Jonathan Pfeffer
Fridays from the Frontline: Duke Fuqua Latin American Student Association Provides Valuable Support
The Latin American Student Association (LASA) is one of the most popular student clubs at Duke Fuqua, with 100+ members representing nearly 20 countries. By helping North American students build careers in Latin America and supporting Latin American students as they pursue careers in the U.S. and Europe, LASA is well-positioned to help preserve professional and cultural bridges with economies that continue to grow. Current student Ariadne Sabatoski took to the Duke Fuqua blog to discuss the critical role that the Latin American Student Association (LASA) plays in admissions, recruiting, external relations, and networking. Duke Fuqua Latin American Student Association... Read more »
Real Humans of USC Marshall’s MBA Class of 2021
We head to sunny California for our latest profiles in Real Humans: MBA Students. The University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business boasts both the oldest entrepreneurship program in the U.S. and the first immersive international MBA experience of its kind. They were also the first top-tier MBA program to reach gender parity. Moreover, the USC Trojan brand is a powerful professional asset to both its current students and alumni, making USC Marshall a stand-out choice for MBA education. The 214 members of the Class of 2021 arrived on campus with an average age of 29. Academically speaking, the... Read more »
Real Humans of Georgetown McDonough’s MBA Class of 2021
In our latest edition of Real Humans: MBA Students, we get to know students pursuing their business management studies at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. This leading school attracts students who wish to immerse themselves in the highly connected and influential environment of Washington, DC, as well as a culture of ethical and principled leadership. 271 candidates chose to enroll in the Class of 2021 at McDonough. Twenty-nine percent of the new students are international, and the same percentage are women. Meanwhile, U.S. minorities represent 37 percent of the class. During their undergraduate years, just over a quarter had... Read more »
Fridays from the Frontline: Diving Into Internship Recruiting at MIT Sloan
For b-school hopefuls and current students alike, the first-year internship is often discussed in terms of how to get one’s foot in the door at an elite consulting firm or Silicon Valley tech titan. The version of this narrative that seems to fly under the radar is that companies both large and small have to find innovative ways to vie for the affections of each new crop MBA talent. As MIT Sloan second-year Valerie Zhao explained in a recent blog entry, MBA students at schools like Sloan have numerous opportunities at their fingertips to check out on-campus presentations and network... Read more »
Real Humans of SMU Cox’s MBA Class of 2021
It’s time to meet another cohort in our series, Real Humans: MBA Students, and this time we’re heading south to Texas. There, Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business is known for its tight-knit community and world-class faculty. Located in the dynamic business hub of Dallas, Texas, SMU Cox draws students from a variety of backgrounds seeking personalized attention as part of their MBA experience. The 115 members of the Class of 2021 arrived on campus with an average of 4.5 years of work experience. Thirty-four percent of the new students are women, and 20 percent are underrepresented minorities. Altogether,... Read more »
Real Humans of Yale School of Management’s MBA Class of 2021
We continue to meet new MBA candidates in our series, Real Humans: MBA Students. This week, we get to know a group of new students who have chosen to pursue their business management education in New Haven, Connecticut, at the Yale School of Management. For Yale SOM, their mission is to educate leaders in business and society, and strategically position graduates to maximize their academic and professional development. Yale’s faculty collaborate to advance knowledge through a number of centers and area specific initiatives. Research centers include Center for Customer Insights, International Center for Finance, Program on Entrepreneurship, Program on Social... Read more »
Real Humans of Stanford GSB’s MSx Class of 2020
The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) is the cream of the crop of elite business school programs worldwide and is considered go-to institution for building “an entrepreneurial mindset, a spirit of innovation, and effective personal leadership skills.” While you may have already seen our Real Humans of the Stanford GSB MBA Class of 2021, we also wanted to introduce you to members of their MSx program, a full-time, one-year degree tailored to experienced mid-career professionals seeking an accelerated MBA. As MSx candidates come to Stanford GSB mid-career, they enter with far more professional experience than those students who took... Read more »
Fridays from the Frontline: Max Olivares on Embracing Diversity at Anderson
Creating equitable spaces that address a range of experiences is not only essential to a great education, but it’s how students, particularly MBA students, prepare to navigate business in an increasingly globalized world. UCLA Anderson’s recent Embracing Diversity Conference was a two-day forum featuring an “elevated conversation about intersecting identities” among current students, alumni, corporate partners. The goal was to showcase what a “learning environment informed by academic, professional, geographic and cultural student diversity” is like. Current Anderson student Max Olivares MBA ’21 took to the UCLA Anderson MBA Insider’s Blog to discuss his Embrace Diversity Weekend experience. Student Blogger:... Read more »
Admissions Director Q&A: Anna Farrus of IMD
We continue our series of Admissions Director Q&As with the leading business school in Switzerland. Located on the shores of Lake Geneva, the IMD MBA does not just prepare you for your immediate post-MBA job, but looks at your long-term career. Two key streams that run throughout the program are leadership and career development. During the program, students develop the leadership skills and self-awareness necessary to develop into top leaders in business. This doesn’t just involve teaching the basic MBA toolkit, but ensuring they have the global, digital, and entrepreneurial mindset that will give them the agility to make an... Read more »
Real Humans of MIT Sloan’s MBA Class of 2021
We continue with our Real Humans: MBA Students series in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Established in 1914, MIT’s Sloan School of Management MBA program emphasizes innovation through a combination of lectures, team projects, and hands-on Action Learning Labs. Sloan’s mission is to develop principled, innovative leaders, who improve the world and generate ideas that advance management practices. Students, for the most part, get to tailor their education toward this goal. Sloan prescribes only a semester of core courses—unlike most programs, which require a full year—followed by the freedom of choosing their studies for the rest of... Read more »
Fridays from the Frontline: A Day in the Life of an MBA Student at Oxford
MBA applicants spend so much time preparing to get into business school, they don’t often stop to imagine what campus life will be like once they get there. Current Oxford MBA student Adiya Chopra took to the Saïd Business School blog to document a representative 24 hours of his MBA life—read on for the details. A day in the life of an MBA student at Oxford by Aditya Chopra Instagram: @adityachopra20 LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/adityachopra770/ It’s 7.30am on Wednesday and I am a little hungover. The rainy weather isn’t helping much. Getting ready, breakfast, calendar schedule check, email check, charging my phone,... Read more »
Real Humans of Carnegie Mellon Tepper’s MBA Class of 2021
This edition of Real Humans: MBA Students takes us to the pioneer of management science, Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. With a student-to-faculty ratio of 13:1, Tepper boasts personal access to world-class researchers—including a legacy of 9 Nobel Laureates. Their commitment to community can be seen in the energetic hub that is the Tepper Quad, and the strength of analytics and data-driven decision making in their curriculum led to their recent STEM designation. Tepper welcomed 200 students to the full-time MBA Class of 2021. The new candidates earned an average GPA of 3.3 during their... Read more »
Admissions Director Q&A: Tino Elgner of IE Business School
IE Business School is centrally located in Madrid’s financial district. Their international appeal and urban environment fosters strong student, faculty and alumni communities. In addition to the school’s one-year, full-time International MBA, IE offers tech, part-time and executive MBA options. In this edition of Admissions Director Q&A, we hear more about IE from Tino Elgner, the Director of Admissions for the Tech MBA & IMBA Program. Born in Germany, Elgner graduated summa cum laude from Clemson University, USA, with a bachelor’s degree in communication studies and a minor in psychology. After ending his semi-professional tennis career, he moved on to... Read more »
Real Humans of Chicago Booth’s MBA Class of 2021
In this edition of Real Humans: MBA Students, we head to the “Windy City” in the midwestern U.S. The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business full-time MBA program is located on the University of Chicago’s main campus in the Hyde Park neighborhood, just seven miles south of Chicago’s downtown center, the Loop. It is home to some of the world’s most distinguished faculty—nine have won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences since the award was established in 1968 (most recently Richard H. Thaler in 2017). Chicago Booth seeks to emulate this academic excellence and global influence throughout their curriculum... Read more »
Fridays from the Frontline: Our Duke Fuqua on Board Experience
Fuqua On Board (FOB) at Duke / Fuqua extends the MBA community beyond campus by connecting students with local nonprofits in Durham. Current Fuqua students Zhiyi Feng and McCallen Moser took to the Fuqua blog to discuss their experience as part of the board of the Durham Art Guild. Our Fuqua on Board Experience by Zhiyi Feng and McCallen Moser Fuqua On Board (FOB) is a volunteer-based, year-long program where MBA students are selected from a pool of applicants and paired with a local nonprofit to serve as a non-voting board member. We worked with Durham Art Guild, a nonprofit... Read more »
Real Humans of HEC Paris’s MBA Class of 2021
In this edition of Real Humans: MBA Students, five new candidates explain their journeys to France and more. We land just 17 kilometers from Paris, where HEC Paris (École des hautes études commerciales de Paris) is housed on a 340-acre, wooded campus with its own Chateau. The 16-month-long curriculum includes a fundamental stage and a customized stage. Approximately a quarter of graduates go on to start their own businesses and, according to the 2017 Times Higher Education Alma Mater Index, they have graduated more CEOs of Fortune Global 500 companies than any other European university. The class size at HEC Paris... Read more »
Real Humans of Michigan Ross’s MBA Class of 2021
When one considers the motto of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business—“Developing leaders who make a positive difference in the world”—it comes as no surprise that Ross alumni can be found doing exactly that. Across the world within virtually every imaginable field, Ross alumni have garnered a reputation for taking on positions of significant social and cultural impact. And the Class of 2021 only seeks to perpetuate the Ross legacy. The Class of 2021 boasts an impressive level of diversity, with 45 percent women, 27 percent hailing from outside the US, and 22 percent identifying as underrepresented minorities. ... Read more »
Fridays from the Frontline: Reflections from a First-Year MBA in NYU Stern’s Fertitta Veterans Program
Military men and women develop skills that translate from the trenches of warfare to the boardroom and beyond. Due in part to fellowships like the Yellow Ribbon Program, veterans have become a growing presence at business schools across the country. At NYU Stern, the Fertitta Veterans Program is a unique scholarship that reduces the tuition of 20 incoming full-time two-year MBA students to just $30,000 per year. With Veterans Day around the corner, we touched base with military veteran and first-year full-time MBA student, Natalie Ashbridge, to hear about her first months at NYU Stern and making the transition to... Read more »
Real Humans of Cambridge Judge Business School’s MBA Class of 2020
This edition of Real Humans: MBA Students takes us to Cambridge, England, to meet students in the one-year MBA program at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School. Cambridge Judge has a class size of around 200 students, with women comprising about a third of the group. The small group is also a diverse ones, as around 50 nationalities are represented in the class. To apply, candidates must have at least three years of professional experience, but the class averages around six altogether. And the school also suggests scoring above a 640 on the GMAT though the class earned a mean score... Read more »
Real Humans of Stanford GSB’s MBA Class of 2021
In this edition of Real Humans: MBA Students, we head to Palo Alto, California—part of Silicon Valley and home to what is widely considered the best of the best business schools in the world. Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) has a well-earned reputation as a big idea incubator with a social conscience, as represented by its motto, “Change lives. Change organizations. Change the world.” The location lends strength in entrepreneurship and the high-tech industry to the program as well, though these fields are further buttressed by the responsive innovative curriculum. The MBA program is also known for its small... Read more »
