As nervous applicants sweat it out over R2 interviews and pending application decisions, there’s been no shortage of interesting news from the schools. Over at Harvard, word of President Larry Summers’ departure has prompted some to speculate that the search for a new dean of the MBA program could drag on longer than anticipated. According to the Harvard Crimson, Summers’ insists that both HBS and the Graduate School of Education will have deans (or acting deans) by July 1st – yet some professors have their doubts.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports on several changes afoot in MBA administration. Georgia Tech has brought Steven Salbu (formerly of UT Austin/McCombs) on board as dean. In addition, SDA Bocconi has replaced both its dean and chairman (both positions are to be filled by Bocconi professors). Finally, USC Marshall remains dean-less, but has reportedly received a $2.25M donation from Fred Keenan.
BusinessWeek Online has reported on two interesting topics in recent days. The first, by Jeffrey Gangemi, covered school selection and the abundance of financial aid being dangled by leading programs (Chicago, HBS, Wharton, et al). The second article is a nice follow-up to our posting from last Monday covering the European vs. American MBA debate. According to BW Online, more and more students are pursuing their MBA abroad.
For those of you who are interested in school selection and branding, GMAC (the Graduate Management Admissions Council) has an interesting PDF report on what determines the branding of various MBA programs and how applicants typically draw conclusions. In fact, there is even a ranking of communcation sources in terms of influence they have on candidates:
1) Published Rankings
2) School Web Sites
3) Interaction with admissions/MBA program personnel
4) Personal school correspondence
5) Friends/relatives
6) MBA-related web sites
Overall, this report is an interesting read for those of you who are curious about how the schools market themselves and how the applicant pool makes choices.
Finally, for those of you who never got around to downloading the MBAPodcast on admissions consultants (featuring Clear Admit as well as Wharton’s Judith Silverman), here is a transcript of the podcast. Happy reading!
