Weekly Columns
Keep up with the latest school facts and news from your fellow MBA applicants.
Published: August 10, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: How an NYU Stern MBA Student Went from Not Knowing What Consulting Was to Killing it at Accenture
In the post that follows, NYU Stern MBA student TJ Herrle reveals that he didn’t even know what management consulting was when he first began considering an MBA. He came to business school from a nontraditional background that included a few years in government as well as working internationally at startups. But that unfamiliarity certainly didn’t stop him from landing a summer internship at Accenture between his first and second years—and thriving in it. If you want to learn more about management consulting—and specifically about how to pivot from a less traditional pre-MBA background—check out Herrle’s post below! This
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Published: August 3, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: How Yale SOM’s MAM Program Prepared Me to Lead in a Humanitarian Disaster
Victor Padilla Taylor, a 2015 graduate of Yale School of Management (SOM)’s Master of Advanced Management (MAM) program, reveals in this week’s Fridays from the Frontline how his time at SOM helped prepare him to confront humanitarian disasters in his current role as a project lead supporting the Logistics Emergency Teams (LET) at the World Economic Forum. Yale SOM’s unique MAM program is a one-year, post-MBA opportunity open to exceptional graduates of business schools within the Global Network for Advanced Management (GNAM) who aspire to become global leaders for business and
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Fridays from the Frontline: HBS Alumna on Why the MBA Is Still Relevant Regardless of Industry
Newly minted Harvard Business School (HBS) graduate Ellen DaSilva (MBA ’17) opted to take two years out of the workforce—in Silicon Valley—to pursue her MBA despite the fact that some in the technology industry give “sideways glances at the mention of an MBA.” In this week’s Fridays from the Frontline, DaSilva argues clearly and persuasively for why she believes the MBA is still relevant regardless of industry because of the leadership skills it hones, the authenticity it encourages, and the network of people it helps establish. Our thanks to DaSilva and to HBS for allowing us
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MBA ApplyWire Spotlight: Applying to Business School for Consulting and Technology
Welcome to another edition of MBA ApplyWire Spotlight, in which we take a closer look at distinctive entries in Clear Admit’s ApplyWire tool. This week, we highlight feedback for an applicant with international experience looking for a post-MBA career in consulting and technology. The target schools include Harvard Business School, INSEAD, Stanford GSB and Wharton.
To start, a community member honed in on the high bar of selected schools:
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Fridays From the Frontline: A Foster MBA Grad’s Journey from Appalachia to Accenture
This week’s Fridays from the Frontline first appeared on the MBA blog of the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. Its protagonist, Steve Tomick, is a recent MBA graduate of the program headed off to a management consultant role at Accenture in Seattle in the firm’s communications, media, and technology group. But as you’ll read, his background couldn’t have been more different. An undergraduate dual major in history and education at Wake Forest, Tomick spent six years working with the Appalachia Service Project, a nonprofit whose mission is to improve substandard housing for low-income families
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Fridays from the Frontline: A Wharton MBA Techie Shares Six Strategies for Recruiting
Recent Wharton/Lauder graduate Victoria Cheng left Philadelphia for Hangzhou, China, where she’ll complete a one-year rotational program at e-commerce giant Alibaba. She came to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School MBA program and Lauder Institute East Asia program with the goal of working in China upon graduation. But that doesn’t mean this MBA techie hasn’t lost sight of her longer-term interest in self-driving cars. In a recent “Wharton Stories” feature on the school’s website, writer Kelly Andrews shares more of Cheng’s story, as well as Cheng’s own astute strategies for recruiting—which seem to have served her
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MBA Applicant Spotlight: London Business School Calling
Welcome to another edition of MBA Applicant Spotlight, in which we catch up with individuals on their admissions experiences. This week, we hear from Mauricio Coindreau, a native of Mexico who currently works as a vendor manager for Amazon. He was part of the Mexico country launch, taking on multiple vendor manager roles in several categories, including books, music, video games and most recently Amazon fashion.
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Fridays from the Frontline: So You Want to Be a Social Entrepreneur at Kellogg
Today’s Friday from the Frontline post comes to us from Saumya, a recent graduate of the two-year MBA program at Kellogg School of Management. With her MBA degree, Saumya’s plans are to return to India, where she worked as a social entrepreneur before coming to Kellogg for business school. Prior to Kellogg, Saumya ran a startup called YellowLeaf in her native India, whose mission is to save migrant blue-collar workers from exploitation. While at Kellogg, she had the opportunity to incubate a second social enterprise, an agri-tech venture called Kheyti, whose low-cost,
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MBA Applicant Spotlight: Finding Fit at Cornell / Johnson
Welcome to another edition of MBA Applicant Spotlight, in which we share admissions experiences from the latest candidates for business school. This week, Mukul Aggarwal, a mechanical engineer from India, shares his journey to the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.
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Fridays from the Frontline: Two UCLA Anderson MBA Alums Discuss Running a Company
Entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing career choices; Forbes estimates that approximately 543,000 new businesses are started each month. That said, the truth is that 90 percent of startups eventually fail, which makes it vital for budding entrepreneurs to learn from their predecessors.
Recently, Erik Basu, a UCLA Anderson School of Management MBA alum and founder/CEO of Sentek Global, and John Tabis, Anderson MBA ’06 and co-founder of the Bouqs Company, shared their advice about running a company. And while both company founders offered different perspectives, their advice is valuable for any potential entrepreneur. We thought it made perfect fodder for today's Friday from the Frontline.
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Fridays from the Frontline: Why David Washer Pursued a Dartmouth Tuck Joint MBA/MPH Degree
For David Washer, who knew he wanted to pursue a career serving the social sector and striving for social justice, a joint MBA/MPH (Master of Public Health) degree seemed like just the ticket. In the post that follows, he shares why the Dartmouth Tuck Joint MBA/MPH degree made the most sense for him—as well as why he believes adding the MBA is a valuable option for social justice advocates considering graduate study. This following post has been republished in its entirety from its original source, the Tuck 360: MBA Blog. Why I Pursued
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Fridays from the Frontline: Darden MBA Student Molly Deale Shifts from Making Hats to Managing Finances
It’s Friday—which means it’s time for some perspective from the MBA community. Today it comes from Molly Deale, a rising second-year MBA student at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Deale’s pre–business school work experience is pretty unique: She managed a New York City millinery studio, creating hats for film, TV, and Broadway clients including Hamilton and Wicked. In the interview that follows, she reveals how she took that experience and married it with Darden’s case-based MBA curriculum, the strong Darden alumni network, and the resources provided through the school’s career services offices to land a summer
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Fridays from the Frontline: Johnson Student’s Summer MBA Internship Building a Veterinary Hospital in Mumbai
Some MBA students choose to intern at investment banks in New York or London, others at tech firms in Silicon Valley, others at big multinational consulting firms. But it’s not every day you hear of someone packing up for a summer internship building a veterinary hospital in Mumbai. And yet, that is precisely how Shantanu Naidu, a “half MBA” at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, will spend his summer. In the post that follows, Naidu shares his family’s ties to India’s Tata Group—which span four generations. He also describes how his first year as an
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Fridays from the Frontline: UCLA Anderson FEMBA Student on Why the Future Must Be More Female
This week’s post comes to us from sunny Southern California and UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. Its author, Sana Rahim, is a student in UCLA Anderson’s fully employed MBA (FEMBA) program while also working as a sales manager at McMaster Carr. Despite the competing demands of work and school, she also finds time to serve as a strategic consultant for social impact at the Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. And this summer she will be on fellowship at the United Nations in Istanbul to work toward sustainable development goals. The preceding sentences alone suggest that Rahim
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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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MBA Applicant Spotlight: Prioritizing Fit to Choose Between Haas, Booth, Kellogg, and ASU
In this edition of MBA Applicant Spotlight, we catch up with Michael Sahm, a healthcare professional who submitted half a dozen business school applications and found success at Chicago Booth, Northwestern / Kellogg, Berkeley / Haas, and Arizona / Carey.
Sahm has worked in the healthcare industry for seven years, first as a management consultant and now at Tenet Healthcare, one of America’s largest healthcare providers. He really enjoys the healthcare space and hopes to explore career opportunities in healthcare venture finance or healthcare tech after business school. As an undergraduate, he earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Southern California, where he was a Dean’s Scholar.
Where did you apply? What were the results?
I applied to six MBA programs—HBS, Stanford GSB, Chicago Booth, Kellogg, Berkeley Haas, and Arizona State. I was rejected at HBS and Stanford (no interviews) and accepted to Booth, Kellogg, Berkeley, and ASU.
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