Fridays from the Frontline
Keep abreast of the latest happenings in the business school blogosphere! This weekly column summarizes recent posts from MBA student and applicant blogs.
Fridays from the Frontline: Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone at HBS
Today we are pleased to share a recent post from the Harvard Business School (HBS) “MBA Voices” student blog, written by newly minted HBS MBA LaToya Marc. She walked across stage this week to receive her degree, culminating a busy two years in which she balanced the pressures of coursework, recruiting, and extensive involvement in student clubs with motherhood.
Marc served as co-president of the Student Association, which she says was her most rewarding experience while at HBS. (Click here to see her addressing her fellow classmates on Class Day with Libby L. Hoaglin, her Student Association co-president.) She also pushed through plenty of anxiety—like many of her fellow classmates, she confesses to worrying that she was an “admissions mistake”—to speak up in class and defend her points of view as part of HBS’s signature case method of learning.
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Fridays from the Frontline: Johnson MBA Immersion Program Helps Build Confidence Through Skill Acquisition
A hallmark of the Johnson Graduate School of Management, which is part of the larger Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, is its intensive immersion program. In the spring of their first year, Johnson MBA students take part in a hands-on semester of integrated course and field work focused on a particular industry or functional role. Johnson currently offers seven immersions—in Capital Markets and Asset Management, Investment Banking, Managerial Finance, Strategic Operations, Strategic Marketing, Digital Technology, and Sustainable Global Enterprise—as well as a Customized Immersion that allows students to create their own intensive courses of study.
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Fridays from the Frontline: 5 Things I Learned About Succeeding in Silicon Valley as a Woman
Today’s post comes to us from Nancy Hoque, an evening & weekend MBA student at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. A former solutions architect designing mission-critical communications for the U.S. military, Hoque is also founder of a modest scarf fashion startup for Muslim women. At Haas, she’s played an active role, serving as vice president of Haas Tech Club and the Women in Leadership Club, as well as a Haas Lean-In Ambassador. She’ll spend her summer working in product marketing management for next-generation cyber security at Symantec. Longer term, she hopes her MBA will prepare her for a leadership role
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Published: April 27, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: A Sufi Poet at INSEAD
Today’s post comes to us from INSEAD MBA student Sabrina Lakhani, a Chicago native whose pre-MBA career took her from Babson College in Boston to a small Connecticut marketing consultancy for a couple of years to volunteering as a full-time project coordinator at a hospital for children in Kabul. From there it was on to East Africa, working first on a network of hospitals and later on a network of schools. She then returned to work for her family’s businesses in Chicago before joining a decision heuristics science‒based marketing firm as director of client services. In an earlier post, she
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Published: April 20, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: An HBS Alum’s Answer to Should Entrepreneurs Get an MBA?
Today’s post comes to us from recent Harvard Business School (HBS) alumnus Jon Staff (MBA ’16), who is now CEO and founder of a company that offers rural escapes to stressed-out city dwellers. Called Getaway, his startup designs tiny houses and places them in picturesque rural locations, where they can be rented out starting at $99 night. In the following piece, Staff takes on the likes of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, who have gone on record as suggesting that entrepreneurs should not seek MBAs. Even though that sentiment gave him pause as he decided
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Published: April 13, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: MBA Student Finds Support to Be Out at Wharton
For some MBA students, business school presents an entire new community with whom they can choose whether or not to share their sexual orientation. For Rafael de la Rosa, a second-year MBA student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, the decision to be out to his classmates was one he arrived at only after careful consideration. Connecting to Wharton’s Out4Biz LGBT student group before coming to campus helped him feel confident that he could be his full self. In the post that follows, you’ll learn that not only did he come out to everyone at Wharton, de
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Fridays from the Frontline: Tuck Net Impact Education Trek
The Net Impact Club at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business recently organized an Education Trek to tour a range of educational organizations in Boston, and this week’s Fridays from the Frontline provides a thoughtful reflection on that experience by one of its participants. Erica Toews, MBA ’18, (pictured above, far left) details the trek’s four stops, which included a Boston public school, a charter school, an education technology company and a nonprofit education organization. Toews’s pre-MBA career included working as a librarian at Stanford Law School, a legal assistant at Google, a teacher with the Fulbright Commission
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Published: March 30, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: February 2017 MBA Mama of the Month Charanya Kannan
To close out Women’s History Month, we are delighted to feature another amazing woman balancing the demands of pursuing her MBA with the demands of raising a family. Harvard Business School (HBS) second-year MBA student Charanya Kannan was named MBA Mama of the Month for February 2017 by our content partner, MBA Mama. A wife and mother of one, Kannan began her career as a TV anchor in her native India. She went on to earn an engineering degree and a diploma in management from Bombay and to join the Tata Group’s leadership program. Tata sent her to
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Published: March 23, 2017
Friday from the Frontlines: Why We Need More Women in Business School
This week’s Friday from the Frontlines comes to us from the London Business School’s MBA recruitment and admissions team and addresses the need for—and value of—having more women in business school. Before recently becoming senior director of MBA recruitment and admissions at LBS, Stephanie Kernwein Thrane oversaw the school’s MBA exchange program, which gave her insight into the goings on not only at the London school but also at 34 partner schools around the globe. She is committed to helping promote women in business school and in business and has been actively involved both at LBS and through
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Published: March 16, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: MBA Mama and Stanford GSB Student Valerie Rivera
This week's Friday from the Frontline comes to us via our content partner, MBA Mama, an online platform designed to share the stories of women successfully navigating both motherhood and the MBA. As its January Mama of the Month (MotM), MBA Mama featured second-year Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) MBA student Valerie Rivera. Mom to 11-year-old twin boys, Rivera is also a 15-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force, where she held various leadership positions.
Don't miss MBA Mama's exclusive interview with Rivera, below, in which she talks about why she chose Stanford for her MBA and what she's liked most about her time there, some of the time management strategies she employs to keep up with family, school and career, and her plans to open a consulting firm after she graduates. Our thanks to MBA Mama for allowing us to share this interview with the Clear Admit audience.
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Fridays from the Frontline: NYU Stern Student Shares a Recruiting Road Less Taken
Are you considering the luxury retail industry after business school? If so, don’t miss this week’s Fridays from the Frontline, which comes to us from NYU Stern School of Business second-year MBA student Nina Dudhale. New Jersey-native Dudhale worked in digital acquisition marketing at American Express OPEN before coming to Stern, where she has chosen to specialize in luxury marketing and finance. Nina Dudhale, Stern MBA ’17 As she shares in the post below, folks at Stern warned her at the get-go that recruiting in the luxury retail space is less structured than industries like consulting or
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Fridays from the Frontline: HBS Student Offers Advice for Prospective Latino Students
Today’s Fridays from the Frontline contribution comes to us from Karla Mendez, a first-year MBA student at Harvard Business School (HBS). Born in Mexico, Mendez moved to Fresno, California, when she was five with parents who wanted to build a better life for her family. In the thoughtful post below, Mendez shares some of her experiences as a Latina American, including the tension between wanting to maintain a strong connection to her Mexican American roots while not having them define her completely. She also describes the pressure so often felt by immigrants, and sometimes even more so their
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Published: February 23, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: A Day in the Life of an INSEAD MBA Student
INSEAD is definitely riding high these days, having topped the Financial Times’ annual ranking of leading global MBA programs for the second year running. Calling itself “the business school for the world,” it features campuses in France, Singapore and Abu Dhabi and more than 90 nationalities represented in its student body. Students complete an accelerated 10-month program, which has helped the school rank especially high in terms of return on investment, since both tuition and the opportunity cost of being out of the workforce is lower for INSEAD students than those in two-year MBA programs.
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Published: February 16, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: MIT Sloan’s Israel Lab
Israel is in the news this week following President Donald Trump’s first official meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which took place on Wednesday. Our Fridays from the Frontline also centers on Israel, but without touching on the incredibly fraught subject of a one- versus two-state solution for the conflict-ridden region. Instead, we focus on a series of fascinating blog posts written by MIT Sloan School of Management students who spent their winter break taking part in MIT Sloan’s Israel Lab. Now in its second year, Israel Lab takes Sloan students on a journey to one
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Published: February 9, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: From Herat to Haas, An Afghan Student’s Journey
Today’s Friday from the Frontline is a bit of a departure from our usual practice of sharing first-person accounts—but the story of Sal Parsa on the Berkeley Haas blog so captivated us that we wanted to make sure the Clear Admit audience didn’t miss it. Below, learn how Parsa went from sewing clothes in a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to serving as president of the Haas Data Science Club while also working to get a career guidance platform startup off the ground. It’s inspiring, to say the least. Our thanks to Haas and Parsa for allowing us to share the story here.
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Published: February 2, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: A Ross Student on How to Act on Climate Change as Business Leaders
How can the business leaders of tomorrow act on climate change? Micaela Battiste, a dual-degree MBA/MS student at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and School Natural Resources and Environment, provides three concrete examples in a recent post on the school’s Student Voices blog. She traveled with a delegation of 10 other Michigan students and faculty to the 2016 United Nations Conference of Parties (COP) in Marrakesh, part of an effort to bring transparency to the COP process. Returning from that conference, Battiste shares that the number of companies committed to taking action against climate change has
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Published: January 26, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: A Haasie Leans In to Increase Ranks of Women in Venture Capital
That women make up only seven percent of partners at the leading 100 venture capital firms wasn’t a deterrent for UC Berkeley Haas School of Business MBA student Kira Noodleman, it was a challenge. Her self-professed passion for solving “problems that matter” and natural gravitation toward “sink-or-swim” environments led her to a summer internship at Bee Partners, a venture capital firm founded by a fellow Haasie. On the last day of her internship, she was offered a full-time position, which she recently accepted. In the thoughtful post that follows, Noodleman reflects on how Haas’s four “Defining Principles” influenced
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Published: January 12, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: Thai Adventure for MIT Sloan Student
Today’s Fridays from the Frontline comes to us from an Indian-born MIT Sloan School of Management MBA student currently in Thailand. Partha Sharma, now in his second year at Sloan, is taking part in the MIT Sloan Global Entrepreneurship Lab, or G-Lab, an experiential learning opportunity in which students spend three months working remotely from MIT with a host company headquartered elsewhere in the world and then three weeks on site at the company’s offices during their January break from classes. This year, Sloan students are in 13 different countries—Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia,
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Published: January 5, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: Are You My Alma Mater?
Chicago native Sabrina Lakhani’s pre-MBA career took her—literally and figuratively—all over the map. From Babson College in Boston she headed to a small Connecticut marketing consultancy for a couple of years before volunteering as a full-time project coordinator at a hospital for children in Kabul. From there it was on to East Africa, working first on a network of hospitals and later on a network of schools. She then returned to work for her family’s businesses in Chicago before joining a decision heuristics science‒based marketing firm as director of client services. In choosing an MBA program, she wanted one that
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Published: December 22, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Navigating Complex MBA Decision-Making Process
Pierre Girard, a 2016 graduate of the Weekend MBA program at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, shares his tips for the complex decision-making process that can accompany choosing to pursue an MBA. For Girard, a father to two small children who planned to continue working while getting his MBA, a part-time MBA program was the best way to meet all of his goals. And some of his tips—such as hiring a maid if your budget allows it—seem perhaps less geared toward traditional full-time MBA students than others.
But at its core, the bulk of Girard’s advice is applicable no matter what kind of MBA degree you’re planning to pursue. The support of your network, setting realistic expectations about your schedule, and knowing how to prioritize are just as critical for full-time, two-year MBA students as they are for full-time employees who are working toward their MBA in the evenings or on the weekends.
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Published: December 15, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Five Tips to Make the Most of Your Campus Visit
Perhaps you’re in the extraordinarily fortunate position of needing to choose between multiple schools that have offered you admission in Round 1. Or maybe you are furiously working on your Round 2 applications. Wherever you are in your process, campus visits can play a vital role in choosing where you ultimately decide to enroll. Today’s Friday from the Frontline post—from Natalia Suarez, a second-year MBA student at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business—provides valuable tips for how to make the most of your campus visit. Suarez, who was born in Colombia but raised in New Jersey and Georgia,
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Published: December 8, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Unlocking a World of Opportunities as an International MBA Student
Today’s Fridays from the Frontline contribution comes to us from Prerana Manvi, a second-year student at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. A native of India, Manvi shares in detail her experiences as an international MBA student—including the many opportunities her time at Kenan-Flagler has afforded her.
For Manvi, success as an international MBA student has hinged on taking full advantage of in-class opportunities, extracurricular activities and real-world experience. Among other things, she has played an active role in student clubs, serving as vice president of international experience for the Consulting Club and president of the MBA Net Impact Club.
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Published: December 1, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: How Did I Get Here? The Road from Science to an MBA
Just how did Chilean native Ignacio Cabrera—with an education in molecular biotechnology engineering and bacteriology and work experience first as research scientist at BioAmber and later as a microbial applications scientist at Kerry Inc.—find his way into an MBA program at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business? Lucky for us, he candidly shared his journey—including the fact that making the choice to leave his scientific career for business school was far from easy—as part of a recent blog post on the Tuck 360 MBA blog. Luckier still, he’s given permission for that blog post to be republished here for all the Clear Admit audience to read.
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Published: November 17, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Harvard MBA on the Politics of Free Speech
As President-elect Donald Trump begins to establish his cabinet, many are still processing the outcome of the U.S. election earlier this month. At Harvard Business School (HBS), second-year MBA student Preeya Sud, who serves as editor-in-chief of the school's newspaper the Harbus, sought out reaction from her classmates in the days immediately following the election, only to find that few students were comfortable signing their names to their political views, regardless of what those views were. Instead, the Harbus invited students to express their reactions anonymously.
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Published: November 10, 2016
Friday from the Frontlines: #MBAsOpenUp at Goizueta
In the wake of an extraordinarily contentious American presidential election with a result that stunned many both within the United States and around the world, much remains uncertain. This much, though, is clear: The election of Donald Trump to serve as its 45th president has revealed the United States as a deeply divided society and underscored the vital importance of dialogue to reach a point of understanding and a path toward a future that supports and protects the rights of all the country’s citizens.
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