Jeanette Brown
Our Latest Podcast: Acing the Skype or Video Interview
Wrapping up our comprehensive coverage of how to prepare for interviews of every sort, the latest episode in the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast series focuses on the Skype or video interview. An option widely available to MBA applicants who perhaps can’t travel to the business school they’re applying to, the Skype or video interview is also increasingly used by recruiters in the job search process. So brushing up on how best to prepare for this increasingly common interview format is valuable whether you’re in the thick of the MBA admissions process or just looking ahead toward your post-MBA career... Read more »
“Game-Changing” Gift Promises to Make Darden More Global, Benefit Every Full-Time MBA Student
One major philanthropic gift unlocked a second matching gift, resulting in a new $30 million scholarship program at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business that promises to make it possible for every student in the full-time MBA program to take part in a Darden Worldwide Course at no incremental cost. Announced earlier this week, the $15 million gift from the Batten Foundation triggered a matching gift from UVA’s Bicentennial Scholars Fund, which the school says places it in a unique position among top MBA programs in being able to send every student to another part of the world funded by philanthropy.... Read more »
March Madness Begins: Consortium MBA Draft Takes Place Today
No, it has nothing to do with basketball. A draft of another sort will take place today, but for some MBA applicants it could be as big as getting signed with the Golden State Warriors. We’re talking about the annual draft for the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management. Each year, the group’s member business schools offer tens of millions of dollars in fellowships to hundreds of MBA applicants, most under-represented minorities. Clear Admit’s DecisionWeek is brought to you by HBX. HBX brings the dynamism of the Harvard Business School classroom to online learning—preparing participants for the next chapter of their... Read more »
Ross MBA Adcom Bullish on Class of 2020—And Round 2 Decisions Aren’t Even Out Yet!
It’s a good week at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. In a March 9th post to the Ross MBA Admissions Blog, Soojin Kwon, managing director of full-time admissions and program, shared her excitement about the Round 1 applicants who have paid their deposits and said they’ll be heading to Ann Arbor next fall. The details she shared about the earliest members of the Ross MBA Class of 2020 suggest that diversity is the word that defines them. In addition to a professional hockey player in the NHL, a Ghanaian who leads commercial programs for GE, a greenlight coordinator... Read more »
Our Latest Podcast: Who Is Your MBA Interviewer?
At schools like Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan School of Management, MBA admissions interviews are conducted exclusively by members of the admissions staff. London Business School and Columbia Business School, meanwhile, are among those that rely on an army of alumni to meet with candidates around the world. Still other schools—including the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business—train current students in the art of interviewing and call on them to help assess potential future classmates. While much of the content of the interview may be similar regardless of who’s sitting across from you in... Read more »
Acing the Wharton TBD: Advice from Former Wharton Admissions Staffers
There’s been a steady stream of bright yellow interview invites to Wharton lighting up Clear Admit’s LiveWire for two weeks running, suggesting that many of you are in the throes of preparing for the school’s unique team-based discussion (TBD). The prompt Wharton used for the TBD with Round 1 applicants in the fall was as follows: “For many students, the global perspective fostered by Wharton’s international community is brought into focus through immersive learning opportunities like Global Modular Courses (GMCs). GMCs are full-credit courses in an intensive workshop format that take place in a location relevant to the topic. For the purpose... Read more »
Why You Should Consider Yourself Lucky to Get to Write the MIT Sloan Pre-Interview Essay
Did you get invited to interview at MIT Sloan today? If so, a hearty congratulations. And if not—there’s still hope! Another batch of invites is slated to go out a week from today, on March 1st. In case you don’t know it already, for those of you who did or still might receive an invitation to interview—you’re also going to get to write an additional essay. That’s right. MIT Sloan is unique among top business schools in that it saves an application essay question for only those candidates it invites to interview. Before you groan and say, “Another essay?” you’d do... Read more »
Real Humans of Goizueta’s MBA Class of 2019
With just 172 students in the two-year full-time MBA Class of 2019, intimate is a word that comes up frequently as many at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School describe the MBA experience. In fact, the class size was smaller than usual—down nine students from the year prior. Overall application volume fell, from 1,432 to 1,136, with the bulk of that slippage among international applicants. Of the students in the Goizueta Class of 2019, women make up 30 percent, a six-point gain over the previous year. Associate Dean of MBA Admissions Julie Barefoot credits some of that growth to an annual... Read more »
Five Tips for Keeping Love Alive in Business School
This is an oldie but a goodie from the Clear Admit archives—as applicable this Valentine’s Day as it was last year. Enjoy! As any business school student will tell you, the pressures of a top-tier MBA program can be overwhelming. And as anyone who’s been in a romantic relationship can attest, care and attention are required to keep things on track. Trying to tackle both simultaneously definitely presents some challenges, but couples from a range of leading schools assure us it can indeed be done. In honor of Valentine’s Day, they’ve generously shared their tips for keeping love alive in... Read more »
Real Humans of the Fuqua MBA Class of 2019
Last July, when the 439 new members of the MBA Class of 2019 arrived on Duke’s Fuqua School of Business campus, they brought with them impressive academic chops. Average GMAT score for the class was 702, up seven points over the year before. The median score—710—jumped 10 points in the same span. GPAs also rose ever so slightly, .03 of a point to 3.5. But as you’ll see in the profiles of several members of the class, the rising scores certainly don’t seem to signify that Fuqua has swayed at all from seeking out other factors long considered of preeminent... Read more »
Amazon—Not Eagles—Wins Super Bowl, According to Kellogg Ad Review
Philadelphia football fans took to the streets, toppling cars, scaling street lamps, and setting at least one fire to celebrate their beloved Eagles’ first-ever Super Bowl win, 41 to 33 against the New England Patriots. But according to MBA students at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, e-commerce giant Amazon was the victor in terms of best ads of the night. On Sunday, as the game got underway in minus-2-degree Fahrenheit Minneapolis, approximately 50 Kellogg students teamed up with marketing professors Tim Calkins and Derek Rucker to determine the night’s winners and losers in the battle of the brands. Advertisers spend... Read more »
Inaugural Dean of Cornell’s Johnson College of Business Steps Down Abruptly, No Reason Given
Soumitra Dutta, who has served as the first-ever dean of the S.C. Johnson College of Business at Cornell University, resigned abruptly yesterday, and neither the school nor Dutta has provided any reason for his sudden departure, according to a report in the Cornell Daily Sun. The College of Business, launched in July 2016, merged the Johnson Graduate School of Management, the School of Hotel Administration, and the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. Dutta also oversaw the Cornell Tech MBA program at Cornell’s campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City. Cornell Provost Michael Kotlikoff sent an... Read more »
Not-to-Miss Ross Interview Tips Straight from the Admissions Director
If you’ve gone to schedule an on-campus Round 2 interview at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business only to learn that all the slots are full, you’re not alone. Soojin Kwon, Ross managing director of full-time MBA admissions and program, shared these and other updates—as well as valuable Ross interview tips—in a post today to her MBA Admissions Blog. “Shortly after posting the interview schedule, nearly all of our on-campus slots filled up,” she wrote. So her team reached out to student interviewers to volunteer more time and opened up more slots—only those filled, too! “Please don’t despair... Read more »
HBS Admissions Director on Round 2 Next Steps
Chad Losee, managing director of MBA admissions and financial aid at Harvard Business School, again shared news about Round 2 interview invitations on his Direct from the Director blog yesterday. He alerted those Round 2 candidates who hadn’t received word in the first wave of notifications last week that a final wave would go out today at noon. True to his word, that wave has just gone out—and unfortunately for many, MBA LiveWire is reflecting a “sea of red” with most candidates reporting they’ve been “released” from consideration. “Unfortunately, we can’t move everyone forward to the next stage of the... Read more »
2018 Financial Times MBA Rankings: Stanford GSB Dashes INSEAD Three-Peat Dreams
INSEAD hoped to top the Financial Times MBA rankings for the third year in a row, but it wasn’t to be. Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) gets top bragging rights this year, returning to the number-one spot it has held only once before, in 2012. INSEAD was knocked to number two, followed by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, which held steady at number three. London Business School (LBS) reclaimed some ground this year—coming in fourth—after a rare fall last year out of the top five. Harvard Business School (HBS), meanwhile, ranked fifth, its lowest showing since 2008. Rounding... Read more »
The Chicago Booth MBA/MPP Dual-Degree Experience
Fridays from the Frontline Today’s the day the University of Chicago Booth School of Business was slated to send out interview invitations to Round 2 applicants, but posts to MBA LiveWire suggest that some applicants began receiving them earlier this week. Have you gotten one? If you’re still waiting, why not distract yourself by learning a little more about the school from a current student? Today’s Fridays from the Frontline column comes to us from Yuli Almozlino, a student in the dual-degree program Booth offers with the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. As the school’s website describes, the program “allows students... Read more »
MIT Sloan Round 2 Interview Invites to Go Out in Two Waves
If you applied to MIT Sloan School of Management in Round 2, listen up. According to a blog post today from Admissions Director Dawna Levenson, MIT Sloan Round 2 interview invites will go out in two waves, one on February 22nd and a second on March 1st. Dawna Levenson, MIT Sloan director of MBA and Master of finance admissions “Thank you to all of our Round 2 MBA applicants!” Levenson wrote as introduction. “I know how much time and effort goes into completing each part of the application. Thank you for sharing your accomplishments, experiences and introduction to your future... Read more »
How to Break into Consulting at Bain—Tips from the Global Head of Consultant Recruiting
For business school students gunning for a career in consulting post-graduation, Bain & Company is on an exclusive shortlist of the most elite consulting firms in the world. Considered the third “B” in “MBB”—the acronym used to refer to McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Bain—the Boston-headquartered firm boasts 53 offices in 34 countries around the world. Bain employs more than 7,000 people and counts as its clients leading Fortune 500 companies, as well as nonprofit and government organizations. And business continues to be booming. Keith Bevans, Bain global head of consultant recruiting We caught up with Keith Bevans, global... Read more »
HBS Round 2 Interview Invites to Go Out in Two Waves Next Week
Chad Losee, Harvard Business School (HBS) managing director of MBA admissions and financial aid, took to his blog earlier this week to share details about the school’s upcoming scheduled release of interview invitations to Round 2 applicants. “We will send two waves of interview invitations: January 25 and January 30,” he wrote. “I know it’s tough to wait that additional few days, but we do need the time to finalize interview invitations,” he added. On January 25th, some applicants will receive a message inviting them to interview while others will hear nothing, he shared. The remainder of the second-round applicant pool... Read more »
The MBA Juggle: An Anderson Student on Balancing Social, Academic, and Career Aspects of B-School
Fridays from the Frontline Before coming to UCLA Anderson School of Management, first-year MBA student Julie Mills worked as a customer success manager at software-as-a-service provider Wrike and served in the Peace Corps in the eastern Caribbean. She’s hoping to advance her career in technology upon graduation, and in a recent blog post she shared how tech has taken off at Anderson over the past eight years thanks to the increased presence of MBAs in the industry, valuable partnerships with companies for on-campus recruiting, and the tight-knit community of Anderson students and alumni. The recruiting opportunities Mills has had at... Read more »
