Business Schools Brace for Record Round One Application Volumes » Clear Admit: MBA Admissions Consultants Blog

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Dawna Clarke (Tuck)
Rose Martinelli (Chicago)
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Soojin Kwon Koh (Michigan)
Randall Sawyer (Cornell)
Beth Flye (Kellogg)
David Simpson (LBS)
Liz Riley Hargrove (Duke)
Linda Meehan (Columbia)
Bruce DelMonico (Yale)
Peter Johnson (Berkeley)
Isser Gallogly (NYU)
Mae Jennifer Shores (UCLA)
J.J. Cutler (Wharton)
Jake Cohen (INSEAD)
Rod Garcia (MIT Sloan)

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Application Deadlines
Below are the upcoming deadlines for admission to top-tier schools.
Jul 1: HBS 2+2
Jul 22: INSEAD Jan Intake R3
Oct 1: Harvard Business School R1
Oct 1: Penn / Wharton R1
Oct 1: Duke / Fuqua EA
Oct 7: CBS J-Term
Oct 7: CBS ED
Oct 7: Stanford GSB R1
Oct 8: Yale SOM R1
Oct 10: Michigan / Ross R1
Oct 14: Chicago Booth R1
Oct 15: Northwestern / Kellogg R1
Oct 20: Berkeley / Haas R1
Oct 27: MIT / Sloan R1
Nov 15: NYU / Stern R1

Essay Topic Analysis
Below are links to our comments on some of the top programs' essay topics.
The Career Goals Essay*
Berkeley / Haas
Chicago GSB
CMU / Tepper
Columbia
Cornell / Johnson
Dartmouth / Tuck
Duke / Fuqua
Harvard*
IESE
INSEAD
London Business School
MIT / Sloan*
Michigan / Ross
Northwestern / Kellogg*
NYU / Stern*
Oxford / Said
Penn / Wharton*
Stanford GSB*
UCLA / Anderson
UNC / Kenan-Flagler
USC / Marshall
UT Austin / McCombs
UVA / Darden
Yale SOM
* denotes '09-'10 commentary

Categories
Use categories to access all that has been written on each of the topics. We have categorized by school and by subject matter.

Interview Reports
A selection of interview field reports from fellow applicants posted to the MBA Admissions Wiki. Add your reports when you are finished with your interviews.
Chicago
Columbia
Dartmouth / Tuck
Duke / Fuqua
Harvard
Kellogg
Michigan / Ross
MIT / Sloan
Stanford
UNC / Chapel Hill
Virginia / Darden
Wharton
London Business School

GMAT Resources
MBA.com
Manhattan GMAT
GMAT Club
Princeton Review
Test Prep New York
Kaplan
Beat The GMAT

Writing Resources
Guide to Grammar and Writing
The Internet Grammar of English
English Usage, Style and Composition
The Economist Style Guide
Paradigm Online Writing Assistant

School Rankings
Rankings are a good way to start your research on various MBA Programs. Keep in mind each uses a different methodology.
Business Week
Economist
Financial Times
Forbes
USNews
Wall Street Journal

Career Guides
The following resources should be useful to those who want to research the careers open to them after (or before) earning an MBA.
Vault.com
Wetfeet

Business School Resources
The following are business resources offered by a variety of leading Business Schools. It's useful to subscribe to these resources, especially for the schools to which you are applying.

MBA Programs: North America
If an MBA Program is not listed, please e-mail and we will be happy to list it.
Berkeley / Haas
Boston College / Carroll
Carnegie Mellon / Tepper
Chicago
Columbia
Concordia
Cornell / Johnson
Dartmouth / Tuck
Duke / Fuqua
Emory / Goizueta
Harvard
HEC Montreal
Indiana / Kelley
Michigan
MIT / Sloan
Northwestern / Kellogg
New York / Stern
North Carolina / Kenan Flagler
Notre Dame / Mendoza
Pennsylvania / Wharton
Queens
Stanford
Syracuse / Whitman
Texas / McCombs
Thunderbird
Toronto
USC / Marshall
UCLA / Anderson
Vanderbilt / Owen
Virginia / Darden
Washington University in St. Louis / Olin
Western Ontario / Ivey
Yale

MBA Programs: Rest of the World
As there is some variety in the length of international MBA programs, we have denoted the length of the program next to its name (1 = one year; 2 = 2 years). If an MBA Program is not listed, please e-mail and we will be happy to list it.
AGSM (Australia) 2
Cambridge / Judge (UK) 1
CIEBS (China) 2
Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (China) 1
Cranfield School of Mgmt (UK) 1
ESADE (Spain) 1 or 2
HEC (France) 2
Hult (UK) 1
IESE (Spain) 2
IMD (Switzerland) 1
INCAE (Costa Rica) 2
INSEAD (France) 1
IPADE (Mexico)
ISB (India) 1
London Business School (UK) 2
Manchester Bus. School (UK) 2
Melbourne (Australia) 2
Oxford / Said (UK) 1
Rotterdam (Netherlands) 1
Tsinghua IMBA (China) 2
University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) 1

Additional Resources
Here we link a host of additional resources available across the web. E-mail info@clearadmit.com to have resources added to this list.
AACSB International
Association of MBAs
Beyond Grey Pinstripes
EFMD
gradschools.com (worldwide)
Infozee
International Student Loans
mba.com (GMAT Scores)
MBAInfo
mbaleague.blogspot.com
MBAzone
MBA Jungle
TOEFL
Top MBA

MBA Tipline
We encourage admissions officers, students and applicants to alert us of interesting news and developments, please send an email to news@clearadmit.com so we can blog it.

Blog Archive

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Business Schools Brace for Record Round One Application Volumes

As round one application deadlines approach, business schools both here and abroad are bracing for a surge in application volume. Recent reports in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Asia Inc reveal what we’ve long known to be true: When business goes south, business school looks like a better and better idea.

“It’s a very predictable and reliable pattern,” Stacey Kole, deputy dean for the full-time MBA program at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, told the Times. “When there’s a go-go economy, fewer people decide to go back to school. When things go south, the opportunity cost of leaving work is lower.” And for workers who find themselves laid off, the decision is made easier still.

Official application tallies aren’t yet available since deadlines for the first round of admissions still loom at many schools. But early reports indicate that final numbers will be high.

According to the Journal report, New York University’s Stern School of Business has seen a 20 percent increase in attendance at off-site information sessions this year, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management is reporting a 22 percent increase in applications so far, and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business has seen campus visits by prospective students double.

As always, registration volume for the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) provides an early indicator of application volume as well. According to the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the test, registrations for the test through the end of September were 11.6 percent higher than in the comparable period of 2007.

In Europe, the same trends are playing out. “Actually, applications to MBA programmes at IE Business school this year have grown over 15 percent and diversity – the number of countries represented – has also increased,” Santiago Iniguez, dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School in Madrid, told Asia Inc last month. “In fact, the number of U.S. students expected for IE’s MBA programme starting this fall will increase over 20 percent,” he continued.

Still, not everyone sees a direct correlation between a sagging economy and a surge in application volume. Others rightly point out that uncertainty about what the job market will look like upon graduation could deter some from applying. And for some students, the credit crisis may make getting loans to cover the cost of business school more difficult.

Derrick Bolton, director of MBA admissions at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, told the Times that he sees very little correlation between a Wall Street bust and an application boom. According to Bolton, application numbers at his school remained “pretty standard” even after some of Wall Street’s greatest declines, such as the market crash of 1987.

For those in good jobs now, meanwhile, the risk of leaving to go to school may seem too great, according to Peter Johnson, executive director of admissions for the full-time MBA program at the University of California Berkeley’s Hass School of Business. “If you are in a good position and you are not confident of how the picture is going to look two years from now, you may stay in that position,” he told the Journal.

And then there’s the issue of student loans, which have become harder to get due to the widespread credit crunch. According to Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, 144 education lenders have suspended private and federal loans. But Kantrowitz says business school students should not be impacted as greatly.
“Graduate student loans are the most profitable [for lenders] because the loan balances are the highest,” he told the Journal.

Stefan Szymanski, associate dean of MBA programs at London’s Cass Business School said much the same thing in an article on topmba.com. “Banks are consistently willing to lend to MBAs because they know they’ll get their money back,” he writes. “And yes, even though the banks have stopped lending to almost everybody else, they seem happy to maintain their loan schemes right now – and they wouldn’t be doing that unless they saw an MBA as a sure-fire economic proposition.”

# posted by Clear Admit @ 2:00 pm in General, MBA News, School: Berkeley / Haas, School: Chicago, School: IE, School: Michigan / Ross, School: NYU Stern, School: Northwestern / Kellogg, School: Stanford

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