MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
Published: September 1, 2015
The Inside Scoop on the Forté Forums: Great Networking for Prospective Female MBA Applicants
From Atlanta to Seattle and back, Forté Forums have been taking place around the country, giving prospective female MBA applicants a terrific opportunity to connect with admissions staff from dozens of leading business schools, hear from current students and alumnae and meet fellow applicants.
The Forté Forums are an annual event series put on by the Forté Foundation, a consortium of leading companies and business schools committed to helping launch women into fulfilling careers in business. Taking place in 10 U.S. cities as well as Toronto and London, these free events kicked off on August 17th and will culminate with a final event in October.
To truly understand what prospective female MBA applicants can hope to gain from attending a forum, we dropped in on one ourselves late last month in Boston. The cluster of professionally dressed young women in the lobby of the Liberty Mutual Building on St. James Avenue provided a preview of what we would discover upstairs. After a brief and efficient check-in process, attendees were given a package of materials and welcomed into a large banquet hall, where admissions staff, current students and alumnae from leading business schools stood ready to answer their questions.
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Published: August 31, 2015
Social Media as a Window to Your Soul? Stanford GSB Prof Says Yes
So last week we shared some tips and cautionary tales from admissions directors at leading business schools about MBA applicants and their social media presence. In a nutshell, we found that different admissions committees use social media to varying degrees as part of the MBA admissions process, but a general rule of thumb is to not be an idiot. In fact, recent research out of the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) suggests that monitoring an applicant's social media behavior over the long run could actually reveal more intimate traits and core personality than face-to-face interviews. Adcoms: take note.
Assistant Professor Michal Kosinski, who teaches organizational behavior at Stanford GSB, was surprised to learn as part of research he conducted recently just how much what an individual “likes” on Facebook can reveal about a person.
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Published: August 30, 2015
Haas Welcomes New Class with Multiple Week Zero Surprises
Orientation week at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business—better known as Week Zero—was chock full of surprises for the 246 incoming students in the full-time MBA Class of 2017. For starters, while working on their very first case study on Virgin America, the students got a shock when Virgin America CEO David Cush walked into the auditorium.
Who better to learn from about the company’s decision to enter the airline market? Discussing the move made by Virgin Group founder Richard Branson in 2007, Cush described the decision—which was based on Branson’s belief that airlines were poorly run and flights were too expensive. Amid intense competition and despite a rocky start, the company is taking on the big airlines and adding new destination cities, he said, and has moved from the bottom quartile to the top half of airlines. Students then got to quiz Cush on the company’s culture, how it hires, its strategy for innovation and the challenges it still faces.
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Published: August 27, 2015
$641,000 Grant Beefs Up Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics
Boasting a new director, visiting professor and junior fellows, the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics (GISME) will offer expanded courses and research for business school students interested in learning more about ethical issues as they impact the functioning of markets, the school announced earlier this month.
“The expanded team at the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics will greatly enhance our efforts to convene the best minds for conversation and debate about the market society,” John Hasnas, GISME executive director, said in a statement. “By advancing research and teaching methods surrounding professional ethics, we hope to educate both business students and the broader business community about a range of topics, including the ethical issues inherent in the market society.”
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Published: August 26, 2015
Social Media in the MBA Admissions Process: How Careful Should You Be?
While presidential candidate Donald Trump has shown that decorum on social media is not necessarily a prerequisite for running for the highest office in the land, admissions directors at leading MBA programs suggest that prospective applicants might do well to show a little more caution when it comes to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
Just what is the role of social media in the MBA admissions process, you ask? We wondered that, too. To get a clearer picture, we checked in with some of our sources in the admissions offices at leading business schools. We discovered that different schools take different approaches when it comes to checking out a candidate’s social media presence—and protocols are still evolving.
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Published: August 25, 2015
Incoming Ross First-Years Help Detroit’s Brightmoor Community Rebound
What better way to get to know your business school classmates than by working together to make an impact on a local community? At the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, first-year MBA students are doing just that as part of the school’s annual Impact Challenge. The unique, immersive leadership development program, organized by the Sanger Leadership Center, brings together the entire class of incoming Ross first-years for a week-long, intense business challenge designed to make a difference in Detroit’s Brightmoor community.
As part of the 2015 Impact Challenge, incoming Ross first-years will work together with close to 60 local high schools students, helping them develop business plans and products for the brand-new Brightmoor Maker Space—a community workshop and incubator where ideas generated by teens and community residents will come to life. The Ross MBA students will also organize a Maker Faire and pitch competition for the teens.
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Published: August 24, 2015
HBS Draws More Women, Adds Six Points to GMAT Median
When it released its preliminary class profile in June, Harvard Business School (HBS) was expecting its incoming class to be 41 percent female, a record for the school. In August, with students preparing to move in on campus, things look even better.
HBS DRAWS MORE WOMEN THAN PRELIMINARY PROFILE SUGGESTED
Dee Leopold, HBS managing director of admissions and financial aid, posted the final Class of 2017 profile on her Direct from the Director blog today, revealing that women will in fact make up 42 percent of the class, a two point increase over last year. While this still trails Kellogg and Wharton—each reported earlier this month that 43 percent of their incoming classes will be women—it puts HBS ahead of last year’s leader of the pack, UC Berkeley’s Haas School, which this year slipped to 41 percent, from a high of 43 last year.
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Published: August 24, 2015
MBA Interview Jitters? Don’t Miss Clear Admit’s Latest Interview Guides
We know. The interview can be one of the most nerve-wracking components of the entire MBA application process. But it doesn’t have to be. Clear Admit’s in-depth Interview Guide Series provides expert advice and insider tips on what to expect and how to prepare—helping you quash the MBA interview jitters and ace the interview.
A sample page from one of the guides.
With interview invites already rolling out at schools like Columbia Business School and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, now’s the time to check out these valuable guides. Five in the series have just been updated for the 2015-16 application season: CBS, Tuck, INSEAD, HBS and Fuqua.
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Published: August 23, 2015
Chicago Booth Re-Ups with Dean Sunil Kumar
Just as business schools like Tuck and Darden bid adieu to long-time deans, Chicago Booth is saying “Play it again, Sunil.” University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Eric D. Isaacs announced last week that Dean Sunil Kumar has been appointed to a second five-year term at the school’s helm.
Zimmer and Issacs praised Kumar’s commitment to the success of Booth’s faculty, students and alumni in Chicago and around the globe in a message to the Chicago Booth community. “We look forward to working with Sunil in the years ahead to ensure that Booth remains a preeminent destination for business education and scholarship,” they wrote.
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Published: August 20, 2015
Percentage of Female MBA Students at Haas Dips Slightly, but Total Number of Women in Program Reaches New High
The Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley last year made headlines when it enrolled a record-setting 43 percent women in its incoming class, besting all other leading business schools and representing a 14-point gain over the year before, when female MBA students at Haas made up just 29 percent of the class. This year, Haas saw a slight decline in women in its incoming class—to 41 percent. But combined with the women in last year’s class, the program as a whole now counts more total women than ever before, the school points out.
Overall, the full-time MBA program still hovers at almost 43 percent female, making it a frontrunner for top MBA programs. “School and student leaders say the class composition both reflects and builds on their push for gender equity,” read a recent article on the Haas website.
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Published: August 17, 2015
Columbia Business School Centennial Celebration to Include 15 Months’ of Activities
Columbia Business School is turning 100! Yesterday marked the kickoff of a Columbia Business School centennial celebration designed to mark a century of developing leaders who impact both business and society. As part of the celebration of the century, the school has unveiled a new website that captures the achievements of the past 100 years through stories, photographs, a comprehensive timeline and more. CBS has also announced 15 months of events and programming and debuted a brand-new video series that showcases the school’s achievements while looking forward to its future impact.
“Since 1916, Columbia Business School has been shaping the landscape of the modern business world as a producer of cutting-edge research and ideas, innovator in the way education is delivered and developer of a global network of extraordinary influence,” CBS Dean Glenn Hubbard said in a statement. The school will call together that global network over this year and next to celebrate, he added. “Together, we will help usher in a new century of impact, innovation and community.”
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Published: August 14, 2015
Record Alumni Giving at Tuck Raises More Funds than Any Prior Year
Record alumni giving at Tuck again? Yes, you read that right. Tuck alumni have outdone themselves once more this year as part of the annual Tuck Annual Giving (TAG) campaign, raising an all-time high of $6.4 million. For five years running, more than 70 percent of Tuck graduates have contributed to the campaign—a participation rate that dwarfs even the closest competitors among other business schools.
“Once again, our alumni have shown their satisfaction with and loyalty to Tuck as a truly special place like no other,” says John Torget T’00, director of Tuck Annual Giving. While Tuck did not publicly release an actual donor count, Torget says more alumni than ever before gave this year. Last year, 6,332 alumni took part, according to the school’s reports.
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Published: August 13, 2015
Wharton Joins the 43 Percent Club, Average GMAT Score Soars
The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania will welcome a 43 percent female class this year, according to Class of 2017 profile statistics released this morning, placing it among the front runners of elite business schools. Just last week, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern shared class profile statistics, revealing that it, too, has an incoming class that is 43 percent women. Both schools this year match UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business female enrollment last year, when that school held the record.
Notably, Wharton did set a record itself in 2011, when women made up 44.7 percent of its entering class. But the school then backslid a little, to 42 percent in 2013 and 40 percent last year. It’s nice to see the Philadelphia school regain some ground.
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Published: August 12, 2015
High-Touch Outreach by Current Students Helps Boost Kellogg’s Female Enrollment
The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University is very excited about its incoming class—and with good reason. A record 43 percent of the Class of 2017 is female—a five-point surge over last year—making Kellogg a frontrunner in a national race to increase female enrollment at business schools. Indeed, Kellogg’s class profile was released just a day before the Council of Economic Advisers and the Council on Women and Girls convened representatives from dozens of leading business schools at the White House to commit to a set of best practices developed to expand opportunities for women in business school and beyond.
But Kellogg's female enrollment wasn’t the only statistic to surge with its newest class. Kellogg’s average GMAT score also jumped, from 716 last year to an all-time high of 724 this year, effectively countering any misplaced concerns that admissions standards with regard to academic caliber might falter as part of a business school gender drive.
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Published: August 9, 2015
UT McCombs Launches New LinkedIn Recommendation Option for MBA Applicants
Beginning this application season, the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin will let MBA applicants use recommendations from their LinkedIn profiles in lieu of traditional letters submitted by recommenders directly to the school. This new option, which went live with the McCombs’s 2015-16 full-time MBA application late last week, is a first among leading business schools.
Feedback from previous applicants and admissions consultants drove the change, says Rodrigo Malta, McCombs director of MBA admissions. “We gather input from applicants at the end of each season, and one of the main pain points we identified were letters of recommendation,” he says. Every school was doing it differently, requiring applicants to go to recommenders with multiple requests. “AIGAC (the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants) also gave us feedback about how painful the recommendation letter process was to both applicants and recommenders, even driving some applicants to draft and submit letters on behalf of their recommenders,” he continued.
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Published: August 5, 2015
LiveWire Data Offers Interesting Insights into Admissions Results
Clear Admit launched its MBA LiveWire feature in December 2014, giving applicants unique real-time insight into how their peers are faring in the admissions process at 33 leading MBA programs around the world. Perhaps most fun, LiveWire lets people share the good news when they are accepted to their target school. It also gives those still waiting to hear a heads up that decisions are rolling out. But more than that, seeing the self-reported GMAT scores and GPAs of other applicants also enables those who follow LiveWire to benchmark their own credentials against their peers.
Now, with almost eight months of collected data, LiveWire also provides a means of analyzing prior admissions cycles. In fact, we have just undertaken the first analysis of LiveWire responses, and the scatterplot here showcases what we’ve found.
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Published: August 3, 2015
Leadership? At Kenan-Flagler, There’s an App for That
Leadership development is a primary focus at top business schools all over the world, with professors, core courses, initiatives and centers all devoted to shaping MBA students into the leaders of tomorrow. The Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is taking things to a new level with the launch of its Leadership App, a digital tool designed to deliver the school’s signature leadership development content directly to students on their iPads.
Kenan-Flagler launched its leadership initiative in 2005 to give its MBA students a competitive advantage in the job market, according to Mindy Storrie, director of leadership development at UNC Kenan-Flagler. In the ten years since, the school has customized the leadership content for all of its degree programs.
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Wharton India Economic Forum to Take Place in Both India and Philadelphia
This post has been republished in its entirety from its original source, metromba.com.
The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania has announced that it will hold its annual India-focused conference next year in India for the first time. The Wharton India Economic Forum (WIEF), which is marking its 20th anniversary, has historically been held on Wharton's Philadelphia campus. The 2016 conference will be held both in Mumbai and Philadelphia. The main goal of the conference is to bring together industry leaders, investors, government leaders and Wharton professors to discuss specific challenges facing the Indian economy and Indian businesses.
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Haas-Accenture Partnership Creates New Big Data Curriculum
From financial services to retail to utilities, companies in an ever-increasing range of industries are exploring and implementing big data and analytics. To equip its MBAs with the tools they need to understand how data science stands to transform business, the Haas School at the University of California at Berkeley has forged a new partnership with global management consulting, technology and outsourcing company Accenture. Together, they have launched a multi-phase initiative designed to position big data squarely within the Haas curriculum.
“Today, every company is a technology company, every company is a software company, every company is a data company,” says Gregory La Blanc, a finance and technology lecturer at Haas. “To be successful, our students need to know how to navigate the strategic landscape in a world filled with all this data.”
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CMU’s Tepper School Appoints New MBA Program Head
The Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) recently appointed a new head of its MBA program, the school announced last week. Kathryn (Kate) Barraclough comes to Tepper from the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University, where she served as director of the school’s Masters in Finance program while also teaching a range of finance courses.
“Kate Barraclough brings an impressive and broad background, ranging from academia to financial services,” Tepper School Dean Robert Dammon said in a statement announcing her appointment. “Her achievements as a scholar, researcher and educational leader were fundamental qualities that led to her appointment.”
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GMAC Debuts Interactive Post-MBA Salary Estimator
Especially given the price tag that accompanies obtaining an MBA from a leading business school, it would be foolhardy for prospective applicants not to give careful consideration to the degree’s return on investment (ROI). This, of course, will depend on the career you pursue after graduation and the salary you are able to command in that role.
Turns out you’re in luck. The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which administers the GMAT entrance exam, has created a new tool designed to help prospective applicants estimate the salary they can expect to earn after completing their degree. Prospective students enter their intended industry and job function, and the tool then parses data compiled by GMAC's surveys of thousands of MBA alumni to return a tailored salary estimate.
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Darden’s Dean Is Bullish on School’s Future as He Prepares to Depart
We had the distinct pleasure of speaking recently with Bob Bruner, who for the past 10 years has served as dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. He will step down at the end of this month, when Scott Beardsley becomes the ninth dean of the school.
In the wide-ranging interview that follows, Dean Bruner reflects on his time at Darden, the strengths his successor will bring in his role as Darden's dean, the state of graduate management education and why he is optimistic about Darden’s future.
As always, he was thoughtful and engaging, with valuable insights for anyone considering business school, whether at Darden or elsewhere. We are so grateful to him for making the time to speak with us.
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Citi CIO Debby Hopkins Named Haas’ Newest Executive Fellow
This post has been republished in its entirety from its original source metromba.com.
The Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley recently named Citi Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) Debby Hopkins as Haas’ newest executive fellow. Hopkins, who is also CEO of Citi Ventures, is returning to Haas in this new role after speaking as part of the Haas Dean’s Speaker Series in 2012.
“Debby is a trailblazer, continuing to question the status quo in her industry,” Haas Dean Rich Lyons said in a statement. “Her views on innovative leadership and social enterprise deeply resonate with our school's identity—we're thrilled to welcome her back.”
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New Associate Dean to Spearhead Growing Entrepreneurship at Yale SOM
As a reflection of the growing importance of entrepreneurship at the Yale School of Management (SOM), the director of the school’s entrepreneurship initiatives has been appointed associate dean, the school announced earlier this month.
Kyle Jensen joined Yale SOM last year as the inaugural Shanna and Eric Bass ’05 Director of Entrepreneurship. Under his leadership, the school’s Program on Entrepreneurship added seven new entrepreneurship courses last year, drawing students from the entire university.
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Admissions Director Offers Advice on Kellogg’s New Essay Questions
We caught up with Director of Admissions Beth Tidmarsh late last week to discuss the new essay questions posted by the Kellogg School of Mangement on July 8th. Though the wording and order of the questions has changed slightly this year, applicants are asked, like last year, to respond to two required prompts and given 900 words in which to provide their answers. As in past years, applicants also have the opportunity to respond to an additional optional essay with no word limit.
Leadership and collaboration once again factor prominently into Kellogg’s new essay questions this year, but Tidmarsh and her team hope the prompts provide applicants with a great deal of latitude in how they respond.
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