MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
Published: August 24, 2014
Ice Bucket Challenge Continues Its Ripple Through Top Business Schools
It started last week with one section challenging another at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, ultimately leading to a school-wide dousing and a challenge issued to rival schools UNC Kenan-Flagler School, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and UVA’s Darden School. And the ice-cold water just keeps flowing (as do the donations).
The challenge, of course, is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that began going viral in late July and has amassed an incredible $79.7 million in donations to date (as compared to just $2.5 million during the same time period last year [July 29th to August 25th]). The ALS Association reports that it has gained 1.7 million new donors along the way.
Those who are challenged are supposed to have ice water dumped over their heads and then challenge others to do the same—or to make a donation to fight ALS—within 24 hours. In taking up the mantle, business school classes have called upon their peers to both endure the icy shower AND donate.
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Published: August 20, 2014
Financial Aid at Harvard Business School, Straight from the Admissions Director
NEWS FLASH: Business school, especially at top schools, costs a ton. Okay, so that’s not really news. More notable is the fact that top schools want to make the MBA affordable, at least according to the most recent post on the Director’s Blog at Harvard Business School (HBS).
Earlier this week, HBS Admissions Director Dee Leopold devoted a post on her blog to the topic of financial aid, noting that HBS last year awarded $26 million in need-based financial aid and has plans to increase that amount for the Class of 2017.
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Published: August 19, 2014
Business School Students Accept ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, Pass It On
With the likes of Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and former President George W. Bush pouring buckets of ice over their heads in support of ALS awareness, surely top business schools are getting in on the action as well, right?
At Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, it began with one section (Section 4) challenging another (Section 5). That section upped the ante, challenging the entire rest of the class, as well as all of Fuqua’s MMS Cross Continent students. So on August 13th, Team Fuqua did the #ALSIceBucketChallenge as one.
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Published: August 18, 2014
Student-Run Program at Tuck School of Business Makes Getting to Wall Street Easier
A new student-run program at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business seeks to help incoming students from underrepresented groups who are interested in financial services by providing career mentorship and preparation beginning even before they arrive on campus.
Called Wall Street Edge (WSE), the program was the brainchild of a recent graduate who himself received invaluable support from across Tuck that helped him meet his goal of working on Wall Street.
“Paying it forward like that is ingrained in the Tuck psyche,” Deirdre C. O’Donnell, associate director for Tuck’s Career Development Office and the WSE adviser, said in an article about the new program on the Tuck website. “It is invaluable for students to explore their options before getting to school, when there will no longer be enough hours in the day.”
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Published: August 11, 2014
Student-Led Program at UPenn’s Wharton School Focuses on Introspection
Ten students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School have helped create a program designed to help encourage MBAs to make time amid their studies to examine what they value in their personal and professional lives.
Called “Purpose, Passion and Principles” – or the P3 program for short – the student-led initiative debuted last fall after roughly a year of development. Participants take part in nine small-group discussions held once a week, in which one student serves as a facilitator. The student facilitator directs the conversation and helps create a safe environment in which students explore topics ranging from reflections on meaningful past life experiences to what success means to them to visions of their ideal future lives.
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Published: August 10, 2014
Cambridge Judge Business School Staff Obtain Social Media Driving Licenses
Staff at the Cambridge Judge Business School recently completed an innovative course designed to educate them in all aspects of social media. Thirty participants now have Social Media Driving Licenses demonstrating their proficiency, the school announced.
The inaugural Social Media Driving License (SMDL) course took place over eight consecutive weeks between May and July 2014. Thirty participating staff members took part in a combination of classroom and online exercises providing a comprehensive introduction to social media, including its professional application, value, scope and limits.
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Published: August 6, 2014
Yale Entrepreneurial Institute Hosts Demo Day for Student Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs developing startup ventures got to pitch their ideas as part of the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute (YEI) Demo Day late last month, part of a host of events and programming supporting entrepreneurial studies at the Yale School of Management.
At Demo Day, YEI’s managing director Jim Boyle noted that the YEI Fellowship Program – a 10-week summer program that provides funding and support to startup teams from across the university to develop their ventures – has grown dramatically since it launched in 2007. Teams raised $600,000 to fund their ventures in the program’s first year, compared to $104 million raised by fellows in 2014.
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Published: August 5, 2014
MBA Recruiting Now Starts Before Classes at Many Top Business Schools
First-year students at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business are gathering this week in San Francisco for a tour of area tech firms, UVA’s Darden School is conducting “career kickoff” meetings with two-thirds of its incoming first-year class and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business has added four days of career services programming to its orientation—and this is all taking place before those MBA students attend a single class.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlights these instances as evidence of several shifts in business education, including that recruiters are eager to meet with future talent earlier than ever before, MBA students have a growing interest in tech careers and traditional on-campus MBA recruiting is no longer sufficient.
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Published: August 4, 2014
The Economist Group Launches $25,000 MBA Scholarship Contest
The Economist Group’s business education division, Which MBA?, yesterday launched its second Brightest Minds MBA Scholarship Contest, which will award a $25,000 scholarship to the prospective MBA or EMBA student who scores highest on a simulated GMAT exam.
The first Brightest Minds MBA scholarship ran earlier this year, drawing more than 4,500 entrants, The Economist Group reports. The winner, Rishabh P. from India, is currently applying to several business schools, with plans to begin an MBA program in fall 2015.
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MIT Sloan to Host Women’s Week, August 4th – 7th
The MIT Sloan School of Management is gearing up for a week filled with events designed to increase awareness about the school among women who are considering a graduate management degree. MIT Sloan Women’s Week, which will take place from August 4th through 7th, will include a webinar open to prospective applicants anywhere in the world, as well as three alumnae panels in cities around the country.
“There are so many opportunities for women to contribute while they are here on campus as well as after they graduate and become part of our alumni network,” Sloan Admissions Director Dawna Levenson said as part of an article about the week’s events. “MIT Sloan women are making an impact in the world, and these panels will showcase just that,” she added.
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Stanford Graduate School of Business to Break Ground on New $75 Million Residential Building
First-year Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) MBA students will live in a brand new residential building by 2016, the school reports. Design concepts for the new $75 million project were approved by the Stanford Board of Trustees last month, and the school plans to break ground on the new facility in fall 2014.
The four-story, 146,000-square-foot residential building will be adjacent to the school’s state-of-the-art Knight Management Center, which opened in 2011. The new facility will include 200 single-living units. The addition of this new housing to the existing 280 units in the school’s Schwab Residential Center will enable Stanford for the first time to offer on-campus housing to its full first-year class. It will also provide space for up to 80 visiting executive education participants.
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Wharton Social Impact Initiative to Pay Down Student Loans for MBAs Who Pursue Nonprofit, Public Sector Careers
For MBAs who pursue careers in the nonprofit and public sectors, paying back staggering student loans they took out to finance their degree can be incredibly challenging. At the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, a social impact‒focused fund managed by the Wharton Social Impact Initiative comes to the rescue.
The John M. Bendheim Loan Forgiveness Fund for Public Service was created in 2005 by a 1940 graduate of the school, John Bendheim, and his son Tom, WG/Lauder ’90. The fund will grant up to $20,000 per year to pay down selected candidates’ student loans.
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IESE Launches Corporate Finance MOOC
IESE, like many other leading business schools, is embracing technology to offer Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and has just launched its latest, called Corporate Finance Essentials. Designed for executives anywhere in the world who want to understand key financial issues related to companies, investors and their interaction with capital markets, the new course will be taught by IESE Javier Estrada.
Over the course of a series of six lectures lasting between 45 and 60 minutes each, Estrada will help participants increase their financial literacy and gain a better understanding of what is written in the financial press. Recommended readings will complement the lectures.
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Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business Hosts 17 Ventures in Summer Startup Incubator
Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business this summer is hosting 17 entrepreneurial ventures as part of its startup incubator program, the school reports.
Called the “Startup Hoyas Summer Launch Program,” the incubator was designed specifically for current Georgetown students and recent graduates who want to launch a new venture. Participating students enjoy a range of benefits, including dedicated support from Georgetown faculty, mentors and experienced entrepreneurs.
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Tuck School of Business Alumni Set Record with Annual Gift
Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business has long been known for the generosity of its alumni, and this year total funds raised broke all previous records, the school reports. Tuck Annual Giving (TAG) raised $6.35 million in the last fiscal year and drew the participation of 70.9 percent of alumni, more than ever before at Tuck or any other business school for that matter.
This year marks the fourth in a row that more than 70 percent of Tuck graduates have contributed to the TAG campaign, which is more than double the average giving rate of other business schools, the school notes.
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Yale School of Management Implements Sliding Scale Application Fee Structure
Yale School of Management (SOM) yesterday announced that its 2014-2015 MBA application is now live. While the application itself features no major changes from last year’s, the school is implementing a new sliding scale application fee structure designed to increase access for applicants from lower-wage regions and industries or who are still in school or at the beginning of their careers. Most applicants will pay the standard $225 application fee, but applicants whose total compensation is less than $20,000 a year will pay $175, and those with a total compensation of less than $10,000 will pay $125. Compensation information
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Yale School of Management to Host First Global Network Week for Faculty
Yale School of Management (SOM) next week will welcome faculty members from the 27 business schools that are members of the Global Network for Advanced Management as part of a four-day program designed to foster collaboration around issues of sustainability.
The program, organized by the Yale Center for Business and the Environment, will begin on July 21st. The faculty event is an outgrowth of the network’s successful Global Network Weeks, which drew together students from the various member schools for weeklong courses with colleagues from peer schools.
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Coding Finds Its Way Into Top Business School Curriculums
Harvard Business School (HBS) plans to offer a computer programming elective within the next couple of years, and other top business schools may be moving in the same direction as more companies seek MBAs with strong technical skills, according to a recent report in Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Paul Gompers, who chairs the MBA elective curriculum at HBS, notes that MBA students there have formed coding clubs or head across to Harvard’s Cambridge campus to take introductory computer science, but that a course specifically tailored to business students is needed at the school.
“This is the changing nature of the workforce, and this is what our graduates are going on to be doing in the next five to 10 to 20 years,” Gompers told Bloomberg BW.
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MBA Students from Leading Global Business Schools to Help Child Cancer Charity
A United Kingdom charity focused on helping children with cancer in developing countries will receive an infusion of expertise and energy this summer as more than 40 students from top business schools in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas develop plans to tackle business problems faced by the organization.
The students, working in teams as part of the Financial Times MBA Challenge, will assist the FT’s seasonal appeal partner, which this year is World Child Cancer (WCC). Seven teams of students – who hail from schools including Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, Oxford Saïd Business School, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, London Business School, ESADE and IE Business School, among others – will each be partnered with a mentor and required to submit a business plan in September on a set topic.
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New Johnson Graduate School of Management Application Permits LinkedIn Submissions
Applicants to Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management can now incorporate their LinkedIn profiles as part of the school’s redesigned application.
Johnson is using LinkedIn’s open platform to allow MBA applicants to pre-fill employment history, educational background and other parts of their application with information from their LinkedIn profiles. Candidates who submit information in this way are asked to grant the school access to their full LinkedIn profiles as part of the application process.
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Alumni Gift to Fund Construction of New Conference Center at Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School (HBS) last month announced plans to build a new center on its Boston campus that will serve as a place for students, faculty, alumni and business leaders to convene and share ideas. Called Klarman Hall in recognition of a generous alumni gift, the new building will feature a large conference center, a performance space and a community gathering space and is expected to open in 2018.
A gift from Seth Klarman (MBA 1982) and his wife Beth will make the construction of the new facility possible. Klarman is president and CEO of Boston-based investment management firm the Baupost Group, his wife is president of the Klarman Family Foundation and both serve as members of HBS’s Board of Dean’s Advisors.
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The MBA Tour Summer 2014 Events
If you’re considering pursuing an MBA, attending an MBA fair is a great place to start. The MBA Tour is hosting nine events across the U.S. this July, starting in Chicago on July 16.
What are the benefits of attending an MBA Tour conference? Hear from students who have attended here!
COLLECT INFORMATION AND EASILY COMPARE PROGRAMS
MBA Panel Presentations cover valuable business school admissions topics and answer a wide range of MBA applicant questions. The panels are hosted by professionals with expertise spanning several topics, including: Preparing Your MBA Application, Financing Your MBA, and GMAT Strategy.
School Presentations highlight unique program features in a 30-minute session given by admission representatives. These presentations are ideal for candidates to learn detailed information, compare different programs, and prepare for speaking with representatives during the MeetUp Sessions or MBA Fair.
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UCLA’s Anderson School of Management Becomes Self-Supporting
Beginning today, the University of California at Los Angeles’s Anderson School of Management will give up state funding and instead become self-supporting, the school announced. Anderson’s dean last week signed a three-year deal with the university provost through which the school’s full-time MBA program will turn down state subsidies in exchange for greater control over faculty recruitment and salary levels and the ability to determine its own tuition, among other things. Anderson hopes to make up for the loss in state funding through donations and likely higher tuitions, reports Inside Higher Ed. In recent years, only about 18
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McDonough School of Business Admissions Director Reveals New Essay Question to Clear Admit
The Fall 2015 MBA application for Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business will feature only one required essay, Clear Admit learned today as part of an interview for our Admissions Director Q&A Series.
Though the new application has not yet gone live – it will be available to applicants early next month – McDonough Associate Dean of MBA Admissions Shari Hubert shared that her team has decided to reduce the number of required essays to just one. The question will be as follows:
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Some Business Schools Adopt Tracking Software in a Bid to Increase Yield
A number of top-tier business schools have begun to use software to track prospective applicants’ interactions with their school in an effort to gauge how interested they are in attending, according to a recent article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The data points – which can include whether a student has emailed admissions staff, how many admissions events they’ve attended and whether they requested program information – are now included in candidate profiles alongside test scores and essay responses, Bloomberg BW adds.
Most schools report that student interest isn’t a main factor in admissions decisions, but the fact that increasing numbers of schools are using the tracking programs suggest that the data gathered counts for something.
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