MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
Published: December 11, 2014
Kellogg Admissions Director Shares How School Assesses Candidates’ Interpersonal Skills
The director of admissions at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management has devoted a series of recent blog posts to demystifying the admissions process at the school. Her most recent post shares what she and her team are looking for as they assess candidates’ interpersonal skills.
How well a candidate fits with the school’s MBA program is a significant consideration for the Kellogg admissions team, as it is at many top programs. “Our community values collaboration, involvement and giving back, and we look for that in our applicants as well,” wrote Admissions Director Beth Tidmarsh in a blog post earlier this week. Candidates who thrive in team-based environments will fit in well at the school, she continued.
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Published: December 9, 2014
Construction Begins on $60 Million Student Building at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business
A magnificent new building devoted entirely to student learning and interaction is now under construction at the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, scheduled to open in fall 2016, Berkeley Dean Rich Lyons announced last week. Called the North Academic Building, the six-story, 80,000-square-foot structure will cost $60 million, funded with private donations from alumni and friends of the school.
Designed to serve as a “learning laboratory,” the new building will feature state-of-the art technology, flexible spaces, many group study areas and a large event space with views of the San Francisco Bay. The student-centric facility will hold no administrative offices.
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Published: December 8, 2014
Darden School of Business MBA Students Host Events to Discuss Sexual Assault
Amid controversy stemming from a Rolling Stone article describing the alleged sexual assault of a University of Virginia (UVA) undergraduate student at a campus fraternity party, students at UVA’s Darden School of Business have chosen to host special events to educate the Darden community on the school’s sexual assault policy.
The Darden School Association (DSA) organized a “Not on Our Grounds” First Coffee – using the informal community gathering that takes place in Darden’s PepsiCo Forum each morning after the first class of the day as an opportunity to discuss the case in the news as well as the Not on Our Grounds campus initiative to end sexual violence.
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Published: December 4, 2014
McDonough School of Business MBA Student Shares Career Search Experience
What does the career search process really look like when you’re an MBA student? Vanessa Dumonet, a second-year MBA student at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, generously took time out of her Thanksgiving break to share just how things unfolded for her.
Dumonet entered Georgetown having worked for five years in marketing and business development for a large international law firm. Drawing on a range of resources at McDonough – including career coaches, career-focused student groups, peer advising and the alumni network – Dumonet has already received multiple full-time offers for next fall and is looking forward to beginning her post-MBA career at luxury beauty company Estée Lauder.
In the interview that follows, you’ll hear from Dumonet herself about which resources proved most valuable in landing her dream job. She’s also got some great advice for prospective applicants on how to jump-start a career search even before arriving on campus, so take note!
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Published: December 3, 2014
Tepper School of Business MBAs, IEEE Seek Standards to Support Evolving Robotics Industry
With robotic applications promising breakthroughs in fields ranging from healthcare and energy to defense and agriculture, MBA students at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business are working with experts to analyze and identify standards, best practices and ways to share knowledge that could help advance the robotics industry.
Engineers, designers and entrepreneurs face both opportunities and challenges in the burgeoning field of robotics. As part of a graduate level course in marketing, Tepper MBA students are working with CMU’s Robotics Institute as well as experts from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and other industry stakeholders to understand how standardization might help the industry as a whole.
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Published: December 2, 2014
Harvard Business School Study Attributes Leadership Gender Gap to Corporate Structures
A recent study by two professors from Harvard Business School (HBS) and a third from Hunter College examined the career ambitions of 25,000 HBS alumni to help understand the gender gap that exists in senior management positions. They found that despite similar ambitions upon joining the workforce, male respondents were much more likely than their female counterpoints to feel like their goals were met. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the survey’s results showed that this disparity had more to do with corporate structures than with women “opting out” to have families.
The study, “Rethink What You ‘Know’ About High-Achieving Women,” was conducted by HBS Professor Robin J. Ely, Pamela Stone of Hunter College and HBS Gender Initiative Assistant Director Colleen C. Ammerman and published this month in Harvard Business Review. Instead of finding that women’s careers were sidetracked because they chose to prioritize family over work, the researchers discovered that the women who left their jobs after having children did so because “they find themselves in unfulfilling roles with dim prospects for advancement” or facing other career limitations. “It simply isn’t true that a large proportion of Harvard alumnae have ‘opted out’ to care for children,” they continued.
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Published: December 1, 2014
London Business School Expands Mentoring Program for Entrepreneurs from London to Dubai
Building on the success of a program launched 18 months ago on its London campus, London Business School (LBS) has expanded a mentoring program to benefit aspiring entrepreneurs to its Dubai Center, the school announced late last month.
Called the “Entrepreneurship Mentor in Residence” program, the program will provide entrepreneurial students and alumni access to year-round mentorship from four successful business executives in the region. The Dubai program’s first mentor panel will include former alumni Genny Ghanimeh, Mohamed Nassar, Tommy Wakefield Smith and Aman Merchant. Students will now have direct access to these mentors for one-on-one consultations up to twice a month.
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Published: November 30, 2014
UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Donors Break Record in One-Day Online Fundraiser
The University of California at Berkeley recently launched a single-day online fundraiser, and participating students from the Haas School of Business outnumbered those from any of the university’s other schools.
The Big Give, UC Berkeley's first-ever 24-hour campus-wide online fundraiser, kicked off at 9 p.m. on Wednesday, November 19th. When it ended 24 hours later, Berkeley-Haas had raised about $561,000 from 651 donors, the school reports.
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Published: November 27, 2014
New Computerized Matching Process Replaces Course Auctions at UPenn’s Wharton School
Professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School have developed a new process for MBA course selection, one they think is more fair, less stressful and less time-consuming than traditional course auctions, the Financial Times reports. Called Course Match, the new system involves a single round of bidding by students, after which 10 high-powered servers spend 12 hours running algorithms to allocate courses.
Wharton professors decided four or five years ago that the auction system then in place wasn’t working as they had intended it to. Some students (especially former financial traders) were fairing really well in the auction system, in which class seats were allocated like shares issues. But others were getting inferior schedules. The process was also stressful and time intensive, requiring students to predict the bidding strategies of their peers and go through eight rounds of bidding.
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Published: November 25, 2014
Columbia Business School Shares Updates on J-Term Admits, Regular Decision Interview Invites
Columbia Business School (CBS) has completed its Early Decision and J-term application review and will welcome approximately 200 new students as part of its January intake, the CBS Admission Committee announced earlier this week. Of those, roughly half come to CBS from international locations.
After taking a week’s hiatus from reviewing Regular Decision applications, the Adcom will pick up where it left off after the Thanksgiving holiday and expects to release the first interview invitations during the first week of December.
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Published: November 24, 2014
Chicago Booth School of Business Partners with U of I College of Engineering
A new partnership between the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the University of Illinois (U of I) College of Engineering promises to spur entrepreneurship by allowing top MBA and engineering students to combine their talents and expertise on joint startup ventures, Crain’s Chicago Business reported last month.
Previously, Chicago Booth MBA students hoping to pursue entrepreneurial ventures requiring engineering know-how were at a disadvantage because the University of Chicago Booth has no engineering school. U of I’s College of Engineering, located in Urbana-Champaign, is one of the 10 best engineering schools in the country – making the partnership with top-ranked Chicago Booth a natural fit. The collaboration is one the schools hope will prove mutually beneficial.
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Published: November 23, 2014
Indian School of Business to Award 10 Merit-Based Full Tuition-Fee Waivers
As part of a new initiative this year, Indian School of Business (ISB) is offering 10 full tuition-fee waivers to the school's top 10 applicants this admissions season. These full waivers – valued at INR 2 million (roughly $66,000) – complement a range of other merit scholarships the school awards to applicants based on leadership potential, past academic performance and personal attributes.
No application is necessary for these new full tuition-fee waivers. Simply complete the ISB application. The Admissions Committee will select the recipients based on its evaluation of all of the candidates. The top 10 candidates, as measured by a combination of academic strength, leadership potential, work experience and other attributes, will be awarded the full tuition-fee waivers. Recipients will be notified of this decision at the time of admission.
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Published: November 20, 2014
CMU’s Tepper School of Business Celebrates Global Entrepreneurship Week 2014
It’s been a busy week at the Tepper School of Business and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) overall, where students have been partaking in a global celebration of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) 2014 began on November 17th and will continue through November 23rd. Observed in 140 countries worldwide, GEW was launched in 2008 to inspire “people everywhere through local, national and global activities designed to help them take the next step in their entrepreneurial journey.”
At Tepper and CMU, the week has included a series of campus-wide events designed to showcase and support the school’s thriving entrepreneurial spirit. Proceedings have included everything from fireside chats and open office hours with venture capitalists to an elevator pitch competition and a startup job fair. Throughout the week, CMU campus experts in new business creation, along with stakeholders in venture capital and community development, have delivered lectures and workshops for aspiring innovators and entrepreneurs.
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Published: November 18, 2014
London Business School Incubator Welcomes Eleven New Start Ups
London Business School (LBS) has selected 11 MBA entrepreneurs to join its Incubator program, where they will receive a year of support in launching their new business ventures, the school announced earlier this month. The Incubator is an initiative of the school’s Deloitte Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
The Incubator’s one-year support package includes an injection of cash for each of the 11 graduate entrepreneurs, as well as office space, professional support from Deloitte, Landor Associates and LBS alumni, access to training and workshops and an invitation to attend the Enterprise 100 members-only Annual Dinner, an event where entrepreneurs will get the network with angel investors, showcase their businesses and receive advice on crafting their business pitches.
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Published: November 17, 2014
INSEAD Launches Emerging Markets Institute on Singapore Campus
INSEAD has launched a new think tank focused on emerging markets, the school announced earlier this month. Developed in partnership with the Singapore Economic Development Board (SEDB), the Emerging Markets Institute (EMI) will be housed on INSEAD’s Asia campus in Singapore.
The new research institute is designed to leverage INSEAD’s intellectual capital and global reputation – the school also features campuses in France and Abu Dhabi – as well as Singapore’s spirit of innovation and foresight to find solutions to the challenges facing emerging economies.
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Published: November 13, 2014
Yale School of Management Hosts Inaugural Low Carbon Case Competition
The Yale School of Management (SOM) today is welcoming student teams from around the world for its inaugural National Low Carbon Institutional Investing Case Competition, the first of its kind in the United States. The event was planned by a Yale SOM student group in collaboration with the school’s International Center for Finance.
Competing teams will be challenged to devise a strategy to help a hypothetical university lower the carbon intensity of its investment portfolio – and in so doing help address the risks of climate change on the university’s endowment and society as a whole.
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Published: November 12, 2014
David Petraeus Speaks to Veteran MBA Students at USC Marshall School of Business
Retired four-star general and former CIA Director David Petraeus spoke to students in the Master of Business for Veterans (MBV) program at the USC Marshall School of Business late last week, sharing his views on strategic leadership at is applies to business.
Fifty active-duty military members and veterans make up Marshall’s one-year MBV program, now in its second year. The MBV program caters to current and former military who want to build foundational management skills while also learning how to transfer the management and leadership experience gained through their service to the private sector.
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Published: November 11, 2014
Demystifying the Mysterious World of Business School Rankings
It’s not every day that MBA rankings end up trending on Facebook, and yet yesterday that’s exactly what happened. When Bloomberg BusinessWeek released its biennial ranking of full-time MBA programs, the results shocked many and created quite a buzz. According to Bloomberg BW’s most recent calculations, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business has stolen the number one spot, knocking Harvard Business School out of the top five for the first time in history.
Just how did Bloomberg BW decide which programs rose to the top and which fell from grace? As it turns out, the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University just a few weeks ago released an infographic that provides a clear and concise overview showcasing the rankings methodologies employed by five major publications: Bloomberg BW, along with U.S. News & World Report, the Financial Times, the Economist and Forbes.
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Published: November 10, 2014
Duke’s Fuqua School of Business Tops Latest Bloomberg BusinessWeek Ranking
Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business shot to the top of Bloomberg Businessweek’s biennial ranking of full-time MBA programs, released today, up from No. 6 two years ago. In the process, the North Carolina school unseated the reigning University of Chicago Booth School of Business and pushed Harvard Business School (HBS) out of the top five for the first time in the history of the rankings.
The formula Bloomberg BW employs to arrive at its rankings is as follows: 45 percent of the score is based on how recruiters rate MBA hires from the school, another 45 percent is determined by how graduating MBAs judge their program and the remaining 10 percent is based on faculty productivity, as measured by a tally of research published in leading journals.
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Published: November 9, 2014
U.S. GMAT Percentile Scores Drop as Asia-Pacific Test Takers Dominate Quant Section
Increasing numbers of prospective business school applicants from Asia-Pacific countries such as India and China are taking the GMAT and outperforming U.S. students on the quantitative portion of the exam, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. As a result, though U.S. students’ raw scores have remained consistent over the past several years, their percentile ranking has slipped as more higher-scoring international applicants take the exam.
The lower percentile rankings can seem to suggest that U.S. student aptitude is declining, GMAC CEO Sangeet Chowfla told the Journal. Ten years ago, a raw score of 48 on the quantitative section (for which scores typically range between 0 and 51) would have yielded a ranking in the 86th percentile, whereas today the same raw score places a test-taker in just the 74th percentile.
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Published: November 4, 2014
Stanford Graduate School of Business to Launch New Ignite NYC Program
Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) is taking its Ignite program for innovators to the Big Apple, the school announced recently. It will launch its New York-based Stanford Ignite program in March 2015.
The nine-week, part-time program – aimed at participants with strong scientific, medical or technical backgrounds who don’t have advanced business degrees – was developed to help teach innovators how get their ideas to market. The New York program is one of six Ignite programs now offered in cities around the world to help expand access to Silicon Valley and Stanford’s entrepreneurship and management education.
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Published: November 3, 2014
Columbia Business School to Offer “StreetWise ‘MBA’” Curriculum for Small Neighborhood Businesses
The Columbia-Harlem Small Business Development Center at Columbia Business School (CBS) this winter will unveil a new “StreetWise ‘MBA’” curriculum designed to help neighborhood small businesses grow. The curriculum will cover topics including financial management, marketing and sales, human resources tactics, business strategy development and access to capital and new contracts.
The new program is supported by Citi Community Development, a division of global bank Citi, and uses a curriculum created by Interise, a nonprofit committed to helping underserved small businesses scale. Already in use in 36 other communities across the nation, the StreetWise MBA curriculum allows small business owners to focus on their own operations rather than study other businesses, in contrast to many other continuing education programs.
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Published: November 2, 2014
Wharton MBA Class of 2014 Career Report Reveals Record Job Offers
A whopping 98.2 percent of Wharton MBA Class of 2014 students seeking employment received full-time offers, according to a career report released today by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. That’s an improvement over last year’s 97.8 percent, which was itself the best number the school had seen in more than 10 years.
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Published: October 30, 2014
Stanford Graduate School of Business Calls It Quits for MBA Admission Blog
Don’t look for future posts on the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) MBA Admissions Blog. In a final entry earlier this week, the school announced that it was saying goodbye to its blog. All prior blog content will remain accessible through mid-December, after which prospective applicants will need to keep up with news and developments regarding Stanford MBA admissions via other means.
“Our blog has begun to resemble a Tesla at a gas station,” wrote admissions staffer Victoria Hendel De La O as part of a final post on October 29th. She attributed the decline of the blog to the school’s increasing reliance on other forms of social media to communicate updates. Indeed, posts to the Stanford MBA Admissions blog have grown increasingly infrequent over the past year – with the last post going up back in June.
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Published: October 29, 2014
Dean’s Speaker Series Draws Janet Napolitano, Biz Stone to UC Berkeley’s Haas School
Two big names will visit the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley next week to address MBA students as part of the school’s Dean’s Speaker Series. Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California system and the former United States Secretary of Homeland Security, will share leadership lessons on November 4th, and Biz Stone, co-founder and CEO of Jelly Industries and co-founder of Twitter, will talk about his experiences on November 6th.
Speaking on Election Day, Napolitano is scheduled to answer questions about the political climate in both California and the nation as a whole. She will also address the challenge of getting more young people involved in politics and public service, as well as her own leadership approach, her experiences as a female in leadership and more.
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