MBA News

The family of a late Harvard Business School (HBS) alumnus has donated $10 million to help support efforts already underway to innovativly redesign the second-year MBA curriculum, the school announced last week. The donation, from the family of the late William F. Connell, a 1963 MBA graduate of HBS, will establish the Margot and William F. Connell Family MBA Program Innovation Fund, which will help support the redesign of the HBS second-year curriculum to provide MBA students with more courses, new technology applications and platforms and expanded faculty development initiatives. Read more

Columbia Entrepreneurs Lab (CEL), a co-working space run by Columbia Business School’s Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center, this summer welcomes its first class of more than 20 students from across Columbia University. The student teams, which represent seven different schools, were selected to develop 13 business ventures over the summer using the lab's resources and space free of charge. Among the ideas selected as part of the inaugural CEL class are a news agregator that monitors geographic-specific, social media traffic for trending stories, a program to bridge educational and cultural gaps between Chinese and American students and an online private tutoring marketplace. Read more

A new online module at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford is bringing together students in the school’s MBA and executive MBA programs with Oxford alumni and leading academic researchers to address some of the most challenging global business and policy issues. In its first year, the program has focused on global ageing. Called GOTO (Global Opportunities, Threats: Oxford), the interactive, multimedia web platform is designed to blend curated content with in-person learning through tutorial groups and events to create plans to address the world’s biggest problems. This year, an action-oriented community of Oxford students, academics and alumni took a hard look at the changing demographics, global pinch points, patterns of consumption, environmental impact and healthcare system strain created by the long-term trend toward global ageing. GOTO will focus on a different global issue each year. Read more

Beginning with the 2014-15 academic year, the UCLA Anderson School of Management will no longer rely on state funding but will instead be completely self-supporting, the school reported last week. University of California President Mark Yudof approved the school’s proposed status change for its full-time MBA program on June 24th, ending a three-year review process. The decision is expected to make it easier for the school to fund-raise with its alumni and philanthropic donors, to make tuition fees more predictable and to give the school greater flexibility in faculty assignments, according to UCLA Anderson Dean Judy Olian, who has led the campaign to win self-supporting status for the school. Read more

Harvard Business School (HBS) today announced that it has expanded the eligibility requirements of its 2+2 Program to include not only college students but also candidates who have gone directly to a master’s degree program after their undergraduate study. The 2+2 Program at HBS is a deferred admissions process originally designed for college students who want to secure a future spot in the HBS MBA class. Candidates admitted to the 2+2 Program will have a place reserved for them at HBS, which they can assume after completing two years of work in the public, private or nonprofit sector. With today’s change, the program is now also open to current students in full-time master’s programs who proceeded directly from college to their current master's degree program, according to HBS Dean of Admissions Dee Leopold. Read more

In a recent article about finding the right fit in a business school program, Bloomberg BusinessWeek turned to Clear Admit Senior Admissions Counselor Stacey Oyler for some guidance. Oyler, who worked in admissions for Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and as a recruiter for McKinsey before joining Clear Admit, encouraged prospective applicants not to let a school’s rank in the various MBA rankings overshadow other important considerations. A top-ranked school can help catch recruiters’ eyes, but the school also needs to be the best match for what you want to do, Oyler told Bloomberg BW. “It’s two years and a significant financial investment,” she said. “So take the time to think about fit just as much as rank and reputation.” Read more

The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing diversity in business school and the corporate world, announced this week that Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business has joined as its newest member school, bringing the total number of member schools to a record 18. McDonough is the first new business school to join the Consortium since 2010. The Consortium recruits new member schools selectively, believing that by partnering with only the top MBA programs in the country is the best way to help its members and fellows succeed while providing its corporate partners with access to the most promising candidates. Read more

Five current MBA students and one recent graduate of the Yale School of Management (SOM) have been selected through a competitive process to be among this summer’s fellows at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute (YEI), the school announced earlier this month. To date, the YEI Summer Fellowship – open to students and teams throughout the university – has accelerated more than 70 Yale student business ventures, which have raised $60.5 million in outside financing and created more than 210 new jobs.  Not only will this year’s six SOM students get to spend the summer developing their ventures at the YEI, they also will benefit from financial support, a work space, mentoring, entrepreneur-led workshops and opportunities to network with potential investors. Selected teams receive stipends from YEI for the summer of up to $20,000 per team, which supports living expenses and initial start-up costs, access to legal, accounting and marketing corporate partners and more. Read more

Early employment data shows that MBA graduates from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley are landing top jobs and top salaries, the school reports. The firms hiring the most Haas graduates this year include McKinsey & Co., Google, JPMorgan, Kaiser and Amazon, and salaries and signing bonuses are continuing an upward climb. Other tip hiring firms include Deloitte Consulting, Samsung, Bain, Adobe, Microsoft and Zynga. But traditional MBA sectors are not the only ones seeing strong hiring, according to Lisa Feldman, executive director of the Career Management Group. “Real estate is a strong area for us this year, and we are also seeing a strong class of entrepreneurs,” she said in an article on the Haas website. “In addition to the entrepreneurs themselves, we have a growing number of students exploring the impact they might have in smaller organizations and seeking experience with early-stage startups,” she added. Read more

Columbia Business School (CBS) has a trio of alumni to thank for filling the coffers of its loan assistance fund, a program that helps alleviate the financial burden of repaying education loans for MBA graduates who pursue work in the public and nonprofit sectors. Elizabeth B. Strickler ’86 and Mark T. Gallogly ’86 have made a generous gift to establish a new fund named in honor of Ms. Strickler’s mother, Ellen B. Strickler ’78, the school announced earlier this month. The Ellen B. Strickler ’78 Loan Assistance Fund is designed to encourage MBA graduates to seek out work in public and nonprofit sectors, as well as with microfinance organizations, low-profit limited liability companies (L3C) and social ventures that focus on low income communities or create significant public good. Each are areas with many unmet needs that CBS grads can address, but they pay much lower salaries than private industry. The fund will be run by the CBS Social Enterprise Program (SEP). Read more

Clear Admit is pleased to announce that co-founder Eliot Ingram has assumed the role of CEO. He succeeds former CEO Graham Richmond, who recently launched Southwark Consulting, a firm that advises graduate admissions offices on enrollment best practices. “I look forward to taking over full leadership of Clear Admit and positioning the firm for its next round of growth,” said Ingram. Ingram has served as a senior admissions counselor and the firm’s CFO since he founded the company with Richmond in late 2001. Clear Admit, a leader in the MBA admissions space for more than a decade, provides guidance – Read more

Researchers at the Haas School of Management at the University of California at Berkeley are teaming up with researchers at the MIT Sloan School of Management to take a closer look at energy-efficiency policies and regulations around the globe to determine whether they are realizing their full potential, the schools announced this week. The project, called E2e, is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the two schools designed to find the best way to go from using a large amount of energy (“E”) to a small of amount of energy (“e”). Participating experts will include engineers, economists and others, and the initiative is led by Catherine Wolfram, associate professor and co-director of the Energy Institute at Haas, Michael Greenstone, a professor of environmental economics at MIT, and Christopher Knittel, co-director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR). Read more

Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business this week welcomes a group of outstanding young women leaders from around the globe to its campus as part of a week-long leadership summit, the school announced this week. Twenty-six young women between the ages of 15 and 23 are taking part in the iLive2Lead (iL2L) 2013 Young Women’s International Leadership Summit on McDonough’s Washington, DC, campus. The women, who come from 21 different countries, will learn leadership skills and develop entrepreneurship action plans as part of the event, which is sponsored by McDonough’s Office of Executive Education. Read more

Two members of the graduating Class of 2013 at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business earned not only an MBA while there but also a master’s degree in public health (MPH). Kate Head and Catherine Augustyn were the first recipients of the new joint degree, which Tuck now offers in partnership with The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice (TDI).  The new program is designed for students who want to combine Tuck’s comprehensive MBA program with TDI’s deep dive into health policy and clinical practice issues. “The combination of those two programs we thought would be a really terrific marriage,” Paul B. Gardent, an adjunct professor of business administration at Tuck and director of the joint degree program, said as part of an article published in Tuck’s online newsroom. The joint degree program is an outgrowth of the Health Care Initiative, an effort launched in 2008 to expand healthcare-focused courses and career resources at Tuck. Read more

Finance professors at MIT Sloan School of Management will conduct a series of high-level seminars in London and Shanghai as part of efforts to raise funds for a new center that will examine the intersection between finance and government, the Financial Times reports today. To date, MIT has raised almost half of the $10 million needed for the center, according to the FT. The MIT Center for Finance and Policy is intended to serve as a hub of research and financial analysis of public policy issues, bringing together top thinkers and spurring collaboration between government, the private sector and academia. “Finance is one field where academia and business are very close,” Sloan Deputy Dean S.P. Kothari told the FT. The center will take a cross-disciplinary approach to tackling the government challenges facing finance and banking, resulting in research that will have implications for every household, Kothari added. Read more

The average applicant to business school spends between 90 and 140 hours on the MBA application process, according to findings from the 2013 Applicant Survey conducted by the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants (AIGAC). Excluding GMAT prep, applicants report that they spend between 70 and 110 hours on the application itself.  AIGAC released the applicant survey results as part of its annual conference, which took place this week in Philadelphia. The association was founded in 2006 to promote high ethical standards and professional development among graduate admissions consultants. It conducts an online survey of MBA applicants each year to help its member graduate management admissions consultants and admissions committees at top business schools better understand prospective MBA students’ goals and needs. Read more

Taking on debt to finance an MBA program only to take a job at a low-paying nonprofit organization after business school doesn’t add up to graduates being able to repay their loans. Fortunately, many top business schools have created programs to help ease the financial burden for those who go into nonprofit or other low-paying fields, according to a recent report in Bloomberg BusinessWeek.  In addition to Harvard Business School, which this year gave 19 students grants of $50,000 to supplement their first-year salaries, schools including Columbia Business School (CBS), Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, UMichigan’s Ross School of Business, Stanford Graduate School of Business and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School all also offer financial assistance in one form or another to help graduates repay student loans, Bloomberg BW reports. And while many business school students don’t seem to know about these programs, they should: The benefits can extend for multiple years adding up to as much as $100,000 for some, Bloomberg BW adds. Read more

The Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley has awarded two inaugural $5,000 prizes as part of the Hansoo Lee Fellowship for Entrepreneurs, a new fund established to honor entrepreneur and alumnus Hansoo Lee, MBA ’10, who died in March of lung cancer.  Romi Elan and Charlie Hughes, MBA students in the Class of 2014, were selected from 10 applicants for the fellowship for a photo app they designed to help friends connect around shared interests and hobbies. Called “Goalzy,” the app is intended to help small groups of friends encourage one another through pictures to pursue personal goals. Seeing pictures of their friends’ latest harvest, for example, could spur other friends to get their own hands in the dirt at the community garden. ““We wanted to help people keep true to their promises to themselves,” Elan said in a statement. Read more

The Winter Garden at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business will feel empty this summer to those used to its bustle during the school year, Booth Senior Associate Director of Admissions Eddie Pulliam warned. But prospective applicants will still find events and activities going on there during the summer months to help them get to know the school and the admissions process.  “If you are in Chicago this summer, we would love to have you visit us on campus,” Pullman wrote in a recent post to the Booth Insider blog. Because there aren’t students on campus or student courses taking place, the Campus Visit program does feature an abbreviated schedule for guests between June 10th and October 4th, he noted. Admissions directors will host information sessions for prospective applicants on Mondays and Fridays from 10:30 to 11 a.m. Following those, from 11 to 11:30 a.m., visitors can take a guided tour of the school’s Harper Center, including its renowned art collection. Prospective applicants are asked to register in advance for these information sessions, but Chicago Booth notes that campus visits will have no bearing on an applicant’s admissions decision. Read more

The Yale School of Management (SOM) will formally incorporate a brief video interview as part of its application process in upcoming admission seasons, Assistant Dean and Director of MBA Admissions Bruce DelMonico shared with the Clear Admit team recently. He also provided more detail about the tests Yale SOM has been using to assess the emotional intelligence of its applicants and shared that his team will eliminate the English-language test requirement that has until now been required of some applicants.  Some Round 3 applicants to Yale SOM in the most recent application season reported that they were asked to respond to an interview question via video. In an effort to learn more about this development, we reached out to DelMonico directly, who shared the following details with us. Read more

Columbia Business School (CBS) has created a new cooperative working space open to all Columbia students who hope to launch entrepreneurial ventures, the school’s Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center announced yesterday. The new Columbia Entrepreneurs Lab (CEL), modeled after the successful Columbia Business Lab, will provide participants who are accepted into the program with free access to resources and mentorship opportunities to get their ventures up and running. "The Entrepreneurship Lab is a collaboration between multiple schools across campus and an important milestone in Columbia University's efforts to prioritize the importance of entrepreneurship programming for all Columbia entrepreneurs," professor Murray Low, director of the Lang Center, said in a statement announcing the launch. Read more

Harvard Business School (HBS) expects women to make up a record 41 percent of its incoming MBA class, according to preliminary data released earlier this week. Up from 40 percent last year and 35 percent ten years ago, it reflects continuing efforts the school has been making to bolster female enrollment.  The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School has been a leader among top business schools with regard to female enrollment, with women making up 42 percent of its incoming class last year. The Philadelphia school has not yet released its enrollment figures for the upcoming fall. Stanford Graduate School of Business, which enrolled 35 percent women last year, also has not yet released fall enrollment figures. Read more

Two visiting finance professors have joined the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley as permanent faculty members, one from Kellogg and another from Chicago Booth, Haas announced last week.  Professor Annette Vissing-Jørgensen, formerly a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and Assistant ProfessorAdair Morse, formerly an associate professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, have been visiting faculty members at Haas since July 2012. Both are known for their insightful research and award-winning teaching, the school notes. Read more

The business education media has been abuzz following the announcement yesterday that Harvard Business School (HBS) will change its application requirements in the year ahead. Bloomberg BusinessWeek, PoetsandQuants, the Financial Times and others all featured articles conveying the news and reactions to it. Both Bloomberg BW and P&Q consulted Clear Admit co-founder Graham Richmond to get his take on what the changes mean.  Most notable, Richmond says, is HBS’s decision to make the essay an optional portion of the application, which sets it apart from virtually every other Read more

Prospective applicants to Harvard Business School (HBS), take note: Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Dee Leopold shared a lot of interesting information in her Director’s Blog today. Topline news: Applicants for fall 2014 will only answer one essay (with no word limit) and will only need to submit two letters of recommendation (down from three). The single essay question asks simply what else the Ad Com should consider about an applicant’s candidacy in addition to the other elements submitted as part of the application (resume, school transcripts, extra-curricular activities, awards, post-MBA career goals, test scores). Read more