MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
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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Published: April 14, 2015
HBS Rolls Out New Recruiting Program Targeting Students at Women-Only Colleges
Harvard Business School (HBS) last week announced a new recruiting program designed to help increase the pipeline of qualified female applicants to its MBA program. The program, called Peek Weekend, invites juniors, seniors and recent graduates from women’s colleges for a June weekend of case studies, presentations and other activities designed to serve as an introduction to HBS and the MBA degree.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, HBS Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Dee Leopold explained that the school hopes through the program to give women a fuller sense of what an MBA can lead to. Calling the MBA “a misunderstood degree,” she noted that there is a perception among many that pursuing one “must mean you want to go work in a bank forever and sit in a cubicle and wear a suit.”
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Published: April 13, 2015
Georgetown McDonough Survey Reveals Interesting Tax Refund Spending Trends
Do you think of your tax refund as a nice spring bonus or money the government owes you? Your answer likely influences the way you’ll spend the funds in question, according to new research from the Georgetown Institute for Consumer Research at the McDonough School of Business. The 2015 Tax Refund Consumer Spending Survey, sponsored by KPMG, was conducted during the last two weeks of March to examine consumer spending around Tax Day.
“Apparently all dollars are not created equal in the minds of consumers,” Kurt Carlson, director of the Georgetown Institute for Consumer Research, said in a statement. Indeed, 53 percent of consumers who think of their refund in terms of a bonus plan to spend it on something in the near term, the survey found. Furthermore, they are more likely to spend it at stores where they rarely shop throughout the year.
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Published: April 12, 2015
Financial Times Data Suggest MBA ROI Is Greater for Younger Students
Parsing through data from its 2015 Global MBA rankings, the Financial Times has come to the conclusion that the earlier you get your MBA degree, the more you stand to boost your salary, both in percentage and absolute terms. Combining survey responses from the MBA class of 2011 with analyses of their career progress and salaries, the latest FT rankings data reveal a more significant jump in pay for younger graduates in the three years after graduation than for their older classmates.
According to the FT analysis, participants aged 24 and under when they began their degree enjoyed salary increases of nearly $69,000 three years out from graduation, a 145 percent increase over their pre-MBA salary. Those who were 27 to 28 when they began their degree program reported an average pay increase of $67,000, to nearly double their pre-MBA salary. The oldest members of the class, those aged 31 or above, had an average pay increase of $56,000, representing a roughly 70 percent bump over their pre-MBA salaries. This pattern was observed in all industry sectors and countries, regardless of whether graduates worked overseas or changed industries, according to the FT.
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Choosing an MBA Program Based on Where You Want to Work
With some lucky applicants now having been accepted to multiple top-tier business schools, a new challenge faces them: choosing where to go. A New York Times article decided to look at that question in an interesting way, offering suggestions for what school to attend based on the specific company you hope to work for upon graduation.
According to the Times analysis, the best school to choose if you want to land at Amazon is the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. Amazon last year hired 27 Ross MBAs, displacing the school’s historical No. 1 recruiter, Deloitte, according to the Times. Another 37 Ross grads headed to the e-commerce giant in the two years before that.
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U.S., European Business Schools’ Expansion to China Continues with New IE Collaboration
Late last month, IE Business School signed a collaboration agreement with Chinese business school Antai College of Economics and Management to offer dual degrees to students from the two institutions, IE announced recently. Antai College, a leading business school in China and part of Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University, hold accreditation from each EQUIS, AMBA and AACSB. Antai College Dean Lin Zhou joined IE Dean Santiago Íñiguez de Onzoño for a signing ceremony at IE’s campus in Madrid on March 26th.
As part of the new agreement, students in IE Business School’s International MBA program can take a dual degree program with the Antai College of Economics and Management and vice versa. A dual-degree program is also available students in IE’s Master in Management and Antai’s Master in International Business program. In either instance, students will be able to complete both degree titles in two years, instead of the three years it would take to complete the degrees separately.
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MIT Sloan to Host May Workshop for Prospective MBA Students Interested in Finance
If you are considering how an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management could help advance your career in finance, an upcoming workshop was made for you. The MIT Sloan Admissions Office has collaborated with several other offices and groups to organize a jam-packed day full of activities next month, all geared toward highlighting MIT Sloan’s strengths in finance for prospective MBA applicants.
The MIT Sloan Focus on Finance Symposium will take place on campus on Saturday, May 9th. The event is a joint effort between the Admissions Office, the MBA and Master of Science in Management Studies program office and the MIT Sloan Finance Group. The day-long workshop will include two sessions taught by finance professors Nittai Bergman and Rajkamal Iyer, including a case study in which participants will get to work together addressing questions of capital structure and financial distress.
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MIT Sloan Gears Up for April Ambassadors Days
MIT Sloan School of Management features its interactive, customizable Ambassadors Program each fall and spring for prospective students, hosted by current students. The Ambassadors Program runs on Mondays and Thursdays throughout MIT Sloan’s spring semester, giving visiting prospective students the chance to choose from a range of options to design the visit that best fits their schedule and interests.
A full Ambassadors day beings with registration, followed by coffee with current students, attendance in a class, an information session with an Admissions representative, a second opportunity to attend a class, and then two campus tour options. Those who register are invited to pick and choose from the available sessions as they like. (Note, visitors are asked to attend only one class, but are given two time slots for ease of scheduling. Classes available to visitors change each day, and visitors may select the time of their class visit, but not the specific class.)
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Published: March 30, 2015
One in Four HEC Paris Graduates Sets Out to Launch a Startup
Entrepreneurship is big and growing at HEC Paris, according to a recent survey of more than 8,500 graduates. The inaugural HEC Entrepreneurship Barometer, published last week, reveals that almost 25 percent of HEC graduates today are entrepreneurs, up from just 10 percent a decade ago.
HEC Paris has been increasingly promoting entrepreneurship over the past 30 years, through teaching, research, mentoring and resources like the HEC Incubator. To measure the impact of these initiatives, HEC Paris devised its new Entrepreneurship Barometer, which surveyed a representative panel of 8,500 alumni from the past decade from across HEC’s various programs.
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Published: March 29, 2015
Columbia Business School Admissions Gears Up for J-Term Applications
While Columbia Business School (CBS) admissions is still busy reviewing applications for students hoping to secure a spot for fall 2015, it is also preparing for applicants to the January Accelerated (J-Term) program, which provides an innovative opportunity for candidates whose career goals don’t require a summer internship.
Columbia’s J-Term condenses the entire academic program of the two-year MBA into 16 months. Beginning in January, candidates study straight through the summer, foregoing the summer internship that is part of the traditional two-year MBA. For those who can achieve their career goals without a summer internship—entrepreneurs or those who plan to return to a family business, for example—the J-Term’s condensed schedule presents a significantly lower opportunity cost than the two-year MBA.
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Published: March 26, 2015
Leading Admissions Consultants Converge in France, England for AIGAC Annual Conference
Leading graduate management admissions consultants are gathering this week in Europe for the eighth annual Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants (AIGAC) members’ conference, where they will share best practices and speak directly with admissions officers from many of the world’s top business school.
Almost 30 attendees representing admissions consultancies from 12 different countries are scheduled to attend the seven-day conference, which takes places at London Business School (LBS) and includes visits to INSEAD, HEC Paris and Cambridge Judge Business School.
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Published: March 25, 2015
Economist, GMAT Tutor Launch $25,000 Scholarship Competition for MBA, EMBA Applicants
The Economist and test prep firm GMAT Tutor have once again partnered to offer a $25,000 scholarship to the prospective MBA or EMBA student who scores highest on a simulated GMAT exam. Called the Brightest Minds MBA Scholarship Contest, the competition is open to prospective MBA or EMBA students anywhere in the world. The first competition ran in 2014, drawing more than 4,500 entrants, The Economist reported.
To take part in the contest, applicants simply complete The Economist GMAT Tutor simulation test, which uses adaptive technology similar to the real GMAT so that the difficulty level adjusts according to the test-taker’s ability. The simulation test requires the completion of a 75-minute Verbal section and a 75-minute Quant section. Participants should have the available time to complete the test in a single sitting and will not be able to pause once they begin.
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Published: March 22, 2015
UVA’s Darden School of Business Launches New Asia Initiative
The University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business earlier this month announced its strategic Asia Initiative at Darden, part of the school’s continuing investment in globalization.
One of the initiative’s main objectives will be to advance the understanding of the dynamics of Asian markets as a critical component of business education. Through its expanded engagement in Asia, the school also hopes to enhance its expertise and resources in the region, facilitate greater collaboration and new partnerships and improve communication between faculty, students and alumni from Darden with business leaders and policymakers in Asia.
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Published: March 19, 2015
Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management Welcomes New Admissions Director
The S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management has named a new executive director of admissions and financial aid and further strengthened the admissions office with several other new hires, the school announced this week. The reinvigorated admissions team complements a recent re-launch of the school’s two-year MBA curriculum, Johnson reports.
Judi Byers, formerly admissions director at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington, DC, brings more than 10 years of admissions experience to her new role at Johnson. She joined Kogod, where she received her undergraduate degree in business, in 2004 as a marketing admissions coordinator, advancing to lead the admissions team by 2013.
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Published: March 16, 2015
UPenn’s Wharton School Announces New Partnership for Student-Led Impact Investing
Students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School will have new opportunities to gain hands-on experience with impact investment thanks to a innovative partnership with an online crowdfunding platform and an investment firm founded by Wharton MBAs, the school announced earlier this month.
The Wharton Social Impact Initiative (WSII), which coordinates the school’s social impact activities, research and opportunities, has partnered with equity-based online crowdfunding platform OurCrowd and investment firm Locust Walk Impact Partners to create what the school touts as the “largest and most active student-run impact investing fund in the world.” The new collaboration greatly expands the student-run Wharton Social Venture Fund (WSVF), which is operated under the WSII.
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Published: March 15, 2015
SXSW Conference Spotlights Business School Students’ Embrace of Design
Student-led design clubs can be found at 70 percent of the top-ranked MBA programs both in the United States and globally, an indicator that MBA students are embracing design wholeheartedly as part of their general management education, according to a presentation yesterday at the SXSW Conference in Austin. The presentation, entitled “Design in Tech,” was delivered by John Maeda, former president of the Rhode Island School of Design who last year joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) as its first “Design Partner.”
As part of the presentation, Maeda provided a data-driven examination of the intersection of design and technology. Reporting on the findings of his inaugural “Design and Technology Trends Report,” Maeda highlighted the rising importance of design in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, noting the acquisition of design firms by tech companies like Facebook and Google, as well as the trend toward venture capitalists funding startups that have designers as co-founders.
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Published: March 12, 2015
Yale School of Management Announces New LGBT Scholarship
Class of 2017 students at the Yale School of Management who demonstrate both strong academic skills and a capacity for leadership within the lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender and queer (LBGT) community will now be eligible for a new scholarship opportunity, the school announced this week. Through its partnership with Reaching Out MBA, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering LBGT MBA students, Yale SOM will award two Reaching Out LGBT MBA Fellowships to incoming Yale SOM students.
Recipients of the fellowships will receive a minimum of $10,000 in scholarship aid for each academic year, as well as access to a range of Reaching Out programming, mentoring and leadership opportunities, including some developed especially for the Fellows.
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