MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
GMAC Debuts Interactive Post-MBA Salary Estimator
Especially given the price tag that accompanies obtaining an MBA from a leading business school, it would be foolhardy for prospective applicants not to give careful consideration to the degree’s return on investment (ROI). This, of course, will depend on the career you pursue after graduation and the salary you are able to command in that role.
Turns out you’re in luck. The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which administers the GMAT entrance exam, has created a new tool designed to help prospective applicants estimate the salary they can expect to earn after completing their degree. Prospective students enter their intended industry and job function, and the tool then parses data compiled by GMAC's surveys of thousands of MBA alumni to return a tailored salary estimate.
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Darden’s Dean Is Bullish on School’s Future as He Prepares to Depart
We had the distinct pleasure of speaking recently with Bob Bruner, who for the past 10 years has served as dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. He will step down at the end of this month, when Scott Beardsley becomes the ninth dean of the school.
In the wide-ranging interview that follows, Dean Bruner reflects on his time at Darden, the strengths his successor will bring in his role as Darden's dean, the state of graduate management education and why he is optimistic about Darden’s future.
As always, he was thoughtful and engaging, with valuable insights for anyone considering business school, whether at Darden or elsewhere. We are so grateful to him for making the time to speak with us.
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Citi CIO Debby Hopkins Named Haas’ Newest Executive Fellow
This post has been republished in its entirety from its original source metromba.com.
The Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley recently named Citi Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) Debby Hopkins as Haas’ newest executive fellow. Hopkins, who is also CEO of Citi Ventures, is returning to Haas in this new role after speaking as part of the Haas Dean’s Speaker Series in 2012.
“Debby is a trailblazer, continuing to question the status quo in her industry,” Haas Dean Rich Lyons said in a statement. “Her views on innovative leadership and social enterprise deeply resonate with our school's identity—we're thrilled to welcome her back.”
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New Associate Dean to Spearhead Growing Entrepreneurship at Yale SOM
As a reflection of the growing importance of entrepreneurship at the Yale School of Management (SOM), the director of the school’s entrepreneurship initiatives has been appointed associate dean, the school announced earlier this month.
Kyle Jensen joined Yale SOM last year as the inaugural Shanna and Eric Bass ’05 Director of Entrepreneurship. Under his leadership, the school’s Program on Entrepreneurship added seven new entrepreneurship courses last year, drawing students from the entire university.
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Admissions Director Offers Advice on Kellogg’s New Essay Questions
We caught up with Director of Admissions Beth Tidmarsh late last week to discuss the new essay questions posted by the Kellogg School of Mangement on July 8th. Though the wording and order of the questions has changed slightly this year, applicants are asked, like last year, to respond to two required prompts and given 900 words in which to provide their answers. As in past years, applicants also have the opportunity to respond to an additional optional essay with no word limit.
Leadership and collaboration once again factor prominently into Kellogg’s new essay questions this year, but Tidmarsh and her team hope the prompts provide applicants with a great deal of latitude in how they respond.
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Entrepreneurship at Ross Gets Major Boost with $60 Million Alumni Gift
A generous new pledge from longstanding benefactors to the University of Michigan will supercharge entrepreneurship studies at the Ross School of Business, the school announced today. The $60 million gift, from the Zell Family Foundation, will provide endowed support for the Samuel Zell and Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies.
The institute was originally established in 1999 with a $10 million gift from the Zell Family Foundation and the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Family Foundation. This newest injection of cash will support continued development of entrepreneurship programs for students and alumni, including $10 million dedicated to a new fund that will invest in new student business ventures.
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UCLA Anderson Entrepreneurship Bootcamp Helps Kick Start Vets
This post has been reproduced in its entirety from its original source metromba.com.
On Saturday, July 11th, a group of disabled veterans will use their military abilities of resilience, focus and leadership to learn the basics of business ownership at the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) at UCLA Anderson. The event, co-hosted by the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University (IVMF) and the Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at UCLA Anderson School of Management, helps post-9/11 veterans with service-connected disabilities develop skills and tools needed to launch, grow and lead successful businesses.
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New HEC Paris Dean Appointed to Succeed Outgoing Bernard Ramanantsoa
Leading French business school HEC Paris yesterday announced a new dean to succeed Bernard Ramanantsoa, who steps down at the end of August after 20 years in the role. Respected researcher and professor Peter Todd will take Ramanantsoa’s place beginning September 1st, serving as the school’s first-ever non-French dean.
The Canadian-born Todd, an expert in the fields of innovation management and information technologies, also brings significant experience managing MBA programs. Until 2014, he served as dean of the Desautels School at Canada’s McGill University, where he himself obtained his undergraduate degree.
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Harvard Business School Case Method Video Slated for Makeover
If you’ve looked at the new essay prompt for Harvard Business School (HBS) this year, you may have noticed that applicants are encouraged to view a video before starting to write. If you hadn’t noticed, you’re welcome.
HBS Managing Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Dee Leopold is passionate about applicants watching this video, which brings to life the signature HBS case method. “I am a nut about that,” she confesses. “If I could require that applicants watch it, I would.”
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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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