MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
Published: August 7, 2017
HBS Enters Business Analytics Arena with New Certificate Program
Data driven. In today’s digital world, businesses that aren’t are quickly becoming passé. To help business leaders—including MBA grads—keep up with and leverage the explosion of data now available in every industry, Harvard Business School (HBS) and two other schools at the prestigious Boston university have partnered with 2U, Inc. to deliver a new online certificate program in business analytics. The program is expected to welcome its first cohort of students in March 2018. The Harvard Business Analytics Program, announced yesterday, will bring together faculty from HBS, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied
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Published: August 6, 2017
MIT Sloan Women’s Week Events on Tap in Six Cities for Prospective Female MBA Applicants
At MIT Sloan School of Management, advancing women in leadership is a core commitment. For starters, the student-led group MIT Sloan Women in Management offers female MBA students a range of opportunities to help propel their careers. Sloan also puts on an annual Women’s Week to showcase for prospective female applicants just what the Sloan MBA student experience is like, as well as the many paths its accomplished alumnae pursue.
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Published: August 3, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: How Yale SOM’s MAM Program Prepared Me to Lead in a Humanitarian Disaster
Victor Padilla Taylor, a 2015 graduate of Yale School of Management (SOM)’s Master of Advanced Management (MAM) program, reveals in this week’s Fridays from the Frontline how his time at SOM helped prepare him to confront humanitarian disasters in his current role as a project lead supporting the Logistics Emergency Teams (LET) at the World Economic Forum. Yale SOM’s unique MAM program is a one-year, post-MBA opportunity open to exceptional graduates of business schools within the Global Network for Advanced Management (GNAM) who aspire to become global leaders for business and
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Fridays from the Frontline: HBS Alumna on Why the MBA Is Still Relevant Regardless of Industry
Newly minted Harvard Business School (HBS) graduate Ellen DaSilva (MBA ’17) opted to take two years out of the workforce—in Silicon Valley—to pursue her MBA despite the fact that some in the technology industry give “sideways glances at the mention of an MBA.” In this week’s Fridays from the Frontline, DaSilva argues clearly and persuasively for why she believes the MBA is still relevant regardless of industry because of the leadership skills it hones, the authenticity it encourages, and the network of people it helps establish. Our thanks to DaSilva and to HBS for allowing us
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The Cambridge Judge MBA Finance Approach
According to U.S. News & World Report, a career as a financial manager is the third hottest job for a graduating MBA student in 2017, while a career in accounting ranks number one. Indeed, finance careers pay well and they offer robust job growth, low unemployment rates, and the opportunity for MBAs to use both their quantitative and creative skills.
According to Shawnice Meador, executive director of MBA career and leadership at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flager Business School, who spoke to U.S. News, "These sorts of roles are really critical for a company since they’re trying to make sure that they’re making strategic financial decisions."
With respect to preparing students for careers in finance, the University of Cambridge Judge Business School takes a multifaceted approach.
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New Scholarship Alert: HBS Announces Forward Fellowship for MBA Class of 2020
The Harvard Business School (HBS) recently announced that it will offer students from low-income backgrounds the brand new Forward Fellowship, beginning for the MBA Class of 2020. The needs-based fellowship will award students between $10,000-$20,000 for every year in which they apply. In the announcement, Chad Losee, the HBS Managing Director of Admissions and Financial Aid, said, “At HBS, we are intent on and proactive about maintaining the diversity of our student body and supporting individuals from all backgrounds. We believe it is important to acknowledge both where each of our students is now
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Fridays From the Frontline: A Foster MBA Grad’s Journey from Appalachia to Accenture
This week’s Fridays from the Frontline first appeared on the MBA blog of the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. Its protagonist, Steve Tomick, is a recent MBA graduate of the program headed off to a management consultant role at Accenture in Seattle in the firm’s communications, media, and technology group. But as you’ll read, his background couldn’t have been more different. An undergraduate dual major in history and education at Wake Forest, Tomick spent six years working with the Appalachia Service Project, a nonprofit whose mission is to improve substandard housing for low-income families
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Darden Debuts MBA Application Tip Video Series Amid MBA Program Leadership Changes
Sara Neher, long-time assistant dean of admissions at UVA’s Darden School of Business, recently announced the debut of a 12-part MBA application tip video series for the 2017-18 admissions season. The brief videos—each between three and five minutes long—cover individual components of the application and are designed so that applicants can watch them all at once and/or return to them one by one as they work on different parts of the application.
“I really encourage you to watch them because they will give you tips that will help you prevent mistakes and know what we are looking for,” explained Neher in an introductory video. “We do mean for the application to be pretty straightforward, but I think it always help to have a few extra tips and a little bit of thought behind what the questions are really asking.”
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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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