MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
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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Darden i.Lab Incubator Welcomes New Ventures
Tomorrow, the i.Lab Incubator at the University of Virginia (UVA)’s Darden School of Business will kick off its 10-week summer session, welcoming 23 entrepreneurs with high hopes for their fledgling businesses. In the mix this year: a matchmaking service for vacationers and owners of high-end vacation homes, a communication network to support development work in sub-Saharan Africa and an online recruiting platform geared specifically toward MBA students at top schools.
Darden’s i.Lab Incubator, or “i.Lab” was launched in 2010 by the school’s Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. A fundraising challenge championed by alumnus W. L. Lyons Brown III (MBA ’87) helped finance a new state-of-the-art facility to house the i.Lab, which opened in summer 2012. The program has since expanded to include not only Darden students but also highly qualified entrepreneurs from the larger UVA and Charlottesville communities.
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Star Sternie Recognized for Helping Promote Inclusion and Diversity within NYU’s MBA Class
Hurnyak with NYU Stern Dean Peter Henry at last night's Academic Awards and Service Recognition Reception
Rachel Hurnyak is proof positive that good things sometimes come in small packages. The petite, soft-spoken president of NYU Stern School of Business LGBTQ student group OutClass was honored by Dean Peter Henry at an awards ceremony last night for her leadership and contributions to the school’s community.
Thanks to the efforts of Hurnyak and other Sternies, the New York City business school this year introduced numerous initiatives emphasizing diversity and inclusion—part of the school’s commitment to promoting “EQ” (emotional quotient) as an integral value within graduate management education.
“I wanted to come to NYU Stern because to me it represented the type of school that would be the best and brightest in terms of diversity and inclusion,” Hurnyak said in an early-morning interview with Clear Admit yesterday before heading off to Yankee Stadium for NYU’s school-wide graduation ceremony. (She did not yet know about the award she would receive later that night.)
Hurnyak, who identifies as a member of the LGBTQ community, was less drawn by the school’s proximity to Wall Street and its investment banks and more by its location within the Village, where the LGBTQ civil rights movement began in the 1960s, she says. When she arrived, though, she found that there was still room for improvement in terms of making the school a more diverse and inclusive place where everyone—regardless of sexual orientation, race, class or gender—could feel safe and supported.
Rather than waiting for something to happen organically or one person leading the charge for change, several groups—including OutClass, the Association of Hispanic and Black Business Students and Stern Women in Business—worked collaboratively to champion greater diversity and inclusion school-wide, Hurnyak says. “Together, we succeeded at getting Stern to a much better place.”
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Insight into Indian School of Business Class of 2016
The Indian School of Business (ISB) earlier this week shared details about the students in its current Post Graduate Program in Management (PGP) class, revealing continued expansion overall, increased interest from students from nonprofit and NGO sectors and a slight dip in the representation of women.
There are 813 students in ISB’s PRG Class of 2016, with 560 students at its Hyderabad campus and 253 students at its Mohali campus. Of those, 236 are women. While this is the highest number of women in absolute terms so far in the school’s history, it represents 29 percent of the overall class, down slightly from 30 percent last year.
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Yale SOM Students, City of New Haven Launch Small Business Academy
Small local businesses in New Haven will now benefit from free consulting from Yale School of Management (SOM) MBA students thanks to a new partnership between the school and the city. Students from the Outreach Nonprofit Consulting (ONC) club at SOM worked together with the City of New Haven Small Business Service Center to launch the Small Business Academy earlier this month.
Recent SOM alumnus Boris Sigal ’14, who directs local procurement and business development for the New Haven Economic Development Corporation, helped spearhead the initiative. “As a recent graduate of SOM, I’m continuously looking for ways to increase collaboration between SOM students and New Haven's vibrant small business community,” he said in an article on the Yale SOM website.
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Employers Bullish on Hiring Recent MBA Grads, Recruiters Survey Shows
Students graduating in recent days from MBA programs across the United States and around the globe have more to celebrate than simply turning tassels, results from a corporate recruiters’ survey released today show. Indeed, employer demand for recent business school graduates tops all previous years, according to the 2015 Corporate Recruiters Survey, conducted by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) in partnership with EFMD and the MBA Career Services & Employer Alliance (MBA CSEA).
Source: GMAC
An astounding 92 percent of U.S. employers surveyed report plans to hire MBA grads this year, up 12 percent over last year. Globally, numbers are also robust, if not quite as strong as the U.S. figures. Some 84 percent of employers worldwide expect to add new MBAs to their workforce this year, up from 74 percent in 2014 and just 50 percent in 2009. This bests the prior all-time high of 82 percent in 2005.
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Ross School of Business Dean Alison Davis-Blake to Step Down Next Year
Alison Davis-Blake, the first female dean at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, will not seek another term when her current five-year term expires next year, she announced in memos to the school’s students and staff today. One of just nine female deans leading a top-tier business school in the United States, Davis-Blake said she hopes to focus on “the broader problems and opportunities facing universities.”
Appointed in July 2011 by former President Mary Sue Coleman and former Provost Phil Hanlon, Davis-Blake came to Ross from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, where she also served as dean. “During the past decade, I have learned that I particularly enjoy working with faculty, staff and students to stabilize challenging situations and then create momentum towards extraordinary positive performance,” she wrote in an email to the Ross staff. “Together, we have created that momentum at the Ross School."
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Harvard Business School Aims to Become “Go-To Place” on Gender Issues
Harvard Business School (HBS) wants to help the world understand gender-related matters as never before—so today it launched a brand-new Gender Initiative designed to promote gender equity in the business world and society as a whole.
“Harvard Business School and its faculty have been leaders in defining the roles and functions of business, as well as effective business practice," Dean Nitin Nohria said in a statement. "With the launch of this initiative, we want to have a similar and lasting impact on the way the world understands and acts upon gender-related matters."
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CFA Credentials Complement the MBA, Do Not Substitute for It
An applied finance and economics professor at Johns Hopkins University who “guarantees” the undergrads who take his class their top choice jobs on Wall Street when they graduate advises those students to skip the MBA and obtain their chartered financial analyst (CFA) credentials instead. At Clear Admit, we’re crying foul.
Hopkins Professor James Hanke, in an interview with Business Insider, said he doesn’t think that MBA programs are worthwhile. CFA credentials, he argued, are "more rigorous" and "much better."
Hanke has been trading currencies and commodities for more than 50 years and runs his own wealth-management firm. Still, we think his comparison—of a specialized technical certification with a broader education in all things management—is absurd.
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