Weekly Columns
Keep up with the latest school facts and news from your fellow MBA applicants.
Published: November 26, 2015
Fridays from the Frontline: Kellogg First-Year Reflects on the Talent of Her Classmates
As those of us here in the United States attempt to work off hearty Thanksgiving meals, some are still reflecting on the things for which we're thankful. In that spirit, our Fridays from the Frontline post today comes from Nikita Sunilkumar, a first-year MBA student at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.
Sunilkumar, a California native who worked as a production engineer at Boeing before business school, entered Kellogg as part of a record-breaking class made up of 43 percent women. As she shares here, she took part in an eye-opening exercise as part of the school's Women's Business Association led by Kellogg Professor Victoria Medvec, one designed to help participants recognize and appreciate the remarkable talent of their classmates. Our thanks to Sunilkumar for sharing her thoughts—and for business schools across the globe working toward gender parity.
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Published: November 19, 2015
Fridays from the Frontline: An INSEAD Student in Asia Mourns for Paris, Holds Hope for the World
INSEAD student Edouard Chehade was not in Paris one week ago today. But he knows Paris well, having spent part of his MBA studying just southeast of the city in Fontainebleau on INSEAD’s Europe Campus. Today he is in Singapore on INSEAD’s Asia Campus, finishing up the final weeks of his MBA program. Paris, though, has been a topic of every moment’s discussion since the November 13th terrorist attacks that killed 129 and injured more than 350, he says.
In the post that follows, Chehade mourns for the victims, those in Paris but also those who have survived or succumbed to similar events in Bombay, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Algeria, Pakistan and countless other countries. The remarkable diversity of the INSEAD class—where students represent more than 80 nationalities—means that he has friends who have lived in many of these very places.
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Published: November 12, 2015
Fridays from the Frontline: Conquering FOMO at INSEAD
Watching LiveWire, we’ve seen lots of INSEAD interview action in the past few weeks, including this disappointed but determined post from an India applicant in Malta who didn’t get an invitation: “Spent all of summer in pursuit of INSEAD,” he or she wrote. “Heartbroken but not Fallen yet!!” Cue a collective “aww” in the Clear Admit office. Keep calm and stay positive!
In today’s Fridays from the Frontline, we hear from someone who did make the cut at INSEAD only to arrive on campus and confront a challenge of a whole new sort: FOMO, or fear of missing out.
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Published: October 29, 2015
Fridays from the Frontline: MBA Mama on Pitching as a Female Entrepreneur
This week in our Fridays from the Frontline series, we are delighted to have as our contributor Divinity Matovu, a first-year MBA student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Matovu, whose focus at Wharton is on entrepreneurial management and finance, also happens to be a mother of two and the co-founder and president of MBA Mama, an online platform where millennial moms can find the products, services, tools and inspiration they need to pursue an MBA.
Her passion for start-ups (she’s launched four of her own) and women’s empowerment shines through in the following post, where she shares a recent experience she had pitching to an all-male panel as part of Wharton’s Venture Initiation Program (VIP). Her spirit and pluck are evident as well. Even amid everything else she’s doing, she finds time to blog regularly—check out her posts to learn more about some of her other passions, including technology, financial inclusion and African affairs. We’re grateful to Divinity for lending her voice and perspective to our series.
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Published: October 27, 2015
MBA Admissions Mashup: Breaking News from HBS, Value of Alumni Networks, and the Importance Balance
Every Wednesday, we share a round-up of the latest news from admissions blogs at the top business schools. In this week’s edition of MBA Admissions Mashup, we take a look at some breaking news from HBS, the value of a vast alumni network, careers and internships, work-life balance, on-campus conferences as well as some last minute admissions advice. This morning, Harvard Business School Managing Director of MBA Admissions & Financial Aid, Dee Leopold announced that she will be stepping down from her post in May 2016. In the post, she assures all of you Harvard Hopefuls
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Published: October 22, 2015
Fridays from the Frontline: MBA Data Guru Analyzes Interview Acceptance Rates
This week, we’ve had the pleasure of connecting with Wayne Atwell, a second-year MBA student at NYU Stern School of Business, who is perhaps better known as the MBA Data Guru. In January 2014, while in the midst of applying to business school himself, he launched a website with that name after crunching numbers to figure out his own chances of getting into the various schools where he had applied. (Atwell is pictured above, far right, with his Stern block and their strategy professor, Sonia Marciano.)
In using data to answer his own questions about the MBA application process, he realized he was also answering the questions of other MBA applicants, and so www.mbadataguru.com was born. As for why and how he’s kept updating it, even now amid the hectic pace of a full-time MBA program? “Mainly I like playing around with data,” he says. “I find it fun.” But he’s also gotten to chat with lots of MBA applicants, learned a bit about web development and managed to grow an audience, he adds. “Still, it’s more of a hobby than anything else."
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Published: October 15, 2015
Fridays from the Frontline: Duke / Fuqua Alum on How Team Fuqua is Central to Duke Culture
Happy Friday! We’re back again this week with another edition of Fridays From the Frontlines. This week we bring you Steven Ma, Duke / Fuqua Alum (Class of 2015). Prior to Fuqua, Steven graduated from Oregon State University with a degree in Biology – not your traditional MBA applicant. When Steven made the leap into the MBA world, he found that the resources just weren’t there for him. His blog, From Bench to Board, aims to chronicle his experiences and learnings with the aim of helping those who are interested in earning an MBA without the
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Published: October 8, 2015
Fridays from the Frontline: Kindergarten Teacher, with MBA from Ross, Pursues Lifelong Tech Dream
How does a kindergarten teacher with a liberal arts degree score an internship at Apple? Find out in this week’s edition of Fridays from the Frontline. Jeremy Schifeling, helped in part by an MBA from the University of Michigan’s Ross School, not only landed a marketing internship on Apple’s iOS team, he went on to work at several educational tech firms and at LinkedIn before founding his own company designed to help others from non-tech backgrounds break into the field.
He contacted us and generously offered to share his story, complete with data revealing that there are three times as many non-tech job opportunities for MBAs at internet firms (in marketing, HR, business development, etc.) as there are positions for computer science (CS) majors and engineers. So if you're from a non-tech background and want to know how make the shift, this post's for you.
As always, we welcome the contributions of other current MBA students and applicants, as well as alumni! Please email Jeanette or Marianne if you would like to add your voice to the mix. Many thanks to Jeremy for his great post!
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Published: October 1, 2015
Fridays from the Frontline: MIT Sloan MBA Student, Veteran Discusses Humility and Success
It’s Friday, and once again we’re bringing you insights straight from current MBA applicants and students as part of our Fridays from the Frontline column. Our contributor this week, MIT Sloan School of Management second-year Brian Kirk (pictured above, second from left), knows his fair share about the frontline, both figurative and real, having served as a U.S. Navy submariner prior to business school.
In the post that follows, he offers some incredible insights about humility and its impact on success, drawn both from his time at Sloan and his military service. Worth the read. Kirk and other leaders of the MIT Sloan Veterans Association just hosted Veteran's Ambassadors Day, a day of programming and activities for prospective MBA applicants from the armed forces. They are planning a second Ambassadors Day in the spring, so if you are an active duty service person or veteran considering business school, check it out.
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Published: September 17, 2015
Fridays from the Frontline: Kellogg Second-Year Shares Advice on Making the Most of the First Year
Welcome back to Fridays from the Frontline, a weekly column where we'll feature guest MBA student and applicant bloggers, as well as original pieces that incorporate multiple perspectives from applicants, students and recent alumni on all things MBA. As always, we welcome your contributions! Please email Jeanette or Marianne if you would like to add your voice to the mix. Many thanks to this week's guest blogger, Rohan Rajiv from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.
This post has been republished in its entirety from "Inside Perspective," a blog featuring contributions from the school's full-time MBA students. Kellogg Second-year student Rohan Rajiv blogs there once a week about important lessons he is learning at Kellogg. You can read more of his posts here.
A few months ago, I wrote a letter to an incoming MBA student in an attempt to help incoming students prepare for their two years at school. I tried staying away from specific advice in that post, as the assumption was that the framework ought to work for everyone.
Today, however, I’m going to dig into my first year process and provide specifics on how I spent my first year.
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Published: September 10, 2015
Clear Admit Gears Up to Bring Back Fridays from the Frontlines
After a summer-long hiatus as business school students toiled away at their internships and prospective MBA applicants crammed for the GMAT, we are gearing up for the return of Fridays from the Frontlines, Clear Admit’s popular weekly feature showcasing the voices of real, live MBA applicants, current business school students and recent MBA alums.
We’ve always loved following the wisdom, humor, triumphs, and tribulations of the MBA blogosphere — and we want to make sure that we’re capturing all of it as we go into the 2015-2016 season. We’ve lined up a roster of bloggers whose posts we enjoy and think would be relevant to Clear Admit’s readers, and we’re reaching out to invite them to participate as periodic guest bloggers on our site. We’ll debut our first guest blog post in the in this space next week.
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Fridays from the Frontline: Join the Ranks!
As we mentioned last week, we're on the lookout for MBA applicants, students, and recent grads who are blogging or tweeting their b-school experiences -- or who would like to start as correspondents for Clear Admit.
If you don't already have a writing platform and feel daunted by the commitment of maintaining your own blog, writing as a correspondent for Clear Admit is a great way to share your insight and experience with the MBA community. We’ll ask our correspondents to weigh in on an admissions, b-school, or career-related topic 1-2 times per month, and will feature their thoughts on the Clear Admit blog (as well as links to any element of their online presence they wish to promote). And to show our appreciation at the end of the admissions cycle/academic year, we’ll reward our most active and insightful contributors with $200 Amazon.com gift cards.
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Fridays From the Frontline: Call for Correspondents
Are you thinking about documenting your MBA application process, b-school studies, or post-grad adventures? Do you already maintain a blog about your business school experience or post-MBA career? Clear Admit wants to hear from you!
We've always loved following the wisdom, humor, triumphs, and tribulations of the MBA blogosphere -- and we want to make sure that we're capturing all of it as we go into the 2015-2016 season. So, we're issuing a Call for Correspondents this week.
If you maintain a blog or tweet about your MBA experiences, please let us know via the form below! We'll be sure to add you to the Clear Admit Mashup page and follow you on Twitter.
And, in a new twist this year, we're seeking applicants, current students, and recent grads to serve as correspondents and regularly share their experiences directly with the Clear Admit audience. We'll ask our correspondents to weigh in on an admissions, school, or career-related topic 1-2 times per month, and will feature their thoughts on the Clear Admit blog (as well as links to any element of their online presence they wish to promote). To show our appreciation at the end of the admissions cycle/academic year, we'll reward our most insightful contributors with $200 Amazon.com gift cards.
Interested? Just complete the form below, and we'll be in touch!
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Fridays From the Frontline: Preparing Women for Future Board Opportunities
The following is a guest post from Amanda Schmid, a first-year student in Kellogg's Full-Time Two-Year MBA Program. The post was originally published on Kellogg's Full-Time MBA blog, the Inside Perspective. Amanda worked in hospitals in DC and Baltimore as a clinician and a department head before pursuing her MBA, and she hopes to play a strategic or general management role at a medical device company after graduation.
Only 18% of S&P 500 boardrooms contain women. It will likely take 30 years for that number to grow to 30%.
In order to continue supporting women in leadership, the Women’s Business Association (WBA)recently hosted a panel to hear how two prominent female executives navigated their careers to lead them to positions on several boards.
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Fridays From the Frontline: Choices
Welcome back to Fridays From the Frontline, our weekly summation of happenings in the business school blogosphere. This week, MBA applicants, current students, and admissions bloggers have made important choices from a variety of different topics in the business school sphere, and life in general.
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Fridays From the Frontline: Divergent Paths
The following is a guest post from Naija MBA Gal that was originally published on her blog. Naija MBA Gal is a consultant specializing in risk assurance at one of the big consulting firms, and she is planning to attend the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago in Fall 2015. You can follow Naija MBA Gal’s application journey on her blog.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
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Fridays From the Frontline: Four Tips for Marketers
The following is a guest post from Ray Hwang, a first-year student in Kellogg’s Two-Year MBA Program. The post was originally published on Kellogg's Full-Time MBA blog, The Inside Perspective. Ray is a leader in both the Marketing Club and High Tech Club, and he will be interning at LinkedIn on the Product Marketing team this summer. Before Kellogg, Ray worked at General Mills.
When I was young, my brother and I would occasionally use a branch or toy hammer to bang each other on the knee, hoping to see the patellar reflex in action. We saw doctors do it on TV and, as over-confident children, naturally felt we could achieve the same results without any training. Unsurprisingly, it never really worked. To this day I’m still unconvinced I actually have the knee-jerk reflex.
There is a reflex, however, which I undeniably have and I’m sure you do, too. It’s a new digital reflex, brought on by the rise of mobile, to turn to whatever device is at hand to satisfy our need for information right in the moment. For example, recently my friend told me about a movie he enjoyed the night before, and without even thinking, I pulled out my phone to read reviews and find a theater near me where it was playing.
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Fridays from the Frontline: GMAT Quant–Advanced Concepts
The following is a guest post from Jonathan Taves, that was originally published on his website, EF Essays: Essays on Economics and Finance.
With math on the GMAT, there’s always room for seconds. For those seeking a score higher than the 560 average, the following advanced concepts are important to learn. They’re less frequently tested than the concepts we discussed last week, so don’t spend hours and hours trying to master all iterations of combinatorics, for example. Competence, not mastery, should be the goal here.
However, these are tested, and so in that sense, aren’t really “advanced” at all. They’re essential. Unfortunately, these concepts are rarely covered in math review guides that aren’t GMAT-specific. Make sure to supplement your studying with lessons on Distance/Speed/Time, Probability, and Combinatorics (Permutations and Combinations).
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Published: April 30, 2015
Fridays from the Frontline: Stop Wasting Your Time on Essays
The following is a guest post from Scott Duncan that was originally published on his blog. Scott is a medical device engineer who is going to Harvard Business School in the fall to transition from designing medical devices to leading medical device companies. You can follow his journey to a HBS acceptance on his blog.
I’m still trying to figure out all of the things I did differently this year that earned me a spot at HBS. Since I had practice writing essays from my previous attempt at applying, and I had really worked hard at defining my core reasons for applying – writing went a lot easier this year.
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Published: April 23, 2015
Fridays from the Frontline: Hello, MBA Class of 2018
The following is a guest post from Jonathan Taves, that was originally published on his website, EF Essays: Essays on Economics and Finance.
On Sunday, Jordan Spieth, a twenty-one year old from Texas, won The Masters. In 1997, a twenty-one year old also won The Masters: Tiger Woods. Amid Mr. Woods’ victory celebration, a reporter asked him if he had anything to say to the viewers back home. After thinking for a moment, he smiled and said, “Hello, world.” The day after The Masters, it only seems fitting that I borrow that iconic response as I announce my intent to reapply to MBA programs:
Hello, MBA Class of 2018
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Fridays from the Frontline: Musings
Welcome back to Fridays From the Frontline, our weekly summation of happenings in the business school blogosphere. This week, MBA applicants, current students, and admissions bloggers have mused upon a variety of different topics from the business school sphere, and from life in general.
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Fridays from the Frontline: Tasting the Fear
The following is a guest post from Naija MBA Gal that was originally published on her blog. Naija MBA Gal is a consultant specializing in risk assurance at one of the big consulting firms, and she is planning to attend the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago in Fall 2015. You can follow Naija MBA Gal’s application journey on her blog.
I’ve officially committed to the Booth class of 2017 and I know its a great decision. So why am I afraid? There is definitely no way I will be worse off come 2017 but I’m not all about being rational.
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Published: March 19, 2015
Fridays from the Frontline: “How I’m Handling the Wharton Waitlist”
Welcome back to Fridays From the Frontline, the column in which we highlight the experiences of MBA bloggers. The following is a guest post from TopDogMBA with valuable advice for other applicants about handling business school waitlists that originally appeared on his blog. TopDogMBA has 12 years of experience in corporate investment banking, and he was admitted to MIT Sloan and INSEAD and waitlisted at Wharton. Follow TopDogMBA for more top-notch advice, MBA application stories, and photos of TopDogMBA's adorable dog Beatrice.
I’ve thought a long time about whether to post this since it puts me way out there, but I tried real hard to think how a Wharton student would deal with it. My conclusion is that the collaborative Wharton spirit would prevail and they’d share their insight with others in the same situation so here goes…
As you probably know, I got waitlisted by Wharton in R1 and, despite getting admitted by the two other schools I applied to, Wharton remains my top choice. Being on the waitlist is a strange existence though, where you know you came within a hair’s breadth of being admitted yet didn’t quite make the cut.
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Published: February 26, 2015
Fridays From the Frontline: Busy, Busy
Welcome back to Fridays From the Frontline, Clear Admit’s weekly summation of posts from the business school blogosphere. This week, MBA applicants and current students alike are busy with the demands of the application process or business school life.
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Published: February 12, 2015
Fridays From the Frontline: Experience
Welcome back to Fridays From the Frontline, our weekly summation of happenings in the business school blogosphere. This week, MBA applicants, current students, and admissions bloggers have stressed the value of experience in a myriad of ways.
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