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CATEGORY - MBA NEWS

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Interview Insights from Stanford GSB, Chicago Booth Admissions Directors

In a post to the Stanford Graduate School of Business Admissions blog last week, Director of Admissions Derrick Bolton shed some light on the timing of interview invitations. “Please be assured that your likelihood of admission bears no relationship to when you receive your interview invitation,” he wrote. “The timing of your invitation simply depends on when we review your file.”

And as for the order in which Stanford GSB reviews applications, there is no pattern, Bolton said. Interviews for Round 1 applicants start as soon as possible after the application deadline, which is typically early November, and continue through mid-January.

“We expect to send Round 1 interview invitations pretty regularly, every business day or so, through mid December,” he said. During the school’s winter shutdown, December 22nd through January 5th, the admissions committee is still reading applications “feverishly,” but invites get bundled and go out every few days instead of every day. 

According to Bolton, he hopes to send almost all Round 1 invitations out by mid-January, but some will likely go out later. And some applicants may be asked to join the waitlist without an interview, he added. But the timing of your invite does not have any bearing on your likelihood of admission, he repeated. “No matter when you receive your invitation to interview, you have the same chance of admission as any other candidate.”

In a blog post of her own, Rose Martinelli of the Chicago Booth School of Business shared a little about interviews at that school. Not a lot of detail here – her post was devoted primarily to the school’s new name and its generous benefactor – but she did reveal that more than 250 applicants were headed to campus this week to interview and that she has been enjoying meeting them all.

That’s all we have for today, but we’ll keep the updates coming as often as we can. And don’t forget, you can share your own interview experiences with fellow anxious applicants on the Clear Admit Wiki and read what others have to say about theirs as well.

Monday, November 17, 2008

BusinessWeek 2008 Business School Rankings: A Closer Look

Today we’ll take a closer look at how the various top programs fared in BusinessWeek’s most recent business school rankings, released last week.

Chicago Booth held firmly to the number one spot it secured in the 2006 rankings, boasting high scores in both the corporate recruiter and graduate surveys. Harvard Business School (HBS) and Wharton traded places this year, with HBS climbing to number two and Wharton slipping to number four. BW’s Louis Lavelle attributed Wharton’s slide to a poorer showing in the intellectual capital category this year than in 2006. 

Columbia, meanwhile, advanced from the number 10 spot to number seven, but MIT Sloan and Berkeley’s Haas School of Business each slipped slightly. Also noteworthy was the fact that Southern Methodist University (18) and Brigham Young University (22) each cracked the top 25 this year for the first time ever. SMU, for its part, has been among the participating schools for years, but lacked sufficient response rates in the recruiter and student portions of the ranking to secure a top spot before now, according to BW’s Geoff Gloeckler.

There were also two newcomers to the Global MBA rankings, IE Business School (2) and Oxford’s Saïd Business School (10). Like SMU, IE has long been a participant but until this year had insufficient recruiter and student response rates, Gloeckler said.

Yale School of Management, meanwhile, seems to have fallen back slightly. It came in at 24 this year, down from 19 in 2006. Lavelle attributed its fall to low student survey scores.

In an article accompanying the rankings, BW takes a look at the current business school landscape, which it says is marked by surging application rates amid “wretched” recruiting prospects.

As has historically been the case in times of economic downturn, application rates to business schools are rising steadily. According to the BW report, schools are reporting double-digit increases in application volume. Chicago Booth, for example, has seen a 20 percent surge in attendance at information sessions around the globe.

But even as more students clamor to get in, job prospects upon graduation are uncertain, with some schools bracing for the toughest MBA job market since the dotcom bust. “I think next fall is going to be very, very difficult,” George Daly, dean of Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, told BW.

The article went on to cite a survey by umbrella group MBA Career Services Council, in which 70 percent of 77 participating schools reported a downturn in full-time recruiting opportunities in financial services in October.

As a result, some students are shifting their focus from investment banking to consulting and other fields. Attendance at recruiting presentations by consulting firms is standing room only, New York University’s Stern School of Business Dean Gary Fraser told BW.

A shift is also taking place in the classroom, as professors are introducing new case studies and re-writing syllabi as part of an effort to make sense of the financial crisis and market upheaval.

Risk management, meanwhile, is expected to play a much more important role in business school curriculums over the next three to five years, according to the BW report, a trend that Robert Meyer, co-director of Wharton’s Risk Management & Decision Processes Center, calls “potentially transformational.”

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

HBS Sends Out 750 Round One Interview Invitations, 100 More to Come

In a post to her blog, Harvard Business School (HBS) Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Dee Leopold informed anxious Round One applicants that 750 invitations to interview went out yesterday. Her office will extend a total of around 850 invitations by the January 21st notification date for Round One, she continued.

“I can’t predict when this additional 100 invitations will go out nor to whom,” she wrote. Candidates who receive later invitations may not have extensive options to interview in hub cities, she noted, but HBS will do all it can to try to schedule convenient interviews. 

Review of written applications will continue up through the January notification date, and the Admissions Board will continue to discuss cases throughout that period. Leopold anticipates that an additional 100 Round One candidates who have not received invitations to interview will be offered places on the wait list in January. These candidates may be invited to interview as their cases undergo further consideration.

“We are trying to be as transparent as possible about this anxiety-producing process,” Leopold wrote. “I hope I am clear in my continued message that this is a ‘selection’ process designed to bring a talented and diverse mix of students into the classroom,” she continued, adding that HBS receives many more qualified candidates than it can admit.

This year’s approach differs rather dramatically from prior years at HBS. First, the school is being a lot more transparent about the number of invites and overall timing/mechanics of the process. Second, the fact that HBS has released the bulk of the invites on a single day is a departure from its past approach of letting the invites trickle out in smaller batches. From where we sit, both of these developments are extremely positive, since Clear Admit has long been a major advocate of transparency in MBA admissions.

Our congratulations to the lucky 750 applicants who received interview invitations yesterday. Don’t forget that you can share your experiences on the Clear Admit Wiki – and learn from those who have gone before you. You also may want to check out the Clear Admit Interview Guide for Harvard, which provides HBS-specific insight and strategic advice for how to prepare.

For those still waiting to hear, stay positive! Best of luck!

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Former Yale SOM Dean Spearheads Employee Education at Apple

As reported here last month, Joel Podolny has left his post as dean of the Yale School of Management (SOM) to head up Apple’s own university program. According to a report in Apple Insider, the new program, which will kick off early next year, may serve as an internal MBA program of sorts. Tapping a business school dean to head it would seem to make perfect sense.

Quoting an unnamed source claiming to be familiar with the matter, Apple Insider reports that Apple University is “intended broadly as an HR type function for developing leadership and other required skills and knowledge within the organization” and will fold in Apple’s existing learning and development organization.

Apple is not the first large company to establish an internal MBA program, the report continues. Pixar, a company founded by Apple Chariman and CEO Steve Jobs and later sold to Disney, developed a similar program for employee education and training.

“Obviously Steve Jobs knows about this concept,” a former Pixar intern told Apple Insider. “I wonder if he finally decided to tie together and probably expand a lot of separate parts of employee enrichment at Apple much like they have at Pixar under the University banner with a dean,” the intern continued.

Creating a connection between the new school and Apple’s existing iTunes University, which peddles educational content to the public, could “be a case study for selling the concept if it is used extensively internally,” Apple Insider speculates.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Silicon Valley Blog Features Clear Admit in Discussion of Entrepreneurship and the MBA

Silicon Valley blogger Marylene Delbourg-Delphis cited Clear Admit’s own Eliot Ingram in a recent post to her blog, Grade A Entrepreneurs. Delbourg-Delphis is a three-time start-up CEO – ACI/ACI US (now 4D), Exemplary and Brixlogic – and her blog, which launched in October, is capturing the attention of Silicon Valley.

In an entry last week, Delbourg-Delphis set out to answer a question she’s hearing a lot these days. “Probably because of the downturn, I have never been asked as often as this year if it is useful for entrepreneurs to have an MBA!” she writes.

She goes on to list several scenarios in which she thinks entrepreneurs might do well to consider earning an MBA. One such scenario, she writes, is if you are a foreigner.

“Going for an MBA at some point or another in the United States may accelerate your understanding of the American business culture,” she says, something the French native didn’t realize herself when she started her first company in 1987. “Had I thought of it, I think I would have considered an Executive MBA, which might have saved me some adjustment time,” she continued.

And then she cited Clear Admit co-founder Ingram, who reminded her of a Duke study that shows that more than half of Silicon Valley startups have one or more immigrants as a key founder. “Entrepreneurs from all over the world bring their creativity to this country,” Delbourg-Delphis writes. “MBA courses may ultimately help all of us speak a common language and belong to the same world of success. Why not?”

To check out Delbourg-Delphis’s new blog, click here.

Friday, November 07, 2008

Chicago GSB Renamed Chicago Booth School of Business in Recognition of $300 Million Alumni Gift

The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business announced yesterday that alumnus David G. Booth (MBA ’71) recently donated $300 million to the school, the largest donation in the university’s history and the largest gift ever to a business school. In recognition of his generosity, the school will be renamed the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Booth, the founder and chief executive of investment firm Dimensional Fund Advisors, built his firm and his fortune on the finance principles he learned at Chicago. His first course there, taught by Professor Eugene Fama, was life-changing, he said. Fama is the founder of the efficient market hypothesis, which states that investors do best by buying and holding widely diversified portfolios, the basic thinking behind index funds.

“I remember Professor Fama standing up the first day of class and saying ‘This is the most practical course you will ever take,’ and it turned out to be true,” Booth said in a statement announcing the historic gift. “We built Dimensional Fund Advisors around his set of ideas. I am hoping that others will join me in giving back to this amazing business school,” he continued.

The gift, which includes an upfront payment, an income stream from shares in Dimensional Fund Advisors’ parent company and equity interest, will help fund several new initiatives, including an aggressive push to attract and retain star faculty.

The school also will consider adding new faculty groups in academic areas not normally associated with business schools, expanding existing research centers and exploring ways to more ambitiously leverage the school’s intellectual capital. The school’s international presence, too, could grow beyond its existing campuses in London and Singapore.

School officials expressed tremendous gratitude to Booth and lauded the decision to rename the school in his honor. “Given the profile of our school and its role in the world, it is imperative that the person who names the school embodies its values and, moreover, is a person who is of great integrity and who commands respect,” Edward Snyder, dean of the business school, said in a statement. “In David Booth, we have a person who exceeds all the relevant criteria.”

Booth’s gift is almost triple the amount given to Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 2006. That $105 million gift, made by Nike founder and chairman Philip H. Knight, had been the largest ever to a business school. Other notable gifts to business schools include $100 million to the University of Michigan in 2004 from Stephen M. Ross, $85 million to the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2007 from a combined partnership of 13 alumni and $60 million to the Darden School at the University of Virginia from Frank Batten Sr., retired chairman and chief executive of Landmark Communications.

To read more about Booth’s $300 million donation to the University Chicago, click here.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

New Stanford GSB Scholarship for Bangladeshi Students; HBS Loans for International Students Without Co-Signer

Today we are pleased to report a variety of good news for international MBA applicants.

First, the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) has announced a new, one-time scholarship program that will cover all expenses for promising Bangladeshi students who demonstrate financial need. 

The Grameen Fellows program, made possible by a generous gift, is designed to help develop a new generation of leaders in Bangladesh who are committed to human and socio-economic progress in their native country.

As part of scholarship eligibility, recipients must commit to returning to Bangladesh within two years of graduation from the Stanford GSB program for at least two years of employment in the public or private sector.

Stanford will award up to two Grameen Fellowships, which will cover tuition, living expenses, and application and examination fees. In this way, the program allows Stanford to extend its outreach within Bangladesh to include the strongest MBA candidates, regardless of financial situation.

To learn more about Grameen Fellowship requirements and application details, as well as other fellowship opportunities at Stanford GSB, click here.

Reassurance for International Students Regarding Loans at HBS

Second, Harvard Business School (HBS) last week announced that international students there will continue to have access to need-based loans without having to find a U.S. co-signer. No other details about the specific loan program were shared, just the reassurance that students will have continued accessibility.

In her post about international loans, HBS Admissions Director Dee Leopold also reminded prospective applicants – both international and U.S. citizens – that HBS also will award $22 million in need-based fellowships – that is, money you don’t have to pay back – at an average of $25,000 per recipient per year. To learn more about HBS fellowships, click here.

Monday, November 03, 2008

MIT Sloan Partners with Schools in China, Korea, France to Launch One-Year Management Masters

According to a report last week in the Financial Times, the MIT Sloan School of Management is joining forces with four international business schools to launch a new one-year masters degree program in management studies.

Students working toward an MBA at any of the four participating schools – HEC Paris, Tsinghua in Beijing, Fudan in Shanghai and the SKK Graduate School of Business at Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University – now will be able to acquire the MIT Sloan degree in addition.

“The world needs more, not fewer, smart people who are trained to be leadership in management, especially now,” MIT Sloan Dean David Schmittlein told the FT.

The new program, which will being in the 2009-10 academic year, is expected to benefit American faculty and students at MIT Sloan as well, says MIT Sloan Deputy Dean Steven Eppinger.

“With business more global than ever, we need to do all we can to encourage connections between our faculty and students and those of some of the best management schools in the world,” Eppinger told the FT.

The inaugural class will include approximately 15 students, but the program is expected to grow to as many as 50 students per class over time. 

Since his appointment last fall, Schmittlein has pushed for a series of changes designed to make MIT Sloan’s offerings more like those of its European business school counterparts. Earlier this fall, MIT Sloan announced the launch of a one-year masters program in finance.

Friday, October 31, 2008

Fed Chair Bernanke to Speak at Haas School of Business Symposium Today

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will speak today as part of a two-day symposium at the Haas School of Business focused on the economy, the mortgage crisis and the government’s rescue plan.

The event, entitled “The Mortgage Meltdown, the Economy, and Public Policy,” is being co-hosted by UC Berkeley and UCLA. Bernanke, who will appear via satellite, will be joined by Janet Yellen, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; California State Senator Darrell Steinberg; and best-selling economist Robert Shiller, author of the Subprime Solution and Irrational Exuberance.

The symposium also will feature several panel discussions moderated by faculty from Haas, UCLA and Stanford. Panel discussion topics include the crisis in finance markets, the demography and geography of foreclosures and the future of the housing finance system.

Haas is investigating options for making the program available via the Internet. For details, click here.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman Kicks Off Kellogg Lecture Series

On Monday, Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman addressed a full house at the Kellogg School of Management, discussing the current economic crisis and the factors that contributed to it. The event, which launched the Kellogg Distinguished Lecture Series, also marked Krugman’s first public appearance since winning the Nobel Prize on October 13th.

Krugman, an international trade expert, offered a gloomy economic forecast to the more than 1,000 people who gathered to listen to him, noting the spread of the U.S. currency crisis to the rest of the world. The $700 billion rescue plan recently passed by Congress, Krugman said, “still looks weak, and it looks small.”

Calling the current situation “one hell of a mess,” Krugman rattled off a lengthy list of what he considers to have been the chief contributing factors.

The first was the unraveling of a theory espoused by many economists, himself included, that developing countries were “decoupled” from economies like the U.S. and Europe and therefore immune to implosions there. That “turns out to be entirely wrong,” Krugman said, noting the rapid-fire worldwide spread of the crisis.

He also blamed former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s decision to reduce interest rates and keep them low following the dotcom crash earlier this decade for setting the stage for the market bubble in the housing sector.

Calling the housing market bubble “pretty predictable,” he cited its rupture as a key part of the present crisis and predicted that house values, which have already plummeted 25 percent, likely still face an additional 15 percent drop.

Krugman participated in a question-and-answer period with Kellogg students after his address, during which time he offered up his view on how the United States might begin to get itself out of the current mess.

Public work projects, including infrastructure repairs on bridges, roads and railways, could be beneficial, he said. Calling himself a “big New Deal romantic,” he said he also sees a role for commissioned artists.

An agenda like the one he describes would be more probable under a Democratic president, he said, pointing out that the financial crisis has made it more likely that voters will choose Barack Obama over John McCain. But no matter who wins next week, he said, “This is no time for a lame-duck administration and a lack of authority.”

Krugman has written more than 20 books, including a recent examination of the rise and fall of the middle class entitled The Conscience of a Liberal. Through his work, he helped establish “new trade theory,” which provides rationale for why only a few countries, similar to one another, dominate international trade. He won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences earlier this month for his research in this field.

Krugman’s appearance, which was open to the entire Kellogg community and telecast to alternate locations to meet high demand, was the first in the newly launched Kellogg Distinguished Lecture Series, an initiative by the school to bring real-world insights into academic discourse. Future speakers in this series will include preeminent thinkers from the worlds of academia, journalism and business.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Admissions Director Shares HBS Policy on Late Recommendation Letters

In a recent post to her blog, Harvard Business School (HBS) Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Dee Leopold addressed a question she hears often from prospective applicants:

“What if my recommender can’t meet the application deadline? Will my application be held over into the next decision round?”

In answer, Leopold explains her team’s protocol with regard to recommendation letters:

Applications with only one submitted recommendation letter by the deadline date are held up for the next round to provide time for the additional letters to come in, she says.

Applications with two submitted recommendations, Leopold explains, are sent out to review by the Admissions Board in the round in which the application was received. The Admissions Board will make every attempt to add the third recommendation letter to the applicant’s file when it comes in, she continues.

But there are no guarantees, she warns. “Since the file can be in any number of places and we can’t stop the reading flow, we can’t promise that the recommendation will be added before review is complete,” she writes. 

Here at Clear Admit, we try to always encourage applicants to engage recommenders early and inform them about the process and your timeline.

For round one applicants, we encourage sitting down with each recommender as early as August, even if actual application forms aren’t yet posted, to present them with a rough sketch of the deadlines and the process. This leaves plenty of time to meet again once the forms are available, at which time you’ll be able to share background materials (a resume, career goals essay, etc.) to help your recommenders understand and support your message.

For round two applicants, now is a great time to begin the process. And if round three is your goal, it’s a good idea to begin thinking about who you might want to ask to write your recommendation letters. For Clear Admit’s tips on how to select recommenders, click here.

Friday, October 24, 2008

UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Creates New Leadership Center

Cementing its commitment to instilling leadership skills in its graduates, the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this month announced that it will create a new center to support leadership education.

Named in honor of the late North Carolina governor, the Luther H. Hodges Leadership Center will support and expand on the activities and programming associated with the Kenan-Flagler Leadership Initiative, an experience-based program launched in 2005 to foster leadership skills development among business school students.

“Luther Hodges is widely recognized as a North Carolina statesman and ethical leader whose life had global impact,” said James W. Dean Jr., UNC Kenan-Flagler dean, in a statement announcing the new center’s creation.

Hodges, a UNC alumnus, served as governor of North Carolina from 1952 to 1960 and as U.S. Secretary of Commerce in the Kennedy Administration. He also helped create Research Triangle Park, which has become a model of economic development and scientific advancement worldwide. The Hodges family has supported leadership education at Kenan-Flagler since the mid-1970s.

As part of the new Hodges Leadership Center, the Leadership Initiative will continue to pursue the mission set for it when it was established, namely, “developing MBA students as exceptional leaders who positively impact the organizations they lead and the communities they serve.”

The program introduces students to leadership principles both inside and outside the classroom and then gives them the opportunity to practice the principles in real-world situations and simulations – with feedback, reflection and replay.

According to Mindy Storrie, Kenan-Flagler director of leadership, the new center and the Hodges’ continuing support will bring enhanced leadership education to the entire UNC community.

“We will expand our leadership activities in the undergraduate BSBA, Master of Accounting and MBA for Executives Programs so that we can further develop the leadership capabilities of all UNC Kenan-Flagler graduates,” she said.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Dean Joel Podolny Leaves Yale SOM for Apple

~BREAKING NEWS~
Members of the Yale School of Management (SOM) community learned in an email this morning that Joel Podolny will step down as dean of the school on November 1st to return to California, where he will lead educational initiatives at Apple. Sharon Oster, Yale SOM professor of management and entrepreneurship, will serve as interim dean while the school conducts a search for Podolny’s replacement.

In an email conveying the news, Yale President Richard Levin praised Podolny’s many achievements in his three-and-a-half-year tenure. “Under his creative and energetic leadership, the Yale School of Management has developed a visionary MBA curriculum that has attracted the attention of business schools and employers, both in the United States and around the globe,” he wrote.

Under Podolny’s stewardship, applications to the MBA program have risen by 50 percent, the permanent faculty has grown by 20 percent and the Yale Tomorrow capital campaign has raised $170 million toward its $300 million goal, Levin continued. “As he departs and Sharon takes charge, Joel leaves the Yale School of Management in the strongest position it has enjoyed in its 30-year history,” he added.

Following on the heels of Levin’s email was a second from Podolny himself. “This is not a decision I have taken lightly, and I am sure it comes as a surprise to many of you,” he wrote. He himself expected to be at Yale SOM for some time, he continued.

“I have often told people that I have the best job in management education, and I could not imagine taking a business school deanship or any other administrative position at another academic institution,” Podolny wrote.

Saying that he wished the call had come later in his tenure, he nonetheless could not turn down the opportunity to work for a company that, as he put it, “has had as tremendous personal meaning for me as Apple.”

After November 1st, Podolny will continue in his role as a Yale SOM faculty member, teaching and working with colleagues to further refine the school’s integrated curriculum. He will begin in his new role at Apple in early 2009.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Top Schools Remain Committed to Helping International MBA Applicants Find Student Loans

In a post earlier this month, we reported that Citibank has cancelled its CitiAssist student loan program with several top business schools as a result of the current economic crisis and shrinking credit markets, creating confusion and uncertainty for many international students about how to fund an MBA. 

So far, loans for domestic students pursuing an MBA program do not seem to have been impacted, but the cancellation of the CitiAssist program brought to an abrupt end loan programs for international students that don’t require a co-signer. Several schools have responded with assurances that they are focused on the problem and committed to providing access to financial aid to all students regardless of citizenship.

In a post yesterday on her newly launched blog, Rose Martinelli, director of admissions and financial aid at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, stressed that she and her team are committed to finding new loan sources for the upcoming year.

In fact, Chicago GSB went through this exact exercise not so many months ago. The school’s previous loan provider cancelled its program for international students in July, and Martinelli’s office scrambled to find a replacement program – with Citibank. Fortunately for this year’s entering class, loans for the current year were locked in and will be unaffected by the more recent CitiAssist cancellation.

But now Chicago GSB must again find a replacement loan program. “We were all taken by surprise and are actively engaged at the highest levels in the school/university in identifying potential new loan sources for the upcoming year,” Martinelli wrote.

In the meantime, she encouraged international students to look at the various financing opportunities available in their home countries. “Rates and terms will vary by location, but it makes sense for you to have this information available so that you can evaluate the terms schools are able to provide for similar loan types when that information becomes available,” she wrote.

Acknowledging how uncomfortable the uncertainty must feel, Martinelli encouraged prospective applicants to remain positive and focus on the fact that an MBA is a long-term investment that will pay dividends over a lifetime regardless of market cycles.

San Francisco Bay–area schools, too, recently also offered reassurance to prospective international students as well as some practical advice. A post last week on the Stanford MBA Admissions Blog featured the following quote from Jack Edwards, director of financial aid:

“International students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business will not be impacted by Citibank’s decision. The GSB Financial Aid Office has a close working relationship with Stanford Federal Credit Union and for the past two years we have made arrangements exclusively through SFCU to provide international students at Stanford the ability to take out private loans without a U.S. co-signer.” Edwards also confirmed that Citibank’s loan program for domestic borrowers had not been affected.

At the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, meanwhile, Director of Admissions Peter Johnson confirmed Citibank’s discontinuation of international student loans without a co-signer. “I’m guessing that no-co-signer loans will be hard to find until the financial services mess is sorted out,” he wrote in an email.

Johnson encouraged prospect Haas applicants to explore alternative financial assistance available through the school. “We  provide $3.2 million dollars in financial assistance, including merit scholarships providing up to full tuition and fees for both years; fellowships for students pursuing careers in financial services, and smaller programs for specific discipline areas,” he wrote. To learn more about Haas’s other financial assistance programs, click here.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

New Initiative Underscores INSEAD’s Commitment to Promoting Women’s Participation in Business

INSEAD announced Thursday that it has created the INSEAD Gender Diversity Initiative in an effort to coordinate its many activities relating to women’s participation in business and business education and enhance its commitment to helping women from diverse cultures throughout the world realize their full management potential.

“Diversity is at the heart of INSEAD’s mission,” Professor Herminia Ibarra, faculty director of the INSEAD Leadership Initiative, said in a statement announcing the new initiative. But cultural diversity is not enough, she continued. “Along with the business world we serve, we must act to increase women’s representation in business and business education – and to harness its potential.”

Through strategic partnerships with organizations that share the school’s vision for women in business, the INSEAD Gender Diversity Initiative will ensure that INSEAD has a presence at preeminent women’s global business forums, engages in important research collaborations and participates fully in the world’s leading women’s networks. These partnership activities also will help the school establish key ongoing corporate relationships.

Several existing partnerships and events, too, will be brought together under the new Gender Diversity Initiative umbrella. These include the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society, rated by the Financial Times as one of the world’s top five international forums; the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, a business plan competition for female entrepreneurs created in 2006 by Cartier and the Women’s Forum with support from McKinsey and INSEAD; and the World Bank’s Global Private Sector Leaders Forum.

The INSEAD Gender Diversity Initiative also will coordinate INSEAD’s participation in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Initiative. INSEAD, along with several other European business schools, in September became official academic partners in the Goldman Sachs’ project launched last spring to provide women in developing countries with access to a business and management education. 

To learn more about the new INSEAD Gender Diversity Initiative, click here.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Generous Gift to London Business School Will Fund Private Equity Research

Earlier this month, London Business School (LBS) announced that it has received a multi-million pound donation to help establish the world’s premier institute for private equity education and research. The donation comes from the family foundation of Jeremy Coller, who heads Coller Capital, one of the United Kingdom’s largest private equity firms.

The new center, called the Coller Institute of Private Equity, will expand LBS’s current private equity program into one of the most advanced in the world through the addition of MBA electives and executive education courses. It also will provide a platform for cutting-edge research and a forum for debate and knowledge exchange within the private equity and venture capital ecosystem. 

“London Business School is the obvious home for the Coller Institute – it is Europe’s leading business school, has a truly global perspective and is situated in a worldwide hub for private equity,” Coller said in a statement announcing the new center. 

In an article in the Financial Times, Coller expressed confidence that the private equity industry is here to stay despite the recent credit crunch. “It is foolish to say this is the beginning of the end. We are right at the beginning of private equity,” he told the FT.

Coller’s £3m-£8m ($5m-$14m, €4m-€10m) donation is designed to secure LBS’s spot as the pre-eminent place to study and research private equity. “To make a more sophisticated market, there needs to be more academic research,” he told the FT. “We want to learn more about ourselves in the industry and to have more case studies,” he continued.

Private equity – the use of long-term capital from investors and loans from banks to buy companies with the aim of selling them a few years later for a higher price – has suffered from a poor public image, something Coller believes would shift if only the industry were better understood, according to the FT article.

In fact, Coller says, private equity is “democratizing wealth,” allowing retirees and savers to invest their pension funds and replace the church and aristocracy as the biggest owners of private assets.
“[It’s] moving from ownership by the few to ownership by the many,” he told the FT. “What the man in the street needs to realize is that they can take ownership of their pension fund.”

Even before Coller’s recent generous donation, LBS’s private equity program was one of the biggest in the field, with 340 students signed up to join the course this year. According to Professor Eli Talmor, who will serve as the first chairman of the Coller Institute, 16 per cent of students applying to LBS want to join private equity, and the private equity club, with 2,000 members, is the school’s largest professional club.

“We have been working on a shoestring and this money will give us the stability and ensure we are around forever,” Talmor told the FT. “This will allow us to do more ground-breaking research and to organize further events around private equity.”

To learn more about the new Coller Institute of Private Equity at LBS, click here.

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.”

Timing the MBA Admissions and Job Markets

As many of our readers know, Clear Admit serves as a ‘featured expert’ in the Beat The GMAT discussion forums.  In this role, we respond to queries from applicants, doing our best to guide them in the admissions process.  A recent post in these forums covered the hot topic of timing the MBA admissions process as it relates to the job market.  We wanted to share the initial post and our response, since we feel this is an important topic for applicants to consider:

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 12:28 am   
Post subject: General Question to Consultants on [Pursuing] MBA During Recession   

There is a debate in international MBA community on whether it is a good plan to go for MBA now when the economy in the US is going towards recession. Jobs are scant, even the Top B-school students are finding it hard to find good internships. Given the involved costs in the MBA education, does it make for International students (India,China,