MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
UNC Kenan-Flagler School of Business Joined by Growing Number of Partners in OneMBA® Program
Kenan-Flagler was one of the four founding partner schools of the OneMBA® Program. Other founding partners include Mexico’s EGADE Business School Tecnológico de Monterrey (EGADE Business School), Brazil’s Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo da Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV-EAESP) and Erasmus University's Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) in the Netherlands. This week, OneMBA announced its newest partner, the School of Management at Xiamen University.
OneMBA is a global executive MBA program offered in partnership by business schools around the world. In the 12 years since its launch, OneMBA had established a reputation for itself as one of the world’s most unique and diverse international MBA programs, according to Yifeng Shen, dean of the Xiamen University School of Management (SMXMU).
“OneMBA's vision and goals reflect those of Tan Kah Kee, the ‘Henry Ford of Asia,’ who founded Xiamen University and its business program in 1921 with the call to serve China while embracing world cultures,” Shen said in a statement.
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What a Harvard Business School MBA Doesn’t Teach You
With just days to go before he graduates, Harvard Business School (HBS) student Ben Faw compiled a list of things he didn’t learn at HBS into a compelling infographic that quickly became one of the most popular blog posts on LinkedIn earlier this week. Since Clear Admit readers often have HBS in their sights, we thought we’d share some of Faw’s insights here.
An army combat veteran, Faw had the idea to dispel some of the misconceptions he thinks people sometimes have about the MBA, and especially about the HBS MBA. With the assistance of fellow classmates and a local startup, he helped create an informative post to tackle the myths one by one.
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GMAC Corporate Recruiters Survey Reveals Strong Hiring Forecasts for MBAs
Good news for MBAs seeking jobs. The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) released the results of its annual global survey of employers, revealing that 80 percent of business school recruiters plan to hire MBAs in 2014. That’s up seven percentage points from last year and a whopping 30 percentage points over 2009, in the midst of the economic crisis.
GMAC’s annual Corporate Recruiters Survey, now in its 13th year, polled 565 employers from 44 countries in February and March, including 32 of the top 100 companies in the FT 500 and 36 of the Fortune 100. GMAC, which administers the GMAT exam, conducts the employers survey in partnership with EFMD and the MBA Career Services and Employer Alliance.
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The Soaring Price of Business School Networking
A New York Times article this weekend examined the growing number of trips and other “lifestyle experiences” that now compete with academic ones as part of the MBA program at many leading business schools. Even those that don’t offer any form of academic credit can be viewed as valuable networking opportunities that can help position students for jobs upon graduation—worth their steep price tags in the eyes of some.
As an example, the Times story lead with a February ski trip to Park City, Utah, that about a third of the MBA class from the University of Texas as Austin’s McCombs School of Business went on. The three-day trip, planned by a student-run group called the Graduate Business Adventure Team, was advertised to cost about $1,000, though final costs may have ended up higher.
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Harvard, Wharton, Stanford Release Class of 2017 Application Updates
Following the Round 3 notification details that went out to applicants to the Class of 2016 on Wednesday, Harvard Business School (HBS) Admissions Director Dee Leopold wasted no time in looking ahead to the application season for the Class of 2017.
In a post to her Admissions Director Blog yesterday, she outlined what prospective applicants should expect in the year ahead. Not to be outdone, Stanford Graduate School of Business and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School also released application updates this week.
In her post, HBS's Leopold shared the optional “essay” question that applicants will encounter when they look at the application for the Class of 2017, unchanged from last year:
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Harvard Business School Admissions Coming Soon to a City Near You
Prospective applicants in parts of Europe and Asia will soon have an opportunity to learn more about the Harvard Business School (HBS) MBA program as part of a series of outreach events scheduled for June. Members of the HBS Admissions Board will be visiting Madrid, Milan, Berlin, Shanghai, Seoul and Tokyo between June 9th and 14th. These international events will include a presentation from current HBS students, as well as alumni and a member of the Admissions Board. In several instances, the event will be followed by a reception, giving prospective applicants an opportunity to network with one another and members of the HBS community.
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Ithaca Mayor Praises Johnson Graduate School of Business Students’ Community Service
Community service projects led by MBA students from Cornell’s Samuel Johnson Graduate School of Business were recognized as part of a recent symposium highlighting leadership through service. Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick, a 2009 Cornell graduate, praised students from his alma mater for seizing opportunities to volunteer in the community.
"I believe that young people like you have the skills that we need in the nonprofit sector that we are not getting," Myrick said. "You have the energy, the creativity, and the moral authority to make change, and it's those things — not experience — that matter."
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Haas School of Business Raises $250,000 for Socially Responsible Investment Fund
The Center for Responsible Business at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business harnessed the power of a new Berkeley crowdfunding platform this semester to raise more than $250,000 for its Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Fund, the school reports.
The center blew past its $100,000 fundraising goal, soliciting donations totaling $126,209 from individuals and corporations, which was then doubled thanks to a matching gift from alumnus Charlie Michaels, BS ’78. Total funds raised came to $252,418.
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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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