MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
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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UCLA Anderson Receives Record $100 Million Gift from Namesake’s Widow
The UCLA Anderson School of Management yesterday announced the biggest financial gift in the school’s history. The $100 million gift comes from Marion Anderson, the widow of the management school’s namesake, billionaire businessman and UCLA alumnus John Anderson. $60 million of the gift will go toward establishing an endowment for financial aid, faculty stipends and research. The remaining $40 million will go toward covering almost half of the cost for a new building projected to be built next to the current complex. In addition to being the largest gift for the business school to date, it is also
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Wharton Commencement Speaker to Share How the MBA Could Save His Life
David Fajgenbaum, MD, MSc, has been working toward his MBA as if his life depends on it. Because it does. On Sunday, in his commencement address to his classmates at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, he will share just why he believes a graduate management education can be the difference between life and death.
Fajgenbaum was diagnosed with idiopathic Multicentric Castleman disease (iMCD) in 2010, a rare and poorly understood hematologic disorder in which the immune system becomes activated and causes cells to release inflammatory proteins that ultimately shut down the body’s organs. At the time of his diagnosis, he was in his third year of medical school at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. He took a year’s leave and underwent aggressive chemotherapy, which initially was unsuccessful. Over a six-month period, he was hospitalized for four and a half months and even read his last rites. But ultimately the chemo helped put the disease into remission, and Fajgenbaum returned to complete his MD. He then proceeded straight into the MBA program at Wharton.
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Morgan Stanley Donates $2.5 Million to Columbia Business School’s New Facilities
Pop quiz: How many Columbia Business School (CBS) alumni work for Morgan Stanley? Graduates of the New York City business school make up 245 of the investment banking giant’s current employees, CBS reports, including Chairman and CEO James Gorman ’87 and Brad Evans ‘70, managing director and vice president of the firm’s investment banking department. Gorman and Evans, together with CBS Professor Meyer Feldberg ’65, also are members of the school’s Board of Overseers.
Ties between the school and the firm grew even stronger earlier this spring when Morgan Stanley donated $5.25 million toward CBS’s new Manhattanville facilities. The “transformative gift,” as a press release last week called it, will create two Morgan Stanley Suites, one in each of the new buildings now under construction. It represents the largest corporate contribution to the Manhattanville Campus to date.
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HEC Paris Hosts 25th Annual MBA Tournament
Teams from 16 of the leading business schools in Europe convened last week to compete in 25 different sports as part of the 25th annual MBA Tournament (MBAT), hosted by HEC Paris. More than 1,500 MBA student athletes battled each other in everything from badminton and basketball to petanque and salsa dancing while also creating valuable new friendships and networking opportunities.
“MBAT is the meeting ground for MBA students across Europe, and new friendships and networking opportunities are at the heart of the tournament,” Bernard Garrette, HEC Paris MBA associate dean, said in a statement. “The MBAT provides the chance for students to put what they have learned in the classroom to the test on the field, creating and leading strong teams.”
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Mothers at Booth Prove That Being a Mom, Getting an MBA Can Go Hand in Hand
What’s harder than juggling the frenetic pace of classes, clubs, recruiting and studying that fills the two years of an MBA program at a top-tier school like the University of Chicago Booth School of Business? Doing it as a single mom. And yet, there are moms who do just that, and do it well.
Sofía Vargas and Natalie Wilson are co-chairs of Mothers at Booth, a student club whose name says it all. Vargas, 25, has a three-year-old daughter named Gabriela. Natalie, 28, has a five-year-old daughter Gabrielle. The two Gabbys play together often as their moms hit the books.
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University of Illinois College of Business Launches New $20,000 MOOC-Based MBA
The University of Illinois College of Business this week announced the launch of an online-only MBA degree program designed to democratize access to graduate management education, according to U. of I. College of Business Dean Larry DeBrock. Called the iMBA, it will be the first complete online graduate business degree offered in partnership with Silicon Valley educational technology company Coursera, which offers courses from many other leading MBA programs through its platform of massive open online courses (MOOCs).
The College of Business is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, and development of this new program was designed to mark the occasion, according to DeBrock. “We’re entering the online MBA field motivated in part to find new ways to return to the tradition of great public universities making an elite education available to all,” he said in a statement.
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Published: April 30, 2015
Business School Students Join Forces to Send Relief to Nepal
Yesterday, a student at Oxford’s Saïd Business School challenged her fellow students to donate to a fundraising campaign for victims of the Nepal earthquake, pledging to personally match every dollar raised in the next seven days, up to $20,000. Today, the school is already 24 percent toward its goal, having raised $4,875.
Elsewhere around the country and the world, business school students are likewise putting their money where their mouths are. Still others are pitching in with person power and organizing know-how, helping bring much needed relief to a nation devastated by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake feared to have affected some 8 million people or more.
April Chapman, who pledged to match funds raised by the students in Saïd’s Diploma in Strategy and Innovation program, said that social media posts and emails began to fly as soon as the news broke, and her cohort immediately decided that raising an immediate financial gift would be the best way to make a difference. Chapman serves as co-chair of the World Vision Innovation Fund, a faith-based humanitarian development and relief organization serving the poor in more than 100 countries. World Vision’s staff in Nepal, along with staff mobilized from other countries, are delivering temporary shelters, food, hygiene kits, water, emergency health and protection for children, according to a release from the organization.
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Published: April 29, 2015
Harvard Business School Wants Its Business Fundamentals Course to Be Law of the Land
Harvard Business School (HBS) today announced that the online business fundamentals course it launched last year will now be available to entering students at Harvard Law School. Today’s announcement follows on the heels of an announcement yesterday that HBS would likewise make its signature online business fundamentals course, known as HBX Credential of Readiness (CORe), available to undergraduate students at nearby Amherst College, with plans in place to roll it out to additional undergraduate institutions in the future. HBX CORe has been available to Harvard College undergraduates since last year.
CORe, says HBS, uses the HBS signature case-based method to teach participants the key concepts of business. As in an HBS classroom, CORe classes require active participation and social learning. Three individual courses make up the HBX CORe core offering: Business Analytics, Economics for Managers, and Financial Accounting.
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Published: April 28, 2015
UNC Kenan-Flagler Launches New Institute to Study Private Capital
If you don’t fully understand the role of private capital markets in the global economy, you are not alone. The University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School has launched a new Institute for Private Capital (IPC) designed to help change that.
“The institute will come to define how private capital is taught and learned in every business school,” said Kenan-Flagler Dean Douglas A. Shackelford. He announced the new institute at the school’s eighth annual Alternative Investments Conference on April 24th to an assembled crowd of more than 150 business and academic leaders and business school students.
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Published: April 26, 2015
UCLA Professors Donate $10 Million to Launch New Marketing Center at Anderson
A $10 million gift from two UCLA professors will create a new marketing center at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, the school announced earlier this month. The gift, from UCLA Anderson Professor Emeritus Donald Morrison and his wife, Sherie Morrison, UCLA distinguished professor of microbiology, immunology, & molecular genetics, will establish the Morrison Family Center for Marketing Studies and Data Analytics. The generous gift is the largest ever from a UCLA Anderson faculty member.
The new Morrison Family Center will enable academics and practitioners to use data and analytical tools to better understand consumer markets and behaviors, enhancing Anderson’s existing marketing curriculum and academic research.
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Published: April 23, 2015
Potential Leaders in Global Real Estate Should Have McDonough in Their B-School Sights
Benefactors of McDonough's new Steers Global Real Estate Center
The new Steers Center for Global Real Estate at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, launched yesterday, promises to redefine the educational experience received by both undergraduate and graduate students preparing for leadership roles in global real estate, the school reports. Formerly known as the school’s Real Estate Finance Initiative, the Steers Center will offer students one-on-one career planning with professors and mentors, as well as experiential learning opportunities through the Real Estate Clinic and Real Estate Laboratory. Consulting projects and career treks will further expand the global nature of real estate opportunities at McDonough.
McDonough Dean David A. Thomas asserts that the new Steers Center will offer students “a transformative program that provides an opportunity to engage the world of real estate through a very practical approach.” He also expects the Steers Center to propel McDonough toward its goal of becoming the premier destination for global business education, he said in a statement.
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Published: April 22, 2015
Spain’s IE Business School Debuts Redesigned International MBA Program
IE Business School in Spain launched its redesigned International MBA (IMBA) program last week with a special event held in the innovative MadridDome tech space. The new one-year MBA program begins this month, with an inaugural cohort made up of 90 percent international students from 65 different countries.
Speakers at the kick-off event on April 13th and 14th included Netflix co-founder Marc Randolf and astronaut Michael López-Alegría, who shared why they view innovative leadership and the entrepreneurial mindset as integral to business management. López-Alegría, the former commandant of the International Space Station, underscored the importance of innovation and creativity when it comes to launching new business ventures, citing private space tourism initiatives as an example. Netflix’s Randolf stressed that the most important thing for entrepreneurs is not to have a good idea, but to put it into practice—and that learning from mistakes along the way is an essential part of the process. Business schools can and should help foster this, he said.
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Published: April 21, 2015
Leading Business Schools Commemorate Earth Day
From Philadelphia to Los Angeles, business schools and their students are endeavoring to combat climate change at both the campus and the corporate level through innovation, conservation and awareness raising.
The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, for its part, is hosting the 8th Annual Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL) Conference. This year’s theme, “Business Takes the Lead,” will examine how business innovation holds promise for helping the world both mitigate and adapt to climate change.
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Published: April 20, 2015
Partnership Between Darden School of Business, UVA Law School Offers Entrepreneurs Pro Bono Legal Assistance
Ventures taking part in the Darden Business Incubator at UVA’s Darden School of Business i.Lab have the added advantage of pro bono legal counsel thanks to an innovative partnership with the University of Virginia School of Law, the Law School reported yesterday.
As part of the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic, entrepreneurs taking part in Darden’s Incubator work directly with law students to create legal plans and handle necessary paperwork for their new ventures. In this win-win arrangement, the law students benefit from practical, hands-on training on how to advise startup companies and draft basic corporate documentation.
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Published: April 19, 2015
Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business to Host 2015 Forté Foundation MBA Women’s Leadership Conference
The 2015 Forté Foundation MBA Women’s Leadership Conference, scheduled to take place in June at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, will welcome current female MBA students and alumni for two jam-packed days of sessions devoted to exploring the nature of power, presence and workplace politics. The annual conference, hosted by a different sponsor business school each year, is put on by the Forté Foundation as part of its mission to help women succeed in business careers through increased access to business education, opportunities and a community of successful women.
With the theme “Let’s Power Up!” this year’s conference is scheduled for June 19th and 20th in Washington, DC, on the campus of Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. The event will feature more than 100 speakers and presenters, as well as 50+ workshops on topics ranging from money management to communications strategies to help make your voice heard in the classroom and beyond.
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Published: April 16, 2015
Haas School of Business Forms New Partnership to Understand Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding – the process of crowds of people investing relatively small amounts of money online to fund new ventures and individuals – promises to reshape the future of finance, and researchers at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business want to understand how. The school this week announced a new partnership with the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership to do just that.
Coined CrowdBerkeley, the new partnership will equip Berkeley-Haas finance and social enterprise faculty and researchers to study databases aggregated by Fund Institute engineers from global crowdfunding platforms. The researchers will use the data to examine and understand how crowdfunding is transforming traditional financial models as well as the opportunities it presents for innovation and new ventures.
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Published: April 15, 2015
Darden Annouces Next Cohort of Ventures for Its i.Lab Incubator
Ventures focused on developing an educational technology to improve spoken English instruction to children in China, products to support healing among orthopedic patients and tools to help small businesses automate processes were among those selected to take part in the 2105 i.Lab Incubator program at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, the school announced this week. Operated by Darden’s Batten Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the i.Lab and incubator will host 25 new ventures in the coming year along with eight ventures from the class of 2014.
“This year we saw a particularly experienced group of applicants,” Philippe Sommer, director of Darden’s Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, said in a statement. “It will be an incredible asset to have entrepreneurs in the incubator with deep expertise in fields such as engineering, biomedicine and education.”
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