Kenan-Flagler’s bid to organize the conference showed “the most thoughtfulness in trying to move the conference forward in terms of content and networking opportunities for students,” said Elizabeth Davis, a member of the organizing committee for the 2008 conference and a second-year MBA student at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business.

UNC Kenan-Flagler will work jointly with three other business schools to develop and organize the Reaching Out 2009 Conference, which will take place in October 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia. Other organizing schools include Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, Duke University’s Fuqua Business School and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Management.

The conference has as secondary goals to build the LGBT community and heighten the visibility of this community and make it more a part of the general work experience. “Mentoring students is a big part of it as well – helping them to decide on future careers and learning more about each of the industries they might consider working for,” Davis added.

This year’s conference attracted 900 attendees and 80 companies, and hopes for the year ahead are to draw more than 1,000 attendees. The 2009 conference, open to all MBA students and alumni, will include the launch of a new workshop to support emerging LGBT student groups at business schools and to help expand an existing MBA admissions recruitment event targeting LGBT students.

Successful career panels from the 2008 conference will be repeated next year, including Media and Entertainment, Finance and Investment Banking, Entrepreneurship, Technology, Retail and Microfinance and International Development. Two new career panels, one focused on human capital consulting and the current direction in human resources and another focusing on nonprofit careers, also will be added.

Previous Reaching Out conferences have been organized by students at the business schools of University of Virginia, Stanford University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Purdue University, Northwestern University, Dartmouth College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania.

To learn more about the Reaching Out 2009 Conference or to register, click here.

Currently, women represent less than 20 percent of most EMBA classes, and at a number of top programs that percentage is closer to 5 percent, the Journal reports. This is compared to 30 percent of the class at top full-time MBA programs and more than 40 percent in part-time programs.

According to the Journal report, obstacles preventing more women from pursuing an EMBA include formats that interfere with raising a family (many EMBA programs require two years of two long weekends on campus each month), trouble securing company sponsorship for the degree and uncertainty around whether the EMBA will actually help them break through the glass ceiling and advance in their careers. Furthermore, until recently, most schools have aimed their female recruitment efforts toward candidates for their full-time programs.

Efforts to address these obstacles and boost female EMBA enrollment range from school to school, the Journal reports. At Columbia Business School, the school and its alumni have started to reach out directly to potential female applicants through personal phone calls and networking events. At the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, a faculty member devotes more than half of her time to increasing diversity and female enrollment at Wharton’s San Francisco–based EMBA program. And at London Business School and IESE in Madrid, the administrations have increased scholarship aid to women who meet greater resistance within their companies to fund the executive programs.

Still other schools have begun to offer program formats that are more appealing to women, the Journal reports. Emory University in 2002 introduced a new modular EMBA program that meets for nine residency periods over 21 months, as opposed to every other weekend. The program has 33 percent women in its current class, compared with 20 percent in its traditional EMBA program, according to the Journal. “For women with young children, weekends tend to be time they spend at home,” Joan Coonrod, director of admissions, told the Journal.

The increased focus on attracting women to EMBA programs has met with praise from organizations that focus on promoting women in business, who argue that greater gender equality will not only benefit women but will make the programs better overall. “The optimal balance for teams to perform strongly is 50 percent women and we have that aspiration,” Linden Selby, a senior admissions manager at London Business School, told the Journal. Selby cited research conducted by London Business School’s Centre for Women to support her assertion that mixed teams are stronger.

To read the full Journal article, click here.

QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a leading career and education network, has canceled each of the four stops planned this month in India as part of its 2008 World MBA Tour, which brings admissions officers from top MBA programs around the globe face to face with prospective applicants in their native countries. This year’s QS India Tour, which was slated to include fairs in New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore, will be rescheduled for sometime in January 2009, according to the QS website.

Top schools whose admissions officers were scheduled to visit India as part of the QS MBA World Tour included London Business School, Emory University’s Gozieta Business School and UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School, among others.

QS will provide additional information about events as they are rescheduled on its website later this month. Candidates for these events are encouraged to register online now in order to receive email notification of the new dates. “We hope that peace and order will be restored quickly,” read the QS website. “Our thoughts are with those affected by the terrorist attacks.”

According to blog posts by hopeful MBA applicants, some schools also have canceled applicant interviews in New Delhi and Mumbai as a result of the terrorist attacks.

“As I had expected last night, Emory mailed to inform that their trip stands canceled, although this information has gone out only to applicants interviewing in Delhi and Mumbai so far,” wrote blogger ahembeea on his blog, B School Bound, on November 27th. “My one chance to interview in person with the adcom now stands squashed,” he continued.

INSEAD, too, has postponed an EMBA Information Session scheduled for New Dehli until sometime in January.

Obviously, our thoughts here at Clear Admit go out first and foremost to the families of those directly affected by the terrorist attacks. But we also certainly understand the frustrations felt by prospective MBA applicants whose opportunities to meet in person with school representatives will be impacted as a result and will do our best to keep our readers informed of any additional canceled or postponed events as we become aware of them.

“We wanted the best, and we weren’t going to settle for anything less,” said Larry Benveniste, dean of Goizueta Business School, of the appointment. “The committee interviewed four finalists, and the person encompassing all of the qualities we wanted was our own J.B. Kurish,” he continued.

Goizueta engaged executive search firm Egon Zehnder to conduct a national search. Tom Key, a Goizueta alumnus, served as principal on the search committee, which was made up of current and former students, faculty and staff. Among the qualifications the committee looked for in candidates were visionary leadership, respected academic credentials, great communications skills and selfless commitment.

Kurish will replace Steve Walton, Goizueta associate professor of information systems and operations management, who has served as interim associate dean for more than a year. Walton will return to full-time teaching.

Kurish came to Goizueta in the fall of 2006. He is an expert in the field of municipal debt issuance and municipal debt market practices, having managed public debt offerings for more than 15 cities and states throughout the United States. Before joining Goizueta, he taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago, ran his own firm and worked as a public finance investment banker for Credit Suisse First Boston.

Kurish’s appointment was met by a standing ovation from an audience made up primarily students. Kurish acknowledged the warm reception with humor, saying, “I am aware that there are about 120 of you who are still awaiting your grades.”

“I have a lot of ideas,” Kurish continued on a more serious note. “I also know that everyone else has good ideas. My job is to take those good ideas and make them work.”

In just two short years at Goizueta, Kurish has taken and active role in developing the new curriculum for the full-time MBA program. In addition to teaching in the full-time program, he also has taught in the evening MBA and the W. Cliff Oxford Executive MBA programs.

Goizueta’s planned changes to its curriculum, like those of Yale, Columbia and other schools that also have restructured their cores recently, are designed to respond to the changing landscape of business, in which globalization, an accelerated pace of change and an increased focus on data-driven decision-making are causing corporations to demand more from their MBAs earlier in their careers.

Like Yale’s School of Management, Goizueta has placed significant emphasis on better integration of course material as part of its curriculum reform. The core class structure has been reengineered so that the sequences of courses and their content are more effective, duplication of material across courses is eliminated and the development of sharp analytical skills – a must-have for all MBAs – begins in earnest right from the start of the first semester.

As its centerpiece, the reformed core will feature a new course entitled “Management Practice,” designed to firmly link management theory to practical applications by giving students the tools they need to consider issues from a range of career perspectives and act quickly to frame problems, analyze data and make timely decisions. 

Also similar to Yale’s reformed core, the development of leadership skills at Goizueta will be a primary focus. “In addition to the ‘Management Practice’ innovation, the new curriculum will continue to reinforce the school’s mission of educating principled leaders for global enterprise throughout the year,” said Steve Walton, interim associate dean of the full-time MBA program and associate professor in the practice of information systems and operations management. Theme weeks, one devoted to “Principled Leadership” and one to “The Global Enterprise,” will help ensure that these two areas get full attention.

Finally, like Columbia’s revamped core, the new Goizeuta curriculum will free students up to select from a greater range of electives earlier in their course of study. The first semester will allow more opportunity for career preparation, and in the second semester, students will be permitted to select electives that promise to help prepare them for their summer internships. 

To make all of the above reforms possible, the following logistical changes will be implemented:

• The fall semester will begin two weeks earlier;
• Students will complete all but one of their core courses by the end of the first semester, and
• Students will complete twice as many elective courses before.

“With the new curriculum, Goizueta students will continue to have the benefits of our small, close-knit community, combined with increased flexibility to pursue a tailored plan-of-study,” said Doug Bowman, professor of marketing and chair of the MBA Curriculum Committee, whose charge was to design the new curriculum.

The committee conducted extensive research before embarking on the curriculum redesign, including surveying school alumni, current students and deans of other top business schools and comparing Goizueta’s existing curriculum with those of other top management programs.

Bowman is confident in the committee’s research and the resulting new core. “This places Goizueta Business School at the forefront of the next generation of MBA curriculums,” he said.

1. Northwestern (Kellogg)
2. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
3. University of Chicago
4. University of Michigan
5. USC (Marshall)
6. Columbia Business School
7. Emory (Goizueta)
8. UCLA (Anderson)
9. Duke (Fuqua – global)
10. UNC (Kenan Flagler)
11. Southern Methodist University (Cox)
12. Georgetown (McDonough)
13. Cornell (Johnson)
14. Ohio State (Fisher)
15. Instituto de Empressa
16. IMD
17. IESE
18. INSEAD
19. NYU (Stern)
20. London Business School
21. ESADE
22. Thunderbird
23. Queen’s University
24. Washington (Olin)
25. Villanova University

1. Harvard University
2. Stanford University
3. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
5. Northwestern University (Kellogg)
5. University of Chicago
7. Dartmouth College (Tuck)
8. University of California–Berkeley (Haas)
9. Columbia University
10. New York University (Stern)
11. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor (Ross)
12. Duke University (Fuqua)
12. University of Virginia (Darden)
14. Cornell University (Johnson)
14. Yale University
16. University of California–Los Angeles (Anderson)
17. Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)
18. University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler)
18. University of Texas–Austin (McCombs)
20. Emory University (Goizueta)

The top nine remains virtually unchanged as compared to last year. The most noteworthy is that Tuck leap-frogged over both Haas and Columbia to land in the #7 spot, but it’s also interesting that Kellogg is tied with regional rival Chicago for the #5 spot (last year it had tied MIT for 4th). As is often the case, there was more movement among schools 10-20. UCLA / Anderson was the biggest mover, dropping from 10 to 16, with Stern rising three spaces to take its place. Ross, which shared the #11 spot with Duke last year, now holds that space alone while Fuqua ties Darden for #12.

While it can be interesting and fun to track these slight changes – especially for those associated with the schools in question – the facts that there is so little change from year to year and that these same programs are included so consistently in the top 20 speaks to the consistent quality of these programs. It also underscores the importance of deeper research to really understand a school and its offerings to put these rankings in perspective and identify the school that’s the best personal and professional fit.

Wharton and the University of Virginia’s McIntire School held on to the number one and two spots, respectively, but the number three spot saw some dramatic shifting – UC-Berkeley’s Haas School skyrocketed from number 12 to number 3 in just a year. BusinessWeek’s article explaining the rankings says that the key to Berkeley’s rise was a significant increase in recruiter satisfaction – last year the school ranked 41st in this category and this year their rating jumped to number one.

BusinessWeek’s top 20:

1 University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
2 University of Virginia (McIntire)
3 UC Berkeley (Haas)
4 Emory University (Goizueta)
5 University of Michigan (Ross)
6 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
7 Notre Dame (Mendoza)
8 Brigham Young University (Marriott)
9 New York University (Stern)
10 Cornell University
11 Georgetown University (McDonough)
12 Villanova University
13 University of Texas at Austin (McCombs)
14 Boston College (Carroll)
15 UNC at Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler)
16 Washington University (Olin)
17 Wake Forest University (Calloway)
18 Indiana University (Kelley)
19 USC (Marshall)
20 Lehigh University

Since many business schools offer graduate or undergraduate programs, but not both, followers of the MBA rankings may not immediately recognize all of the schools in the top 20. However, with the nation’s top firms recruiting heavily from the leading schools, the bright young graduates of these programs are likely to be the future colleagues and team members of MBA grads.

1. Recruiter feedback on each school (for 21 different attributes)

2. Recruiter plans to hire graduates from the schools in the future

3. Recent hiring patterns of corporate recruiters

While traditionally less popular than the Business Week or US News MBA rankings, the Journal has been gaining ground with increased fanfare surrounding their rankings each year.  Their related hard-copy publication, WSJ Guide to the Top Business Schools, helps in this effort.  In addition, a GMAC survey showed that the WSJ rankings were viewed as “most credible” by MBA applicants (although we’d like to suggest that the reputation of the newspaper itself may help this perception along). 

While the ’recruiters only’ focus of the WSJ rankings will always provoke criticism, the rankings appear to be here to stay.  Without further ado, let’s take a look at the top national programs for this year:

1. U. Michigan (Ross), 2. Dartmouth (Tuck), 3. CMU (Tepper), 4. Columbia (CBS), 5. UC Berkeley (Haas), 6. Northwestern (Kellogg), 7. U. Penn (Wharton), 8. UNC (Kenan-Flagler), 9. Yale (SOM), 10. MIT (Sloan), 11. U. Chicago (GSB), 12. Duke (Fuqua), 13. UVA (Darden), 14. Harvard (HBS), 15. USC (Marshall), 16. Cornell (Johnson), 17. NYU (Stern), 18. Stanford, 19. UCLA (Anderson)

What’s interesting to note is that both Kellogg and Wharton have slipped down a bit in the ‘top 10′ this year, largely to make room for new ‘top 5′ entrants Haas and CBS.  The triumvirate of Ross, Tuck and Tepper have held solid at the top for another year, with Tuck and Ross merely swapping first place honors.  Harvard and Stanford continue to miss out on ‘top 10′ status in this ranking, with HBS holding steady in the #14 slot and Stanford slipping to #18 from #15 last year.

Beyond the US national ranking, the Journal also published an international ranking – using a slightly different methodology this time out (to more closely measure non-US-based employment upon graduation).  Here are this year’s top ‘international’ business schools:

1. ESADE, 2. IMD, 3. IPADE, 4. London Business School, 5. Thunderbird, 6. Columbia (CBS), 7. EGADE, 8. MIT (Sloan), 9. U. Western Ontario (Ivey), 10. INCAE, 11. UC Berkeley (Haas), 12. Instituto de Empresa, 13. York (Schulich), 14. U. Chicago (GSB), 15. IESE, 16. HEC Paris, 17. U. Penn (Wharton), 18. INSEAD, 19. Erasmus (Rotterdam), 20. Harvard (HBS), 21. Bocconi, 22. U. Toronto (Rotman), 23. NYU (Stern), 24. Stanford

Finally, top honors in a few academic disciplines:

• Accounting: Chicago GSB
• Corporate Social Responsibility: Yale
• Entrepreneurship: Stanford
• Finance: Wharton
• General Management: Harvard
• IT: MIT Sloan
• Marketing: Kellogg
• Operations: CMU Tepper
• Strategy: Harvard

We encourage our readers to review the WSJ Career Journal site for further details about the rankings methodologies.  As always, please remember that rankings are one of many resources for information regarding MBA programs.         

Deadlines

Round One
Application Deadline: November 1, 2006
Admissions Decision by: January 1, 2007

Round Two (final deadline for international applicants)
Application Deadline: December 16, 2006
Admissions Decision by: March 1, 2007

Round Three (final deadline for scholarship consideration and applicants to the one-year MBA program)
Application Deadline: February 1, 2007
Admissions Decision by: April 1, 2007

Round Four
Application Deadline: March 1, 2007
Admissions Decision by: May 1, 2007

Essays

1. List one of your most significant professional or organizational accomplishments. Describe your precise role in this event and how it has helped to shape your management skills. Please limit your response to two, double-spaced, typed pages.

2. Please complete/address two of the following statements. Full-time candidates (Two-year and One-year programs) must compete/address choice F as one of the two options. Please
limit each response to one, double-spaced, typed page.
A. I have always wanted to…
B. My most memorable cross-cultural experience…
C. My family background is unique because…
D. The person who has had the greatest influence on my leadership style is… because…
E. The greatest lesson I have ever learned…
F. Of Goizueta’s core values (courage, integrity, accountability, rigor, diversity, team,
community), which value resonates most with you and why?

3. What do you expect to accomplish in the Goizueta Business School MBA program? How will your participation in the MBA program fit in with your experiences and responsibilities as well as your short and long-term career goals? Please limit your response to two, double- spaced, typed pages.

As always, we’ll follow up with some commentary on and analysis of each of these questions a bit later this week.