APPLICANT RESOURCES

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Admissions Director Q&A
Below are links to Clear Admit's exclusive interviews with MBA admissions directors at leading programs.
Dawna Clarke (Tuck)
Rose Martinelli (Chicago)
Judith Hodara (Wharton)
Sara Neher (Darden)
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)
Mary Miller (Columbia)

Clear Admit School Guides
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Clear Admit Career Guides
Clear Admit Career GuidesUnderstand career-specific offerings at leading MBA programs and identify the schools that will best support your career goals with the Clear Admit Career Guides! Available for Consulting, Investment Banking, Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Healthcare.

Clear Admit Strategy Series
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Clear Admit Interview Guides
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Application Deadlines
Below are the upcoming deadlines for admission to top-tier schools.
Feb 10: INSEAD R3
Mar 1: Michigan / Ross R3
Mar 3: CBS
Mar 3: LBS R3
Mar 4: Kellogg R3
Mar 8: Cambridge / Judge R4
Mar 8: CMU / Tepper R3
Mar 9: Duke / Fuqua R3
Mar 9: Penn / Wharton R3
Mar 10: Berkeley / Hass R4
Mar 10: Chicago Booth R3
Mar 10: Yale SOM R3
Mar 15: NYU / Stern R3
Mar 17: UCLA / Anderson R3
Mar 19: UNC / Kenan-Flagler R4
Mar 30: Cornell / Johnson R4
Mar 31: UVA / Darden R3
Mar 31: INSEAD R4
Apr 1: UT-Austin / McCombs
Apr 2: Dartmouth / Tuck R3
Apr 2: Oxford / Saїd R3
Apr 7: Stanford GSB R4
Apr 8: Harvard R3
Apr 14: CBS

Essay Topic Analysis
Below are links to our comments on some of the top programs' essay topics.
The Career Goals Essay
Berkeley / Haas*
Chicago Booth*
CMU / Tepper*
Columbia*
Cornell / Johnson*
Dartmouth / Tuck*
Duke / Fuqua*
Harvard*
Indian School of Business*
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
Knewton

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

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Friday, April 17, 2009

Columbia ODYSSEY, Outrageous Business Plan Competition Winners Announced

Following up on two recent blog posts about competitions taking place at Columbia Business School (CBS) in past weeks, we wanted to let you know who won.

Top prize in the first competition, a triathalon of business management contests pitting teams from 15 of the world’s top business schools against one another, went to London Business School.

Called ODYSSEY, the competition was developed by two CBS students who, at a conference in India just months after the Olympics in Beijing, decided that there needed to be an opportunity for students from schools around the world to exchange ideas and compete on more than a single topic.

“Basically, we set out to create an Olympics for MBA students,” explained Peter Novak, MBA ‘09, one of the event’s co-founders. Novak and the event’s other co-founder, Mark Trayling, MBA ’09, identified the ODYSSEY 15, a list of 15 schools deemed to represent the top MBA programs in the United States and around the world. Teams from each of these schools were invited to travel to CBS to participate in ODYSSEY’s three events – the Negotiation, the Pitch and the Case.

“Most definitely the international aspect is what really makes it,” said Trayling. “It couldn’t function nationally, international was the real key component,” he continued.

The roster of winners reflects this claim. A team from Harvard Business School took second place, and a team from the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad) took third.

For Björn Koertner, a member of the winning LBS team, what stood out most about the competition was the opportunity it provided to go head to head with teams from so many other top schools. “There was really a team from all the top 15 business schools in the world,” he said, compared to other competitions that only draw teams from six or seven schools.

That they were schools from all over the globe also was critical, he added. “For us this was very important because giving people a global education is one of the core elements of LBS and why most of the students are at LBS,” he said.

The speakers the competition drew – including Didier Lombard, chairman and CEO of France Telecom, Orange; Steve Forbes, Forbes chairman and CEO; and Ian Davis, McKinsey & Company managing director – were also a high point, Koertner said. “I don’t know another case competition or b-school competition where you have such a showing of high-level speakers,” he added.

Finally, the fact that the competition consisted of three distinct challenges to be completed under very tight time constraints also made it unique, Koertner said. “In other case competitions it’s sufficient to have one superstar on your team who has the ideas, but in this it was necessary that you have a team of five people who are all very good,” he continued.

Even though CBS didn’t come out on top, Trayling and Novak were thrilled with how the event turned out. “The students, participants, attendees, companies, speakers – from all aspects it was a great success,” Trayling said. “The question for us now is how to make it even better next year,” he added.

Upon winning, the LBS team broke out into a spontaneous performance of “God Save the Queen” on the steps of Columbia’s Low Library. Which country’s anthem will be sung next year remains to be seen. 

The More Outrageous, the Better
Also announced this week were the winners of the Tenth Annual A. Lorne Weil Outrageous Business Plan Competition, which also took place at CBS in late March. The competition, open to teams of CBS MBA or EMBA students, challenges budding entrepreneurs to submit a business plan and deliver a two-minute elevator pitch to win the support of a panel of venture capitalist judges.

The title of Most Outrageous Business Venture went to two ventures this year based on their ambition, innovation, creativity and persuasiveness. The first-place winners were Megan Bordi ’09 and her business partner Nate Altschul for Green Panda Games™ (greenpandagames.com), a safe, free-to-play virtual world and game website for kids and tweens in China, and Joshua Hecht ’10 and business partner Darren Molovinsky for Curtain Call, a program book for Off-Broadway theaters and performing arts venues. Each team won $4,000 to help fund the launch of their businesses.

For more on the results of the Outrageous Business Plan Competition, click here.

# posted by Clear Admit @ 11:00 am in MBA News, School: Columbia, School: London Business School

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Duke / Fuqua
Harvard
Kellogg
Michigan
MIT / Sloan
New York / Stern
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Stanford
Virginia / Darden
Wharton
Yale
ESADE
IESE
INSEAD
London Business School

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Community blog with MBA student and alum contributors.


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Video blog entries posted by women MBA students.


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Independent blog with content by Vanderbilt MBA students.

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