Posted by Clear Admit on May 29, 2009, at 3:00 pm
Posted in:  Events , MBA News , School: Dartmouth / Tuck A second-year student at the Tuck School of Business, working in partnership with a Ph.D. Innovation candidate at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering, took first place in the U.S. and second globally in the recent 2009 Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC). The Dartmouth team won $10,000 for its business plan to reduce counterfeit drug sales in developing nations.
Second-year Tuck student Shivam Rajdev worked together with Thayer engineering student Ashifi Gogo to develop mPedigree Logistics, which gives consumers the ability to check a drug’s authenticity with a simple text message. Gogo came up with the idea after witnessing the devastating effects of fake medication in his native Ghana, where counterfeit drugs often contain little or no active ingredients and can be laced with dangerous chemicals.
“I entered the GSVC because I wanted to demonstrate that it’s possible to have a strong social and environmental impact while delivering good financial results,” Rajdev said in a statement. “It is important to cultivate future business leaders who value the social mission of their enterprises in addition to their profit potential,” he continued.
Rajdev and Gogo’s plan will help guarantee that consumers can access safe drugs while also helping genuine pharmaceutical manufacturers reclaim market share lost to counterfeiters.
GSVC, the largest and oldest student-led business plan competition focused on social ventures, is aimed toward supporting the creation of new social ventures and building awareness of social enterprises.
mPedigree Logistics will use its prize money to conduct a trial of the technology in Nigeria this summer. Rajdev and Gogo hope to launch the technology there by the end of this year and to use the launch as a case study for entering the Indian market early next year.
To learn more about the GSVC, click here.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 29, 2009, at 8:00 am
Posted in: MBA News , School: Stanford Earlier this week, Stanford GSB announced the hiring of Garth Saloner as their new dean. He will replace Robert Joss, who has served as dean for the past decade and was responsible for both the development of a new curriculum as well as the launch of construction of new state of the art facilities.
Saloner has been teaching at Stanford since 1990 is presently the Jeffrey S. Skoll Professor of Electronic Commerce, Strategic Management and Economics. He has also served as the director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Graduate School of Business and has been integral in the launch of the new curriculum. Saloner holds a PhD in Economics, Business and Public Policy from Stanford University and is one of only two faculty members to have been awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award at the GSB twice (1993 and 2008). He looks to build upon the momentum generated by Robert Joss as the school continues to forge into new territory with their curriculum and gets set to open its new facilities in 2010-2011. For more information on the history of the Stanford Graduate School of Business as well as all the details regarding the school’s innovative curriculum, read the Clear Admit School Guide to Stanford GSB.
The full press release issued by the school is listed below:
May 26, 2009
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS —Economist Garth Saloner, a scholar of entrepreneurship and business strategy, will be the next dean of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, President John Hennessy and Provost John Etchemendy announced today.
Saloner, 54, who joined the Stanford faculty in 1990, is the Jeffrey S. Skoll Professor of Electronic Commerce, Strategic Management and Economics, and a director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Graduate School of Business. He will succeed Robert Joss, who is stepping down after 10 years as dean. Saloner’s appointment is effective September 1, 2009.
“Over nearly two decades at Stanford, Garth Saloner has demonstrated that he is not only a top-notch scholar, but also a respected leader among his peers and distinguished teacher highly-praised by his students,” Hennessy said. “His scholarship in the areas of entrepreneurship and electronic commerce is particularly pertinent to our times and the global economy.”
Etchemendy said Saloner has been a leader in the evolution of management education.
“Garth Saloner helped to lead the development and transition to a new curriculum that is truly reinventing the path to an MBA,” Etchemendy said. “In his own words, this new curriculum is the ‘innovation of the MBA.’ As dean, Garth will ably continue the momentum generated by Dean Joss and maintain the research excellence of our business school.”
Saloner said he welcomes the challenges ahead.
“The Stanford GSB has the opportunity to prepare future generations of principled critical analytical thinkers whose actions can change the world. Through our research, we will continue to develop . . . → Continue Reading
Posted by Clear Admit on May 29, 2009, at 1:31 am
Posted in: Fridays from the Frontline Welcome to another installment of Fridays from the Frontline, in which we highlight the latest goings on in the MBA blogosphere. It seems to have been a week of transitions – while recent grads leave the classroom for the job market, first-year students prepare to move from dorms to internships and soon-to-be-first-years move from the workforce towards the MBA campus. The new crop of applicant bloggers (Class of 2012) are also gearing up for a few changes, taking up the writing reins and covering the early stages of MBA applications.
After a late night INSEAD information session, HARI continued his diligent MBA prep with a GMAT practice test. Like many applicant/soon-to-be first-year bloggers this past holiday, Wake Forest ’11 Omne enjoyed his Memorial Day weekend, but needs to hunker down with his MBA budget for the upcoming year. While Kellogg ’11 The.Grey.One awaits the verdict for his choices of exotic KWEST destinations, Kellogg ’11 Orlando received unfortunate news about his stateside housing preferences for the upcoming year. Meanwhile, MBA hopeful Helen is still in limbo with Stanford GSB and remains on the waitlist. On the sweeter side, Fuqua ’11 The Strange Consultant found business in his pudding cup, while Haas ’11 Sunnyside Up recounted the pros and cons of Ghirardelli’s brownie mix and low fat vanilla ice cream – not to mention her long-awaited acceptance to Haas’s Class of 2011! (Congratulations, Lauren!) The Class of 2011 are indeed busy making – and living – plans for the summer, as is evident by Stanford GSB ’11 Palo Alto for a While’s bid farewell for the coming summer months. Looking a bit further into the future, Kellogg ’11 Managing Magic accounted for a potential Plan B in entrepreneurship and offered a detailed summary of a recent talk about the value of search funds.
A few first years were adjusting to the downshift in schedules, now that final exams have ceased. Having conquered all his finals, McCombs ’10 Metal accounted for filling his hours now that team meetings and deadlines are in the past. Fellow McCombs ’10 Paragron2Pieces is making a jump into the heart of downtown Austin and looking forward to more fun times her second year. Kellogg ’10 La Coguette gave into the guilty pleasure of scanning the BusinessWeek forums – a former procrastination tool from her MBA applicant days – and threw in her two cents on a recent post.
In her recent return to the blogosphere, Chicago Booth ’09 MaybeMBA shared her perspective on finding a job amidst a tight economy. While things wind down at INSEAD, congratulations are in order for INSEAD ’09 Forest of Fontainebleau, whose team won INSEAD’s Business Venture Competition!
We can’t wait to hear more about upcoming adventures, big moves and new experiences. If you’ve just joined – or have been milling around . . . → Continue Reading
Posted by Clear Admit on May 28, 2009, at 2:00 pm
Posted in: Essay Topic Analysis , General , School: Stanford Following the announcement of Stanford’s deadlines and essay topics, we’d like to take some time to provide guidance on the essays. While Stanford continues to fine-tune the topics for the shorter Essay 3 responses, the prompts for Essays 1 and 2 still constitute the heart of one’s application. Ideally, an applicant’s responses to Essays 1 and 2 would work together to provide the adcom a picture of the guiding force or principle behind his or her experiences to date (which can be covered in the first question) and objectives for the future (discussed in the second). While it’s possible that the thing that matters most to an applicant might be something completely removed from his or her professional objectives, it almost seems natural that the career goal discussion would be a slightly narrower continuation of the theme developed in Essay 1.
Essay 1: What matters most to you, and why? The open-ended and somewhat philosophical nature of this question can make it a challenging starting point. If a topic doesn’t immediately spring to mind, a constructive approach might be to think about your experiences to date (growing up, attending school, working, pursuing outside activities and general interests) and look for some unifying theme among some or all of them. Because it’s always a good idea to introduce specific details and anecdotes to really tie the general ideas expressed in your essays to the key elements of your candidacy, it would be wise to select a topic that not only gives the adcom a sense of your values and priorities, but also allows to you discuss some of the ways you have translated these into action. Needless to say, this is one of the more challenging essays in the business school world, so feel free to reach out to Clear Admit if you seek tailored guidance vis-a-vis your candidacy.
Essay 2: What are your career aspirations? How will your education at Stanford help you achieve them? All told, this is a fairly standard career goals essay. In fact, Stanford narrows the scope of the question to keep the focus on one’s professional objectives. Though Stanford leaves the question somewhat open, it will still be to the applicant’s benefit to sketch out a specific short and long-term goal, explaining the motivation and reasoning behind each, and to provide a detailed discussion of the ways a Stanford MBA would be conducive to achieving these aims, as well as the potential contribution he or she could make to the program.
As is the case with most schools, demonstrating an understanding of the unique merits of Stanford’s program is crucial to an effective response to this question. Taking the time to learn about the school’s curriculum, special programs and extracurricular activities – whether through a visit to campus, conversation with alumni or reading the Clear Admit School Guide to Stanford – will pay dividends here.
Essay 3: Answer two of the four questions below. Tell us not . . . → Continue Reading
Posted by Clear Admit on May 28, 2009, at 11:30 am
Posted in: MBA News , School: Cornell / Johnson On May 15th, the Johnson School at Cornell University became the 15th school to join the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, whose mission is to enhance diversity in business education and leadership by increasing the representation of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans on business school campuses and in the ranks of management.
“Joining the consortium will help us build the diversity of our MBA classes and enrich the learning experience for all our students,” Johnson Dean Joseph Thomas said in a statement announcing the new alliance. “The Johnson School works to promote a culture that not only values differences but treasures them as sources of strength,” he continued.
The consortium will begin recruiting prospective MBA students for the Johnson School in the fall of 2009, with the first class graduating in the spring of 2012. In addition to its recruitment efforts, the consortium also awards more than $12 million in full-tuition, merit-based MBA fellowships annually and has been instrumental in assisting more than 5,500 underrepresented minority students earn their MBAs and advance their careers in corporate America.
As the newest consortium member, the Johnson School joins 14 other top business schools including Carnegie Mellon University, Dartmouth College, Emory University, Indiana University, the University of Michigan, New York University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Rochester, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Virginia, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Yale University.
To learn more about the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, click here.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 28, 2009, at 3:00 am
Posted in: Campus Chronicles , General With the end of the academic year, the student presses have fallen silent and it is time to put our weekly roundup of campus papers on hold until the start of the fall semester. However, for those applicants looking for some fun summer reading that has the added benefit of enhancing your MBA applications, the archives of student newspapers are a wonderful resource that is well worth exploring. As we’ve pointed out in past Campus Chronicles columns, student papers often offer excellent insight into the culture on campus and provide a great window on the events and controversies at each school, making them an important part of the MBA application research process.
Candidates beginning the application process might find it helpful to read through some of the back issues of a school’s paper. Information from the papers can become a valuable addition to MBA essays later this summer – perhaps you would like to help organize one of the conferences or speaker series profiled in the paper? Maybe the summaries of the multi-school case competitions or athletic matches stir your competitive spirit and inspire you to join one of these activities at business school? Alternatively, perhaps you’ve appreciated how helpful the student newspaper is to applicants and would like to contribute to its production as an MBA student? Each of these ideas for involvement can help you tailor your application essays to a school while adding flavor and interest. For applicants’ convenience, we’ve listed below the MBA programs whose student newspapers were regularly profiled in this year’s Campus Chronicles column.
Chicago: Chibus Columbia: Columbia Bottomline Harvard: Harbus Michigan Ross: Monroe Street Journal MIT Sloan: Fifteen NYU Stern: Stern Opportunity Wharton: Wharton Journal
Happy reading!
Posted by Clear Admit on May 27, 2009, at 2:00 pm
Posted in: Essay Topic Analysis , General , School: Harvard For the 2009-2010 admissions season, Harvard Business School applicants will need to respond to a total of four essay questions. While the number of responses candidates must compose remains the same as last year, HBS aspirants now have an additional option. Candidates must respond to the two initial questions on the list and may then choose two of five additional questions – one more than last year – to round out the set. With this greater flexibility, it becomes even more important for applicants to choose topics judiciously to provide a comprehensive and meaningful picture of their candidacy. Applicants must also be clear and concise to fit their essays within the 1800 word total limit. Let’s take a look at the essay questions for this year:
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.
2. What have you learned from a mistake? (400-word limit) This question makes an appearance for a third 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 . . . → Continue Reading
Posted by Clear Admit on May 27, 2009, at 12:00 pm
Posted in: Events , School: Northwestern / Kellogg Earlier this month, student groups at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management collaborated to host the school’s second annual Green Week, encouraging students to go green on both a personal and professional level.
Together, Kellogg’s Net Impact chapter and the Environmental Sustainability Business Club (ESBC) organized a series of events focused on sustainability and the environment lasting from May 5th through 8th. Events included a range of lectures and speakers as well as opportunities for students to participate in environmental initiatives on campus.
ESBC members staffed a booth in the Kellogg Atrium, urging students to make a “green pledge” and passing out giveaways and coupons from local green businesses. Other students coordinated with Kafé Kellogg to replace plastic utensils in the campus eatery with biodegradable ones, and a solar car parked outside the Donald P. Jacobs Center helped showcase Earth-friendly transportation alternatives.
A visit from Michael Mandelbaum, author and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, was scheduled to coincide with Green Week. Mandelbaum gave a lecture entitled “How Green Will Our Future Be?” on May 5th. Green Week organizers also invited Laura Flanigan, a consultant from Five Winds International, and John Vlahakis, founder and president of Winnetka, Ill.-based Earth Friendly Products, to deliver lectures.
Vlahakis, a Kellogg alum (’85), founded Earth Friendly Products in 1993, and today the company manufactures more than 60 household products and 16 pet-care items. The small, family-run business competes with Clorox and Proctor & Gamble’s green products, selling at large distributors like Sam’s Club and Costco.
“What separates us is that we’re the only guy that makes its own product,” Vlahakis told students. “And we’re beating the big boys at their own game – we’re beating Procter & Gamble in 154 Sam’s Club stores.”
In his lecture, Vlahakis encouraged his fellow Kellogg students to consider careers in which they can give back to society or the environment. “I’m using [my company] as a tool to do more in society,” he said. “We have a finite time here on the planet and you want to do more than make money.”
To learn more about Green Week at Kellogg, click here.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 27, 2009, at 3:00 am
Posted in: Poll
What Is The Appropriate Length of a Resume for Your Business School Applications?
As many pages as necessary. Three pages: one for education, one for full-time experience and one for internships, part-time work experience and activities. One page. It’s best to get my information across quickly, but with enough detail to introduce the adcom to the key aspects of my candidacy. Half a page. The resume should merely serve as an outline, since I’ll elaborate on everything in my essays and interview.
View Results
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Posted by Clear Admit on May 26, 2009, at 12:00 pm
Posted in: MBA News , School: Georgetown In the year ahead, Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business will welcome 13 new full-time faculty members and open a much-anticipated new building for business school classes. The new professors will begin teaching at the school in August, and the new building will open officially later this summer.
“I am pleased we can add so many outstanding faculty to our roster,” Dean George Daly said in a statement on May 15th. “This is the largest influx of such scholars during my time at the school. These appointments also coincide with the opening of our new building this fall, which will enhance learning and interaction between our students and faculty,” he continued.
Two of the new hires come to McDonough from the private sector: Bill Novelli, former CEO of AARP and co-founder of the global public relations firm Porter Novelli, and Mary “Meg” VanDeWeghe, former senior vice president for finance at Lockheed Martin. Also among the new faculty hires are two current adjunct professors, Michael Fitzgerald and Charles Skuba.
The remaining 11 new faculty hires include William Baber in accounting; Bumjean Sohn and Phillip Swagel in finance; Michael O’Leary and Chris Long in management; Kurt Carlson in marketing; Volodymyr Babich and Victor Jose in operations and information management; and Daniel Baer, Jacob Gramlich and David Tan in strategy. Finally, McDonough also has hired Jie Yang as a research associate who will teach one finance class.
For detailed information about each of the new hires, click here.
The new home for the McDonough School, meanwhile, is the culmination of an $82.5 million privately funded construction effort that began in March 2006. The 179,000-square-foot facility will serve to alleviate overcrowding, improve undergraduate classrooms and allow for expansion of the school’s graduate and executive programs.
The new building will feature seminar classrooms for a new introductory International Business Seminar for first-year students, a lecture classroom specifically tailored for accounting classes, more faculty offices and more common space for students to study and meet to work on group projects.
The new building is located on the site of a former parking lot adjacent to the Leavey Center. The selected site, at the center of campus and convenient to the Leavey Center ‘s conference and hotel space, will unify the upper and lower parts of Georgetown ‘s Main Campus and provide a new cross-campus promenade.
For more information about construction status, click here.
Welcome to another edition of Trivia Tuesday! Each week in this column we examine the programs, policies, resources and opportunities of the leading business schools with the goal of highlighting distinctive aspects of the student experience. This week we turn our attention to programs for international students beginning their MBA studies in the United States, with a focus on the resources offered by Harvard, MIT Sloan and Tuck.
Most international orientation programs are held on campus in the week or two before all first-year students are required to arrive. In general, these programs offer an introduction to U.S. culture, an overview of the academic expectations of the MBA program, and workshops in written and oral English language skills.
For instance, in addition to the standard orientation for all students, Tuck offers a five-day International Orientation Program that is highly recommended for international students who have not previously lived or worked in the United States. Held the week before the school-wide Orientation, students in the program engage with Tuck faculty, staff and teaching assistants to become familiar with the case-study method, the standards expected in verbal and written communications, and how to work on teams with people from other backgrounds and cultures. The Career Development Office also leads workshops on resume writing, interviewing and networking. Likewise, for international students with little prior experience in the U.S., MIT Sloan’s two week Communication and Culture workshop in mid-August provides an introduction to Sloan’s classroom environment and to U.S. business and social norms.
Meanwhile, Harvard Business School offers one of the longest international orientations among its peers. The school’s Pre-MBA International Program is a five-week course during which students from abroad are introduced not only to life in Boston and at HBS, but also to the basics of the case method. Outside experts are brought to the campus to speak to international students about writing, business English, and publication skills, after which attendees participate in several mock-case discussions to prepare them for the pace and tenor of class sessions.
For international students concerned about making the transition to business school and to the U.S., these specialized orientations are a great resource. Participants at all schools report that in addition to learning about the academic environment and brushing up on language skills, the international orientations are also a wonderful way to meet fellow international students and to start building a network of business school friendships. For more information on orientations, pre-term programs, and resources for international students, be sure to talk with current students or to check out the Clear Admit School Guides!
Posted by Clear Admit on May 25, 2009, at 8:00 am
Posted in: Deadlines , Essay Topics , School: Stanford Following Harvard Business School’s announcement last week, the Stanford Graduate School of Business has followed suit by publishing their deadlines and essay topics for the coming application cycle. The main areas to note with this year’s application are some changes to the options for essay 3 and a new R1 notification date (before Christmas instead of in January – a change that mirrors Harvard’s decision to notify applicants earlier this year as well).
Without further ado, let’s look at the details:
Application Deadlines Round 1: October 7, 2009 Round 2: January 6, 2010 Round 3: April 7, 2010
Note: All deadlines are 5 p.m. (Pacific)
Notification Dates Round 1: December 16, 2009 Round 2: March 31, 2010 Round 3: May 19, 2009
Essay Questions Essay 1: What matters most to you, and why? Essay 2: What are your career aspirations? How will your education at Stanford help you achieve them? Essay 3: Answer two of the four questions below. Tell us not only what you did but also how you did it. What was the outcome? How did people respond? Only describe experiences that have occurred during the last three years. Option A: Tell us about a time when you built or developed a team whose performance exceeded expectations. Option B: Tell us about a time when you made a lasting impact on your organization. Option C: Tell us about a time when you motivated others to support your vision or initiative. Option D: Tell us about a time when you went beyond what was defined, established, or expected.
Essay Length Stanford provides the following guidelines on essay length:
Your answers for all of the essay questions cannot exceed 1,800 words. Each of you has your own story to tell, so please allocate the 1,800 words among all of the essays in the way that is most effective for you. We provide some guidelines below as a starting point, but you should feel comfortable to write as much or as little as you like on any essay question, as long as you do not exceed 1,800 words total.
Essay 1: 750 words Essay 2: 450 words Essay 3: 300 words each
Formatting Stanford provides the following guidelines on formatting:
Use a 12-point font, double spaced Indicate which essay question you are answering at the beginning of each essay Number all pages Upload all four essays as one document Preview the uploaded document to ensure that the formatting is true to the original Save a copy of your essays
With the flurry of top programs releasing their deadlines in recent weeks (Chicago, INSEAD, Columbia, HBS and Stanford), applicants should begin to get a sense of how the fall calendar is shaping up. See the left-hand column of this blog for a running list of fall deadlines.
As always, we’ll be back with a post in the coming days that offers our in-depth analysis of the Stanford GSB essay questions . . . → Continue Reading
Posted by Clear Admit on May 25, 2009, at 3:00 am
Posted in: Admissions Tips , General At the end of March, we discussed the importance of signing up for a feedback session when one is planning to reapply to a program that provides this opportunity. Today we’d like to follow up on that post by offering a few thoughts on feedback session etiquette.
While on one hand a feedback session marks the close of this year’s process, it’s crucial that you realize that the impression you make on the adcom member conducting the session may be added to your file and come to bear on your candidacy next year. Taking heed of the following advice could help to make your feedback session as productive as possible – both in terms of gaining information about your weaknesses that you can address now and fostering a positive relationship with the school that will pay off in the future.
Be pleasant. Though the admissions process is a highly emotional one and to have invested time, effort and money in an application without having an acceptance to show for it is undoubtedly very frustrating, receiving the adcom’s comments in an appreciative – not defensive – manner is of the utmost importance. While it might be tempting to argue with the adcom’s criticisms of your file or counter their comments about your weaknesses with steps you’ve taken to address them, this is simply not going to be productive. You should view this as an exercise in listening and an opportunity to demonstrate your commitment to the school. No one ever converted a rejection to an admit by merely arguing their case in a feedback session.
Take what you can get. Because time is so limited, we often encourage applicants to approach the adcom member conducting their session with pointed questions about specific elements of their application and ideas for improvement. However, you need to remember that there is some information they are simply not at liberty to divulge. If you’ve waived your right to view your recommendations, for instance, they might not be able to speak on this subject, and they might also hesitate to go into detail about your interview as well (for fear that you’ll track down an alumni or student interviewer to complain about their review). When you meet a roadblock like this, the best strategy is to leave it at that, letting the adcom member share what he or she is comfortable saying rather than pressing or probing for more information.
Follow through. If you take down the name and email address of the person conducting your feedback session, it would be a nice touch to send this person a brief thank you note after your meeting. Further, by keeping in touch with this individual and updating him or her of your progress over the months leading up to your application and decision, you can make that person your advocate by demonstrating that you’ve been following their advice (an email or two between April and November is sufficient).
Of course, the schools are not always . . . → Continue Reading
Posted by Clear Admit on May 22, 2009, at 2:00 pm
Posted in: MBA News , School: Harvard In a recent post to her blog, Harvard Business School (HBS) Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Dee Leopold announced that for future incoming classes, HBS will accept only the Internet Based Test (IBT) version of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or the International English Language Testing Service (IELTS) exam. The change will take place beginning with the class of 2012.
The TOEFL or IELTS test is required of applicants to HBS who did not use English as the language of instruction in their undergraduate education. Because both the IBT version of the TOEFL and the IELTS feature speaking components, the new test requirements will enable HBS to assess the speaking ability of these prospective applicants.
“In our discussion-based, case method classroom, we have found that speaking ability (along with strong listening, reading and writing skills) is critical to success,” Leopold said. “Therefore, we need to see speaking scores in order to evaluate applicants appropriately.”
The IBT version of the TOEFL is available in all testing centers, according to Leopold’s post.
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