MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
Published: August 8, 2013
UCLA Anderson School of Management Hosts Summer Institute for Emerging Managers and Leaders
UCLA Anderson School of Management last month hosted 50 top students from historically black and Hispanic-serving colleges and universities as part of a program designed to expose prospective future business school students to the principles of business development, entrepreneurship and management. The University of California Summer Institute for Emerging Managers and Leaders (UC SIEML) program rotates across six UC business schools, and participating students attend classes, workshops and networking events for two consecutive summers.
Beyond the benefits provided to the students, the program also helps participating business schools connect with undergraduates before they graduate and head off in other directions. . “Take a look of other graduate degree programs,” says Linda Baldwin, Anderson assistant dean of diversity and 2013 UC SIEML director. “They have a pipeline from their undergraduate departments,” she said. “With the MBA program, there’s typically a break. The students get scattered.”
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Published: August 7, 2013
GMAC Commissions New Book on Challenges Facing Business Education
The Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), which owns and administers the GMAT exam, has commissioned a new book examining challenges confronting graduate management education, from technological advancements and globalization to how to measure program quality other than through rankings.
Disrupt or Be Disrupted: A Blueprint for Change in Management Education, out this month, contains contributions from leading academics and thinkers such as Harvard Business School Professor Rakesh Khurana and Former INSEAD Dean Dipak Jain on how to reimagine curriculum content and delivery, student engagement, faculty development and more.
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Published: August 5, 2013
IE Business School Enters New Collaboration with Top Seeds Lab Startup Accelerator
Spain’s IE Business School last month inked an agreement with Top Seeds Lab, a Madrid startup accelerator supported by a range of top-tier technology corporations. As part of the new collaboration, IE entrepreneurial students working on projects through the school’s Venture Lab will be eligible to receive an additional boost from Top Seeds to help spur their ventures toward success.
Under the terms of the new agreement, IE’s Venture Lab will be able to include up to two teams in the third edition of Top Seeds Lab’s Startup Acceleration Program, which will run from October 28, 2013, through February 28, 2014. Top Seeds Lab will also include a fast track for one or two IE student projects in future editions of its acceleration program.
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Published: August 4, 2013
At Duke’s Fuqua School of Business Many Roads Lead to Consulting
Consulting firms make up six of the 10 top employers of graduates from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and almost a full third (32 percent) of the 2013 class accepted consulting jobs this past year, the school announced recently.
For three years in a row, Deloitte has hired more Duke MBAs than any other employer, hiring 26 graduates from the most recent class. Other consulting firms hiring multiple Duke MBAs include Bain and Company, McKinsey and Company, Boston Consulting Group, Accenture LLP and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, according to data gathered by Fuqua's Career Management Center (CMC.)
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Kellogg School of Management Adds Video Essay, Alters Admissions Deadlines
Earlier this week, the Kellogg School of Management said that it will begin requiring a video essay as part of its 2013/2014 MBA application. The school will also revert to a one-part application, with a single set of deadlines, rather than the two-part process it has used in recent years. These and other changes were first reported Monday by PoetsandQuants.
As part of the new video essay, students will be directed from the application to a landing page on a Skype-like platform where they will be asked a short question, according to a subsequent report in Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Applicants will have one to two minutes to collect their thoughts and one to two minutes to record an answer. They can replay their answer and start over up to two times is they are dissatisfied, receiving a new question on each subsequent try.
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Yale School of Management Debuts Two New SPOCS for Global Network Schools
The Yale School of Management (SOM) last week announced that it will offer two new virtual courses to its students as well as to students from the 22 other schools within the Global Network for Advanced Management. The courses, one in competition law and another in mobile banking opportunities, are an example of the growth of small online private courses (SPOCs), which some schools are beginning to offer instead of or in addition to massive open online courses (MOOCs).
Yale SOM faculty will teach the two new digital courses, and their lectures will be streamed via the web. Participating students will collaborate on virtual project work as part of teams with students from other schools around the globe. Madrid’s IE Business School, a member of the Global Network, will provide and manage the technology platform to support the courses.
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Two Columbia Business School Alumni Pledge $40 Million Toward New Manhattanville Campus
Two 1967 graduates of Columbia Business School (CBS) have pledged a combined $40 million toward the school’s new Manhattanville facilities, the school announced this afternoon. Alumni Arthur J. Samberg and Mario J. Gabelli, both members of the school’s Board of Overseers, have pledged $25 million and $15 million, respectively, citing their desire to help provide others with the educational opportunities they had. Their gifts continue a trend of multi-million dollar pledges to support construction of the school's new facilities.
Samberg, who is the manager of Hawkes Financial Services LLC and a member of Acadia Woods Partners LLC, and Gabelli, who is chairman and chief executive officer of GAMCO Investors Inc., both credit their success to the education they received at CBS. Through their gifts they hope to support the completion of the school’s new facilities and, in so doing, expand the opportunities available to future students.
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UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Dean Reappointed to Second Term
Rich Lyons, dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley since 2008, was reappointed last month for a second term by UC Berkeley’s provost and executive vice chancellor. Following his reappointment, which became effective July 1st, Lyons shared his vision for Haas’s future, specifically with regard to technology in education and the school’s work environment and global profile.
Lyons wants Haas to be a “definer of what’s next at the confluence of technology and management education.” More than simply translating existing courses into digital format, he wants Haas to change the courses themselves and the way it thinks about pedagogy. "It’s about things like 'game-ifying' content to engage students even more fully, having courses that adapt in real time to individual students’ needs, and letting students 'test again' until they have truly mastered material,” he said in a statement.
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Stanford Graduate School of Business Webinar Offers Tips for Applicants to New MS Computer Science/MBA Joint Degree
The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) announced this past spring that it will offer a new MS Computer Science (MSCS)/MBA joint degree program, and a recent webinar provides tips for prospective applicants looking to learn more about the program and its application requirements.
The webinar begins with Mary Oleksy, who oversees the joint and dual degree programs for the GSB, outlining some basics. “The purpose of this degree program is going to be to provide an opportunity for computer scientists to develop necessary skills to be managers and entrepreneurs, and for technologically inclined business students to gain a solid background in Computer Science by combining these two degrees into a really focused and intentional approach,” she says.
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U.S. News Ranks 10 Full-Time MBA Programs That Lead to Highest Student Debt
As part of its Short List series, U.S. News & World Report today took a closer look at the student debt load incurred by full-time MBA students graduating from top business school programs. According to data provided by schools as part of its annual ranking, U.S. News found that full-time MBA graduates in 2012 emerged with an average of $49,619 in debt. At the 10 schools where graduates incurred the most student debt, the average per student was $97,154.
Graduates of New York University’s Stern School of Business top the list in terms of average debt. There, the average graduate has a debt load of $105,782. Six figure debt is also the norm for graduates from the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, U.S. News reports.
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Cornell’s Johnson School to Offer New One-Year MBA Program in New York City
Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management today announced that it will offer a one-year, full-time MBA program on a new Cornell NYC Tech campus on Manhattan’s Governors Island. The program’s first class will begin in May 2014.
“The MBA degree on the Cornell NYC Tech campus is a unique opportunity for us to continue an established history of innovating graduate business education, both in content and pedagogy,” Johnson Dean Soumitra Dutta said in a statement. “We’re creating a program that addresses the fact that technology has changed the way business is done. It’s not about adding technology courses to an existing MBA, but about developing a new education and learning experience for business leaders in the digital economy.”
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Tuition Climbs at UM’s Ross School of Business, Remains Flat in UC System
Last month, the Board of Regents at the University of Michigan approved a $1,100 increase per term for its full-time MBA program at the Ross School of Business. The tuition increase, which will take effect in the fall, represents a 4.4 percent rise for in-state students and a 4 percent rise for out-of-state students. Meanwhile, the Board of Regents for the University of California system earlier this week approved a proposal that rules out tuition hikes for that system’s graduate business schools, at least for this year.
As reported by Bloomberg BusinessWeek on June 21st, two members of the six-person board at the University of Michigan voted against the tuition hike. “The continued raising of tuition is not sustainable,” Regent Denise Ilitch said in a statement. “If we were as good at raising revenue streams as we are at raising tuition, our students would be far better off.”
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Tuck Alumni Give Record-Setting $6.3 Million in 2013
For the third year in a row, more than 70 percent of alumni contributed to the Tuck Annual Giving campaign at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, raising a record $6.3 million in the last fiscal year. The participation rate is nearly triple the average participation rate of nine peer business schools, Tuck reports. Achieving the 70 percent rate also triggered a $50,000 gift from an anonymous donor last month.
“The generosity of our alumni is unrivaled and enables us to provide a truly transformational experience to each and every one of our students,” Tuck Dean Paul Danos said in a statement. The funds raised provide about 8 percent of the school’s annual operating revenues and direct support for innovation, Tuck reports.
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Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management Adds New Courses on Big Data
Big data matters in today’s business world as never before. Recognizing this, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management is working to establish a strong reputation in data analytics. This fall, as part of its MBA curriculum, Kellogg will offer four new courses designed to help prepare students to interpret big data and put it to work for their organizations.
"We're moving into a world where managers have to be conversant in analytics and in information technology,” Kellogg marketing professor Florian Zettelmeyer says. In particular, he notes, executives need to get better at learning how to establish analytics competence across all areas of an organization.
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Wharton School Receives Large Gift to Permanently Endow Innovation Management Institute
How can decision-makers across industries best manage the risks and rewards of innovation? Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School have been studying that subject for years, and a recent major alumni gift will permanently endow an innovation management institute where that work will continue and expand, the school announced this week.
An earlier gift from Wharton alumnus William L. Mack, W’61, and his wife, Phyllis, established the Mack Center for Technological Innovation in 2001, and the couple’s 2013 gift has now transformed the center into the Mack Institute for Innovation Management, Wharton announced today. William Mack, a renowned global real estate and asset manager, was the founder and chairman of AREA Property Partners and today serves as chair of the Mack-Cali Realty Corporation board of directors and the Wharton Board of Overseers.
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McDonough School of Business, Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative Collaborate on Summer StartUp Program
For the second year in a row, the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative and the McDonough School of Business are partnering to help teams of current students and alumni kick-start business plans over the summer. Called Summer StartUp, the program is designed to help entrepreneurial students and recent alumni do just that – to spend two months over the summer developing business plans and initiative their own businesses.
McDonough and the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative collaborate to give participating students working space as well as great networking opportunities and exposure to potential business investors. This year, Summer StartUp will include 15 student ventures drawn from across the university.
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Tuck School of Business Welcomes BlackRock Executive as Senior Fellow
Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business this month welcomed a top BlackRock Investment Institute executive as a senior fellow at its Center for Global Business and Government, the school announced last week. Peter Fisher, BlackRock senior director and a former top Treasury Department official, joined Tuck on July 1st. He will hold the position while continuing his work with BlackRock.
At Tuck, Fisher will work with the center to build on Tuck’s connections to experts in the private and public sectors. He will also oversee research and analysis projects conducted by MBA students on topics at the intersection of business and government, and he will expand opportunities for Tuck MBA students and alumni who are interested in areas such as financial markets, public finance and monetary policy.
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Northwestern’s Kellogg School Names New Senior Fellow for its Kellogg Markets and Customers Initiative
Sanjay Khosla, a former executive at Mondelez (Kraft) and Unilever, has been appointed as senior fellow with the Kellogg Markets and Customers Initiative (KMCI), Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management announced last week.
“To excel in today's global 21st century business environment requires deep customer insight—not only in developed nations, but also in emerging markets,” Kellogg Dean Sally Blount said in a statement. “Sanjay Khosla has decades of experience in adapting business strategies to new markets, and his accomplishments and perspective will be invaluable to both Kellogg faculty and students.”
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New $10 Million Alumni Donation Will Support Curriculum Innovation at Harvard Business School
The family of a late Harvard Business School (HBS) alumnus has donated $10 million to help support efforts already underway to innovativly redesign the second-year MBA curriculum, the school announced last week.
The donation, from the family of the late William F. Connell, a 1963 MBA graduate of HBS, will establish the Margot and William F. Connell Family MBA Program Innovation Fund, which will help support the redesign of the HBS second-year curriculum to provide MBA students with more courses, new technology applications and platforms and expanded faculty development initiatives.
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Columbia Entrepreneurs Lab Provides Free Summer Working Space to Student Teams to Collaborate on Business Ventures
Columbia Entrepreneurs Lab (CEL), a co-working space run by Columbia Business School’s Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center, this summer welcomes its first class of more than 20 students from across Columbia University. The student teams, which represent seven different schools, were selected to develop 13 business ventures over the summer using the lab's resources and space free of charge.
Among the ideas selected as part of the inaugural CEL class are a news agregator that monitors geographic-specific, social media traffic for trending stories, a program to bridge educational and cultural gaps between Chinese and American students and an online private tutoring marketplace.
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Oxford University’s Saïd Business School Launches Innovative Online Module to Address Global Challenges
A new online module at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford is bringing together students in the school’s MBA and executive MBA programs with Oxford alumni and leading academic researchers to address some of the most challenging global business and policy issues. In its first year, the program has focused on global ageing.
Called GOTO (Global Opportunities, Threats: Oxford), the interactive, multimedia web platform is designed to blend curated content with in-person learning through tutorial groups and events to create plans to address the world’s biggest problems. This year, an action-oriented community of Oxford students, academics and alumni took a hard look at the changing demographics, global pinch points, patterns of consumption, environmental impact and healthcare system strain created by the long-term trend toward global ageing. GOTO will focus on a different global issue each year.
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UCLA Anderson School of Management to Become Financially Self-Supporting
Beginning with the 2014-15 academic year, the UCLA Anderson School of Management will no longer rely on state funding but will instead be completely self-supporting, the school reported last week. University of California President Mark Yudof approved the school’s proposed status change for its full-time MBA program on June 24th, ending a three-year review process.
The decision is expected to make it easier for the school to fund-raise with its alumni and philanthropic donors, to make tuition fees more predictable and to give the school greater flexibility in faculty assignments, according to UCLA Anderson Dean Judy Olian, who has led the campaign to win self-supporting status for the school.
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Some Master’s Degree Students Now Eligible for Harvard Business School’s 2+2 Program
Harvard Business School (HBS) today announced that it has expanded the eligibility requirements of its 2+2 Program to include not only college students but also candidates who have gone directly to a master’s degree program after their undergraduate study.
The 2+2 Program at HBS is a deferred admissions process originally designed for college students who want to secure a future spot in the HBS MBA class. Candidates admitted to the 2+2 Program will have a place reserved for them at HBS, which they can assume after completing two years of work in the public, private or nonprofit sector. With today’s change, the program is now also open to current students in full-time master’s programs who proceeded directly from college to their current master's degree program, according to HBS Dean of Admissions Dee Leopold.
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Clear Admit’s Stacey Oyler Discusses Finding the Right MBA Fit with Bloomberg BusinessWeek
In a recent article about finding the right fit in a business school program, Bloomberg BusinessWeek turned to Clear Admit Senior Admissions Counselor Stacey Oyler for some guidance.
Oyler, who worked in admissions for Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and as a recruiter for McKinsey before joining Clear Admit, encouraged prospective applicants not to let a school’s rank in the various MBA rankings overshadow other important considerations. A top-ranked school can help catch recruiters’ eyes, but the school also needs to be the best match for what you want to do, Oyler told Bloomberg BW. “It’s two years and a significant financial investment,” she said. “So take the time to think about fit just as much as rank and reputation.”
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Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business Joins Consortium for Graduate Study in Management
The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing diversity in business school and the corporate world, announced this week that Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business has joined as its newest member school, bringing the total number of member schools to a record 18.
McDonough is the first new business school to join the Consortium since 2010. The Consortium recruits new member schools selectively, believing that by partnering with only the top MBA programs in the country is the best way to help its members and fellows succeed while providing its corporate partners with access to the most promising candidates.
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