing their day-to-day experiences over the course of a normal week at business school. The group includes four men and five women who came from around the country and the globe to pursue their MBA at Stanford. More than half of the students profiled are international, hailing from Brazil, Zimbabwe, China, India, South Korea and Argentina.
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Ross School of Business MBAs Win Global Sustainability Challenge
A team of MBA students from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business defeated finalists from Yale School of Management and Rollins School of Business earlier this week to win the 2014 Nespresso Sustainability MBA Challenge, the school reports.
In total, 59 teams from business schools in 19 different countries took part in the challenge, in which Nespresso invited them to develop innovative solutions to issues surrounding its supply chain of high-quality coffee.
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New MIT Sloan School of Management Essay Question Presents Challenging Opportunity to Applicants
MIT Sloan School of Management, like many top business schools, has recently released its essay questions for the upcoming application season, leaving prospective applicants and others in the admissions community buzzing about how this year’s prompts require more or less from applicants than in years past. Sloan put a new twist on things late last week when it revealed that its newest question invites applicants to write their own letters of recommendation.
Make no mistake. These essays are not intended to take the place of actual letters of recommendation, two of which will still be required of all applicants to Sloan. Instead, the new essay prompt is designed to encourage applicants to reflect on themselves in a new and different way. Specifically, they are asked to put themselves in their most recent supervisor’s shoes and – from that manager’s perspective – offer an assessment of how they themselves interact with others, stand out from others and what they would change about themselves.
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Renovation Planned for USC’s Marshall School of Business Thanks to $15 Million Trustee Gift
A $15 million gift from a trustee of the University of Southern California (USC) will fund complete renovation of a building that will serve as a new center for the Marshall School of Business’s international efforts, the school announced yesterday.
The gift, from USC trustee Thomas J. Barrack Jr. and his family, will transform Bridge Hall, which served as the Marshall School’s first building when it was built in 1928. In recognition of the generous donation, it will be renamed Barrack Hall.
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500 Harvard Business School Alumni Contribute to First Crowdsourced Article
Harvard Business Review recently published its first formally crowdsourced article, a piece entitled “The Capitalist’s Dilemma” that included contributions from almost 500 Harvard Business School (HBS) alumni. The experiment was designed to helped build on a theory put forth by renowned HBS Business Administration Professor Clayton Christensen about the flawed way that companies make investment decisions, which he first explored as part of a New York Times article in 2012. Lead authors Christensen, who is best known for his work on disruptive innovation, and Derek van Bever, a senior lecturer in entrepreneurial management at
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Better Storytelling Leads to Soaring Application Volume at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School
The Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill saw the number of applicants to its MBA program increase 28 percent this year over last, growth the school attributes to better “storytelling” and branding, according to a report in Triangle Business Journal.
UNC as a whole has been working to increase brand recognition, and the increase in applicant volume at the business school is in part a result of these branding efforts, Sridhar Balasubramanian, associate dean for the MBA program, told the Triangle Business Journal.
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UPenn Study of Wharton MOOCs Suggest They Don’t Threaten Traditional MBA Programs
A University of Pennsylvania study of massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered by its Wharton School reveals the online courses present an opportunity for business schools to expand to under-served markets rather than a threat to their traditional business programs. The study findings were published today in the Harvard Business Review.
The study – led by researchers Ezekiel Emanuel, Penn’s vice provost for global initiatives; Gayle Christensen, executive director of Penn Global; and Brandon Alcorn, Penn Global project manager – is the first of its kind to focus specifically on MOOCs offered by a business school. The researchers surveyed more than 875,000 students enrolled in nine MOOCs offered by Wharton.
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HEC Paris Inaugurates New e-Lab
Earlier this month, leading European business school HEC Paris launched its new e-Lab, a unique space designed to support entrepreneurship, creativity, teamwork and communication through by making high-tech technology available to its students.
“The ‘e’ in e-Lab signifies both ‘entrepreneurship’ and ‘electronic,’ emphasizing the close link between the two,” read a release on the HEC Paris website announcing the May 20th inauguration of the new space. Designed for use by HEC Paris students interested in entrepreneurship, the e-Lab features video-conferencing capabilities, walls completely covered in "white board" paint, and portable equipment that can be moved easily to facilitate collaboration.
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Columbia Business School Annual Dinner Rakes in $3.2 Million
A gala event held earlier this month helped raise more than $3 million to fund financial aid, faculty research and entrepreneurial outreach at Columbia Business School, the school reports. The school’s 38th Annual Dinner drew more than 800 people to New York City’s Waldorf Astoria on Monday, May 5th.
Setting a record, 60 new donors contributed 11 percent of the $3.2 million in total funds raised. There were 173 gifts in total, consistent with last year. Attendees included 120 current students from the full-time MBA, EMBA and EMBA-Global programs, as well as more than 40 alumni club leaders representing 30 regional alumni clubs, 13 countries, and two affinity clubs, the school reports.
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UNC Kenan-Flagler School of Business Joined by Growing Number of Partners in OneMBA® Program
Kenan-Flagler was one of the four founding partner schools of the OneMBA® Program. Other founding partners include Mexico’s EGADE Business School Tecnológico de Monterrey (EGADE Business School), Brazil’s Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo da Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV-EAESP) and Erasmus University's Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) in the Netherlands. This week, OneMBA announced its newest partner, the School of Management at Xiamen University.
OneMBA is a global executive MBA program offered in partnership by business schools around the world. In the 12 years since its launch, OneMBA had established a reputation for itself as one of the world’s most unique and diverse international MBA programs, according to Yifeng Shen, dean of the Xiamen University School of Management (SMXMU).
“OneMBA's vision and goals reflect those of Tan Kah Kee, the ‘Henry Ford of Asia,’ who founded Xiamen University and its business program in 1921 with the call to serve China while embracing world cultures,” Shen said in a statement.
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What a Harvard Business School MBA Doesn’t Teach You
With just days to go before he graduates, Harvard Business School (HBS) student Ben Faw compiled a list of things he didn’t learn at HBS into a compelling infographic that quickly became one of the most popular blog posts on LinkedIn earlier this week. Since Clear Admit readers often have HBS in their sights, we thought we’d share some of Faw’s insights here.
An army combat veteran, Faw had the idea to dispel some of the misconceptions he thinks people sometimes have about the MBA, and especially about the HBS MBA. With the assistance of fellow classmates and a local startup, he helped create an informative post to tackle the myths one by one.
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GMAC Corporate Recruiters Survey Reveals Strong Hiring Forecasts for MBAs
Good news for MBAs seeking jobs. The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) released the results of its annual global survey of employers, revealing that 80 percent of business school recruiters plan to hire MBAs in 2014. That’s up seven percentage points from last year and a whopping 30 percentage points over 2009, in the midst of the economic crisis.
GMAC’s annual Corporate Recruiters Survey, now in its 13th year, polled 565 employers from 44 countries in February and March, including 32 of the top 100 companies in the FT 500 and 36 of the Fortune 100. GMAC, which administers the GMAT exam, conducts the employers survey in partnership with EFMD and the MBA Career Services and Employer Alliance.
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The Soaring Price of Business School Networking
A New York Times article this weekend examined the growing number of trips and other “lifestyle experiences” that now compete with academic ones as part of the MBA program at many leading business schools. Even those that don’t offer any form of academic credit can be viewed as valuable networking opportunities that can help position students for jobs upon graduation—worth their steep price tags in the eyes of some.
As an example, the Times story lead with a February ski trip to Park City, Utah, that about a third of the MBA class from the University of Texas as Austin’s McCombs School of Business went on. The three-day trip, planned by a student-run group called the Graduate Business Adventure Team, was advertised to cost about $1,000, though final costs may have ended up higher.
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Harvard, Wharton, Stanford Release Class of 2017 Application Updates
Following the Round 3 notification details that went out to applicants to the Class of 2016 on Wednesday, Harvard Business School (HBS) Admissions Director Dee Leopold wasted no time in looking ahead to the application season for the Class of 2017.
In a post to her Admissions Director Blog yesterday, she outlined what prospective applicants should expect in the year ahead. Not to be outdone, Stanford Graduate School of Business and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School also released application updates this week.
In her post, HBS's Leopold shared the optional “essay” question that applicants will encounter when they look at the application for the Class of 2017, unchanged from last year:
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Harvard Business School Admissions Coming Soon to a City Near You
Prospective applicants in parts of Europe and Asia will soon have an opportunity to learn more about the Harvard Business School (HBS) MBA program as part of a series of outreach events scheduled for June. Members of the HBS Admissions Board will be visiting Madrid, Milan, Berlin, Shanghai, Seoul and Tokyo between June 9th and 14th. These international events will include a presentation from current HBS students, as well as alumni and a member of the Admissions Board. In several instances, the event will be followed by a reception, giving prospective applicants an opportunity to network with one another and members of the HBS community.
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Ithaca Mayor Praises Johnson Graduate School of Business Students’ Community Service
Community service projects led by MBA students from Cornell’s Samuel Johnson Graduate School of Business were recognized as part of a recent symposium highlighting leadership through service. Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick, a 2009 Cornell graduate, praised students from his alma mater for seizing opportunities to volunteer in the community.
"I believe that young people like you have the skills that we need in the nonprofit sector that we are not getting," Myrick said. "You have the energy, the creativity, and the moral authority to make change, and it's those things — not experience — that matter."
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Haas School of Business Raises $250,000 for Socially Responsible Investment Fund
The Center for Responsible Business at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business harnessed the power of a new Berkeley crowdfunding platform this semester to raise more than $250,000 for its Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Fund, the school reports.
The center blew past its $100,000 fundraising goal, soliciting donations totaling $126,209 from individuals and corporations, which was then doubled thanks to a matching gift from alumnus Charlie Michaels, BS ’78. Total funds raised came to $252,418.
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