Posted by Clear Admit on May 31, 2010, at 3:00 am
Posted in:  Admissions Tips Since many of our readers are just beginning the business school application process, we wanted to offer some basic tips on a critical variable in the MBA admissions equation: recommender selection.
When choosing your recommenders, remember that it can be seen as a test of judgment – selecting a recommender whose letter is ineffective or who appears dubious about your qualifications may raise doubts about your ability to judge your interactions with others or to select the right person for a job. In order for your letters to be as effective as possible, you should look for several qualities in a recommender. First, your recommenders should have greater seniority than you unless the school specifically asks for a peer recommendation. The adcom gives greater weight to statements made by your superiors than by a peer because a peer is assumed to be essentially a friend and therefore predisposed to write a positive recommendation.
As we discuss in greater depth with our clients, the most persuasive recommendation letters are those which contain specific examples and anecdotes. Because of this, you should select recommenders who are very familiar with your work and with whom you interact(ed) on a regular basis. This usually means that you should choose current or former direct supervisors, rather than someone whose title you think will impress the adcom. Choosing a recommender based on their name or title can imply that you put an undue emphasis on such qualities instead of thinking about who would be the best person for the job. In addition to picking people who know you well, you should also pick recommenders with whom you have a positive relationship, since if they like and respect you, their letters are likely to be much more positive and persuasive.
When deciding amongst your current and former supervisors or mentors, there are several factors to consider. First, the people you select should be able to provide the adcom with a fairly comprehensive and up-to-date perspective on your professional experiences. Often, it makes sense to ask your current supervisor and a supervisor from the job you held immediately prior to your current position. If you find that it works best to choose two recommenders from the same employer, you should make sure that they can talk about different aspects of your experiences so as to provide letters that are complementary rather than repetitive. In such a case, you should talk to each recommender about the anecdotes and traits each of them would like to cover. Alternatively, if you decide to choose a recommender with whom you worked some time ago, you should choose a person with whom you have maintained a strong relationship so that they can speak positively to your continued professional development as well as to your past accomplishments.
Ideally, you would also choose recommenders who can write well and who are receptive to input. Strong writing skills are obviously important because an articulate letter is more effective than an inarticulate one. In addition, an openness . . . → Continue Reading
Posted by Clear Admit on May 29, 2010, at 9:00 am
Posted in: GMAT - Quantitative , GMAT Practice Problem , GMAT Tips Today’s GMAT challenge question comes from our friends at ManhattanGMAT. To help you with your GMAT studying, try to solve the problem on your own, and then read on for the explanation of its solution:
Problem
If x and y are integers and x < y, what is the value of x + y?
(1) xy = 4
(2) |x| = |y|
A: Statement (1) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (2) alone is not sufficient.
B: Statement (2) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (1) alone is not sufficient.
C: BOTH statements TOGETHER are sufficient, but NEITHER statement ALONE is sufficient.
D: EACH statement ALONE is sufficient.
E: Statements (1) and (2) TOGETHER are NOT sufficient to answer the question asked, and additional data are needed.
Solution
The question cannot be easily rephrased to incorporate the particular information given. However, of course we should take note that both variables are integers and that x is less than y. We are looking for the value of x + y.
Statement (1): SUFFICIENT. First, we should list out all the possible scenarios in which integers x and y fit the equation xy = 4.
There are three possibilities, as we can find by trial and error: 22 = 4, (-2)2 = 4, and 41 = 4. However, of these possibilities, there is only one for which x is less than y, namely (-2)2 = 4. Thus, we can find the value of x + y, which is -2 + 2 = 0.
Statement (2): SUFFICIENT. Knowing that |x| = |y| does not tell us the values of the integers. However, since they have the same absolute value, but x is less than y, it must be the case that y is a positive integer and x is the negative of that integer. For instance, if y is 5, then x is -5. The sum of x and y must therefore be 0, no matter what.
The correct answer is (D).
For more information on ManhattanGMAT, download Clear Admit’s independent guide to the leading test preparation companies here. This FREE guide includes coupons for discounts on test prep services at ten different firms!
Posted by Clear Admit on May 28, 2010, at 1:00 pm
Posted in: MBA News , School: Northwestern / Kellogg , School: UCLA / Anderson Sally Blount, who will become the first woman dean of a top-tier U.S. business school when she assumes the role at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management this summer. is one of a rush of female appointments at business schools in North America in the past few years, the Financial Times reports.
Business schools at the Universities of Miami and South Carolina and Loyola’s Sellinger School have recently appointed women to the top position, where they join a list of experienced women who have been running schools such as UCLA Anderson, Ivey, Minnesota, Notre Dame and Pepperdine, the FT reports.
But according to Carolyn Woo, who has served as Notre Dame’s dean for the past 13 years, business schools are behind the curve in appointing women deans. Four of the eight Ivy League universities – Harvard, Brown, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania – already have women presidents, she points out. Woo told the FT that she believes that these presidential appointments are what have helped women finally break through the credibility barrier in terms of securing other top positions.
Meanwhile, Sue Cox, dean at the University of Lancaster in the United Kingdom, sees the appointment of more women deans as an inevitable outgrowth of having more women in strong faculty roles. “When I came to Lancaster I was the only female professor in the school,” she told the FT. “Now there [are] more women coming in at a professional level.”
Still other women deans suggest that a change in strategy in many business schools has helped women advance to higher positions, the FT article adds. “Disciplines such as finance were seen as leverage for the brand” in the past, Alice Guilhon, dean of France’s Skema told the FT. But today, human resources, communications and other soft skills are much more in demand, she adds.
For her part, Judy Olian, dean of the UCLA Anderson School of Business, believes that women’s ability to take a more collaborative approach to leadership is critical. “We [women] listen more. We have discussions and we explain to everybody,” she told the FT. “I think successful deans, men and women, have to be comfortable sharing their leadership decisions.”
To read the full Financial Times article on the growing number of women business school deans, click here.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 28, 2010, at 3:00 am
Posted in: Fridays from the Frontline Welcome to this week’s Fridays From the Frontline, our ongoing endeavor to know all there is to know about the b-school blogosphere. This week was chock full of graduations and transitions. Some students said their final good byes to their respective programs, while others said ‘see you later’ as they departed to summer internships across the globe. Though many students were in ‘good bye mode’ recent applicants were beginning to say hello to their MBA experiences. Nistha flashed back to deciding to reapply to MBA programs and explained her decision. Braveheart began revising his essays and considered adding safety schools to his roster for this year’s application cycle. Madalogue asked her readers to cease requesting copies of her essays, and gave a thorough list of reasons why it was poor form to ask for them. Hari happily announced his second place position in the BoBs and attributed the delay of the announcement to his recent engagement (congratulations!). The Journey delved into the specifications of INSEAD’s language requirement and pointed out the benefits of being upfront about ‘native languages’ at the beginning of the application process. Ellipser’s spending habits went up now that his GMAT study isolation period was over. MBAYogi asked his readers how far to take his GMAT preparation. A. also had an application question: how important is one’s job title to an adcom? Silent Warrior searched a number of sources for information about the Reliance Stanford Scholarship.
Kellogg ’12 Jeremy knew that making small talk at networking conferences can be difficult for everyone, and compiled a great list of suggestions on how to bolster yourself while remaining professional. Fuqua ’11 Choc Heave also had thoughts on networking, and identified three different kinds of networking techniques. Harvard ’11 Military to Business celebrated the end of five days’ worth of five-hour exams with a dinner with his section mates then clubbing with over 300 fellow Harvard students. Kellogg ’11 Shobhit posted videos from his recent Nuvention course. McDonough ’11 Part-Timer went to his second summer Introduction to Marketing class. Kellogg ’11 Orlando found time in his schedule to go and see Simon Johnson speak for the Kellogg Distinguished Speaker series. Rady ’11 Classy Career Girl considered what she would do if she couldn’t fail. Darden ’11 Julie was filled with bliss over her internship.
Darden ’10 Oren shared some of the weather fears the school had for graduation, but didn’t report on the final outcome. Though Oren left his readers hanging, Darden ’10 Mechanigal made it clear that graduation was held outside. Harvard ’10 Gabrielle enjoyed graduation week and included a run-down of all her favorite memories from the last two years. Darden ’10 July Dream graduated and, after one . . . → Continue Reading
Posted by Clear Admit on May 27, 2010, at 3:14 pm
Posted in: Twitter Thursdays Welcome to this week’s edition of Twitter Thursdays, in which we take a look at some of the top news released by MBA programs on Twitter! If you want your Twitter feed filled with Clear Admit’s updates, special prizes, admissions tips and breaking news, be sure to follow us on Twitter. We’ve also compiled a list of MBA programs to ease your daily access to breaking news from the top MBA programs, as reported by admissions committee members themselves.
The Assistant Dean of UCLA / Anderson’s MBA Admissions and Financial Aid, Mae Jennifer Shores, will be making a few more Round 3 admit calls this week. The Dean of the Haas School of Business, Rich Lyons, plugged an article in The Economist on the Berkeley-Haas strategic plan and the central role of its “defining principles.” Looking for more ways to differentiate his program, Jim Dean, the Dean of UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, reflected on the school’s new Leadership Initiative. The Dean of Darden School of Business, Bob Bruner, honored the memory of Yeardley Love and celebrated the commencement of the Class of 2010. Across the pond, MBA Admissions Coordinator at Judge Business School, James Barker, conducted interviews with Round 5 candidates.
For prospective students in the coming admissions season, Chicago Booth hosted an admissions chat. MIT / Sloan reported higher on-campus recruiting numbers this year, as compared to 2007. INSEAD shared their Leadership Summit summaries on Private Equity, Entrepreneurship and Innovation. While Yale School of Management debated the coverage of sustainability, The Kellogg School plugged its professors’ latest research and insight on a range of topics. Some professors at The Wharton School opined on the impact of unrest on Thailand’s economy, as well as how well housing will indicate economic recovery.
That wraps up Twitter Thursdays this week! Thanks for checking it out! If you’re on Twitter or want to suggest someone else to follow, let us know; e-mail wiki@clearadmit.com with your user name and status as an MBA applicant, student or admissions officer so we can add you to the appropriate Twitter list. Happy tweeting and we’ll see you next week with some more updates!
Posted by Clear Admit on May 27, 2010, at 1:30 pm
Posted in: MBA News , School: Oxford , School: Penn / Wharton Though the job market has improved this year over last, newly minted MBAs should not view the degree as an instant ticket to a new career, a recent article in the Economist warns.
Where firms were once furiously snapping up the most talented students from top schools as fast as they could, even without specific positions in mind, the economy has forced them to return to the basics, hiring MBAs only when a slot becomes open, according to the Economist article. Graduates this year, as a result, find themselves competing fiercely for available positions and needing to consider options their predecessors might not have.
No longer can a fresh MBA graduate count on the “classic triple jump,” a simultaneous change in function, role and location, Derek Walker, head of the careers service at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, told the Economist. Instead, they may have to accept changing only one of the three and then proving themselves within a given firm before attaining the other changes, he says.
This year’s grads may also need to be more flexible in terms of where they look for jobs, the Economist article continued. While recruitment at consulting firms is almost back up to pre-recession levels, finance positions – long the other top destination for MBAs – have dried up, according to the article. This leaves recent grads needing to be more flexible and consider options in other sectors.
But according to Oxford’s Walker, there may be advantages in this. Firms from sectors other than finance are generally better at developing students’ careers, he told the Economist.
Many business schools also report that more students are showing an interest in entrepreneurship or in working for start-ups. Though it may be more risky and perhaps pay less initially, Michelle Antonio from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School tells the Economist that her students feel like they are pursuing something worthwhile.
For the full Economist article, click here.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 27, 2010, at 3:00 am
Posted in: Campus Chronicles , School: Cornell / Johnson In this week’s Campus Chronicles post, we’ll venture to Ithaca, New York and take a look at student newspaper The Cornell Business to see what’s new and exciting for MBA students at Johnson.
Earlier this spring Johnson students participated in the annual Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration. In the ensuing two days of panels and networking sessions, Johnson students had a chance to mingle with over 200 Cornell alumni as well as faculty and staff from 11 Cornell schools and colleges. Five teams of students from the top universities also participated in the 2010 Cornell Venture Challenge business plan competition, representing the e-commerce, biotech, medical devices, and sustainability industries. Johnson MBA teams included Ezra Pharmaceutical and ZetrOz, both of which were based on technologies developed at Cornell and demonstrated the intersection of scientific research and technology commercialization.
Johnson students also had a chance to participate in the 2010 Microsoft Firenze BXT Innovation Competition. Teams worked to address a current Microsoft problem through adopting a cross functional approach; teams were therefore made up of students from different universities and had members with expertise in business, design, or technology. Johnson’s High Tech Club facilitated the involvement of Johnson MBA students. Although no Johnson students made it to the finals, one team leader from Johnson nonetheless spoke highly of his experience in the competition, saying it was “a great opportunity to work with a talented interdisciplinary team. It was very constructive being able to draw on everyone’s unique expertise to produce truly novel product ideas.”
The Cornell Business recently interviewed leaders of the Johnson Board Fellows program, a group of students who contribute to local non-profit organizations through non-voting membership positions. After developing their partnership with United Way and Food of the Southern Tier this year, the JBF plans to involve community business leaders with the program to a greater extent next year. The new executive director is also eager to involve more students in this volunteer and community service program.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 26, 2010, at 4:13 pm
Posted in: GMAT - Verbal , GMAT Tips Today’s GMAT tip comes from our friends at Veritas Prep. In today’s article, they present another installment of their “Think Like the Testmaker Series”:
Brian Galvin is the Director of Academic Programs at Veritas Prep, where he oversees all of the company’s GMAT prep courses.
Admit it: although it will never appear as one of the answer choices, the correct answer to nearly every GMAT question is “who cares?”. Given that a and b are nonzero integers…what is the value of a? Who cares? Which of the following principles, if valid, would support the scientist’s beliefs regarding medieval biology? Who cares? These situations chosen by GMAT authors to test your problem solving and analytical abilities are, on their own, a bit arbitrary and unrelated to your interests and expertise. For the most part, your only concern in these subjects is going to be the fact that you need to be able to answer the questions accurately to get into a graduate business program (and maybe that you will see these topics show up on a game of Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy one day).
Since business schools don’t look at apathy as a positive quality in applicants, you need to find a reason to care about each of these questions so that you can focus clearly and have a more vested interest in the answer to that particular question. Critical Reasoning questions, though full of arbitrary subject matter, provide a great way to do this by looking to Hollywood for the answer:
Get into character.
As your favorite actresses and actors know, the best way for them to embrace their acting roles is to become the characters they portray, and take ownership of the entire situation. With Critical Reasoning, you can do the same by reading the question stem first, and becoming the character in the courtroom drama that is the GMAT. If your job is to:
Strengthen the conclusion: Become a prosecuting attorney, with ownership of your “case” (the conclusion), seeking out the “smoking gun” piece of evidence that will best win your case.
Weaken the conclusion: Become a cross-examining attorney, looking for flaws in the “testimony” of the stimulus and looking for the piece of information in the answer choices that will provide an alternate explanation for why the evidence doesn’t lead to the proposed “verdict”, or conclusion.
Draw the conclusion: Become the jury, using the judicial standard that your “verdict” must be true beyond a reasonable doubt. If you can find reasonable doubt with any of the proposed conclusions, you cannot in good conscience select them as the correct answer.
Describe or mimic the reasoning: Become a Court TV reporter and focus more on the technique of the argument than on the subject itself.
By taking ownership of your role within each question, you will read the stimulus as someone who is invested in the outcome of the question, and not as a passive observer, becoming familiar with the topic . . . → Continue Reading
Posted by Clear Admit on May 26, 2010, at 1:26 pm
Posted in: MBA News , School: Columbia , School: Harvard , School: Penn / Wharton Graduates from top MBA programs in the United States can expect to earn $2.5 million, on average, in base pay and bonuses over the course of a 20-year career, with graduates from the very top programs earning even more, according to recent research commissioned by Bloomberg Businessweek.
For the second year, Bloomberg BusinessWeek asked PayScale, a salary data collection company, to calculate median cash compensation for graduates from top business school upon graduation and again after 5, 10, 15 and 20 years of work. PayScale, which uses online pay comparison tools to collect individual salary data, has a database of 23,000 MBA grads at the top 45 U.S. business schools.
According to PayScale’s data, Harvard Business School graduates can expect to earn the most over their careers – an average of $4 million. Wharton alumni came in second, at $3.5 million, followed by graduates from Columbia Business School, who averaged $3.4 million.
That top B-school brands yield the highest average pay comes as no surprise to some. “The cream-of-the-crop companies hire the cream-of-the-crop grads,” Paul Dorf, managing director of Compensation Resources, a consulting firm that specializes in executive compensation, told Bloomberg BW. “Someone with an MBA from Wharton has a better shot not only at getting a job, but also at getting more money,” he continued.
The data are not without certain limitations, though, Bloomberg BW notes. They don’t include stock or options and rather than track the same graduates over time, they reflect the experience of individuals who graduated at various points throughout the last 20 years. But they do provide a sense of how grads from top MBA programs fare when it comes to compensation over the span of a career.
The research also reveals that the economic downturn has taken a toll on salaries for new grads. The salaries of graduates this year are down about three percent compared with 2009, Bloomberg BW reports. “Being an MBA hasn’t suddenly become the same as flipping burgers at McDonald’s, but there has been a downward trend overall,” Al Lee, director of quantitative analysis at Payscale, told Bloomberg BW.
Of course, starting at a lower base salary – be it due to general economic conditions or because you graduate from a lower-ranked school – could have career-long repercussions. “The differences might not seem like a lot now, but over time, it will be very hard to recoup that lost income,” Compensation Resources’ Dorf told Bloomberg BW. “Over 20 years, the difference will grow exponentially.”
For the full Bloomberg BusinessWeek article, click here.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 26, 2010, at 3:00 am
Posted in: Uncategorized
How are you Narrowing the Field?
I reach out to the schools directly and speak with students and admissions representatives. I read school guides and research details on the web. I look for the programs that could help me grow in an area of professional interest. I talk to colleagues, friends and family with knowledge on business schools. I have wanted to go to School X for years, it is the only school to which I am applying.
View Results
Loading …
Posted by Clear Admit on May 25, 2010, at 4:14 pm
Posted in: Deadlines , Essay Topics , School: Yale The Yale SOM deadlines for the upcoming admissions season have been released. The three deadlines are as follows:
Round 1 Application Deadline: October 7, 2010 Decision Notification: December 16, 2010
Round 2 Application Deadline: January 6, 2011 Decision Notification: March 25, 2011
Round 3 Application Deadline: March 17, 2011 Decision Notification: May 12, 2011
Yale SOM has also released its essay topics for the upcoming year. Applicants are required to complete four short answer responses, as well as two longer essays. Candidates wishing to submit an optional essay are welcome to do so.
Short Answers Please answer each of the four questions below with a short paragraph of no more than 150 words. This is an opportunity to distill your core ideas, values, goals and motivations into a set of snapshots that help tell us who you are, where you are headed, and why. (150 words maximum per question)
1. What are your professional goals immediately after you receive your MBA? 2. What are your long-term career aspirations? 3. Why are you choosing to pursue an MBA and why now? (If you plan to use your MBA experience to make a significant change in the field or nature of your career, please tell us what you have done to prepare for this transition.) 4. What attracts you specifically to the Yale School of Management’s MBA program?
Personal Statements Choose two of the following topics and answer them in essay form. Please indicate the topic numbers at the beginning of your essays. (500 words maximum per essay)
1. What achievement are you most proud of and why? 2. What is the most difficult feedback you have received from another person or the most significant weakness you have perceived in yourself? What steps have you taken to address it and how will business school contribute to this process? 3. Describe an accomplishment that exhibits your leadership style. The description should include evidence of your leadership skills, the actions you took, and the impact you had on your organization. 4. An effective leader for business and society is one who is able to hear, understand and communicate with people from all segments of society. In order to educate such leaders, Yale SOM is committed to promoting diversity and creating a community that cultivates a wealth of perspectives. In this spirit, describe an instance when, as part of a team, you played a role in bringing together individuals with different values or viewpoints to achieve a common goal. 5. For Reapplicants (answer this topic plus one of the other topics): What steps have you taken to improve your candidacy since your last application?
For more information on the program’s deadlines, essay topics or application form, make sure to visit the Yale SOM website.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 25, 2010, at 2:00 pm
Posted in: Essay Topic Analysis , School: Columbia After sticking with the same three essays for the past two years, this year Columbia has made a significant change. Although the first essay on career goals remains the same, Columbia has reduced the amount of essays to two and has adopted a new second essay topic that focuses on applicants’ personalities. With one question on work goals and the other on personal interests, this set of topics suggests a dual focus on one’s professional and personal interests, experiences, and plans. Bearing this in mind, feel free to contact us for a free consultation, in which one of our Admissions Consultants will help you evaluate the elements of your profile and spread them across each of these essays. Let’s take a look at this season’s topics: Essay 1: What are your short-term and long-term post-MBA goals? How will Columbia Business School help you achieve these goals? (Recommended 750 word limit) This prompt falls in line with the standard Career Goals Essay, and thus the general advice we’ve offered in the past on how to tackle this sort of question applies here. In addition, because people applying to Columbia are often also considering first-tier schools like Wharton, Chicago, and NYU, it’s especially important for you to convince the Columbia adcom of your interest in the program by packing your essay full of school-specific details about classes and clubs. Taking the time to learn about the school’s curriculum, special programs and extracurricular activities – whether through a visit to campus, conversations with members of the community, or reading the Clear Admit School Guide to Columbia – will pay dividends here.
Essay 2: Please tell us about yourself and your personal interests. The goal of this essay is to get a sense of who you are, rather than what you have achieved professionally. (Recommended 500 word limit) New to the Columbia application, the second part of this prompt may look familiar to people who have looked at past essay questions from the Duke Fuqua MBA application. This prompt offers applicants the opportunity to demonstrate the well-rounded nature of their candidacy. Because Columbia explicitly states that they do not want to hear about professional achievements in this essay, applicants should instead chronicle other passions, showing how these have led to extracurricular and academic accomplishments. Regardless of how you chose to approach writing this essay, the most important thing is to demonstrate the unique aspects of your candidacy, as well as illustrate how you would make a valuable addition to the Columbia community, such as providing your classmates with a unique point of view, becoming the leader of a student club, or forming your own extracurricular activity.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 25, 2010, at 1:00 pm
Posted in: MBA News , School: NYU Stern Last month, New York University’s Stern School of Business launched a new rating system designed to rank the level of risk that the largest U.S. financial institutions bring to the overall health of the financial system.
The NYU Stern Systemic Risk Rankings, launched on April 21st, uses stock quotations and other market data from 1990 to the present to help provide regulators with an early warning when an individual firm could threaten the overall health of the nation’s financial system. The rankings are based on the award-winning work of Professor and Nobel Laureate Robert Engle, who directs NYU Stern’s Volatility Lab.
“Consistent with the vision of NYU Stern’s Volatility Lab, we view our Systemic Risk Rankings as a research laboratory, a first step towards better understanding the systemic risk of financial firms,” Engles said in a statement announcing the rankings’ launch. “By making these rankings available over the web, we hope they start a dialog with academics, practitioners and regulators alike, generating new ideas for measuring systemic risk,” he added.
The ranking system grew out of an extensive research effort by NYU Stern faculty surrounding the 2008 financial crisis. By using available market data, the ultimate goal of the rankings is to give regulators a tool that is more efficient and transparent than individually scrutinizing confidential company financial data, Engles said.
In contrast to rating the individual risk of a firm, the new rankings indicate which firms present the greatest risk to the overall U.S. economy at a given time. “These are the firms that regulators should be watching closely,” said Matthew Richardson, Finance Professor and Director of NYU Stern’s Salomon Center for the Study of Financial Institutions.
To learn more about the new rankings system, click here. To access the rankings online, click here.
Posted by Clear Admit on May 25, 2010, at 3:00 am
Posted in: School Guides , School: NYU Stern , Trivia Tuesday It’s time again for Trivia Tuesday, our weekly examination of the offerings and opportunities that impact the student experience at the leading MBA programs. Although many business schools offer optional pre-term programs for enrolling students, NYU Stern goes a step further and invites selected applicants to a summer session of coursework prior to the start of the full-time MBA program. Let’s take a closer look at what Stern’s program entails and how it fits into the general campus orientation.
Stern’s Summer Start program allows a selected group of entering students to spend the summer on campus getting a head start on their MBA coursework. When considering students for Summer Start, the admissions committee looks for candidates who have strong communication and leadership skills, but could benefit from extra preparatory study before beginning the MBA. Some Summer Start students have been out of school longer than most of their new classmates, while others have worked in less traditional pre-MBA professions.
Admission to Summer Start is by invitation only; there is no way to apply directly to the program. Because the admissions office looks to fill the Summer Start program with candidates who are enthusiastic about Stern and the mission of the program, candidates invited to interview for Summer Start have an opportunity to decline the invitation. However, once a student has interviewed with Summer Start and received a formal offer of admission from the program, participation is mandatory.
The program begins in mid-July and runs for six weeks, earning participants six of the 60 credits needed for graduation. All enrollees take the core curriculum course Statistics & Data Analysis, and most also enroll in Management Communication & Collaboration as well as Conflict & Negotiation. Some students in the program also pursue coursework to boost quantitative knowledge and/or business writing skills, and the program organizes a variety of social and cultural events to introduce students to each other and to the city.
In late August, Stern brings all entering students to campus for their eight-day Pre-Term Orientation. During the Pre-Term Orientation, students begin making connections within the class, explore New York City, and participate in team building and case analysis exercises plus units on management communication and ethics. Other typical Orientation activities include career development programming, a barbecue and receptions, a harbor cruise and a trip to a Yankees baseball game.
For more information on NYU Stern, including campus life, the core curriculum, and the structure of each incoming class, be sure to check out the Clear Admit School Guide to Stern!
|
