The Leading Independent
Resource for Top-tier MBA
Candidates

News

Keep up with the latest events and news on MBA programs, Part-Time and Executive Programs, and rankings.
Published: March 25, 2019
Yale SOM Innovates MBA Admissions Process with New Behavioral Assessment
Laurel Grodman, Managing Director of Admissions, Analytics and Evaluation, and Bruce DelMonico, Assistant Dean for Admissions at Yale SOM Have you applied to the Yale School of Management or are you planning to apply?  You may be wondering about that something extra in your Yale SOM application checklist—the Behavioral Assessment.  The admissions team implemented this new, innovative tool to help them bring together a strong MBA class.  To get the skinny on what the Behavioral Assessment is and how it’s being used in the Yale SOM admissions process, we caught up with Laurel Grodman, managing director of admissions, analytics and evaluation, and Bruce DelMonico, assistant dean for admissions.  Read on for in-depth insights from Laurel and Bruce regarding how this tool plays a part in your MBA admissions experience. Could you start by explaining what the Behavioral Assessment is and how it now fits into the Yale School of Management MBA admissions process? The Behavioral Assessment is an online admissions tool that measures a set of interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies associated with business school success.  It’s administered by the research division of ETS, and takes about 20 to 25 minutes for an applicant to complete.  The test itself is a forced-choice module, in which you are given 120 pairs of statements and you have to choose the statement that is more like your own behavior.  You don’t need to do anything in advance to prepare for the assessment, nor does it require any specialized knowledge or information. Read more
Published: March 25, 2019
Reviewing the Undergraduate Admissions Scandal—Could it Happen with MBA Programs?
Earlier this month, dozens of people were caught greasing the wheels of undergraduate admissions.  Parents funneled a combined total of $25 million through a college admissions consultant, William "Rick" Singer, to athletic coaches and test proctors, all with the aim of gaining admission for their children to an elite undergrad program.  Undergraduate programs entangled in the scandal included Stanford University, the University of Southern California, Wake Forest University, Georgetown University, Yale University and others. Read more
Published: March 20, 2019
INSEAD Offers 10 Tips for Creating (and Sustaining) Successful Partnerships
Corporate partnerships are vital to success, and the number of companies forming these alliances is growing all the time. Between 2002 and 2011, companies formed nearly 42,000 partnerships, according to Greve Rowley and Shipilov. The reason behind this growth is the fact that partnerships offer significant cost and speed advantages for companies. According to INSEAD director of business innovation Paul Sanders, they bring substantial value. Unfortunately, many partnerships fail—60 to 70 percent according to Jonathan Hughes and Jeff Weiss. So, what can your business do to ensure that your alliance doesn’t just avoid failure, but is highly successful? Sanders discusses the ten stages of successful partnerships in one of the most recent INSEAD Knowledge articles. Here’s what he had to say. Read more
Published: March 20, 2019
Columbia Professor Offers Advice on #MeToo Fallout for Female Leadership
The #MeToo movement has been a good thing, bringing to light many gender issues regarding sexual harassment and assault. And, it’s been particularly valuable for women in the workplace. Unfortunately, while most of the response to the #MeToo movement has been positive, it has triggered a few unexpected negative consequences. As a Forbes article recently explained, there’s a “potential threat to women’s advancement to senior leadership, as some men have become wary of forging professional relationships with female colleagues.” Read more
Published: March 17, 2019
Rochester Simon School of Business Leads the Way with STEM-Designated MBA Program
As international applications at U.S. business schools drop, there’s more demand than ever for science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines in MBA curriculum. Why? The new STEM designation program. Created by the federal government to help with the shortage of qualified workers in the STEM fields, the program makes H1b visas far more attractive. If a student attends a STEM-designated education program and gains a STEM job after graduation, they gain an additional 24 months of optional practical training (OPT) time. This lengthens their stay in the U.S. from one to three years, which is very attractive to candidates and a solid reason for schools to consider the STEM designation. And many have. Read more
Published: March 17, 2019
Episode 33: Keith Bevans of Bain & Company Discusses Consulting, Recruiting and More
Bain & Company—widely considered one of the most elite consulting firms in the world—is a coveted post-MBA destination for students at top business schools in every part of the globe.  Our guest today, Keith Bevans, is a partner in Bain & Company's Chicago office and also heads Bain's global consultant recruiting efforts.  The latter involves managing the team that identifies and attracts talent to Bain's offices and ensures that the next generation of leaders continue to make Bain "The best firm to work for." Keith Bevans, Partner and Leader of Corporate Recruiting, Bain & Co. While Bain primarily targets top-20 schools for MBA recruiting, it hires from more than 60 schools around the world and is committed to finding the best talent wherever it can.  Bevans is a Bain lifer.  He started as an associate consultant out of MIT, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering. He left Bain to get his MBA at Harvard Business School but returned upon graduation and has been there ever since. For much of his career, he has been a client-facing partner in the firm’s Performance Improvement practice, with a focus on processes to improve effectiveness and efficiencies. Read more
Published: March 14, 2019
Fridays from the Frontline: What is it like to be a woman in one of today’s top global business schools?
In light of International Women's Day last week and the ongoing Women's History Month, this edition of Fridays from the Frontline features two Forté Foundation scholars from Cambridge / Judge. Forté Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to empowering women in business, offers a Fellows Program, which provides fellowships to “women pursuing a full-time, part-time or executive MBA education at our sponsor business schools.” According to Forté, sponsor schools have given more than $142 million to more than 6,300 Forté Fellows to date. Read on to hear from members of the Judge MBA Class of 2018, Natalia Dziergwa and Rebecca Kilbane, about why women would do well to consider Cambridge Judge. The following piece has been republished in its entirety from its original source, Cambridge Judge Insight. Read more
Published: March 13, 2019
Will the UK Avoid Chaos After Brexit? Wharton Podcast Discusses
With the Brexit deadline looming on March 29, and chaos after Brexit almost expected, there are a lot of unknowns. But thanks to a possible extension and guarantees from the EU to help British Prime Minister Theresa May push her proposal through Parliament, new possibilities are starting to open up. Still, there is a lot of uncertainty over Brexit that’s impacting the UK on a variety of levels, including business. Read more
Published: March 13, 2019
Can IKEA and the Instant Pot Teach Us About Competition? MIT Sloan Thinks So
People purchase IKEA furniture because it’s easy to put together. They don’t want to have to buy a drill; they want holes and pieces that easily fit together like Legos. In fact, according to Harvard professor Theodore Levitt, when someone buys a drill, what they want is what the drill can do. That’s just one reason why MIT professor Sanjay Sarma believes that IKEA is on the cutting edge of business. While other companies are trying to sell solutions to outdated problems, IKEA has figured out how to solve a core problem. “That's what I call inversion,” Sarma said. “You’ve got to wrap yourself around the need and think outwards, rather than limit yourself to your product.” So, what can IKEA and other companies teach about competition? Sarma provides insight from three recognizable brands who are mastering the art of inversion, and one that failed. Read more
Published: March 11, 2019
Wharton Tops the U.S. News 2020 MBA Ranking And More
As reported here this morning, the Wharton School has claimed the number one spot—for the first time on its own—of the U.S. News and World Report 2020 rankings of full-time MBA programs. Before we get to other noteworthy shifts and positions, here’s a quick rundown of this year’s top 10, in order of their 2020 rank (2019 rank in parentheses): Read more
Published: March 11, 2019
Podcast Episode 32: Key Takeaways from the U.S. News 2020 MBA Ranking
The 2020 rankings of full-time MBA programs are out from U.S. News & World Report, and our admissions experts, Graham Richmond and Alex Brown, have once again been kind enough to help make sense of them. Before they dig into the rankings, here’s a quick rundown of this year’s top 10, in order of their 2020 rank (2019 rank in parentheses): 1 University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (3) 2 Stanford Graduate School of Business (4) 3 Harvard Read more
Published: March 7, 2019
International Women’s Day in the Business School Community
Each year, the business school community takes extra time on International Women’s Day to promote gender parity and celebrate women.  Given the plethora of events and related research, we’re rounding up what the top business schools are doing as shared on Twitter. A picture from Cornell / Johnson summarized International Women’s Day in 1,000 words: https://twitter.com/CornellMBA/status/1103999121868886017 Cambridge Judge and Yale SOM held events: Read more
Published: March 7, 2019
Fridays from the Frontline: Tuck’s OnSite Global Consulting Takes a Closer Look at China’s Running Culture
As we enter the third decade of the Asian Century, Stateside MBA programs are taking strides to find ways to embed themselves and their students in Asian markets. One clear method to gain a foothold in any market—or at the very least get a lay of the land—is through cultural immersion. Second-year Tuck student Maria Milleville, who will join the Danaher Corporation’s General Management Development Program after graduation, documented her experience with Chinese running culture as part of her OnSite assignment. The following piece has been republished in its entirety from its original source, the Tuck 360 Blog. Read more
Published: March 7, 2019
Everyone Should Promote Gender Balance According to INSEAD Research
Improving gender balance isn’t just a problem for some businesses or individuals; it’s a problem for everyone. The most progressive companies are taking active steps to find a better balance, which is a very encouraging development. Read more
Published: March 6, 2019
U.S. and China Trade Agreement: Wharton Podcast Talks About What’s Going On
The U.S. and China trade war has been a concern for a while. It’s been costing the economy and businesses millions in imports and exports. When, in February, the U.S. decided to postpone plans to implement a stiff import tariff indefinitely, many people thought a resolution was on the horizon. Unfortunately, trade negotiations between the two countries go beyond tariffs. Other sticking points include U.S. concerns over the protection of intellectual property rights and cultural disconnect between the rights of businesses in both countries. According to experts at the Wharton School and Fordham University, there’s a long way to go before a trade agreement can be reached. Read more
Published: February 28, 2019
Prodigy Finance to Host Free Webinar on March 21st – “How Will You Fund Your MBA Abroad?”
Click here to Register If you’re applying for your MBA abroad in 2019 or later, this is a great opportunity to learn about how you can get a free loan quote without any co-signer or collateral in under 30 minutes. The webinar will be hosted by the Prodigy Finance Country Manger for India, Nikhil Lasrado. He will discuss financing for your education, including: • Benefits of a top-ranked MBA course • The 30-minute loan application • Loan terms, including loan size, interest rates, and repayment period • How Read more
Published: February 28, 2019
London Business School on Gaining and Using Power
Power shapes every interaction. Powerful people get their way often, we’re generally nicer to them, and we listen to them. So how do you get power and use it? Power is a zero-sum game and complicated to discuss. However, for London Business School Associate Professor Ena Inesi, that’s what makes it so appealing to study. Read more
Published: February 27, 2019
And the Award Goes to…Wharton Talks About the Financial Benefit of Winning an Oscar
Nearly 30 million people tuned into the 91st Academy Awards ceremony this past Sunday, rooting for Roma, listening for Lady Gaga, or just joyfully discovering Olivia Colman. Fanfare and speeches aside, there’s no doubt that winning an Academy Award is a great honor. Whether it’s a film, actor, director, or those working behind the camera, an Oscar is validation for a lot of hard work. But what is the actual benefit of winning an Oscar beyond a gold statue? Is there any financial award? That’s what a recent Knowledge@Wharton podcast set out to discover. The podcast, which interviewed Wharton’s Jehoshua Eliashberg and S. Abraham Ravid, talks about the benefits of being nominated and winning an Oscar. Read more
Published: February 26, 2019
MBA News You Need: Tuck Wins Global Challenge, Columbia Revisits Homeownership, Anderson Helps with a Case of the Mondays, and More
Each week we collect all the MBA news that’s fit to print and provide a quick overview of the latest trending topics from top business schools around the world. Here’s your quick MBA News You Need digest for the week of February 25, 2019. Read more
Published: February 20, 2019
Columbia Business School Talks Taxing Multinational Corporations
The first step toward social responsibility is fair taxation. There’s just one problem—for years, multinational corporations have raced to pay the fewest taxes or avoid paying it altogether. For example, Apple employs a few hundred people in Ireland, so they fall under the .005% tax bracket, and they’re not alone. Read more
Published: February 20, 2019
Harvard Research Reveals that Gender Diversity Makes Firms More Productive
Gender parity in business has been a hot topic for years. Some researchers have argued that it leads to more innovative thinking while others claim it can harm performance. But what’s the truth? The problem is that, in the past, most research studies have limited their looks at gender diversity to a specific industry or region. But when you take a wider view, the results are clear. Gender diversity in the workplace is a good thing according to Harvard Business School researchers. Read more
Published: February 13, 2019
Kellogg Faculty Offer Advice for Career Development
If you want to develop your career, you have to take steps to make it happen—strategize. To help you get there, Northwestern / Kellogg faculty got together to offer five pieces of advice for career development, no matter where you are professionally. Read more
Published: February 13, 2019
Real Humans of Carnegie Mellon Tepper’s MBA Class of 2020
Pittsburgh is a city of confluence, intersected by three rivers—the Ohio, Alleghany, and Monongahela. As the city’s hills rise away from these three mighty bodies of water, the various streams of Pittsburgh life merge—the artistic culture of Pittsburgh with its industrial past and its technological future. One of the places that best exemplifies the mixture that is Pittsburgh is Carnegie Mellon University. Sitting along the coast of the Monongahela, Carnegie Mellon is well known as one of the best technical schools in the U.S., producing generations of engineers and computer scientists. It also has one of the top drama schools, Read more
Published: February 12, 2019
AI Investment Driven by Fear of Disruption According to MIT Sloan
To future-proof their organizations, 91.6 percent of executives are accelerating their investments in artificial intelligence and big data initiatives, explains MIT Sloan experts. According to the NewVantage Partners 2019 Big Data and AI Executive Survey, which surveyed 65 Fortune 1000 organizations, the drive for this focus is the fear of disruption. To successfully compete against highly agile data-driven competitors, Fortune 100 companies are realizing that they must be more adept at leveraging their data assets. They’re recognizing the rapid evolution of AI capabilities and how those can and should be used to provide business value. 91.7 percent of executives in the study identified a need to transform their organizations to be more nimble and data-driven with dollar investments in these areas increasing. Read more
Published: February 10, 2019
Real Humans of Emory Goizueta’s MBA Class of 2020
Long the hub of the South, Atlanta has been rapidly gaining national prominence due to the rise of its homegrown rap scene and its booming media economy, anchored by firms such as Turner and Tyler Perry Studios. Long before Atlanta became a music and media hub, Atlanta was—and remains—a major international business hub. Currently, the city is home to massive companies such as Coca-Cola, Delta, UPS, and the Home Depot. Given the companies headquartered in the city, it is a no-brainer that Atlanta is a stellar place for MBA students to learn their craft. Emory University’s Goizueta Read more

MBA Applywire

5
December 21, 2024 12:13pm ET
Applying: Dartmouth / Tuck, Northwestern / Kellogg, UPenn / Wharton, UT Austin / McCombs, UVA / Darden
Intake Year: 2025
Pre-MBA Career: Military/Corporate Logistics
Post-MBA Target Industry: Consulting Companies: Bain , BCG , McKinsey
GRE: 302
GPA: 3.63
Years of Work Experience: 9
Notes:

Submitting for R2, but retaking GRE after application deadline. Military Vet with Corporate experience.
8
December 20, 2024 5:17pm ET
Applying: Columbia, Duke / Fuqua, Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, Northwestern / Kellogg, Stanford GSB, U. Chicago Booth, UPenn / Wharton
Intake Year: 2025
Pre-MBA Career: Healthcare
Post-MBA Target Industry: Consulting Companies: Bain , BCG
GRE: 332
GPA: 3.5
Years of Work Experience: 3
Location: Florida
Post MBA Location: Consulting
Notes:

25F, lgbtq, 3 years as a registered nurse. also have started working for an early stage VC in the past several months.
2
December 19, 2024 4:44pm ET
Applying: Berkeley / Haas, Stanford GSB
Intake Year: 2025
Pre-MBA Career: Insurance
Post-MBA Target Industry: Entrepreneurship
GRE: 318
GPA: 3.59
Years of Work Experience: 3.5
Location: Georgia
Post MBA Location: Southeast
Notes:

Looking to launch a tech startup post MBA, without any background in tech. Come from a quant heavy background and undergraduate coursework. I regularly attended admissions events, in person and online at my schools. I hope that focusing energy on my few top schools and spending a lot of time on essays will help me overcome the less than average test score (164 quant 154 verbal) and GPA.

Serial entrepreneur with a history of profitable small businesses. Was promoted twice in 3.5 years. Involved in many extracurricular activities in and outside of work. My background is very centered around financial services/insurance, is this a red flag for a pivot to Tech Entrepreneurship?

Transferred between two state schools in the southeast. School I graduated from is a top 25 undergrad business program. Obtained a few professionals designations post grad.
3
December 18, 2024 11:38am ET
Applying: Michigan / Ross, UNC Kenan-Flagler, Vanderbilt / Owen
Intake Year: 2025
Pre-MBA Career: Held various positions in Finance and Accounting in a healthcare institution
Post-MBA Target Industry: Consulting, Other Companies: BCG , Deloitte , Other
GPA: 3.0
Years of Work Experience: 11
Location: International
Notes:

I am passionate about healthcare enhancing patient quality care. So exploring in that field is what I would love. Got a 72k scholarship from Vandy and named Forte Fellow. UNC 50k. I'm having a hard time deciding though my heart is leaning towards Owen
3
December 18, 2024 10:23am ET
Applying: Arizona State / W.P. Carey, Indiana / Kelley, Ohio State / Fisher
Intake Year: 2025
Pre-MBA Career: Facility management
Post-MBA Target Industry: Consulting
GRE: 309
GPA: 2.8
Years of Work Experience: 3
Notes:

Graduate GPA -3.869
View or Submit Entries

MBA LiveWire

December 21, 2024 8:37am ET
Accepted to Duke / Fuqua
Round: Round 1
Received via phone on December 11, 2024
GMAT: 675
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Consulting
December 21, 2024 2:38am ET
Waitlisted at Duke / Fuqua
Round: Round 1
Received via phone on December 10, 2024
GPA: 3.27
GMAT: 760
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Finance
Application Location: CA
December 20, 2024 11:16pm ET
Accepted to Babson / Olin
Round: Round 1
Received via email on December 17, 2024
GPA: 3.9
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Target Career: Consulting
Application Location: South Asia
December 20, 2024 7:50pm ET
Accepted to Columbia
Round: Round 1
Received via portal on December 10, 2024
GMAT: 750
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Application Location: India
Note:

$100k scholarship
December 20, 2024 3:21pm ET
Accepted to Yale SOM
Round: Round 1
Received via email December 20, 2024
GPA: 4.0
GMAT: 750
Program Type: Traditional Two-Year
Note:

100% scholarship
View or Submit Entries
Live
Wire