MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
Yale School of Management to Operate New Leadership Center in Beijing
New center's floor plan; Rendering by M Moser Associates.
The Yale School of Management (SOM) will launch and operate a new Beijing center to host leadership programming by schools and centers from across Yale University, the school announced late last month. To inaugurate the new Yale Leadership Center, Yale SOM will host a major conference next fall underscoring the university’s far-reaching engagement with China.
The new center is located in Beijing’s central Chaoyang District and will feature advanced technological capabilities to connect Beijing with New Haven and other points around the world for meaningful dialog, the school reports. The center will be home to research, conferences and professional and executive education. It will also provide office spaces for Yale faculty use when in Beijing as well as flexible work space for SOM’s MBA, MAM and PhD students.
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UCLA Anderson Finance Professor Named Dean of Full-Time MBA Program
A finance professor recognized with numerous awards for teaching excellence has been named dean of the full-time MBA program at UCLA Anderson School of Management, Anderson Dean Judy Olian announced late last month. Professor Mark Garmaise will assume his new role on July 1, 2014, succeeding Senior Associate Dean Andrew Ainslie, who has been named dean of the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School.
“In Mark, we have a combination of remarkable talents – an outstanding teacher who is dedicated to his MBA students, and a trailblazing scholar who infuses his teaching with relevant and emerging research findings,” Olian said in a statement.
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UPenn’s Wharton School Awards $30K to Slidejoy for 2014 Wharton Business Plan Competition
How would you like to view beautifully designed ads every time you unlock your phone? What if you got paid to do it? Slidejoy, an intelligent Android app designed by a team of Wharton students, is built on precisely that model—and it took top honors in the 2014 Wharton Business Plan Competition last week, the school announced.
The Slidejoy team won the $30,000 Perlman Grand Prize at Wharton’s annual Venture Finals on May 1st, where total cash prizes and in-kind services topped $125,000, the school reports.
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Published: April 28, 2014
Columbia University Alumni Teams Selected to Join Columbia Startup Lab
Thirty-one teams of Columbia University alumni have been selected as the first-ever winners of the Columbia Startup Lab contest and will occupy newly renovated office space in the heart of New York City’s Silicon Alley, the school announced earlier this week.
The teams, totaling 63 people, were chosen from more than 200 submissions by recently graduated alumni from each Columbia College, Columbia Business School, Columbia Engineering and the School of International and Public Affairs. As part of the Startup Lab, the entrepreneurs will benefit from discounted office space ($150 a month per desk) and business infrastructure, as well as support from each of the affiliate schools and Columbia Entrepreneurship, a new organization that resides in the President’s Office with close partnership from the University Office of Alumni Relations and Development.
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Published: April 27, 2014
Chicago Booth School of Business Transfers MBA Application Review from Current Students to Admissions Staffers
Beginning with the 2014-2015 application season, current students at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business will no longer read the applications of prospective candidates for the school’s MBA program. Instead, admissions staff will assume responsibility for reading all files, a shift school administrators hope will both provide for more consistent evaluations and free up the student reviewers to interact with prospective members of the Booth community in more meaningful ways.
“The consistent read piece is only a small part of why we have changed the GA role,” Stacey Kole, deputy dean of the full-time MBA program, told Poest&Quants. “The driving force behind the change in our Graduate Fellows Program is to further engage students as ambassadors, providing meaningful connections between our students and those not yet in our community.”
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Published: April 24, 2014
Tax Deductions for MBA Costs?
We all know the cost of an MBA is not insignificant. Beyond discussion of whether or not the investment is worth it, what if you could deduct the costs as a business expense? Can you?
A recent MarketWatch article delved into precisely that question, answering with a resounding “Depends.”
The general rule regarding business deductions for educational expenses says that as long as you incur the costs to maintain or improve skills used in your current job or self-employed business, you can deduct the costs as a business expense.
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Published: April 23, 2014
Johnson Graduate School of Management to Change Core Curriculum
MBA students will find a new core curriculum that places greater focus on leadership and modeling and analytics when they arrive on campus at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management in the fall. Planned changes to the core also include shifting the timing of the courses to better accommodate an increasingly intense recruiting environment.
Johnson’s core has remained relatively unchanged for the past decade, though individual course are constantly adjusted to reflect feedback gathered from students, alumni and recruiters. The changes planned for next year are the result of a systematic reevaluation of the entire curriculum undertaken by the administration. They were outlined in a recent article by Jeffery Gordon, MBA ’15, in the Cornell Business Journal.
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Published: April 21, 2014
University of Chicago Booth School of Business Professor Wins Clark Medal
The American Economic Association last week awarded the 2014 John Bates Clark Medal to a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Chicago Booth Professor Matthew Gentzkow won the top honor, which is awarded each year to an American economist under the age of 40 judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.
The Clark Medal, named after American economist John Bates Clark (1847–1938), is considered one of the two most prestigious awards in the field of economics, along with the Nobel Prize in economic science.
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Published: April 20, 2014
Yale School of Management Deepens Its Commitment to Entrepreneurship
The Yale School of Management (SOM) last week announced the launch of a formal Entrepreneurship Program, which will feature expanded course offerings and enhanced recruitment of entrepreneurial faculty and students. It also appointed a new director of entrepreneurial programs and pledged new scholarships and financial support to entrepreneurial students—all as part of a major new commitment to entrepreneurship at the school.
Kyle Jensen, PhD, was appointed the inaugural Shanna and Eric Bass ’05 Director of Entrepreneurial Programs and lecturer in entrepreneurship on April 17th. Beginning his official duties on July 1st, Jensen will design and teach entrepreneurship courses, recruit and advise student entrepreneurs, establish programming to complements the work of the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute (YEI) and more.
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Published: April 16, 2014
Deans of Leading Business Schools Descend on the White House
The deans of more than a dozen leading business schools took leave from their campuses yesterday to head to the White House, where they met with senior advisors preparing for the White House Summit on Working Families. The White House is seeking input from a range of stakeholders to identify best practices to develop workplaces that better meet the needs of women and working families.
“We did not think this goal could be achieved without thinking of the business leaders of tomorrow, and that is why today, we met with a group of deans from our nation’s leading business schools to discuss best practices for business schools that can better prepare their students for the increasing importance of women in the labor force and the prevalence of employees with families where all parents work,” read a post on the White House Blog.
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Published: April 15, 2014
Stanford Tops Forbes Rankings of Most Satisfied MBA Graduates
When it comes to the satisfaction of its MBA alumni, Stanford Graduate School of Business bests all other business schools, according to Forbes most recent biennial ranking. Forbes evaluated responses from 4,600 graduates from the Class of 2008 to arrive at its top 10 list, polling them on salary and ROI, satisfaction with their education and the preparation it gave them and how happy they are in their current job.
Stanford ranked in the top five among schools across all three categories in the 2013 Forbes survey. Its grads reported higher salaries than any others, with median total compensation of $221,000 five years out of school. Stanford grads also gave the school top scores when asked about their education and how prepared they felt relative to graduates from other MBA programs. As far as job satisfaction, Stanford ranked fourth. But when Forbes averaged the satisfaction scores across all three categories for the 50 U.S. schools with the most responses to the survey, Stanford came out on top overall.
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Published: April 14, 2014
Alumna, Faculty Member Jointly Donate $1 Million for New Tepper School of Business Facility
A Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) alumna and her husband, a current member of the Tepper School of Business faculty, have given a $1 million gift to support construction of a new home for the business school as part of the newly established David A. Tepper Quadrangle, the school announced last week.
The gift is from Gunjan Kedia, MSIA ’94, and her husband, Sridhar R. Tayur, a professor of operations management at Tepper. “Our 20-plus years of association with the Tepper School and Carnegie Mellon have been rewarding, both professionally and personally,” the couple said in a joint statement. “We are excited to contribute toward and to be a part of the new Tepper Quadrangle, and we look forward to many more decades of being engaged with the university.”
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Published: April 13, 2014
MIT Sloan MBAs Scope Out Leading Seattle Firms as Part of Annual Tech Trek
After returning from a recent MIT Sloan Tech Trek to Seattle, a first-year MBA student shared highlights in a recent article on GeekWire. Jarek Langer (MBA ‘15), vice president of treks for the Technology Club at Sloan, detailed his recent trek, which included visits to Amazon, Microsoft and Groupon. Though all three companies had already given formal
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UNC Kenan-Flagler School of Business Teaches the Languages of Global Business
Do you know about the Working Languages program at UNC Kenan-Flagler School of Business? It’s a series of courses designed to help business students develop communication skills in foreign languages that will allow them to thrive in today’s increasingly international business environment. So far, nearly 400 students have taken part, the school reports.
Working Language courses are offered to both undergraduate business and MBA students through the Global Business Center (GBC), with partial support from a CIBER grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Currently, Spanish, Portuguese and Mandarin classes are available. Participants in the Working Language program learn through a combination of classes, online exercises and conversation hours with native speakers.
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Choosy MBA Students at Top Schools Reject Job Offers, Hold Out for Dream Jobs
Some students at top MBA programs are rejecting employment offers and choosing to graduate without a job in hand, holding out for positions at technology firms and startups, which hire later than more traditional finance and consulting companies, according to a Wall Street Journal report yesterday.
“I'm not nervous,” Ellen Cory, a second-year student at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business who has turned down several job offers, told the Journal. "I'm not behind for the type of position I'm trying to get. I've seen classmates get a lot of great jobs. And I have confidence that I will be able to find a job that satisfies me," she said.
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April Campus Visit Dates Available at Yale School of Management
Yale School of Management (SOM) welcomes prospective applicants to come visit its New Haven campus this spring as part of its Campus Visit Program, according to a recent Admissions Corner blog post by Associate Director Kristen Shockley.
“Our globe-trotting students have just returned to campus from their International Experience trips and Global Network Weeks and our campus visit program is poised to host visitors from near and far in their search for the right business school,” she writes.
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Published: March 31, 2014
Columbia Business School Students to Volunteer as Part of Inaugural Day of Impact
Hundreds of MBA students, faculty and staff at Columbia Business School (CBS) will fan out into the communities surrounding the school this Friday for an inaugural student-led volunteering initiative called Day of Impact. As part of the day-long event, members of the CBS community will give back to their larger community by beautifying city parks, delivering meals to home-ridden residents, preparing food for a food bank, caring for animals in need and more.
“Making an impact on society — however large or small — is a huge part of who we are at Columbia Business School,” Sheila Lalani ’14, vice president of community service for the school’s Graduate Business Association, said in a statement. “The idea behind Day of Impact is to demonstrate our community’s commitment to not only bettering the business world once we graduate, but also working to improve the community in which we live.”
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Published: March 30, 2014
NYU Stern School of Business Appoints Alumnus as New Dean of MBA Students
Conor Grennan, an alumnus of New York University’s Stern School of Business, will become the school’s dean of students for the MBA program effective tomorrow, the school announced today. In his new role, Grennan will serve as a liaison between the Stern’s administration and its more than 2,500 full-time and Langone MBA students.
Before attending Stern’s full-time MBA program, Grennan founded non-governmental organization (NGO) Next Generation Nepal, which has rescued approximately 500 trafficked children in post-war Nepal and reconnected them with their families. While at Stern, he wrote Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal, a New York Times best-selling book chronicling motivations for and experiences with his NGO. Grennan earned his MBA from Stern in 2010 and served as president of the student body during his second year there.
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Published: March 27, 2014
UC Berkeley Draws Record Number of Entrants to Startup Competition
More than 200 teams from UC Berkeley and UCSF have entered this year’s startup competition, including 18-Haas affiliated teams, competing for $60,000 in prizes.
The contest, previously known as Bplan, sports a new name this year, LAUNCH, which is intended to reflect the continued move away from long-form business plans to the one-page business model canvas and 10-slide presentation used by today’s startups.
“We thought about what this competition is really trying to do: It’s now much more about catapulting and launching companies from ideas to viable businesses over the course of the competition,” says Moses Lo, MBA ’15, one of the co-chairs of the competition. “LAUNCH exactly describes our aim.”
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Published: March 25, 2014
Long-Standing Tuck School of Business Dean to Step Down Next Year
Paul Danos, who has led Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business for the past 19 years, will not seek reappointment for a sixth term and will instead step down in June 2015 when his current term ends, the school announced this week.
Danos, Tuck’s ninth dean, has served for longer than any other in the school’s history and is one of the longest-serving deans in management education. When he steps down, almost half of Tuck’s 10,000-plus living alumni will have graduated under his deanship, the school notes.
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Published: March 24, 2014
Clear Admit Bullish on New Wharton Dean
As we reported last week, Geoffrey Garrett has been named to replace outgoing Dean Tom Robertson and will take the helm on July 1st. So what’s Clear Admit’s take on this new dean? We welcome what we believe to be a strong candidate and wish him well in his new role.
A political economist with a Pacific Rim orientation but clear U.S. interests as well, we think Garrett will make a good fit for Wharton on several levels. He brings an understanding of the intersection between business and politics that will lend itself well to Wharton’s focus on globalization and on preparing its graduates to understand how business is done internationally.
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Published: March 23, 2014
Fewer Grads from European MBA Programs Are Heading Into Finance
Far fewer MBA students from Europe’s top business schools are choosing careers in finance than they have in the past, opting instead for jobs at Facebook, Amazon and other tech firms, according to a recent report in the Financial News.
London Business School (LBS), Cambridge’s Judge Business School, Oxford’s Saïd Business School, INSEAD and HEC Paris all report significant drops in the number of MBAs who have accepted full-time roles and internships at finance firms as the heaviest portion of the annual recruiting season comes to an end.
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Published: March 20, 2014
Online Here We Come, Says Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School (HBS) today announced that it is joining some of its peer business schools in launching an online learning program. Called HBX, the online initiative is one the school hopes will successfully convey its signature case method digitally. HBX’s initial offering, called CORe (Credentials of Readiness), will provide participants with a primer on the fundamentals of business.
“The HBX launch marks an important milestone in our ongoing efforts to educate leaders who make a difference in the world,” HBS Dean Nitin Nohria said in a statement. The program embodies the school’s hallmark highly engaged, interactive learning and will provide an important means of engaging with new and wider audiences, he added.
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Published: March 19, 2014
MBA Tuition Increases Planned at Many Top Business Schools
Numerous top business schools have approved tuition hikes averaging around 4 percent for the class of 2016, increases that come on top of a 37 percent rise in the degree’s cost over the past six years, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports.
The increases, which range from 2.7 percent at Harvard Business School to 4.9 percent at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, bring the average cost for a year of tuition and fees to roughly $60,000 and the total cost of the degree to as much as $150,000, including living expenses and other add-ons. Six of Bloomberg BW’s 10 top-ranked MBA programs recently approved tuition increases, and the remaining top schools are set to make decisions closer to the fall, according to the report.
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Published: March 17, 2014
New Program Qualifies GMAT Test Takers for Interest Rate Reduction for New MBA Loans
Photo credit: zingbot
The Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), which owns and administers the GMAT exam, has partnered with Discover Student Loans to introduce a new program designed to qualify GMAT test takers for an interest rate reduction on eligible new MBA loans.
The Discover MBA Loan with GMAT Test-Taker Reward, launched last month, offers graduate business students who take the GMAT exam the opportunity to receive a 0.25 percent interest rate reduction on new MBA Loans from Discover Student Loans.
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