Fridays from the Frontline
Keep abreast of the latest happenings in the business school blogosphere! This weekly column summarizes recent posts from MBA student and applicant blogs.
Fridays from the Frontline: An Open Letter to Donald Trump from Members of Wharton’s Community
As anyone who has had even half an ear open to U.S. politics knows, presidential candidate Donald Trump has been quick to cite his affiliation with the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In an open letter to Trump shared via Facebook recently, a contingent of Wharton students, alumni and faculty chose to express their thoughts on Trump’s candidacy as it relates to the school’s diverse community.
Please note that the following sentiments reflect the views only of the 600 signatories to date—they are not affiliated with the Wharton School. Clear Admit also does not take a stance with regard to politics, national or international.
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Friday from the Frontline: First-Year Project for PayPal France
This week’s post comes to us from Tuck rising second-year Ashley Cahill, a Connecticut native who spent the five years before business school working in Shanghai, China, in public relations roles for the American Chamber of Commerce, Weber Shandwick and a sustainable agriculture startup. As you’ll read, her international experiences have extended right into the MBA program thanks to Tuck’s First-Year Project, which Cahill completed in Paris as part of an assignment for PayPal France. Our thanks to her for agreeing to share her experience with Clear Admit’s audience. This post has been republished in its entirety from its
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Friday from the Frontlines: How to Be an Ally After the Orlando Tragedy
The devastating attack on an Orlando nightclub earlier this week drew responses of support and unity from MBA students and professionals around the globe, as showcased in yesterday’s Top MBA Tweets of the Week. We also took note of this insightful piece on LinkedIn posted by NYU Stern alumna Rachel Hurnyak (MBA ’15), who now works as a project manager for Tesla. We first connected with Hurnyak last May, just after she was honored by Stern Dean Peter Henry for her work to promote inclusion and diversity within Stern’s MBA class. Hurnyak was instrumental in helping lead Stern’s
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Friday from the Frontlines: Tuck’s Global First-Year Project
This week’s Friday from the Frontlines comes to us from Nicholas Ritter, a second-year MBA student at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business who is spending the summer interning with IBM Watson’s Life Sciences team in New York. Prior to business school he worked as an electrical and product engineer for Nabsys, a biotech startup developing genomic sequencing technology. In his free time he is a Tripod Hockey Captain, a Revers Energy Fellow, an admissions associate and hard at work to form a Tuck Toboggan Club. In the post that follows, Ritter shares about his global first-year project with scaffolding manufacturing firm
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Friday from the Frontlines: Kellogg’s Efforts to Infuse Design Thinking into the MBA
For those of you not yet familiar with the MMM Program at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, it is an immersive dual-degree program that pairs the rigorous business education of the MBA with a strong foundation in design thinking and innovation. Graduates of the MMM Program receive an MBA from Kellogg and an M.S. in design innovation from the Segal Design Institute at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
The first degree-granting program of its kind, the MMM program was designed to help students become innovation experts capable of driving the entire innovation lifecycle of a product, service or business strategy. In addition to its unique curriculum, the program also features an annual MMM Innovation Council, drawing together business innovation leaders, including many MMM alumni.
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Fridays from the Frontline: Recent HBS Alum Turns Down Google to Found His Own Startup
Tim Chaves, a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Class of 2015, snagged a coveted internship at Google during the summer following his first year at HBS. His performance led Google to offer him a full-time job after graduation. He turned it down. Who turns down Google? He turned it down to found a startup. And here’s the real kicker: He has three young kids. “That’s so risky,” said basically everyone. But in the post that follows, you’ll see why he thinks it was absolutely the right choice. His startup, ZipBooks, is a free small business accounting software platform
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Fridays from the Frontline: Welcome Weekend at Vanderbilt Owen
Continuing our series of posts from applicants sharing how they arrived at a decision on where to enroll for business school, this week we hear from Dylan Bright about the admitted students’ weekend he attended at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management. As you’ll read, the well-planned weekend helped him know that the Nashville school was the one for him.
If you’ve recently decided on where you’re heading in the fall, we’d love to have you share your decision-making process with us in a subsequent post. And if you haven’t already, remember to submit via MBA DecisionWire!
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Fridays from the Frontline: Having to Decide Between Multiple Schools
In last week’s Fridays from the Frontline, we circled back with an applicant who’d shared his admissions journey with us earlier in the process to see how it concluded. For this week’s post we did the same, checking in again with Natalie Neilson, who shared her application process here back in December. What we didn’t plan on was the fact that both of these applicants would reveal that they're heading off to the same school in the fall! (For anyone not heading to Wharton, we’d love to have you share your decision-making process with us in a subsequent post. And if you haven't already, remember to submit via MBA DecisionWire!)
But though both applicants ultimately chose Wharton, the processes they followed in arriving at that decision took different turns. Neilson, for her part, was in the enviable spot of having to decide between multiple schools—eight of them. While perhaps one of the better stressors to face—you’ll see that it was indeed stressful. Read on to learn her advice for narrowing your list, making peace with your decision and making plans for the next two years!
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Published: April 28, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Why I Chose Wharton
Decisions, decisions. Some lucky applicants have been wrestling with decisions over the past many weeks, with acceptances to multiple MBA programs giving them tough choices to make. Along the way, we’ve seen an uptick in submissions to MBA DecisionWire, giving us some insight into where candidates have decided to go based on where they were admitted. One applicant, Preston Landers, had three top schools to select from when all was said and done. Landers wrote a post for Fridays from the Frontline earlier in the application process, and we circled back to see if he would
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Published: April 21, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Reapplying to HBS
Earlier this week, Harvard Business School (HBS) released interview invitations for applicants in Round 3, as well as for undergraduate applicants to its 2+2 Program. (This deferred admissions program guarantees a place for admitted undergrads in the HBS class after they graduate from college and successfully complete two years of approved work experience.) As expected, MBA LiveWire lit up with submissions as the decisions rolled in—but unfortunately red rejections far outnumbered interview invites.
If you were among those “released” from consideration on Wednesday, don’t despair. As HBS itself notes, the school receives roughly ten applications for every available spot in the class, and every year it must turn away many qualified candidates. Not only that, reapplicants—people who were rejected on the first try—claim 94 spots in the Class of 2017. That’s almost a full tenth of the class!
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Published: April 14, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Tackling Trash at Yale School of Management
With Earth Day just around the corner, we are excited to feature a tale of tackling trash at Yale School of Management (SOM) as our Fridays from the Frontline post today. Andrew Greaves, a first-year MBA student at SOM—together with another SOM first-year, Andy Beck—recognized a problem on campus. Despite the fact that recycling and composting presents clear environmental and economic benefits to the school, too many recyclable and compostable materials were ending up in the trash. As Greaves and Beck began to investigate the situation, they learned some interesting things. For starters, the Dining and Facilities teams at SOM
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Published: March 31, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: So You Want to Live in a French Villa for Business School?
A few weeks back in this space we included tips from a Harvard Business School (HBS) student on where to live on campus. This week, an INSEAD MBA student shares her dream of living in a French villa for business school and how she made it come true.
Much like INSEAD itself, the villa sounds like an international melting pot, home to 11 students speaking 15 different languages. As you might expect, Fontainebleau offers a range of accommodations for INSEAD students, but snagging a villa or chateau takes a little more work. Have no fear: In the post that follows INSEAD December ’16 MBA student Winnie Van tells you exactly what steps to follow.
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Published: March 24, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: A Recent HBS Alumna Reflects on Her Business School Experience
The paths that people follow to business school can be remarkably diverse—as can those they follow once they’re done. Mallory Dwinal’s interesting course to Harvard Business School (HBS) and beyond caught our attention. The recent HBS alumna (pictured above, far left) wound her way to the Boston business school only after picking up a PhD in education from the University of Oxford and working for Teach for America as a middle and high school Spanish teacher at a charter school in Washington, DC. The former Rhodes Scholar is now hard at work founding a school of her own—Oxford Day Academy—a
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Published: March 17, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: An INSEAD Student Shares the Diverse Start to His MBA
With so much buzz around this week’s release of the 2017 U.S. News ranking of top business schools, we decided to devote this week’s Fridays from the Frontline to a student perspective from one of the schools not even mentioned. Because U.S. News ranks only U.S. business schools, some great schools elsewhere in the world get left out of the conversation. Case in point: INSEAD.
INSEAD, with campuses in France, Singapore and Abu Dhabi, boasts a remarkably diverse class made up of more than 70 nationalities. Its accelerated 10-month program also appeals to students looking to gain an MBA skill set without taking a full two years out from the work force. While not perfect for every prospective MBA applicant, current student Rayan Dawud shares in the following post some of why INSEAD, so far, feels just right for him.
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Published: March 10, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: HBS MBA Shares the Skinny on On-Campus Living
If you are heading to Harvard Business School in the fall, you’re thinking about where to live, yes? This week’s Fridays from the Frontline—from first-year HBS student Gil Gerstl—sheds light on why he chose to live on campus and the multiple advantages it has presented for him. Thanks to Gerstl for granting permission for us to share his views here! The following post has been republished in its entirety from its original source, “MBA Voices,” the HBS Admissions Blog. Living in an Apartment at HBS HBS is 40-acre residential campus, one that was built on the understanding that
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Fridays from the Frontline: Kellogg Student Reflects on MBA Recruiting Process
This week’s Fridays from the Frontline comes to us from Kellogg School of Management second-year MBA student Rohan Rajiv, a regular contributor to Kellogg’s full-time MBA student blog. In a series called MBA Learnings, Rajiv has chronicled his progress through Kellogg’s MBA program. In today’s post, he shares candidly about MBA recruiting, which he says “is probably the single hardest piece of the graduate school puzzle.” Peer pressure and self doubt can combine to make the process of landing a post-MBA job fraught with stress. Read on to learn some of Rahiv’s tips for staying cool under pressure.
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Published: February 25, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Goizueta MBA Student Shares Emory’s Many Healthcare-Focused Opportunities
Earlier this week, we featured an article highlighting some of the best MBA programs for students interested in the intersection between business and healthcare. In reporting that piece, we came across a terrific recent blog post by a student working concurrently toward her MBA at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and her Master of Public Health (MPH) at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health. Claire Cooper (MBA/MPH ’17) with classmate on a trip to visit Genentech That student, Claire Cooper, has generously given us permission to republish her piece here for the Clear Admit audience. Read
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Published: February 18, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Ross MBAs Get Investment Tips from Warren Buffett
How would you like to trade investment tips over lunch with Warren Buffett? A group of MBA students from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business had just that opportunity last month. Two of them, Cazzie Palacios Brown (MBA/MS ʼ18) and Michelle Gross (MBA/MS ʼ17), shared their experiences and some of what they learned from the value investing giant in a recent post on the Ross Student Voices blog. They have generously allowed us to repost their piece here for the benefit of Clear Admit’s readers. Read on to learn how Buffett classifies investments, his views on social impact investing,
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Published: February 11, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: An MBALauncher Shares Her Round 2 Application Process
Today’s Friday from the Frontline features an interview with Lisa Atufunwa, a 29-year-old Denver native who submitted applications to five schools as part of Round 2. Business school has always been a part of her plan, and she’s hoping the MBA will help her pivot her career.
Currently working in communications for a range of tech companies, startups and public holding companies, Atufunwa is targeting schools with strong programs in marketing. Her post-MBA goal is to become an assistant brand manager in the personal beauty sector, working for a company like L'Oréal, Sephora or Estée Lauder. “That’s always been a personal passion of mine,” she says.
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Published: February 4, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Kellogg MBAs Gear Up for Super Bowl Ad Review
It’s time for the Super Bowl—and at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, that means it’s also time for the Super Bowl Ad Review. Brands spend more than $2 billion each year to advertise their products through Super Bowl commercials, some more effectively than others. For the 12th year running, Kellogg marketing students will apply their unique framework for evaluating an ad’s brand-building potential as part of the 2016 Kellogg Super Bowl Ad Review.
As the players take the field on Sunday, more than 50 Kellogg MBA students will team up with marketing professors Tim Calkins and Derek Rucker to determine the winners and the losers in the battle of the brands. They’ll us the ADPLAN framework to evaluate each ad according to six critical criteria: Attention, Distinction, Positioning, Linkage, Amplifications and Net Equity.
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Published: January 28, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Yale SOM MBA Student Tests His Mettle on Shark Tank
This week in Fridays from the Frontline we’re featuring an exclusive interview with Shaan Patel, a 26-year-old, second-year MBA student at Yale School of Management (SOM) who tonight will appear on ABC’s Shark Tank. Patel, who is taking a two-year leave of absence from medical school to get his MBA, also runs a company on the side that helps high school students prepare for the SAT and ACT college entrance exams. The Las Vegas native launched the company—called 2400 Expert SAT Prep—to teach others the strategies that helped him achieve his own perfect 2400 SAT score.
In the interview that follows, he shares how business school prepared him for Shark Tank and why he thinks the MBA is a valuable path for entrepreneurs. He also offers tips for business school students who want to try their hand at getting on the show. (Even thought he had to wait in line for nine hours for the casting call—missing a pitch competition taking place back on campus as a result—he thinks it was worth it.)
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Published: January 21, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Triumphant Reapplicant Gains Admission at UCLA Anderson
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Our Fridays from the Frontline contributor this week took these words to heart, reapplying in fall 2015 after an unsuccessful application process the year before. A young female Indian engineer, she had relatively strong scores and grades, but not a ton of experience under her belt. Read on to learn some of the steps she took to strengthen her application the second time around—gaining admission at UCLA Anderson.
While happy to share her story with the Clear Admit audience, she wants to remain anonymous until she actually matriculates. So until then, we’ll just refer to her as the Pull That MBA Trigger blogger.
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Published: January 14, 2016
Fridays from the Frontlines: Kellogg MBAs Take Silicon Valley
Welcome back to Fridays from the Frontlines, where each week we feature the perspectives of current MBA applicants, students and recent alumni wherever they are in the trajectory of business school. Today we’re pleased to feature a post from Luke Murphy, a first-year MBA candidate at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, who recently led a group of fellow students on a trek to San Francisco startups. He was a good one to help organize the trip, having grown up in the Bay Area and worked there for years before business school, most recently as director of business development at Nasdaq in San Francisco. But as you’ll see in the post that follows, even he was surprised by some of what the trip revealed.
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Published: January 7, 2016
Fridays from the Frontline: Juggling Motherhood and the MBA at HBS
How many times have you heard someone liken pursuing an MBA to drinking from a fire hose? Between the coursework, student clubs, networking, recruiting—there aren’t enough hours in the day. Now imagine doing it as mom to a three-year-old.
Katie Colgary is a second-year student doing precisely that—juggling motherhood and the MBA at Harvard Business School (HBS). She graciously agreed to share this recent blog post with Clear Admit’s readers, in which she reveals how she does it, as well as what resources are in place at HBS to help make doing it possible.
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Published: December 31, 2015
Fridays from the Frontline: The HEC Paris MBA Experience with Footnotes
Happy 2016 everyone! Today in Fridays from the Frontline, we’re featuring a post submitted to us by Prashant Khorana about his HEC Paris MBA experience. On Twitter, Khorana (@prashantkhorana) describes himself as a data scientist/mathematician who is passionate about analytics, economics, finance, leadership and investing and who hates unproductive activities.
Titled “Brief Notes on the HEC Paris MBA Experience,” the post is nonetheless longer than we generally publish here—especially with the footnotes, which Khorana doesn’t want you to miss. So we’ve offered you a taste to whet your appetite and encourage you to follow the link below to read the post in its entirety. He covers everything you’ve ever wondered about HEC Paris, from getting in to settling in, from learning French to surviving St. Cyr and triumphing at MBAT. Many thanks to Khorana for sharing his experience with the Clear Admit audience.
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