MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
Clear Admit’s Graham Richmond Weighs in on Harvard Business School Application Changes
The business education media has been abuzz following the announcement yesterday that Harvard Business School (HBS) will change its application requirements in the year ahead. Bloomberg BusinessWeek, PoetsandQuants, the Financial Times and others all featured articles conveying the news and reactions to it. Both Bloomberg BW and P&Q consulted Clear Admit co-founder Graham Richmond to get his take on what the changes mean. Most notable, Richmond says, is HBS’s decision to make the essay an optional portion of the application, which sets it apart from virtually every other
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Harvard Business School Reduces Number of Application Essays, Recommendations
Prospective applicants to Harvard Business School (HBS), take note: Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Dee Leopold shared a lot of interesting information in her Director’s Blog today. Topline news: Applicants for fall 2014 will only answer one essay (with no word limit) and will only need to submit two letters of recommendation (down from three).
The single essay question asks simply what else the Ad Com should consider about an applicant’s candidacy in addition to the other elements submitted as part of the application (resume, school transcripts, extra-curricular activities, awards, post-MBA career goals, test scores).
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UMichigan’s Ross School of Business Revises Essay Portion of Application
In a post yesterday to the Ross Admissions Blog, Director of Admissions Soojin Kwon shared the school’s planned changes to the essay portion of the application and the rationale behind them. Applicants for fall 2014 will find that one of the essays from last year has been adjusted, one has been eliminated and the others have remained the same. They will also find that they have 450 words fewer overall with which to answer the essays.
“Before we jump into the next admissions cycle, our team takes some time to reflect on how our application process worked for the past year and where we can make improvements,” Kwon wrote, noting that the process includes gathering feedback from application readers, student and alumni interviewers and even admitted students who decide to enroll elsewhere. Kwon’s team also confers with colleagues in Career Services, Academic Services and the MBA program itself to make sure the application is designed to best identify potential star students.
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UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Dean Appointed School Provost
The University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School will soon need to begin a search for a new dean. That's because its current dean, Jim Dean, has been appointed executive vice chancellor and provost for the university, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported last week. Dean, who has served as dean at Kenan-Flagler since 2008, will transition to his new role effective July 1st, at which point he will be Dean Dean no more.
UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp and Chancellor-Elect Carol Folt shared news of Dean’s appointment in a May 23rd email to the UNC community. The University’s board voted on the appointment earlier that day.
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GMAC Corporate Recruiters Survey Shows Employer Hiring Up 4 Percent for MBAs
More corporate recruiters have hired or plan to hire MBAs this year than last, according to the 2013 Corporate Recruiters Survey by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC). Globally, 75 percent of employers surveyed plan to hire MBAs, up from 71 percent last year, GMAC reports. Not only that, the average number of MBAs each company expects to hire is also up, from 11.4 per company in 2012 to a projected 14.6 this year.
More employers also report plans to hire graduates of specialized business master’s programs this year than last, GMAC found. The percentage of employers planning to hire graduates with master’s degrees in management, accounting, finance and other specialized business degrees all rose as well, by between one and five percentage points over 2012.
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Student-Run Fund at Yale School of Management to Support 33 Nonprofit, Public Sector Summer Internships
Continuing a tradition dating back to the earliest years of the school, students at the Yale School of Management (SOM) have raised more than $88,000 this spring to provide stipends to students who pursue summer internships in the nonprofit and public sectors, which often pay little to no salary. The monies raised by the student-run Class of 2014 Internship Fund will support 33 students this year, the school announced.
This year’s fundraising campaign included several events centered around the theme of “All for SOM and SOM for All.” “We all worked together to support the fund and to create the community that is Yale SOM,” Bukky Olowude '14, co-chair of the campaign, said in a statement.
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New Online Magazine Focuses on the MBA
If you’ve been scanning Apple’s newsstand recently, a new title may have caught your eye. MBA Intelligence is an online magazine for current and prospective MBA students that debuted in December 2012. Currently available on the iPad, the new publication has been attracting most of its readers from the United States, the United Kingdom, China and other parts of Asia, according to publisher Redwood Apps.
The magazine features a mix of content, ranging from pieces geared toward prospective applicants on topics like preparing for the GMAT to articles written by current MBA students showcasing the analysis they have performed around current companies and issues as part of their work in actual business school classes.
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University of Chicago Booth School of Business Throws Annual PINK Party
Students at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business were seeing pink last week thanks to the annual school-wide PINK party, an initiative designed to raise awareness about the LGBTQ community at Booth. Sponsored by OUTreach, a Booth student organization for gay and lesbian members of the community and their allies, the PINK party took place this year at SPIN nightclub in downtown Chicago on Saturday, May 18th.
Booth students were encouraged to dress in pink and come out to support the LGBTQ community as part of what was billed as “the absolutely biggest Booth party of the year.” Wearing pink got you a free drink at the party; dressing in drag as part of the Drag Contest 2013 got you free admission and unlimited free drinks all night.
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USC Marshall School of Business Looks to Raise $400 Million for Scholarships, Capital Projects, Programming
The Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California (USC) last week launched a campaign to raise $400 million, funds that will support student scholarships, faculty research and teaching, capital projects and more, the school announced.
Marshall kicked off the initiative with a gala event on May 8th, drawing 300 donors, faculty, students and others to Warner Bros. Studio. Marshall’s mission is grand, USC Marshall Dean James Ellis told the assembled guests. “We are altering the business landscape across Southern California and beyond,” he said.
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NYU Stern School of Business Dean Bowls, Publishes
In the midst of leading one of the top MBA programs in the world, Dean Peter Blair Henry of New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business somehow also finds time both to publish and to unwind with students.
A recent tweet from the school (#Stern2013) leads to photos of Henry just after he’s released a bowling ball down the lane. While scores aren’t revealed, he has the look of a cranker with a smooth delivery. Let’s just say, he didn’t throw a powder puff. Besides offering up an opportunity to show off their bowling lingo, MBA Bowling Night 2013 also gave Stern students a chance to unwind and celebrate the final weeks before graduation with both Dean Henry and Stern President John Sexton. Check out the slideshow for yourself.
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Top Business Schools Report Healthy Application Volume Increases
When GMAT test-taking volume jumped by 11 percent for the year ending last June, those watching the MBA admissions space had reason to suspect that application volume at top schools might follow suit. Recent articles from Bloomberg BusinessWeek and Poets & Quants reveal exactly that, with Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, the University of Virginia’s Darden School and the University of Chicago’s Booth School all reporting double-digit increases in the number of students applying to their two-year, full-time MBA programs.
Bloomberg BW last week surveyed its top-10 ranked business schools, discovering that half were reporting significant increases in application volume, ending a three-year decline. Johnson led the pack, with an increase of 12 percent, followed by Darden, at 11 percent, and Chicago Booth, at 10 percent.
P&Q reports that Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business blew even those numbers out of the water: Applications to that school’s two-year MBA program swelled by 25 percent after it moved up the Bloomberg BW rankings four places, to 15th, last year.
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University of Chicago Booth School of Business Shares Waitlist Admissions Updates
Round three interviews wrapped up last week at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, which means the Admissions Committee is now busy making final decisions about recent interviewees, as well as about candidates who remain on the waitlist from earlier rounds. May 23rd is decision day.
“For all candidates, we know that the waiting period is difficult, and for those on the waitlist, there may also be some questions about what happens between now and the decision deadline,” wrote Associate Director of Admissions Carrie Lydon in a recent post on the Booth Insider Blog. She and her team will be reviewing waitlisted candidates’ applications, as well as any additional materials they may have submitted since originally applying. Candidates are also still welcome to submit additional updates through the Booth admissions application system. “However, since we are in the final review process, we unfortunately cannot guarantee that they will be received in time to be included,” Lydon cautioned.
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Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management Sees Application Volume Rebound
After a 7 percent drop in applications to its two-year, full-time MBA program last year, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management saw double-digit application volume increases this year to all of its MBA programs, according to a recent article in Poets&Quants. Interest in the school’s one-year MBA program for undergraduate business majors was especially great, with 30 percent more applicants this year over last, Kellogg Dean Sally Blount told P&Q.
Blount bragged about the school’s waitlist, calling it “awfully beautiful” and noting that it is filled with candidates with GMAT scores of 720 and higher. She credited the school’s new senior leadership team – as well as its strategy to build enrollment in its one-year program while shrinking its traditional two-year program – for the application volume growth. Kellogg last year increased the size of its one-year program by 15 percent, to 100 students.
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Interest in Social Entrepreneurship Rises Among MBAs, Creating Some Challenges for Business Schools
As interest in social entrepreneurship has swelled among MBA students in recent years, top business schools have responded by developing new programs, centers and scholarships for students pursuing a field that was relatively unheard of a few decades ago. But as the Financial Times reported in a recent article, the trend toward social entrepreneurship, as well as shifts in the structure of organizations social entrepreneurs seek to join upon graduation, presents a new set of challenges for top MBA programs.
“In the 1980s there was almost no talk at all in business schools about anything that we might now call social entrepreneurship,” Peter Tufano, dean of Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, told the FT. “I think we’ve seen an explosive growth in demand for social entrepreneurship in the last 10 years,” he added.
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Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management Wins Top Accolades for Diversity
The Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management got an A+ for diversity in recruitment practices as part of a recent benchmark study conducted by Diversity MBA Prep, an online community offering resources to women and minorities considering an MBA. Of 50 top MBA programs included in the study, only Johnson received the top grade.
As part of the MBA Advantage: Diversity Outreach Benchmarking Report, schools were evaluated based on the diversity of perspectives provided to candidates via their Web and social media presence, the range of activities and outreach directed toward candidates of diverse backgrounds, diversity at the school leadership level and the effectiveness of diversity recruitment initiatives.
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Harvard University Receives $50 Million to Increase Collaboration between Life Sciences and Harvard Business School
A family foundation headed by a Harvard Business School alumnus has donated $50 million to launch an initiative designed to speed the development of early-stage scientific discoveries into patient therapies and cures for diseases, Harvard announced earlier this week. The gift also will fund a new fellowship in life sciences entrepreneurship.
The Blavatnik Family Foundation, headed by Len Blavatnik (HBS MBA ’89), provided the generous gift, which will establish the Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator and the Blavatnik Fellowship in Life Science Entrepreneurship Program at HBS.
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Landmark $100 Million Gift to Columbia Business School Will Create Second New Building on Manhattanville Campus
Columbia Business School (CBS) announced big news today: The Ronald O. Perelman Center for Business Innovation will rise on the school’s Manhattanville campus, opposite the Henry R. Kravis Building. Perelman, a longtime member of the CBS Board of Overseers and chairman and CEO of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., has pledged $100 million to create the new facility, which will be named in his honor. Perelman’s gift matches the largest gift in the school’s history, which CBS alumnus Henry Kravis, the namesake of the Manhattanville campus’s other building, made in 2010.
“The Perelman Center will allow Columbia Business School to continue pioneering breakthroughs in management education, such as moving beyond functional expertise or siloed learning and ensuring a more integrated curriculum for our students,” CBS Dean Glenn Hubbard said in a statement. “It will help us create the classrooms of tomorrow and foster an even greater collaborative spirit among recruiters, students, alumni and faculty members, paving the way for a stronger network and more meaningful outcomes for our community,” he continued.
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Published: April 30, 2013
UPenn’s Wharton School Awards $100,000 Social Impact Prize to Rural Education and Development Program in South Asia
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania awarded its second annual Barry & Marie Lipman Family Prize last week to an international non-profit dedicated to creating lasting change in rural South Asia by providing education, enterprise and community development through libraries, the school announced.
READ (Rural Education and Development) Global was chosen from more than 115 organizations worldwide to receive the Lipman Family Prize, a $100,000 annual award established last year to recognize initiatives that help create sustainable solutions for social and economic challenges.
READ is based on the idea that a critical component of alleviating global poverty involves empowering rural communities. To do so, READ partners with rural villages in Bhutan, India and Nepal to build community library and resource centers that provide educational and economic opportunities to impoverished villagers. For-profit enterprises are paired with the READ Centers to generate revenue that can support the center over time. To date, there are 67 READ Centers supported by 98 for-profit enterprises – providing access to 1.95 million rural villagers.
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Published: April 29, 2013
Tuck Associate Dean Leaves to Lead Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management
The associate dean for the MBA program at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business has been named the new dean of the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management, Tuck announced last week. M. Eric Johnson, a fixture in the Tuck community for the past 14 years, will assume his new post in Nashville on July 1st pending approval by Vanderbilt’s Board of Trust.
“During his time at Tuck Eric was truly an academic leader at the school and an outstanding teacher,” Tuck Dean Paul Danos said in a statement. “He has been much beloved by students for his flair in the classroom and dedication to their personal transformation and by faculty and staff for his collegiality and wisdom," Danos continued.
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Published: April 28, 2013
Tepper School of Business FlexMBA Online Offering Draws Interest from Prospective Applicants Nationwide
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)’s Tepper School of Business will debut a new online MBA offering next fall, and prospective applicants from across the United States – as well as Europe and Asia – have shown interest and/or submitted applications, the school reports.
FlexMBA – a new online MBA offering that will offer the same curriculum, faculty and access to services to online students that they would receive on campus as part of the traditional MBA program – differs from the MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) model by creating small class sections of roughly 20 students and maximizing interaction between students and faculty, Tepper notes. Students will take part in weekly live online classes with Tepper professors and attend approximately five “access weekends” each year in which all FlexMBA students will travel to a CMU campus for intense classwork and professional development programs.
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Published: April 25, 2013
Stanford Graduate School of Business Announces New Africa MBA Fellowship Program
Citizens of African countries who are admitted to the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) MBA program and can demonstrate financial need are now eligible for a new $140,000 fellowship, the school announced earlier this month.
The Stanford Africa MBA Fellowship Program is part of an effort by the school to contribute to Africa’s human and economic development by educating leaders who are committed to making an impact on the continent, according to a recent post on the Stanford MBA Admissions blog. “This fellowship program is a critical step toward removing any financial barrier,” wrote admissions blogger Victoria Hendel de la O.
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Published: April 23, 2013
Columbia Business School Hosts Annual Columbia Forever Week
Earlier this month, Columbia Business School hosted a weeklong series of events as part of an annual initiative designed to connect second-year MBA students with the school’s alumni community and encourage the current students’ future participation as alumni themselves.
Columbia Forever Week 2013 took place from April 8th through 11th and included a range of events and activities spotlighting alumni. Student clubs hosted events with young alumni, giving current students an opportunity to learn more about life after graduation.
CBS Matters, a recurring forum that usually features current students speaking to their classmates about what’s most important to them and why, instead featured alumni answering those questions for the first time. Alumni Richard Paul Richman ’73, namesake of the school’s Richman Center and a member of the Real Estate Forum and the Board of Overseers, and Coleman Skeeter ’12, cofounder of Urbavour and a participant in the Columbia Business Lab, both spoke.
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Published: April 21, 2013
Alternative Lenders Could Offer New Options for Foreign Students at U.S. Business Schools
Private student lending shrank sharply during the financial crisis, and though traditional lenders have cautiously returned to making loans to U.S. citizens, non-Americans looking to attend business school in the United States often are hard-pressed to find financing options that don’t require a U.S. co-signer. But according to a recent article in the Financial Times, peer-to-peer lenders and crowdfunding start-ups could present new opportunities for foreign students.
One peer-to-peer lender, SoFi, which hopes to lend $1 billion this year, has been in discussions with several U.S. business schools about extending loans to foreign students that would be funded by alumni from their home country, the FT reports. Meanwhile, Pave, a crowdfunding start-up that lets students raise money from backers in exchange for a share of future income, is also considering expanding to other countries, the FT adds.
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Published: April 18, 2013
Boston Manhunt Closes Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, Cancels Sloan AdMIT Weekend
As a search for the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings continues, area business schools have closed and are urging students to “shelter in place” – that is, remain wherever they are – as instructed by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick early this morning.
Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan School of Management both have cancelled classes, and MIT Sloan has also cancelled its AdMIT weekend for accepted students, according to websites and Twitter accounts from each school.
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Published: April 16, 2013
Dean of UPenn’s Wharton School to Step Down in June 2014
The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania becomes the latest top business school to embark upon a search for a new dean, the school announced today. Dean Thomas S. Robertson, who has led the school since August 2007, will step down as of June 30, 2014.
In a letter to the Wharton community, Robertson shared that he will not seek reappointment next year when his term expires but will instead return to the marketing faculty to teach and pursue his research interests.
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