MBA News
A collection of news items from MBA programs and about the business school admissions process.
Social Impact at the Marshall School of Business
When talking about career paths one might pursue after an MBA, most people think of areas like finance, consulting or marketing. Over the past several years, however, MBA students have grown increasingly interested in the business of social impact; according to Business as Unusual, a 2014 Net Impact survey, 88 percent of MBA students report that they’re interested in learning about businesses with social missions and environmental emphases. That’s one reason why the USC Marshall School of Business recently hosted its second annual Social Impact Careers Panel.
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Chicago Booth Names Stanford GSB Professor as Its Next Dean
The path from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business is becoming well worn, as Chicago Booth prepares to welcome its second consecutive dean from the Palo Alto campus. Madhav Rajan, who chairs the accounting department at Stanford GSB and served as senior associate dean for academic affairs from 2010 to 2016, will take the helm at Booth on July 1st, the school announced yesterday.
Sunil Kumar, who served as Chicago Booth’s dean from 2011 until leaving to become provost of Johns Hopkins University in July 2016, also came from Stanford, where spent 14 years, ultimately in the role of senior associate dean. Since his departure, Douglas Skinner, also an accounting professor, has served as interim dean as Chicago Booth conducted a global search for a successor.
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What Women Want in an MBA: Financial Aid and Flexibility
In honor of International Women’s Day, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) today released a new report entitled “What Women Want: A Blueprint for Change in Business Education.” For readers who may be too young to remember the 2000 romantic comedy also called “What Women Want,” it starred Mel Gibson as a chauvinistic advertising executive who suffers a blow to the head that renders him suddenly able to hear everything women around him are thinking. Though first instinct would be to assume that the two—Gibson’s rom-com and GMAC’s research—have nothing at all to do with one another, that’s not
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DecisionWire Data Suggests a Tiered Business School Ranking
As many of our readers know, U.S. News & World Report is scheduled to release its annual ranking of leading MBA programs next week. We wanted to use this time—ahead of the ranking’s release—to highlight some key insights from our MBA DecisionWire data, which we think will provide context for the upcoming rankings and perhaps even foretell some of the results. Our analysis of DecisionWire data yielded some fascinating findings that we believe support a tiered ranking system for schools, one in which the peer group a school finds itself in serves as a better indicator of
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Which Business Schools Produced the Most Unicorn Founders
Billion-dollar startups, affectionately coined “unicorns,” have become a benchmark that business schools around the world use to boast overall success. But which business schools actually produce the most successful startup founders? Earlier this year, U.K. software research firm Sage compiled data on billion-dollar startups, which also included the schools from which company founders graduated. The research, unsurprisingly, found two business schools standing taller than the rest of the competition: Harvard Business School (HBS) and Stanford University Graduate School of Business. HBS alumni produced 23 of these unicorn startups, as reported by Fortune. These
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Data Science Courses Increasingly Find Their Place in MBA Curriculums
Five years ago, MIT Sloan School of Management debuted a new course its professors believed to be the first of its kind. Called “The Analytics Edge,” the course gave students access to large quantities of real data that they could use to hone their analytic skills. “Our focus is on the application and the story, and how to use it in real life,” Allison O’Hair, one of the course’s co-instructors, said as part of a news article on the school’s website at the time. “To our knowledge, this is a new way of teaching ... the only class here that teaches analytics through applications. We let students get their hands dirty with real data and applications of analytics.”
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Fridays from the Frontline: HBS Student Offers Advice for Prospective Latino Students
Today’s Fridays from the Frontline contribution comes to us from Karla Mendez, a first-year MBA student at Harvard Business School (HBS). Born in Mexico, Mendez moved to Fresno, California, when she was five with parents who wanted to build a better life for her family. In the thoughtful post below, Mendez shares some of her experiences as a Latina American, including the tension between wanting to maintain a strong connection to her Mexican American roots while not having them define her completely. She also describes the pressure so often felt by immigrants, and sometimes even more so their
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Top Student Trading Competition Returns to Rotman School
For the 14th consecutive year, the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management last month hosted one of the world’s top student trading competitions. The Rotman International Trading Competition (RITC) is an annual event that draws students and faculty from 52 universities worldwide—including from China, Iceland, India and South Africa—for a three-day simulated market challenge.
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Published: February 28, 2017
New Smith School of Business Program Inspires Fearless Leadership
The development of leadership skills is heavily emphasized by many MBA programs. In fact, it’s often a selling point. At the University of Maryland R.H. Smith School of Business, leadership development is a core part of the UMD Smith MBA experience, reflected in the recent launch of a new program to help encourage fearless leadership in its students.
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Published: February 27, 2017
Black Business Leadership in Focus at Harvard Business School
“Entrepreneurship is a synonym for liberation because those who have success with it—it provides them the freedom to be whoever they want to be,” said Steven Rogers, a senior lecturer on entrepreneurial finance at Harvard Business School (HBS), as part of recent video promoting his latest project. “But more importantly to me is that it provides them with the freedom to uplift others.”
Linking entrepreneurship with freedom in this way provides the perfect set up for Rogers’ new course, “Black Business Leaders and Entrepreneurship.” New this semester, it is the first of its kind at HBS.
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Published: February 27, 2017
MBA Alumni Tout Degree’s Value and Versatility, GMAC Survey Finds
There have long been MBA applicants who view business school as an opportunity to make a career pivot—changing industry, function or both. Indeed, according to survey results released today by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), more than half of alumni respondents currently work in an industry or job function they had no prior experience in before entering business school. Not only that, two in five alumni (39 percent) currently work in an industry they hadn’t even considered prior to starting business school. GMAC’s 2017 Alumni Perspectives Survey Report, conducted last fall, includes responses from 15,000 graduate business
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Published: February 23, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: A Day in the Life of an INSEAD MBA Student
INSEAD is definitely riding high these days, having topped the Financial Times’ annual ranking of leading global MBA programs for the second year running. Calling itself “the business school for the world,” it features campuses in France, Singapore and Abu Dhabi and more than 90 nationalities represented in its student body. Students complete an accelerated 10-month program, which has helped the school rank especially high in terms of return on investment, since both tuition and the opportunity cost of being out of the workforce is lower for INSEAD students than those in two-year MBA programs.
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Published: February 22, 2017
I’d Tell You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You: Confidentiality Warning Keeps MBA Applicants Mum on Wharton TBD Prompt
In past years, the prompt the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School sends in advance to MBA applicants invited to participate in the team-based discussion (TBD) portion of its admissions process has been a closely held secret—for about two minutes. Historically, within days of invitations going out, it has been shared by someone (or someones) within the applicant community, drawing feedback and advice on how best to prepare. In fact, some admissions consultants have even crafted whole workshops around the topic.
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Published: February 21, 2017
Brexit and Trump: Making International MBA Applicants Rethink B-School
What do Brexit and the victory of Donald Trump have in common? The recent referendum in the United Kingdom and election in the United States—while each unique in its own way—are similar in as much as they were both surprising resurgent populist victories reflecting a rise in nationalism stoked by anxiety around immigration. They have also both left prospective international MBA applicants unsure of whether to study in either country.
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Published: February 20, 2017
New Program Lets College Students Try on a Stanford GSB MBA
Nicolas Curtin, a 21-year-old Anchorage native currently in his junior year at West Point, first learned about the Stanford MBA Future Leaders Program through a pop-up ad on Facebook. Neither of his parents had ever been to college, let alone business school, but his economics teacher that semester happened to mention that he had an MBA. That made the Facebook promo catch his eye. “It was really dumb luck that I was able to stumble across the program just as my interest was piqued,” Curtin says. He submitted an application—consisting of a recommendation letter from that economics professor
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Published: February 19, 2017
New Innovations Are Revamping the Tuck MBA
Leadership, a global mindset and community inclusivity. Four years ago, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College identified these three concepts as principal tenants that would drive new innovations of its MBA program spearheaded by Associate Dean Praveen Kopalle. The tenants were identified by a task force and were based on student surveys and a study conducted by the Parthenon Group. The result of Tuck’s initiative is a series of six innovations designed to enhance the MBA program and student experience, outlined in a recent article by Tuck Senior Writer Kirk Kardashian entitled
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Published: February 16, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: MIT Sloan’s Israel Lab
Israel is in the news this week following President Donald Trump’s first official meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which took place on Wednesday. Our Fridays from the Frontline also centers on Israel, but without touching on the incredibly fraught subject of a one- versus two-state solution for the conflict-ridden region. Instead, we focus on a series of fascinating blog posts written by MIT Sloan School of Management students who spent their winter break taking part in MIT Sloan’s Israel Lab. Now in its second year, Israel Lab takes Sloan students on a journey to one
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Published: February 16, 2017
When Will Those MIT Sloan R2 Interview Invites Roll Out?
In a post to her Admissions Blog yesterday, MIT Sloan School of Management Director of MBA and Master of Finance Admissions Dawna Levenson provided lots of valuable information for MIT Sloan applicants anxiously awaiting Round 2 interview invitations. Dawna Levenson, MIT Sloan director of MBA and Master of finance admissions As at many leading business schools, an interview is a required step toward admission at MIT Sloan. “The goal of the interview is to personally get to know you better and to hear more about your professional stories and background,” Levenson writes. MIT Sloan R2 interview
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Published: February 15, 2017
SMU Cox’s Maguire Energy Institute Honors Top Energy Leaders
Texas consumes more energy than any other U.S. state, both per capita and as a whole. In addition, several major oil companies have TX headquarters, including BP, ConocoPhilips and Exxon-Mobil. Because Texas is a global energy leader, many of the business schools in the state maintain connections to the industry through clubs, MBA concentrations, faculty and course work.
Each year at the SMU Cox School of Business, the Maguire Energy Institute honors one of the top leaders in the energy industry with the L. Frank Pitts Energy Leadership Award. The award—created in 2010—recognizes an individual who exemplifies a spirit of ethical leadership within the energy industry. This year, the award committee chose Trevor Rees-Jones, the founder and CEO of Chief Oil & Gas LLC.
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Published: February 15, 2017
Are LBS MBA Grads Falling Out of Love With Finance?
London Business School (LBS) MBA graduates are seeing higher salaries and increased hiring rates, but their love of the finance industry seems to be waning. According to the 2016 London Business School employment report, MBA grads are heading into the financial sector at the lowest rate in five years. Now, to be fair, one in every four LBS grads (25 percent) stills takes a job in finance, but that’s well behind the 35 percent of graduates who enter consulting. The technology industry hired the third-most LBS 2016 graduates at 21 percent—matching the the previous
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Published: February 13, 2017
NYU Stern Dean Announces Plans to Resign, Citing National and Global Economic Trends
Members of the NYU Stern School of Business community today learned that Dean Peter Blair Henry will step down from his position at the end of this calendar year, having decided that the current state of the world calls for him to contribute in other ways.
NYU Stern Dean Peter Blair Henry
“I did not make this decision lightly, but given the current trends affecting the national and global economy, I feel compelled to re-engage now with policy and recommit, full-time, to scholarship and my lifelong interest in the linked fortunes of advanced and developing economies,” he wrote in a letter to the Stern community. “At a time when advanced-nation rhetoric and a seeming unwillingness to commit to the reforms needed for growth are at odds with global population trends and an increased need for investment in the developing world, I believe now is the time for me to make further contributions as an economist, advisor and Stern professor,” he continued.
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Published: February 13, 2017
Admissions Director Q&A: OSU Fisher’s Alison Merzel
Last week we shared the lighter side of Alison Merzel in our Real Humans of MBA Admissions series. This week, we’ve asked her some more serious questions about the admissions process at the Ohio State University (OSU) Fisher College of Business. Merzel is senior director of graduate recruiting, admissions and financial aid at Fisher, a role she’s held for the past year and a half. But she’s been at Fisher for much longer than that—starting as a student herself. Soon after graduating with her master’s degree in labor and human resources from Fisher, she joined the admissions team
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Published: February 12, 2017
Ross R2 Applicants: Don’t Miss These Updates from Admissions Director Soojin Kwon
The snow storm that’s pummeling the Northeastern United States gave Michigan a pass, according to Ross School of Business Director of Admissions Soojin Kwon. That means interviewees flying to Ann Arbor this past weekend found lots of sunshine and clear roads, provided they weren’t stranded in their departure cities by cancelled flights.
Ross Director of Admissions Soojin Kwon
Those who did make it, Kwon wrote on her Admissions Blog, got to stay through the weekend if they wanted, attending the Alfred E Edwards Conference, hosted by the Ross Black Business Students Association. Long-time Essence Magazine Chief Editor Susan L. Taylor delivered the keynote address.
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Published: February 9, 2017
Anxiety Persists for International MBA Students Despite Appellate Court’s Rebuke of Immigration Ban
Last night, a three-member panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit refused the Trump administration’s call to reinstate a ban barring the entry of all refugees and visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries into the United States. Although the case could still advance to the Supreme Court, yesterday’s ruling means that, for now, the executive order signed by President Donald Trump two weeks ago remains unenforceable.
That’s good news for international students from the affected countries, some of whom were detained at airports attempting to return to campus from overseas travel, others of whom were forced to cancel plans to leave the United States for fear they might not be allowed back in.
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Published: February 9, 2017
Fridays from the Frontline: From Herat to Haas, An Afghan Student’s Journey
Today’s Friday from the Frontline is a bit of a departure from our usual practice of sharing first-person accounts—but the story of Sal Parsa on the Berkeley Haas blog so captivated us that we wanted to make sure the Clear Admit audience didn’t miss it. Below, learn how Parsa went from sewing clothes in a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to serving as president of the Haas Data Science Club while also working to get a career guidance platform startup off the ground. It’s inspiring, to say the least. Our thanks to Haas and Parsa for allowing us to share the story here.
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