Posted by Clear Admit on September 10, 2004, at 10:16 am
Posted in:  School: Michigan / Ross BusinessWeek has just published a breaking story about a $100 million donation that Stephen Ross made to the University of Michigan Business School. This is the largest single gift ever for a U.S. business school.
According to the article, the school has unveiled plans for a new facility (to be designed by the same firm that built Wharton’s Huntsman Hall). The school has also decided to change its name to the Stephen M. Ross School of Business.
For the full text of the article:
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/sep2004/bs2004099_8431_bs001.htm
Posted by Clear Admit on September 9, 2004, at 11:05 am
Posted in: General The World MBA Tour is traveling through North America in the coming weeks. The ‘tour’ is a great way for prospective MBA students to gather informational materials from the various MBA programs in attendance.
At the tour, the schools each have tables/stands that are typically staffed by admissions officers and alumni from the region – presenting a nice opportunity for applicants to engage in conversation with those who know the programs from the inside. Of course, applicants should not approach the MBA fairs as their chance to ‘talk their way’ into an acceptance letter from a dream school. Instead, the best approach is to use the events as fact-finding missions – gathering information that might help refine a list of target schools or provide interesting school-specific content for essays.
For information about which schools are attending, click here.
World MBA Tour Dates
September 12th, Los Angeles
September 14th, San Francisco
September 17th, Miami
September 19th, New York City
September 21st, Boston
September 23rd, Chicago
September 26th, Toronto
September 28th, Atlanta
September 30th, Washington DC
For more information about registration, click here.
Posted by Clear Admit on September 8, 2004, at 9:59 am
Posted in: Essay Topic Analysis , School: Stanford Derrick Bolton, the Assistant Dean and Director of MBA Admissions at Stanford, has written an excellent piece on the Stanford MBA application essays. It is featured in the Director’s Corner of this month’s Stanford MBA Admissions Newsletter.
Here’s an excerpt:
The most important piece of advice on the essays is extremely simple: answer the questions – each component of each question. An additional suggestion for writing essays is equally straightforward: think – a lot; then write. We ask about your values, passions, ideas, experiences, and aspirations – and what kind of person you wish the Stanford MBA Program to help you become. Reflective, insightful essays help us envision the individual behind all of the experiences and accomplishments that we read about elsewhere in your application. Your essays are not the entirety of your application: we are reading them with all the information contained in your application as part of a holistic process. Please remember that the admission process for the Stanford MBA Program focuses on intangibles: character and competence, with an emphasis on character. Our goal is to understand what motivates you and how you have become the person you are today.
For the full text of the article: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/connect/newsletter/04_09_director.html
Posted by Clear Admit on September 7, 2004, at 10:39 am
Posted in: General The Wall Street Journal‘s College Journal site has just published an article about admissions consulting. HBS, Wharton and Stanford admissions officers were all interviewed for the piece, along with Clear Admit, Kaplan, etc.
Here’s the beginning of the article…
Admissions Coaches Become More Popular
By EILEEN GUNN
Candace Davies was working in the wealth-advisory division at Merrill Lynch when she decided she wanted an M.B.A. Not just any M.B.A., but one from a top-ranked school. Ms. Davis had achieved a lot for someone just four years out of college. At 25, she was bringing in and managing her own high-net-worth accounts. Even so, she thought she’d need help since her GMATs weren’t as competitive as she had hoped, her undergrad major was biology and her grades were mediocre.
To gain an extra edge, she sought advice from an admissions consultant, a fast-growing aid for college and graduate-school applicants. The service she hired, Kaplan Inc., a New York-based test-preparation provider, teamed her with a former admissions officer at the University of Rochester’s business school, who helped identify those schools that would be a stretch for her to get into and those that better fit her interests and test scores. The counselor also reviewed her essays to make sure they made the most of her Wall Street experiences and coached her on interviews.
In all, Ms. Davies spent nearly $2,000, was accepted at five of the seven schools she’d chosen and was offered scholarships to four, including the Johnson Graduate School of Management Cornell University, where she started this fall.
–Admission’s Biggest Open Secret–
In the past five years, admissions consulting has taken off and is now possibly the biggest open secret in applying to business school — a service that’s as popular as it is controversial and expensive. About a third of the customers are international applicants looking for help with English and the application process. Others want to overcome hurdles such as low grades or a nontraditional background. Consulting services, which range from national players like Kaplan to smaller boutiques and solo practitioners, charge anywhere from $125 an hour for editing an essay to $5,000 to $8,000 for unlimited help on five to seven applications.
Graham Richmond graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and then co-founded Clear Admit, an admissions counseling firm in Philadelphia. Many clients are what he calls “overly traditionals” — people who got top grades at elite colleges, went directly into jobs at brand-name consulting or financial firms and now want to set themselves apart from the countless applicants who did exactly the same thing. (A female first-year student at Wharton sums up the dilemma: “I graduated summa cum laude and got a 700 on my GMATs, but so did a bunch of my classmates. So how do you differentiate yourself?”)….
For the full text of this article, please visit the WSJ College Journal site:
http://www.collegejournal.com/mbacenter/preparemba/20040902-gunn.html
Posted by Clear Admit on September 3, 2004, at 10:10 am
Posted in: Admissions Tips Alex Brown, an admissions director from Wharton, has posted a thoughtful piece on choosing the number of schools to apply to and the rounds in which to apply. You can find it in the Wharton blog, but here is a small excerpt:
Applicants typically fall in to one of two categories when considering business school:
A. Those that need to go that year
B. Those that wish to go to certain schools
If you fall into category A then it might make sense to select schools that are a decent fit (based on your understanding of your competitiveness and the schools’ selectiveness), a reach school (a school you think may be a bit of a stretch) and a safety school (a school you think you are well qualified to attend). This strategy helps ensure you go to the best business school for you the year you have determined you need to return to business school.
If you fall into category B then it makes sense to only apply to schools you know you would attend if admitted (i.e. a safety school is not necessary). If you are not admitted to one of your schools of choice, see if you can get feedback and then consider reapplying the following year. You might also revisit whether you are still in category B, or whether you now fall into category A.
For the full text of the article, follow the link below:
http://adcomblog.wharton.upenn.edu/admissions/2004/09/how_many_applic.html
Posted by Clear Admit on September 1, 2004, at 11:27 am
Posted in: Admissions Tips Our guest for today’s blog posting is Grace Wang, a GMAT expert who teaches for Manhattan GMAT. Ms. Wang has written an interesting article about the scoring of the GMAT and how ETS arrives at your overall score.
Scoring Quirks
by Grace Wang
When students are asked what part of the GMAT scares them the most, they typically say the Quantitative section, or even more specifically, the Data Sufficiency questions in the Quantitative section. Thus, most students are surprised to find out that it’s the VERBAL raw score and percentage that drives your TOTAL score and percentage.
Take a look at two hypothetical students. One is a strong Quantitative student and a decent Verbal student. She takes the test and scores the following:
Quant: 50 (96th percentile)
Verbal: 32 (67th percentile)
The other does okay in the Quantitative section, but really shines in the Verbal. His scores break out as follows:
Quant: 42 (66th percentile)
Verbal: 44 (98th percentile)
Who gets the higher total score? Are they the same? It turns out that the one with the higher Verbal percentile gets the higher total score, approximately 690 vs. 670. Why is this? The percentiles for the Quantitative and Verbal sections were almost exactly the same, but switched. Here are two possible reasons:
As American business schools draw a more international student body, more and more students will take the test, not all of whom speak English as a first language. However, as more and more quantitatively focused Indian, Russian and Asian students start taking the test, it becomes much harder to do “well” on the Quantitative section. Just eight fewer raw points drops you a full thirty percentage points. In Verbal, you can drop thirty percentage points, too, but the raw point difference is twelve versus eight.
The total score is based on you as a complete student. It is more common, given the trend in the pool of test-takers, to do well in Quant and okay in Verbal than it is to do well in Verbal and okay in Quant. Thus, the latter score COMBINATION is more rare in the total pool of test-takers and results in a higher total percentile. Your Verbal score and percentile is the driver of your total score and percentile.
How does this scoring quirk affect prepping for the GMAT? For one, it can be used as a tool to alleviate fear of the Quantitative section. Panic is the X-factor on the exam and can easily paralyze a student, especially early on in the test and especially for very high-scoring students who are seeking perfection. If a student understands that he/she can get a competitive score (a.k.a. 700+) without hitting 80% in the Quantitative section, it might help them move on when they inevitably get stuck. Keep in mind though that many business schools adhere to an 80/80 rule or at least benchmark, meaning they’d like to see students hit at least the 80th percentile in each section.
Second, it further reinforces the view that not only is it more probable for a native English-speaking student to achieve mastery in Verbal than in Quantitative but it is also arguably more important. During practice, fully read and re-read the explanations provided in prep material (particularly the ETS Official Guide for GMAT Review to learn the GMAT test writers’ rules, logic and rationale).
The bottom line is that each test taker must discover and make the most of his or her own strengths and weaknesses. For many, the verbal section is easier; and for others, it’s the math section. Still, it’s helpful to know the trends and have as much information as possible when you are just getting started with your preparation for the GMAT and Business School.
Your GMAT Next Steps:
- Don’t delay the GMAT until you are ready to submit b-school applications. Plan. Prepare. Practice. The average GMAT study time is 2-4 months!
- Sign up for the official test by calling 1-800-GMAT-NOW, or by going to the official GMAT website at http://www.mba.com/.
- Learn more about the exam and about ways to prepare at www.manhattangmat.com.
Copyright, Manhattan GMAT Prep, Inc. 2004
|
