MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
One-on-One with New Georgetown McDonough Dean Paul Almeida
On August 1st, the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business will welcome a new dean, Paul Almeida. Almeida is the current deputy dean of executive education and innovation, as well as a professor of strategy and international studies. When he takes his place as dean, Almeida will also become the William R. Berkley Chair.
In a press release, Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia spoke about the appointment: “Throughout his tenure at Georgetown, Paul has exemplified a commitment to principled leadership, instilling a global mindset focused on service to others into each program and project he oversees. I am deeply grateful for his willingness to serve our entire university community as dean of the McDonough School of Business."
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H1-B Visas and MBAs, Take Two: Why Such a Big Deal Right Now? Which Employers Are Sponsoring?
Yesterday, we debuted the first in our series on H1-B visas with an examination of what the H1-B visa is and what the process involved to get one is like. Today, we’ll delve deeper to better understand why it’s become such a hot topic right now as well as look at data from a range of sources on U.S. employer willingness to sponsor international MBAs who require legal documentation such as the H1-B.
Why Are H1-B Visas Such a Big Deal Right Now?
International students attending business school in the United States with hopes of remaining there to work after graduation is not a new phenomenon. According to the 2017 mba.com Prospective Students Report released by the Graduate Management Admission Council last month, almost three in five prospective business school students (59 percent) intend to apply to programs outside their country of residence, up from 44 percent in 2009. While the primary motivator for candidates seeking study opportunities outside their home country is to receive a higher-quality education (63 percent of respondents), those looking to increase their chance of securing international employment represent a close second (58 percent of respondents). Further, 34 percent of candidates who prefer to study outside their country of citizenship intend to seek employment in the country where they prefer to attend school. In this most recent GMAC applicant survey, 58 percent of international applicants named the United States as where they hoped to attend business school.
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Fridays from the Frontline: Darden MBA Student Molly Deale Shifts from Making Hats to Managing Finances
It’s Friday—which means it’s time for some perspective from the MBA community. Today it comes from Molly Deale, a rising second-year MBA student at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Deale’s pre–business school work experience is pretty unique: She managed a New York City millinery studio, creating hats for film, TV, and Broadway clients including Hamilton and Wicked. In the interview that follows, she reveals how she took that experience and married it with Darden’s case-based MBA curriculum, the strong Darden alumni network, and the resources provided through the school’s career services offices to land a summer
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Anxiety Around H-1B Visas Looms Large for Prospective MBA Applicants, Current Students, Recent Grads
Do you have the H-1B heebie-jeebies? If so, you are not alone. MBA LiveWire threads have been filled with prospective international applicants questioning whether it makes sense to pursue a U.S. MBA given that potential changes to visa policy could make it less likely they’ll be able to obtain work in the States after graduation. Current students are desperate to know which U.S. employers are most likely to hire MBA grads who need the H-1B. And some current graduates, plum jobs in hand, still don’t know their fate in the H1-B lottery, which could determine whether they get to start at the Chicago office where they’ve been hired or may instead have to rearrange their plans.
Adding to the existing extreme uncertainty is the fact that no one knows which way things will go from here. Multiple legislation has been introduced to revise the H1-B visa process in any number of ways, some of which could, in fact, benefit MBAs. But other proposed changes could instead create even greater challenges or hardships for international students hoping to use business school as a means of propelling a future career stateside. Of course, President Donald Trump could also draft an executive order at any point, making altogether different changes to the ways in which the U.S. welcomes—or doesn’t welcome—highly-skilled immigrant labor. In his campaign he frequently went on record vowing to "Buy American and hire American" and threatening major immigration reform, including changes to H1-B protocol.
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HBS Expands Loan Repayment Assistance Program to Include Jobs at Hybrid and For-Profit Social Enterprises
For more than 25 years, Harvard Business School (HBS) has helped encourage its graduates to pursue work in the nonprofit and public sectors through a loan repayment assistance program that enables debt-saddled recent grads to more realistically consider these positions, which often pay far less than jobs in the private sector. Last week, HBS’s Social Enterprise Initiative (SEI) and MBA Program announced an expansion of the Nonprofit/Public Sector Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) to now also include hybrid and for-profit social enterprise positions. B-Corps? L3Cs? Matt Segneri,
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Harvard Sets Out to Train Future Tech Leaders with Debut of New Joint MBA/MS in Engineering Degree
Harvard University today becomes the latest to throw down the gauntlet in the quest to provide preeminent leadership to the ever-growing tech sector—announcing the launch of a new joint master’s degree (MS/MBA) program between Harvard Business School (HBS) and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).
The two-year, full-time, HBS joint MS/MBA degree for tech leaders will include additional coursework during each January term but give students freedom during the summer to pursue an internship or startup venture, just as the traditional MBA does. It will welcome its first cohort of approximately 30 students in August 2018 and will confer two degrees to graduates, a Master of Science in engineering sciences and an MBA. Tuition has not yet been finalized, but it “will be an additional cost to the MBA reflecting the additional coursework,” Chad Losee, HBS managing director of MBA admissions and financial aid, told Clear Admit.
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Fridays from the Frontline: Johnson Student’s Summer MBA Internship Building a Veterinary Hospital in Mumbai
Some MBA students choose to intern at investment banks in New York or London, others at tech firms in Silicon Valley, others at big multinational consulting firms. But it’s not every day you hear of someone packing up for a summer internship building a veterinary hospital in Mumbai. And yet, that is precisely how Shantanu Naidu, a “half MBA” at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, will spend his summer. In the post that follows, Naidu shares his family’s ties to India’s Tata Group—which span four generations. He also describes how his first year as an
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“Manbassadors” Help Haas Address Gender Inequality
UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business recently profiled the Manbassadors, a student organization that provides men with tools to “better support their female friends, girlfriends, wives, and daughters when they’re no longer blind to how women often have to deal with unfair situations.” Dean Richard Lyons will present a “Question the Status Quo” award to Manbassadors Founder Patrick Ford ’17.
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Chicago Booth Reveals New Venture Challenge 2017 Winners
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation announced the winners of the 21st annual Edward L. Kaplan, '71, New Venture Challenge (NVC) last week. NVC is one of the most prestigious startup programs in the country and a cornerstone of the Booth MBA experience.
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Wharton Commitment Project Draws a Third of the Class in Debut Year
Doctors have the prestigious White Coat Ceremony, in which medical students at the end of their final term trade their short physician assistant’s coats and don long white coats to symbolize their commitment to uphold the expectations and responsibilities of the medical profession. Nurses have a similar Pinning Ceremony, in which newly graduated nursing students are presented with a special nursing pin from their college’s faculty as they are welcomed into the nursing profession and recite the Nightingale Pledge. These traditions—covered as part of a core class at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School called “Responsibility in Business”—helped
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Funds Help McCombs MBA Students Pursue Social Impact
With the rising emphasis on social impact in recent years, it has become fairly common for MBA programs to prepare their students not just to do well in business but to also do good in the world, and students are on board with this shift in focus. Based on Net Impact’s 2014 “Business as UNusual” guide to graduate programs, 88 percent of surveyed MBA students reported that learning about social and environmental business is a priority. At the UT Austin McCombs School of Business, peer-generated funds are supporting MBA students in exploring social impact as a
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Beyond Business School: General Motors CEO Mary Barra
General Motors CEO and Stanford MBA Mary Barra is a testament to passion and commitment. Though many profiles on Barra focus on her role as the world’s first female automaker CEO, it is perhaps more telling that, according to Forbes, Barra is lauded as having “… accomplished more in three years than most CEOs do in 30 years.”
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Fridays from the Frontline: UCLA Anderson FEMBA Student on Why the Future Must Be More Female
This week’s post comes to us from sunny Southern California and UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. Its author, Sana Rahim, is a student in UCLA Anderson’s fully employed MBA (FEMBA) program while also working as a sales manager at McMaster Carr. Despite the competing demands of work and school, she also finds time to serve as a strategic consultant for social impact at the Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. And this summer she will be on fellowship at the United Nations in Istanbul to work toward sustainable development goals. The preceding sentences alone suggest that Rahim
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Annual Celebration Honors Stanford GSB Social Impact Student Leaders
“As I’ve said before, making money is the easy part—it’s making the world a better place that is the hard part.” They are the words of Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) Dean Emeritus Arjay Miller, 101, spoken last week as part of a ceremony honoring GSB students for their commitment to social change. “I wanted to encourage students to find unique ways to overcome social challenges, and I’m thrilled with the change these programs have inspired over the past few years,” he continued.
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Rob Adams Announced as New UW Foster Entrepreneurship Center Director
For years the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship has integrated entrepreneurship into the very fabric of the University of Washington, particularly its Foster School of Business. Now, with Seattle angel investor, startup mentor, and former Cisco acquisitions manager Rob Adams as the next director, there are more great things to come. Adams succeeds Connie Bourassa-Shaw, who will be stepping down at the end of June to take her place as the part-time executive director of the Foster School’s new Master of Science in Entrepreneurship degree program.
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Owen Graduate School Renovating With Future in Mind
Earlier this month, speaking to 329 members of the Owen Graduate School of Business Class of 2017, Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman recalled the recent past. A ‘93 Owen alum, Friedman fondly remembered her time as a student, dropping references to AOL floppy disks, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Meatloaf’s biggest hits. Beyond Friedman’s nostalgic flair, her commencement speech also emphasized how important innovation will be for Owen’s new MBAs.
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Admissions Director Soojin Kwon Shares the Skinny on Ross’s New Application Essays
Soojin Kwon, who leads MBA admissions at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, began her most recent Director’s Blog by suggesting that things are quiet on campus right now—only to reveal big news about planned changes to its approach to essay questions this year.
Soojin Kwon, Ross director of admissions
The two are connected, of course. It’s the relatively quiet time—when students jet off for global immersion courses around the world or gear up for summer internships every bit as far flung—that the Admission Committee can finally catch its breath, review its process, and really examine what’s working and where there might be opportunity to change things up a little.
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Fridays from the Frontline: Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone at HBS
Today we are pleased to share a recent post from the Harvard Business School (HBS) “MBA Voices” student blog, written by newly minted HBS MBA LaToya Marc. She walked across stage this week to receive her degree, culminating a busy two years in which she balanced the pressures of coursework, recruiting, and extensive involvement in student clubs with motherhood.
Marc served as co-president of the Student Association, which she says was her most rewarding experience while at HBS. (Click here to see her addressing her fellow classmates on Class Day with Libby L. Hoaglin, her Student Association co-president.) She also pushed through plenty of anxiety—like many of her fellow classmates, she confesses to worrying that she was an “admissions mistake”—to speak up in class and defend her points of view as part of HBS’s signature case method of learning.
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Oxford Saïd Expands New Global Leadership Council & Responsible Business Forum
Like many leading MBA programs in the global arena, the University of Oxford Saïd Business School is continually working to enhance its opportunities for students, professors, and alumni. Most recently, the school expanded its global reach with the establishment of a new Global Leadership Council, which has the goal of advancing the school’s business education model. In addition, the second annual Responsible Business Forum provided a platform for the next generation of business leaders to address social and environmental issues.
Both the council and the forum brought together global companies and educational stakeholders to support the development of mutually beneficial relationships.
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$20 Million Alumni Gift Expands Social Sector Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business has received a $20 million alumni gift that will expand social innovation and entrepreneurship research and programming, the school announced earlier this week. The gift comes from Tandean Rustandy, MBA’07—founder of a successful Indonesian ceramic tile manufacturing company—and the school’s Social Enterprise Initiative has been renamed the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation to reflect his generosity and its expanded mission.
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Bain, LinkedIn Partner to Help Get More Women to the Top in Business
Despite outnumbering male college graduates and making up 40 percent of the classes at several top MBA programs, women represent just 25.1 percent of senior managers and executives at S&P 500 companies and a paltry 4.4 percent of CEOs, according to Catalyst, a nonprofit organization promoting inclusive workplaces for women. What gives?
Leading consulting firm Bain & Company partnered with LinkedIn in late 2016 to answer that very question—and come up with recommendations for how to effect change. Together, Bain and LinkedIn conducted a survey of 8,400 men and women on LinkedIn who work for U.S. companies and hold at least a bachelor’s degree. They asked this group—which included everyone from entry-level employees to top leaders at firms spanning all major industries—about their career aspirations and how confident they felt in their ability to reach the executive level.
Analysis of the results revealed that though men and women have similar aspirations when they graduate from college, women’s aspirations and confidence dropped significantly a few years into their careers.
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Fridays from the Frontline: Johnson MBA Immersion Program Helps Build Confidence Through Skill Acquisition
A hallmark of the Johnson Graduate School of Management, which is part of the larger Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, is its intensive immersion program. In the spring of their first year, Johnson MBA students take part in a hands-on semester of integrated course and field work focused on a particular industry or functional role. Johnson currently offers seven immersions—in Capital Markets and Asset Management, Investment Banking, Managerial Finance, Strategic Operations, Strategic Marketing, Digital Technology, and Sustainable Global Enterprise—as well as a Customized Immersion that allows students to create their own intensive courses of study.
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Is Trump Rhetoric Driving Prospective International Business School Students to Canada?
Graduate management education has become increasingly global, but fewer prospective business school students from outside the United States cite America as their most preferred study destination than have in the past, according to a recent report from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). Anti-immigrant rhetoric and uncertainty around potential changes to student and work visas—coupled with growing numbers of high-quality programs in other parts of the world—have driven the decreased appeal of U.S. programs, GMAC’s data suggests.
More prospective students than ever—nearly three in five (59 percent)—intend to apply to programs outside of their country of residence, according to the 2017 mba.com Prospective Student Survey Report, released this week by GMAC. That’s up from 44 percent in 2009. Those looking beyond their own country’s borders do so in pursuit of a higher-quality education (says 63 percent of respondents), better odds of securing international employment (58 percent), and to build an international network (51 percent). And a third of candidates (34 percent) who prefer to study outside their country of citizenship say they also hope to land a job in the country where they go to school.
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