MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
A PEEK Is All It Takes: HBS’s Innovative Initiative to Woo Women
HBS Professor Youngme Moon teaching PEEK students Photo credit: Evgenia Eliseeva
For Priyanka Krishnamoorthy, a 2015 Mt. Holyoke graduate working in investment banking at Bank of America, a recent weekend at Harvard Business School (HBS) helped set her sights on pursuing an MBA. The Sri Lankan native majored in economics and minored in math and had been thinking about business school for a while. She originally read about PEEK—an innovative weekend program HBS debuted last month for students from women’s colleges—in an article in the paper. She decided to apply after attending an information session HBS held at neighboring Smith College. “They pitched it really well as a way to see what HBS is like,” she recalls. “On campus you hear a lot about PhD programs and law school, but not about business school.”
For Krishnamoorthy, the highlight of the weekend was getting to meet current HBS students and alumnae and hearing about the decisions they made both before and after business school. Just a few weeks into her own first job, she found their choices really eye-opening. “I thought there was a set path to it, but they all said, ‘No, you can come from anywhere.’” She was encouraged multiple times throughout the weekend to think of the MBA more as a master’s in leadership than a master’s in business administration.
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NYU Stern Ranked Number One in Support of LGBTQ MBA Students
Last week’s momentous Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality helped more people than ever before feel like the United States is a great place to be part of the LGBTQ community. Maybe it got you wondering about which business schools are the best places to be part of that community?
As it turns out, there’s a ranking for that. And this year, New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business soared to the top, winning recognition for getting more of its student body involved to help foster an LGBTQ-inclusive campus culture than any other top business school.
The MBA Ally Challenge rankings, released in June, are the culmination of a year-long competition launched by nonprofit organization Friendfactor as part of an effort to encourage straight people to become visible and active allies in their workplace and campus communities.
Twenty-three schools participated this year, shattering prior records. Together, the business schools involved 9,000 students as allies—more than double last year’s participation of 4,300—and hosted more than 280 events and activities. Collectively, the schools improved LGBTQ inclusiveness on campuses by 30 percent based on measures taken at the beginning and again at the end of the school year, Friendfactor reports.
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Fuqua Admissions Dean Dishes on Essays and Life
It’s not every admissions director who will make time during her vacation to discuss how prospective business school applicants should approach their essays. And yet Liz Riley Hargrove, associate dean for admissions at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, did just that. Speaking from North Carolina’s Outer Banks this morning, before the kids woke up ready to head to the beach, she shared insights with Clear Admit on the essay prompts released last week.
Not a lot has changed this year in terms of Fuqua’s application, it turns out. Applicants will find they have twice as much space in which to answer three short-answer prompts—one on short-term goals, one on long-term goals and one on an alternative plan should that first short-term goal not pan out. This year candidates get 500 characters for each response, up from 250 last year. “We wanted to give candidates a little more opportunity to expand upon their responses,” she says of this year’s doubled answer field.
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MBA Provides Both Immediate and Lasting Value, Say Graduates
Type “the MBA is” into Google, and the autocomplete box fills with inauspicious indicators of the degree’s value. “The MBA is losing its magic” is followed by “the MBA is worthless” and “why the MBA is a waste of time and money.” Students graduating with an MBA disagree—and quite emphatically—according to a survey report released today at the annual Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) Conference in Denver.
“Business school graduates are clear in their judgment that their degrees not only provided immediate value, but lasting value,” Bob Alig, GMAC’s executive vice president for school products, said in a statement announcing the results. Indeed, nine out of 10 of the more than 3,000 graduating business school students who responded to the GMAC Global Management Education Graduate Survey (GMEGS) rate the value of their degree as good to outstanding, and 88 percent would recommend their program to others considering a graduate business degree.
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Today’s Mobile Generation Wants Business School Admissions on the Go
Business schools that aren’t meeting prospective applicants on their mobile devices and via social media may need to rethink their strategy—and fast. This according to a recent survey measuring how today's mobile generation consumes media as part of the MBA admissions process. Results of the survey, conducted by Southwark Consulting and the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), were released last week.
“Everyone has read stories and surveys about this newest generation shifting its media consumption habits,” says Southwark consultant Alex Brown, who co-authored the study. “The interesting thing about this study is that it is the first one to specifically target people applying to or considering business school.” The survey’s 743 respondents from around the world were all registered on mba.com, the official website of the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT), which is the primary entrance exam for business school applicants.
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Cornell’s Johnson School Admission Director Shares Excitement about Forté Conference
Current MBA students and alumni from leading schools around the country and the globe convened yesterday and today for the 2015 Forté Foundation MBA Women’s Leadership Conference, held this year at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Representatives from Forté’s sponsor schools are as important a part of the conference as the student attendees. Admissions directors and others from Forté’s 48 sponsor schools attend in order to meet students, learn from speakers and network with sponsor companies. They also share their own challenges and triumphs as they relate to enhancing the experience of current and prospective female MBA students.
Judi Byers, executive director of admissions and financial aid at the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, shared her excitement via Twitter about attending this year’s conference. Clear Admit caught up with Byers, who joined the Johnson School earlier this spring, to learn a little more about what she most hoped to gain from the event.
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Forté Foundation Women’s Leadership Conference Draws Record Attendance
Current female MBA students and alumni have come out in droves this year for the 2015 Forté Foundation MBA Women’s Leadership Conference, taking place now at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Kicking off with a sponsors meeting on Thursday for school and company representatives, followed by a career-focused day of programming yesterday and a day centered around professional development today, the conference this year has welcomed 459 MBA women and alumni, in addition to more than 100 speakers and presenters. For those who don’t know Forté, it is a nonprofit consortium of leading companies and top business schools devoted to launching women into successful business careers.
“I think we have pulled together some really interesting topics that a lot people want to hear about,” says Elissa Sangster, Forté Foundation executive director, when asked what contributed to this year’s record attendance. “We are excited to see it all come together.”
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A European MBA: Right for You?
IESE in Barcelona, Spain
With the dollar reaching a 12-year high against the euro earlier this spring, much ink has been spilled about how the time is right to head to Europe for an MBA. Indeed, pursuing a graduate management education abroad can present a range of advantages for American students—with cost savings chief among them, especially given the recent relative strength of the dollar. That said, the decision of whether or not to head to one of Europe’s top business schools is a highly personal one best made after careful consideration of many factors that extend well beyond any savings tied to currency rates.
“Oh yes, I definitely did benefit from the exchange rate,” says Alexander Eldred, a Washington, DC native currently completing his MBA at France’s HEC Paris. As luck would have it, Eldred paid the bulk of HEC’s 52,000 euro tuition in March, right as the euro dipped to 1.05 to the dollar. Had he paid the entire tuition then, it would have amounted to $54,600 for a degree that just a year earlier would have run him $72,280. Add to that living expenses, which are similarly lower than they have been historically thanks to the exchange rate, and the savings stack up.
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Berkeley Haas Center Expands Social Sector Leadership Focus
A new name and a new logo help trumpet the expanded mission of a center devoted to advancing social sector leadership at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Previously known as the Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership, the renamed Center for Social Sector Leadership (CSSL) seeks to help develop a new generation of business leaders focused on fostering social impact across the public, private and nonprofit sectors, the school reports.
“The future requires collaboration between these sectors, and Berkeley-Haas is arguably the best place to define how this next generation of problem solving works,” Ben Mangan, executive director of the rechristened Center for Social Sector Leadership, said in a statement. The center focuses on training MBA students to become multi-sector leaders, helping them build skills that will serve them as corporate leaders, public advisors and members of nonprofit and social enterprise boards.
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Stanford GSB Students Single Out Marketing Professor for Distinguished Teaching Award
As part of commencement exercises last week, MBA students at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) celebrated an associate professor of marketing for his contributions in teaching and student impact, the school reports.
Jonathan Levav, who joined Stanford in 2011, teaches a management foundation class entitled “Project Launch,” in which students learn how to analyze market situations to determine whether a product launch makes sense. He also teaches an elective called “From Launch to Liquidity,” which calls on students to examine the challenges start-ups face in achieving liquidity from the perspectives of organizational behavior, marketing and finance. His research—which combines laboratory and field experiments with secondary data analysis—focuses on consumer behavior and behavioral decision theory.
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Georgetown McDonough’s Shari Hubert Points to Subtle Changes in New Application
Refreshed following a two-day staff retreat, the head of admissions at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business took time this morning to share with Clear Admit her advice to prospective candidates on how to approach the school’s application for the Class of 2018.
Though its essay question remains unchanged from last year, there are subtle shifts elsewhere in the application, says Shari Hubert, who has served as Georgetown McDonough’s associate dean of MBA admissions since 2013. Among other things, applicants will have greater opportunity to highlight experiences living and working abroad. Read on to learn more about these subtle shifts, as well as Hubert’s advice on how to make taking a risk in response to the essay pay off.
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Darden Adds Experiential Learning, First-Year Customization Options to MBA Curriculum
The Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia yesterday announced a range of enhancements to its MBA program, including a new, required experiential learning course and greater opportunities for customization of the MBA program for first-year students.
Beginning this year, all incoming first-year students will be required to take a new course called ‘Innovation, Design and Entrepreneurship in Action’ or IDEA, according to Mike Lenox, associate dean for innovation programs and academic director of Darden’s Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. As part of IDEA, students will be organized into teams to work on real-world, global field projects over the course of seven weeks. Corporations, government agencies and nonprofit organizations will sponsor these challenges.
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MBA Applicants Say Fuqua, Chicago Booth Get to Know Them Best, Survey Finds
Applicants who applied to leading business schools in the 2014-15 admissions cycle felt that Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business got to know them better than others, according to survey results released today by the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants (AIGAC). Notably, scores for how well schools got to know applicants fell this year over last for every school except Chicago Booth—and more so at schools that reduced the number of essays applicants could reply to in the 2014-15 application cycle.
AIGAC, which was co-founded in 2006 to set and promote high ethical standards and professional development among graduation admissions consultants, has been conducting an annual survey of MBA applicants for the past six years. Survey questions are designed to solicit feedback from applicants on everything from the tools they use to research programs to where and why they ultimately enroll to how they expect an MBA will impact their future careers and salaries.
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$11 Million Gift Establishes New Technology Center at UCLA Anderson
The number of students studying technology is on the rise at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and a new center launched this week will create even more opportunities for research and scholarship in technology management, the school reported this week. An $11 million gift from James L. Easton, chairman and CEO of global sports equipment manufacturers Easton Sports, will launch the new center, which expands a technology leadership program established by Easton in 2009.
The new Easton Technology Management Center will serve as a hub for innovative research and scholarship in technology leadership, develop closer ties with UCLA’s engineering and medical schools, as well as technology industry professionals, and help drive curriculum innovation in the area of technology leadership. Anderson Associate Professor Guillaume Roels will serve as the center’s faculty director.
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$31 Million Alumni Gift to Establish New Entrepreneurship Center at CMU
Good news for the entrepreneurial applicant considering the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU): A generous alumni gift will establish a new hub for entrepreneurial activities across the university, the school announced yesterday.
Alumnus James R. Swartz (MSIA’66), founding partner of global venture capital firm Accel Partners, has given $31 million to the school, which will create the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.
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McCombs Director of MBA Admissions Weighs in on Essays, Application Changes
The McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin earlier this week posted its essay questions for the application season. Though the prompts remain largely the same as last year, McCombs Director of MBA Admissions Rodrigo Malta had several interesting tidbits of news to share yesterday in an interview with Clear Admit.
“We really, really, really love our first essay question,” Malta says of the prompt that invites applicants to introduce themselves to members of their future McCombs cohort. “We have had it for three years now, so we had it way before Harvard did,” he adds with a satisfied chuckle.
When the question debuted at McCombs the year before last, applicants were asked to reply in essay form. Last year, McCombs offered greater flexibility, inviting applicants to choose between writing an essay, sharing a video introduction or sharing an about.me profile.
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New Courses, Boot Camps Keep Kellogg MBAs on the Cutting Edge
From the very latest in how to market consumer packaged goods (CPG) to the finer arts of persuasive data visualization, a new series of classes and boot camps at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management is giving MBA students there the tools they need to stay current in the ever-evolving world of business.
Kicking things off last month, the Kellogg Marketing Club partnered with CPG giant Kraft to offer a day-long boot camp designed for first-year students preparing for summer gigs with CPG firms. Kraft company leaders led the boot camp sessions, which covered topics ranging from channel relationships to Nielsen ratings.
“The purpose of the boot camp was to give first-year students some exposure to concepts that they will encounter in their consumer packaged goods internships, but are not necessarily covered in the first-year curriculum,” says Eric Leininger, clinical associate professor of executive education, who directs Kellogg’s Chief Marketing Officer Program.
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Why Mission Matters at MIT Sloan School of Management
Spoiler Alert co-founders Ricky Ashenfelter and Emily MalinaPhoto credit: Mimi Phan/MIT Sloan
How important is a business school’s mission statement to the experience of its students? According to recent graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management, the school’s mission—to develop principled, innovative leaders who improve the world and to generate ideas that advance management practice—influenced where they chose to attend business school, the experiences they had there and the future path of their careers.
Ricky Ashenfelter knew he wanted a school in a market that had a lot of entrepreneurial ventures, which led him to focus his search on San Francisco and Boston. But more than that, he also wanted a school that valued and would offer coursework tied to energy and sustainability. That narrowed his focus further to MIT Sloan, the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and Stanford Graduate School of Business, he says.
“What I liked most about Sloan was that it was part of a larger MIT ecosystem, which was not the case for many business schools,” Ashenfelter says. And so he left his consulting job at Deloitte and headed for Boston hoping to find solutions to the problems of food waste in business supply chains.
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FIFA Corruption Scandal Serves Up Ethics Course Material for MBA Students
“Ethics and integrity are essential in the world of sport and are topics that have continued to gain importance for FIFA and the football community in recent years." These words, spoken by former Fédération Internationale de Football (FIFA) President Joseph “Sepp” Blatter in August of last year, ring somewhat hollow today. At the time, the international governing body for soccer that he then led was preparing to host the first-ever World Summit on Ethics in Sports in Belgium. "We therefore welcome the opportunity to host this special summit and look forward to a fruitful debate among international experts on these important topics,” Blatter continued.
Maybe he missed the conference? Apparently, he either didn’t listen to the international experts or he thought that what they had to say somehow didn’t apply to his own organization. Earlier this week, Blatter announced that he would resign as president of FIFA following the indictment by the United States government of several current and former FIFA officials and sports marketing officials for bribery, fraud and money laundering.
As devastating as the unfolding scandal has proven for Blatter and FIFA’s reputation, there are valuable lessons to be learned, and professors at several leading business schools fully expect to use the FIFA case to teach their MBA students.
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Rainforest Alliance President Joins NYU Stern to Head New Sustainable Business Center
Resolving to better train business leaders to take on the environmental and human challenges facing the world, New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business today announced that it will ring in 2016 by launching a new Center for Sustainability Business. Environmental activist and steward Tensie Whelan, currently the president of the Rainforest Alliance, will join the Stern faculty to establish and lead the new center in January 2016.
Whelan, who earned her bachelor’s degree from NYU in 1980, returns to her alma mater with more than 25 years of experience confronting environmental and sustainability issues at the local, national and international level. She helped grow the Rainforest Alliance’s budget from $4.5 million to $50 million, recruiting 5,000 companies in more than 60 countries to transform their engagement with sustainability through partnership with the organization.
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HBS Alumnus Gives Largest Gift in University’s History to School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
An alumnus of the Harvard Business School (HBS) today made the largest gift in Harvard University’s history—a $400 million endowment that will support the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The gift, from billionaire hedge fund manager John A. Paulson (MBA ’80), will help fund SEAS’s planned expansion across the river from Cambridge to Allston, where its scientists and engineers will occupy research and teaching facilities adjacent to HBS and the Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab).
“John Paulson’s extraordinary gift will enable the growth and ensure the strength of engineering and applied sciences at Harvard for the benefit of generations to come,” Harvard University President Drew Faust said in a statement. “His appreciation of the importance of SEAS to faculty, students, and schools across the university has motivated a historic act of generosity that will change Harvard and enhance our impact on the world beyond.”
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Prince of Wales Challenges Prospective, Current Business School Students to Champion Sustainability
Speaking last week at London Business School (LBS), His Royal Highness (HRH) the Prince of Wales challenged current and future MBA students to demand an education that will prepare them to lead the world toward greater sustainability.
“To all those current business school students – and to those who are deciding where to study – ask yourself, is your chosen business school really going to equip you to be the kind of leader that is so badly needed for the next 50 years? Nothing less will do,” Prince Charles said.
LBS hosted the May 28th event, which was convened by the Prince's Accounting for Sustainability Project (A4S) and the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL). Speaking to an assembled audience that included deans and leading academics from business schools from around the world, HRH conceded that some progress has been made in the past two decades in terms of incorporating sustainability into mainstream accounting and finance research and teaching within business schools.
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Big Shoes to Fill at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business
Photo by Laura DeCapua
One month from today, Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business will officially welcome its new dean as Professor Matthew Slaughter succeeds 20-year veteran of the post Dean Paul Danos.
Talk about big shoes to fill. Dartmouth President Phil Hanlon called Danos “everything any institution could want in a business school dean,” and more than 50 alumni and friends contributed to a $10 million endowment to name the deanship in his honor, supporting in perpetuity all who come after him.
In a wide-ranging interview published recently by the Dartmouth Office of Public Affairs, soon-to-be-Dean Slaughter talks about what it’s like to follow in Danos’s footsteps, what he thinks prepares him for the challenge and more.
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Sustainability Takes Center Stage at Harvard Business School Commencement
Leah Ricci (left) and Allison Webster (right) stand ready to help HBS Commencement attendees dispose of materials properly
Forget crimson. The stoles and tassels worn by Harvard Business School (HBS) graduates today may have been deep red, but the school was going for green in its commencement exercises this year. As part of the day’s events—as well as those of Class Day yesterday and Reunion tomorrow—HBS graduates, alumni and guests will take part in a coordinated composting effort unlike any in the school’s history.
For the first time ever, the back-to-back celebrations this week at HBS will feature completely compostable lunch containers and utensils, which attendees will sort into designated bins for recycling, composting and trash. And because it can sometimes be hard to determine which items go into which bins—especially for novice environmentalists—HBS Green Team volunteers will staff each of the 20 sorting stations to help people know what’s what.
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Columbia Business School Admissions Director Provides Insight into 2015-16 Essays
Columbia Business School (CBS) kicked off the application cycle for the Class of 2018, sending its application live in late April, before any other leading business school. Though this year’s essay questions aren’t hugely different from last year’s, the school’s admissions director took time to share her perspective on the subtle changes with Clear Admit and offer some guidance to applicants who may be preparing to embark upon the application process.
Speaking to Clear Admit yesterday, Admissions Director Amanda Carlson turned first to the school’s first essay prompt—the “career goals/why a Columbia MBA now” question.
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