Posted by Clear Admit on May 21, 2008, at 2:24 am
Posted in:  GMAT Tips , Workbook Wednesdays Welcome to this year’s first edition of Workbook Wednesdays, where we offer our readers a shot at one of Manhattan GMAT’s ‘challenge problems,’ the caliber of problem you’ll see if you’re scoring above 700 on the GMAT exam. Check back with us on Thursday when we’ll work through the answer!
Question
One smurf and one elf can build a treehouse together in two hours, but the smurf would need the help of two fairies in order to complete the same job in the same amount of time. If one elf and one fairy worked together, it would take them four hours to build the treehouse. Assuming that work rates for smurfs, elves, and fairies remain constant, how many hours would it take one smurf, one elf, and one fairy, working together, to build the treehouse?
- (A) 5/7
- (B) 1
- (C) 10/7
- (D) 12/7
- (E) 22/7
Posted by Clear Admit on May 20, 2008, at 4:39 pm
Posted in: General , MBA News , School: MIT / Sloan MIT awarded top prize in its annual $100K Entrepreneurship Competition was last week to Diagnostics For All (DFA), a nonprofit proposing new diagnostic tools that promise to dramatically improve healthcare management in developing countries.
Since its launch 19 years ago, the MIT $100K has served as an indicator of which emerging markets are getting funded by venture capitalists. More than 85 companies with an aggregate market capitalization of approximately $10 billion have been born as a result of the competition.
For the first time this year, entrants competed in seven distinct industry tracks – astro/aerospace, biotech, development, energy, mobile, products and services and Web 2.0/IT. The introduction of industry tracks was intended to help foster VC partner-level and industry specific mentorship and to encourage sponsored prizes.
“The competition’s finale marked the culmination of a new era of the MIT $100K in delivering the specific industry level support and knowledge required to compete in today’s market,” Jeffrey Sabados, a competition co-lead organizer, said in a statement.
With its patent-pending technology providing rapid and accurate diagnostic tools for liver, kidney, and metabolic diseases, DFA beat out the six finalists in other industry tracks for the overall competition title, walking away with $100,000 in start-up funds. Its offering, based on technology developed in world-renowned chemist George Whitesides’ laboratory at Harvard University, provides a platform for simple, portable, low-cost paper diagnostic tools that are easy to dispose.
A panel of expert judges awarded the grand prize after watching presentations by each of the finalist teams. Judges this year included venture capitalists Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande, co-founder and chairman of Sycamore Networks, and Robert Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet and founder of 3Com, who also served as the evening’s keynote speaker.
Audience Picks $10,000 Prize Winner
Having teams compete in industry tracks was not this competition’s only first. This year also featured the debut of the first-ever $10,000 Audience Prize. Using an audience response system technology developed by a semi-finalist team from the competition’s mobile track, Poll Everywhere, audience members got to cast their own votes — via text message – in response to elevator pitches delivered by each of the seven finalist teams. The audience chose the team Covalent Solar, which wowed them with its offering for a simpler, cheaper solution for harnessing solar power.
This year’s competition drew 232 initial entrants. Along with DFA and Convalent Solar, the majority of the finalists and many earlier entrants report that they plan to launch businesses built around their competition entries.
To learn more about the MIT $100K, click here.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 20, 2008, at 2:29 am
Posted in: School: Harvard , School: Virginia / Darden , Trivia Tuesday Welcome to another edition of Trivia Tuesday, our weekly look at the policies and practices that differentiate the leading business schools. This week’s focus is the structure of Darden’s first-year class and the way it impacts the first-year experience at the school.
Darden’s entering class is divided into five sections of approximately 60 students each. As at other business schools that break their classes into smaller groups, Darden’s sections are designed to represent the professional and demographic diversity of the full first-year class. Each section takes all of its core curriculum courses together and therefore shares a common set of faculty. Given the relatively small size of the sections and the intensely participatory nature of Darden’s case-based learning style, the school has taken the unusual step of reassigning sections at the conclusion of the first semester. This allows students to benefit from the ideas and perspectives of a new group of classmates during second semester case discussions. Section loyalty runs deep at Darden, despite the mid-year reshuffling of the class. Inter-section athletic events and other competitions take place each year, with students’ first semester sections holding their allegiance. In addition, alumni returning to campus often identify themselves by their section affiliation.
Darden first-years are further divided into 50-60 Learning Teams of 5-6 students apiece. As with the sections, learning team assignments are made with an eye to the diversity of students’ professional, academic and geographic backgrounds. However, Darden’s Learning Teams differ from those at most schools in that they are made up of students drawn from different sections of the class. Because class participation counts for such a large percentage of the grade in each course, case-based schools such as Darden and Harvard ensure that Learning Team members are not in the same class sections. This arrangement allows students to share their insights freely without having to compete against teammates in the classroom.
Unlike the first-year sections, Darden’s Learning Teams work together throughout the first year. Students are expected to use the teams as a resource for sharing and testing ideas, but above all, the teams are seen as an exercise in learning to lead a diverse group toward a shared goal. The school expects students to be committed to their Learning Teams and these teams play a central role in the lives of first-years.
To support the work of the Learning Teams, Darden reserves a study room for each team from 7-10 p.m. on Sunday through Thursday evenings. This practice is unique to Darden among its peer programs; few business schools have enough study rooms to provide their learning teams with dedicated meeting space throughout the week.
To learn more about the first-year academic experience at Darden or other leading MBA programs, be sure to check out the schools’ websites or the Academics section of the Clear Admit School Guides!
Winning ideas have value, especially at business schools. As graduation and summer internships loom ever nearer, we wanted to share a look at the successful ideas and the pots of money being won by student projects at several top schools.
Two students of University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business have been winning accolades and business plan contests this spring using rice husks. So far they have been awarded almost $100,000 in prize money, including $50,000 for winning the Social Innovation Competition at the University of Texas on May 2, $35,000 for taking second place at MIT’s Ignite Clean Energy competition on May 12, and a $10,000 top prize from the University of Virginia on April 7. The two students started a project with an India-based partner to supply electricity to villages in Bihar using rice husks as the source of fuel. So far two pilot rice husk generators are providing power to about 10,000 rural Indians, which will save 200 tonnes of emissions annually compared to diesel or coal power. The business plan of Husk Power Systems calls for a rapid expansion that will put the miniature power plants in hundreds more villages within a few years. Apart from electricity,the ash of the burnt husks can be sold as a high quality ingredient for cement, making even the waste from this project valuable.
The Kellogg School of Business celebrated five Kellogg students who brought home top honors from the 2008 Walter V. Shipley Business Leadership Case Competition. Along with their triumph, these Kellogg students received a prize of $20,000. The case study in this year’s competition focused on the Environmental Defense Fund’s proposed negotiation strategy with two private equity firms who had plans to buy out a large energy company. One winning student credits the team’s success over peers from other schools to Kellogg’s emphasis on collaboration.
Another illustration of successful collaboration in the Northwestern region resulted in a team of Kellogg School and Feinberg School of Medicine students winning first place in the CHEST Foundation Case Competition held on May 8. The event was co-sponsored by the Social Entrepreneurship Lab at Kellogg, the Kellogg Social Impact Club, the Health Industry Management Program, and Healthcare and Biotechnology Club. The winning business plan was a hybrid for-profit and nonprofit business model designed to attack key asthma triggers in the home through an effort to educate patients and help them reduce exposures in their homes.
The for-profit arm of the enterprise would raise revenue through a residential cleaning service that specializes in eliminating indoor asthma triggers, while the not-for-profit organization would use these funds to drive a community-based “train the trainers” asthma education program. The students’ polished presentation and attention to financial details earned them top marks and a $2,000 prize. Hopefully this idea will also help thousands of Chicagoan’s breath easier!
Posted by Clear Admit on May 19, 2008, at 1:09 pm
Posted in: General , MBA News Despite a faltering economy, job prospects remain good for MBAs, according to a recent survey by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC). The number of employers seeking to hire MBA graduates is up and projected to climb even farther, base salaries are reported to have increased this year over last and many firms expect their on-campus recruitment efforts to remain steady, although some firms do project a slowdown in this area.
These and other findings were released as part of the 2008 Corporate Recruiters Survey, an annual survey conducted by GMAC in partnership with the MBA Career Services Council and European Foundation for Management Development.
According to the survey, the proportion of employers seeking to hire MBA graduates has grown by 6 percent in the last year. In terms of actually hires, nearly two-thirds of respondents (64 percent) reported hiring MBA graduates in 2007, with even more (70 percent) planning to hire MBAs in 2008. Overall, the companies projected an 11-percent increase in the average number of hires – all good news for MBA graduates embarking upon a job search.
Mo’ Money
Salaries, too, are projected to rise. Three out of four (75 percent) survey respondents said they expect to increase the annual base salary of graduating MBAs in 2008 compared with 2007. According to company executives and managers, a typical MBA candidate can expect a starting annual salary of $89,621 in 2008, up 4 percent over last year. For the highest paying jobs, though, candidates should look to the European Union, where the average total annual salary is $98,617. (The average offered by U.S. companies is $85,581, followed by an average of $50,771 offered by companies in all other world regions.)
On an industry by industry basis, not a lot of change in terms of the employers paying top dollar: The highest average total annual compensation for recent MBA graduate hires is in consulting ($111,539), followed by finance or accounting ($110,114).
Recruiters on Campus
Of employers that actively recruit on campus, nearly half (49 percent) reported that they expect their on-campus recruitment efforts to remain steady in 2008. That said, 15 percent of firms that aggressively pursue MBA recruitment do anticipate a drop-off in this area this year over last.
As with pay, consulting and finance firms top the list in terms of recruitment efforts as well. But there is also hiring strength in several other industries, including healthcare, pharmaceutical, and products and services firms. In fact, in these sectors, recruiters report that they are more likely to hire MBA graduates in 2008 compared to 2007. Meanwhile, while nonprofit and government organizations were least likely to be involved in on-campus recruitment (44 percent) in 2007, they were the most likely to report plans to increase their on-campus recruiting effort in 2008.
Across industries, the MBA continues to be more attractive to corporate recruiters than any other degree or background, according to survey results. Seventy percent of respondents reported being more likely in 2008 to hire MBA graduates (70 percent) than graduates with a bachelor’s or first university degree (54 percent), experienced direct-from-industry candidates (50 percent), graduates from disciplines other than business (40 percent), specialized master’s in business graduates (34 percent), or graduates who hold MSc degrees in business or management (21 percent).
According to the survey results, part of what makes employers look upon MBA graduates so favorably is their staying power. Employers report that 65 percent of their 2003 hires, 74 percent of 2005 hires, and 90 percent of 2007 hires have continued working for the company. In addition to projected high retention rates, the survey also found that employers value MBA graduates for business management knowledge, communication skills, technical or quantitative skills and ability to apply business discipline to any job or function.
To learn more about GMAC’s annual Corporate Recruiters Survey, click here.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 19, 2008, at 2:38 am
Posted in: Essay Topic Analysis , School: Harvard Perhaps in anticipation of another increase in application volume, the number of HBS essay questions that candidates must answer has gone down – from 5 last year to 4 this season, down from 6 or 7 essays a few seasons ago. Further, at just 1800 words total, Harvard’s has become one of the shorter b-school applications. This underscores the importance of choosing among essay options judiciously, and using the limited words in each essay as beneficially as possible. That said, let’s take a look at the questions for this year:
Essay 1: What are your three most substantial accomplishments and why do you view them as such? (600-word limit)
This essay question has been a hallmark of the HBS application for many years. Due to its top billing, this question could be the first element of your file that the adcom reads, making this response a great opportunity to present the reader with three strong stories that introduce the major themes of your candidacy. Each accomplishment can be presented as a stand-alone section here, so you needn’t be overly concerned about composing a seamless narrative.
HBS has traditionally been very impact-oriented in evaluating applicants’ credentials, so one way to determine which three accomplishments to describe in this essay is to think about the end results. Experiences in which you made a lasting and quantifiable impact can lend themselves to concise, factual narratives, and considering that each accomplishment must be described in approximately 200 words, this can be an important consideration. However, this isn’t to say that the process followed, skills gained, and lessons learned along the way aren’t important, too; these factors could be a great way to address the second half of the question: why you view these accomplishments as your most significant to date.
A final point is that it’s also important to select stories with an eye to balance. An applicant who describes two professional successes and one extra-curricular accomplishment, or perhaps one each from the professional, academic and activities realms, can show that he or she excels in any environment.
Essay 2: What have you learned from a mistake? (400-word limit)
This question makes an appearance for a second consecutive year. The subject of failure or setback is a popular one for business school essays in general, and there are a few important elements to consider in addressing this and similar prompts. Firstly, professional maturity, self-reflection and insight are key qualities to communicate. Towards that end, successful essays will describe the mistake in straightforward, step-by-step detail, and will also own the misstep rather than making excuses.
Another important element to touch on is that you’ve experienced some growth or development since the initial mistake. While applicants should not ‘gloss over’ their mistakes, it is important to emphasize positive growth and the learning experience that can come from missing the mark. An effective essay will present this growth in terms of thoughts and feelings, while balancing comments about internal reflections with descriptions of more external actions and changes in behavior.
Please respond to two of the following (400-word limit each):
Essay 3.1: What would you like the MBA Admissions Board to know about your undergraduate academic experience?
While MBA applicants often draw upon their extracurricular experiences during college as topics for essays, it’s rare that they get a chance to talk about their more intellectual interests and achievements. This is your chance to go into some detail about why you chose your school and major, and tell the admissions committee about your academic interests and educational milestones. A great essay will underscore an applicant’s intelligence and work ethic, as well as incorporate some element of leadership (especially if the applicant had a significant impact on the department or school as a whole).
Essay 3.2: Discuss how you have engaged with a community or organization.
This is the first of two new prompts for HBS this season, and opens a wide range of topics for discussion and skills and qualities that an applicant can highlight. While the “organization” component clearly lends itself to coverage of an extracurricular involvement or leadership at work or at school, the “community” side could just as easily apply to international experience or immersion in a new team or demographic – essentially focusing just on the positive conclusion of a “culture shock” or “outsider” essay. Harvard’s selection of this prompt suggests a strong interests in applicants who are proactive in making connections and building relationships, perhaps toward some specific cause or goal. The interpersonal elements of this experience will therefore be of just as much interest and your reasons and the results of this engagement. Though this essays lends itself nicely to a discussion of a long-term or ongoing involvement with the community or organization in question, centering the essay on a single meaningful anecdote will also be a viable strategy for showing your skills in action.
Essay 3.3: What area of the world are you most curious about and why?
This is another new question for this season, also with a broad reach. A literal interpretation of this question might focus on geographic region, but it also invites discussion of an area of knowledge or inquiry – anything one might explore or investigate.
This question could be an excellent choice for joint or concurrent degree applicants as a substitute for the “career vision” essay; an MBA/JD applicant might elect to discuss his or her deep interest in the intersection of business and law, for example. For the vast majority of applicants, though, there are a number of strategic considerations that go along with this prompt. Because the adcom hopes to get to know its applicants better through the essays, it’s natural for them to wonder what most interests them. It doesn’t seem extremely likely, though, that one would have a passion worth covering in this essay that wouldn’t be more constructively discussed in response to one of the school’s other prompts. Because it doesn’t make sense to write an essay about what one doesn’t know, the subject of this response should ideally be an area of curiosity that one has already explored to some extent. One might therefore find that an academic interest is more naturally covered in “undergraduate experience” option, that a professional or regional interest fits better with the “career vision” essay, and that a hobby or cause shared with others works best with the response about engaging a community or organization.
This essay does lend itself well to covering a solo activity or interest (making it a good platform for World War I buffs and amateur astrologers to discuss this aspect of their lives), but these are seldom crucial elements of one’s candidacy. We don’t mean to say that there’s no way for the average applicant to answer this question well, only that he or she should take a good look at this year’s other options before proceeding.
Essay 3.4: What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you?
Always unique among b-schools, HBS not only frames its essay about the applicant’s professional future in terms of a broad vision rather than concrete goals, but also makes it optional.
Harvard’s adcom tries to identify future business leaders, so applicants presenting a directed vision will make a positive impression. Because this essay is about your career vision, you might summarize your past experiences in a very concise manner (i.e. just a few sentences) before moving on to a detailed discussion of your future plans and the reasons that these plans are meaningful to you. Whereas many schools request a clear description of the candidates immediate post-MBA program, this particular question lends itself to a long-term, big picture outlook. Of course, you might also touch on the ways in which HBS will help you achieve your vision. Think about how Harvard’s program (specific classes, classmates and clubs) would prepare you for your future.
Conclusion
While each of these topics require a careful approach, one of the more challenging aspects of the HBS application is assembling the right mix of anecdotes across essays so as to provide the committee with the most complete (and strategic) view of your candidacy. This is compounded by the fact that HBS allows for several choices in the final two essay topics. As such, we recommend that our readers be sure to take a step back and consider their essays holistically as they move through the process of topic selection and writing.
According to a report yesterday in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for postsecondary education plans to leave her post, just one year after her appointment by President Bush, to lead the Washington Campus, a consortium of university business schools.
Diane Auer Jones was appointed the nation’s top higher-education official by Bush in May 2007, replacing Sally Stroup, who stepped down. According to the Chronicle report, Jones had hoped to remain at the Department of Education through the end of the Bush administration in January 2009 but couldn’t pass up the chance to replace the Washington Campus’s president, who is retiring. It was a case of “the perfect job coming at not the perfect time,” she told the Chronicle.
The Washington Campus is a consortium of 16 major university business schools founded in 1978 to help educate business school students and corporate executives on the process of U.S. policy making. Among its member universities are the University of California at Berkeley’s Hass School of Business, UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
Founded on the principle that “understanding government is indispensable knowledge for all business leaders,” the Washington Campus provided customized executive education programs for corporations and associations, open-enrollment programs for business executives and graduate-level courses for MBA students within the consortium.
According to the Chronicle, Jones feels she is leaving the Education Department at an appropriate time in its calendar even though the Bush administration still has eight months remaining. Several critical regulatory processes have been finished, and all of the department’s major grant competitions have been completed.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 16, 2008, at 2:32 am
Posted in: Fridays from the Frontline Welcome back to Fridays From the Frontline, Clear Admit’s weekly peek through the MBA looking glass. There was quite a sight to behold this week as applicants and students battled addled brains made mad by tough decisions that could determine their futures, some temporarily while others with permanence. Let’s check out a few in each camp…
Mbarunnergirl recently returned from a breathtaking journey ‘down under’, which helped her realize, among other things, that the travel-heavy consulting lifestyle’s just not for her. Now, with the summer stretching out ahead of her, she has to figure out what is, at least for the next several months until she joins Columbia. Her dilemma surely resonates with JulyDream, who’s also looking to gainfully employ her time before she heads off to Darden, although right now she’s been stymied by a sudden onset of nostalgia about her current gainful employer. On the other hand, My MBA Dream’s sights are focused ahead – all the way to next application season, in fact – unless the Darden waitlist pans out for this fall. Speaking of restarting the whole nerve wracking process, Miss Curly Bee spoke out in defense of one its most anxiety inducing elements – gasp – the BusinessWeek forums! What’s wrong with a little b-school drama now and then? she implores would-be censors of this MBA circus.
First-year HairTwirler wasn’t in the mood for any funny business from the MBA community this week, however: she took a decisively hard line stance on which applicants should be doing community service and why. So what makes her an authority? An outstanding grade in Ethics at Georgetown, for starters. M@ also cut to the chase, frankly speaking about his unsatisfying Ross Multidisciplinary Action Project grade, which couldn’t have been further disconnected from the success he felt his team achieved in South Africa. The week was easier on Necromonger, who’s finding INSEAD’s P5 surprisingly manageable. He took the opportunity this afforded him to capture INSEAD’s Fontainebleau campus from a variety of perspectives. UniQpath also entertained a change of perspectives, reflecting on how her career aspirations have shifted over her first year at Wharton, landing her at a Bay area startup for the summer instead of a big consulting firm.
Back at INSEAD after a Wharton exchange, MillionDollarSpatula’s getting ready to make a big career decision, too – will it be a gritty general management job at a down-to-earth firm or a posh, supporting role at Fortune 500 company? Meanwhile, job in hand, Angie found time to sing the praises of LBS again, this time with the heady assertion that the school “rules European sports,” as evidenced by London Business School’s triumph in the European MBA Tournament (for the third year in a row!). And last but not least, Mbagladiator took a break from his full-time post as a social butterfly to share his accomplishments over the past few weeks – from knocking out papers and finals to narrowly defeating the Yale SOM’s Dean Podolny in bowling.
That just about wraps up the MBA blogging news for this week! Hope to have you back with us next Friday for the latest synopsis of business school blogging activity.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 15, 2008, at 11:53 am
Posted in: Deadlines , Essay Topics , School: Harvard As promised, the HBS deadlines and essay questions have been released today for the 2008-2009 admissions cycle. Though much remains the same, there are two notable differences over last year’s deadlines and essay topics. First, the Round 1 deadline is almost two weeks later this year, taking place in mid-October instead of early October, and the 2008-2009 application will require just four essays – down from five in 2007-2008 and six in earlier years. This should be good news for applicants, who will have more time to work on fewer essays.
Application Deadlines
Round 1: October 15, 2008
Round 2: January 6, 2009
Round 3: March 11, 2009
Note: All deadlines are 5 p.m. EST.
Notification Dates
Round 1: January 21, 2009
Round 2: April 2, 2009
Round 3: May 13, 2009
Essay Questions
1. What are your three most substantial accomplishments and why do you view them as such? (600-word limit)
2. What have you learned from a mistake? (400-word limit)
Please respond to two of the following (400-word limit each):
1. What would you like the MBA Admissions Board to know about your undergraduate academic experience?
2. Discuss how you have engaged with a community or organization.
3. What area of the world are you most curious about and why?
4. What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you?
Posted by Clear Admit on May 15, 2008, at 11:30 am
Posted in: MBA News , School: Dartmouth / Tuck It’s internship time for many business school students just wrapping up their first year of study. For those headed to investment banks and consulting firms, summer internships can mean regular paychecks offering a preview of what to expect after graduation. But for students who instead have opted for nonprofit, service-based positions, a summer of eating Ramen noodles and little else may be more the norm.
Not so at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Last week, Tuck held its eighth annual Tuck GIVES (Grants to Interns and Volunteers for the Environment and Society) auction, a student-run event that gives the entire school community a chance to help support students heading into nonprofit and public-sector internships.
Combining silent and live auctions, calendar and raffle sales and a poker tournament, this year’s event brought in $67,400.
“I feel fortunate to go to a school where my classmates devote so much of their time and money to helping their peers engage in nonprofit and public-sector work,” Rachel Roth T’09, an event organizer, said in a statement. Other members of the Tuck GIVES leadership team included Brooke Szostak T’08, Jamie Greenthal T’08 and Chelsey Hood T’08.
Students supported their peers not only by bidding on auction items, but also by offering up their skills and services to serve as auction items themselves. Distinctive items auctioned off this year included flying lessons, a traditional New Orleans-style crawfish bowl with Tuck Dean Paul Danos and a traditional fiesta dinner prepared by seven Tuck students from Mexico.
The proceeds from last year’s auction funded seven student internship positions at organizations in industries ranging from healthcare to public education. This year’s proceeds, too, will supplement the salaries of Tuck students pursuing internships in the nonprofit and public sectors.
“Tuck GIVES demonstrates how Tuck puts its values to work,” said Patricia Palmiotto, director of the Allwin Initiative for Corporate Citizenship, in a statement about the event. The Allwin Initiative helps to sponsor the auction each year. a sponsor of the event. “We believe in using business skills to make a positive difference in the world,” Palmiotto continued.
To learn more about Tuck GIVES, contact the Allwin Initiative for Corporate Citizenship.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 15, 2008, at 2:59 am
Posted in: Admissions Tips With the release of most Round 3 notifications in the past three weeks, the 2007-2008 admissions season is coming to a close for the vast majority of MBA aspirants. We’d like to offer our congratulations to all those who have gained admission to one of more of their target schools, and wish good luck to waitlisted applicants whose fate is presently a bit less certain. For all those who submitted their applications in the final round and received an unfavorable decision, we’d like to share a few tips that we hope will make the process of facing rejection as productive as possible:
1) Understand the odds and consider reapplying in the early rounds next year. If you failed to gain admission to a school in its final application round, you should not give up hope or instantly assume that your profile contains some glaring weakness that will forever bar you from acceptance. Because relatively few spots in the incoming class are available by the time of the Round 3 deadlines, it is always most difficult to get into a school at this point in the year. In many cases, an earlier application is all that you need to find success in the process.
2) Get feedback from the admissions committee. As we commented in a recent post, some of the top programs allow unsuccessful applicants to sign up for a feedback session with an admissions officer (sessions typically take place over the summer). This is a unique chance for you to learn how the committee perceived your application. Keep in mind that your audience with the adcom will be brief – try to approach the meeting with pointed questions about your candidacy in order to ensure that the feedback session is as productive and informative as possible.
3) Get feedback from other sources. Although a number of schools do not offer feedback, there are other ways to learn about where you may have fallen short. To start, you should read over your file with a critical eye and try to identify and understand your weaknesses. Take a step back from the process and be objective about your shortcomings. You might also share your file with colleagues who have been to business school. While this can be enlightening, you should also be careful about the feedback you collect on these fronts, since not all of it will be accurate (or consistent). Finally, you might seek feedback from an MBA admissions consulting firm. Clear Admit offers complete feedback sessions, including detailed written reports that provide an individualized road-map for reapplication.
4) Plan for a productive summer. Although it’s tempting to simply take a break from the admissions process after receiving a rejection letter, it is imperative that reapplicants use the summer months to address the weaknesses in their profiles. In many cases, reapplicants need to pursue outside coursework, retake a standardized test (GMAT/TOEFL), increase involvement with outside activities or take on new responsibilities at work. All of these tasks take time and cannot be addressed in the fall when application forms and essays should be the priority. By being proactive about improving your candidacy now, you will put yourself in a much better position to apply next year.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 14, 2008, at 1:17 pm
Posted in: Admissions Tips , General , GMAT Tips On June 19th, ManhattanGMAT, the nation’s largest GMAT-exclusive test-prep company, will open its Chicago Center to prospective MBA applicants for a free information session explaining the ins and outs of the admissions process. Clear Admit’s own Graham Richmond will lead the session, sharing admissions expertise gained in the seven years since he co-founded Clear Admit with fellow Wharton graduate Eliot Ingram. (Prior to co-founding Clear Admit, Richmond also served on the admissions committee at Wharton, evaluating candidates for admission and representing the school at events across the globe.)
The event will also feature ManhattanGMAT instructor Keith Blume, who will speak to the GMAT specifically, helping prospective applicants understand how it works, what it tests, how business schools interpret scores and the benefits and limits of using short-cuts and tricks.
As if that alone weren’t reason to stop by, attendees also will receive a range of gifts and special promotions, including:
• A free access pass to one of ManhattanGMAT’s computer adaptive practice exams
• A chance to win a free ManhattanGMAT 9-session course (a $1390 value) or a complete set of ManhattanGMAT course books (a $270 value)
• A chance to win a set of five Clear Admit School Guides (a $175 value) or a set of five Clear Admit Interview Guides (a $100 value)
• $100 off any 9-session ManhattanGMAT preparation course
• A free hour of Clear Admit consulting time with the purchase of 10 hours of consulting time (a $200 value)
The information session will take place from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., and drinks and appetizers will be available. This exclusive event is free to interested applicants, but advance registration is required. To register online, click here. (Note: This link will take you to the manhattangmat.com website. If it is your first visit to the site, you will be asked to first complete a free student profile.)
Once you have registered, you will receive a confirmation email with the address of the event and other details. For questions about this event, contact ManhattanGMAT at 800-576-4628 or email studentservices@manhattangmat.com.
We hope to see you there!
Posted by Clear Admit on May 14, 2008, at 2:45 am
Posted in: GMAT Tips , Wiki Wednesdays Welcome to another edition of Wiki Wednesdays, where we highlight fresh and informative content from the Clear Admit Wiki! This week, we’re zeroing in on the GMAT page as many applicants are in the midst of preparation – and perhaps a little perspiration – for the test. Let’s take a look at what blogger AlchemistMBA shared in the Clear Admit Wiki about his GMAT experience…
After summarizing his take on a number of GMAT prep materials, the applicant noted, “I used a small diary to keep track of some grammar quirks, the more challenging Quant problems and the weird sentence correction sentences I came across.” While study habits and preferences will undoubtedly vary, candidates could consider keeping separate notes for ease of reference when tackling such problems again and again and again.
Despite thorough preparation, however, the test taker wasn’t quite ready for everything! As he recounted, “you have to use an erasable clipboard that you write on with a sketchpen for scratch work. I didn’t know this before hand and I had a VERY difficult time. On the page, I couldn’t tell the difference between my 7′s and 4′s while doing my calculations.” Applicants may want to crumple up that scratch paper and trade in their yellow legal pads for a dry-erase board in order to more closely simulate the test-taking situation. To find out AlchemistMBA’s final score, be sure to check out the Clear Admit Wiki!
As always, we encourage the MBA applicant community to share their thoughts on and experiences with the GMAT, a sometimes challenging, but necessary, part of the admissions process. If you would like to add your experience to the Clear Admit Wiki, simply create an account or send your reports to wiki@clearadmit.com. Thanks to all those who have contributed this season! Best of luck to those still sharpening their pencils!
Posted by Clear Admit on May 13, 2008, at 10:15 am
Posted in: Essay Topics , MBA News , School: Harvard Some of us here at Clear Admit received an RSS feed update dated May 12th from Harvard Business School Admissions Director Dee Leopold announcing that new essay questions for the 2011 are now available to prospective applicants.
“Well, I suppose this is the official launch of the Class of 2011 application season!” Leopold wrote. “The new essay questions are now posted along with the application calendar. Our application will be available online in mid-June.”
So we immediately set out to find the new questions so we could share them with our readers. Alas, they don’t seem to have gone live yet to the HBS site. But given Leopold’s post, we’re sure they aren’t long in coming, and we will carefully monitor the site and alert you when they are up.
Leopold’s note yesterday also indicated that she will be in New York City on May 27th for the first of several upcoming outreach events. More events – most in August and September – will be added as they are scheduled, she continued. College visits, meanwhile, will take place in late September, October and November.
Prospective applicants are more than welcome to visit HBS over the summer, during which time members of the Admissions Board will be hosting information sessions, Leopold continued. And though class visits don’t resume until early October, the HBS website features a video called Inside the Case Method, which Leopold recommends viewing in the meantime. “I think it gives a very clear picture of what happens in the MBA classroom and offers both student and faculty perspectives,” she wrote.
Finally, Leopold shared that she’s hoping to be a more active blogger now that the HBS Class of 2010 is set and that she will be re-writing the FAQ section of the HBS website to make it more comprehensive and colorful.
Once again, we will keep you posted about the new essay questions – as soon as they are up we will share them with you here.
|
Comments closed