Weekly Columns
Keep up with the latest school facts and news from your fellow MBA applicants.
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 20, 2017
MBA DecisionWire Spotlight: MIT / Sloan or Berkeley / Haas for Technology
As acceptance notifications roll out, many MBA candidates are posting their successes and selections on MBA DecisionWire, a tool for applicants, students and alumni to share their admissions results. In this edition of MBA DecisionWire Spotlight, we take a closer look at a candidate with acceptances to Berkeley / Haas, Duke / Fuqua, MIT / Sloan, and UCLA / Anderson.
While the applicant had already pared down the list, he’s still seeking advice to determine where to pursue his MBA:
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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 14, 2017
MBA DecisionWire Spotlight: Wharton, Columbia, or Booth for Investment Management
MBA DecisionWire is a tool for applicants, students and alumni to share more information with their peers—specifically about where they decide to attend business school based on where they applied and were accepted. In our new series, MBA DecisionWire Spotlight, we’ll be taking a closer look at selected posts. This week, we kick off with one candidate’s decision between Chicago / Booth, Columbia Business School and The Wharton School.
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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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Published: November 3, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: The Supply Chain Master in Your Kitchen
Most MBA students head to business school expecting to learn about management from professors, peers, class discussions, team projects and text books. Which, of course, they do. But the management lessons don’t stop there.
Sagar Doshi, an MBA student at the University of Oxford’s Saïd School of Business, has been writing about his experiences on campus in a series of blog posts on the Oxford Saïd MBA Blog. “I'm in a short, one-year MBA program, and one of my goals has been to get to know the people and community around me as much as possible,” he tells us. This desire has prompted his posts, many of which focus on aspects of life at Saïd that some might take for granted or overlook entirely. We’re sharing one today that provides a glimpse into the management practices that help keep the school’s kitchens running smoothly and the students well fed.
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Published: October 20, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Reflecting on the HKS/HBS Joint Degree Program
Harvard today is hosting an information session in Budapest on its joint degree program, through which students can study at both Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and Harvard Business School (HSB) and complete both their Master in Public Administration (MPA) and their MBA in just three years. Can’t make it to Budapest but still interested in learning more about the HKS/HBS joint degree program? You’re in luck. Our Fridays from the Frontline today comes to us from Rafael Rivera, a student in the HKS/HBS joint degree program now in his third and final year. In his post, Rivera shares
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Published: October 13, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Catching the Political Bug at Tuck
Sure, climate factors into how some people decide which business school to attend. But usually it has to do with warm temperatures and sunshine, not elections. Not for Justen Nestico. A second-year MBA student at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, Nestico chose Tuck in part because of its location at the heart of what has proven to be one of the wildest presidential races in the nation’s history. In the post that follows, Nestico shares how he and other Tuck students who’ve caught the political bug are ideally positioned to watch the electoral process unfold first hand. Our
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Published: October 6, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Enhancing Diversity in Business Starting at Kelley
Indiana University's Kelley School of Business is today kicking off a two-day celebration marking 50 years of participation as a member school of the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management. Kelley was one of just three founding member schools—but the Consortium’s ranks have since grown to include 18 of the best business schools in the country.
In anticipation of this important milestone, Ruby Jones, a Kelley School first-year MBA student and Consortium Fellow penned a beautiful essay explaining the Consortium to those who are unfamiliar, describing her journey from a nonprofit career to business school and sharing how she hopes—with her MBA—to assist the next generation of diverse leaders. Our thanks to Jones for granting permission for us to republish her essay here.
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Published: September 29, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Tackling Inequality—An HBS Independent Project
"Did you know that nearly 80 percent of HBS alumni are asked to serve in nonprofit boards at some point in their lives post-HBS?” asks Harvard Business School (HBS) second-year MBA student Molly Palmersheim in a post this week on the HBS MBA Voices student blog. That statistic spurred Palmershein and other students—as part of an independent study in their EC year with HBS Professors Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Nien-hê Hsieh—to design a course that could help train students for these roles they were so likely to take with nonprofit community organizations.
For Palmershein, part of being the kind of “difference-making” leader HBS students are educated toward becoming would naturally involve volunteering with community organizations. “I came to HBS knowing that community leadership would live alongside my professional and personal lives post-HBS,” she writes. But she didn’t realize how the skillset she was developing at HBS could change how she worked with nonprofits.
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Published: September 22, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: A CBS First-Year MBA Student Reacts to Police Shootings
Columbia Business School (CBS) was one of the first schools to join students at Wharton earlier this week in response to the recent deaths of black men at the hands of police in two U.S. cities. Soon, students at six or more schools had come together, dressed in black, both to mourn the losses but also to let those deaths serve as a rallying cry for dialogue both at business school and in the business world beyond.
Adding to the dialogue, this week’s Fridays from the Frontline is a thoughtful, candid essay from CBS first-year MBA student Lyndon Mouton. In it, Mouton provides the poignant and at points painful perspective of an African-American male faced with continuing issues of race and policing that interfere with the business school education he is working so hard to obtain.
Before matriculating at CBS over the summer, he worked in private equity in Chicago and New York. Our thanks to Mouton for sharing his thoughts here with the Clear Admit audience.
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Published: September 15, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Chicago Booth Admissions Director on the Impact of Booth’s Flexible Curriculum
Last week we featured a student blogger from Harvard Business School (HBS) explaining why, for him, that school’s required curriculum provided the business foundation he believes will best prepare him for a seat at any business table. This week, our Fridays from the Frontline comes from Kurt Ahlm, associate dean of student recruitment and admissions at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. On the “Booth Insider” blog, Ahlm recently extolled the virtues of that school’s extraordinarily flexible curriculum—though the timing was simply to coincide with Booth’s upcoming Round 1 deadline and was certainly not
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Published: September 8, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Everything You Need to Know About the HBS Required Curriculum
As Stefan Coburn, Harvard Business School Class of 2017, looks back on what he learned in his first year of business school, it’s clear that he is a satisfied customer. “I never could have imagined the extent to which the required curriculum (RC) would deliver so much knowledge in nearly every essential aspect of business, from marketing to finance to operations to leadership,” he writes. If you have HBS in your sights, don’t miss this comprehensive analysis of the school’s signature first-year required curriculum. And if you just hit submit in time for the Round 1 deadline, best
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Published: September 1, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Darden MBA Student on Google’s Great Perks
This week’s Fridays from the Frontline post comes to us from Jimmy Figueroa, a second-year MBA student at UVA’s Darden School of Business just back from his summer internship at Google in San Francisco. A veteran of New York’s financial services sector prior to business school, Figueroa had a no-nonsense view of what to expect from a job and an employer. “It was always a no frills environment where you work hard, work long and perform,” he writes. And if you do well, you’ll get rewarded monetarily. Free cafes, gym classes, game rooms—the companies that have those don’t
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Published: August 25, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Five Questions with Kellogg Professor Blake McShane
As we wait for students to get into the swing of things at campus enough to begin blogging and applicants to really dive into the application process, we’re taking a bit of a departure from our regular Fridays from the Frontline routine to share the perspective of a business school professor.
Blake McShane, an associate professor of marketing at Kellogg, teachers courses in customer analytics, marketing research and data analysis. A statistical methodologist, McShane has developed statistical models for fields ranging from online advertising and neuroscience to paleoclimatology and baseball. Below, McShane talks about this marketing research course and what he hopes students get out of it, what he loves most about teaching at Kellogg and his own research.
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