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London Business School Deadlines 2010-2011

Clear Admit — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:21:20 +0000

The London Business School deadlines for the 2010-2011 application season are now online. The deadlines for the four stages are as follows:

Stage 1
Application deadline: October 6, 2010
Interview decision sent on: November 5, 2010
Admission decision sent on: December 15, 2010

Stage 2
Application deadline: January 5, 2011
Interview decision sent on: February 8, 2011
Admission decision sent on: March 24, 2011

Stage 3
Application deadline: March 2, 2011
Interview decision sent on: April 8, 2011
Admission decision sent on: May 20, 2011

Stage 4
Application deadline: April 20, 2011
Interview decision sent on: May 27, 2011
Admission decision sent on: July 1, 2011

All applications are due by 5:00 p.m. UK time on the day of each deadline.

Admissions Tip: Off-Campus Information Sessions

Clear Admit — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:00:57 +0000

For all those applicants who have recently opened a calendar to plot out the next few months only to realize they can’t possibly fit in campus visits on top of full time jobs and essay writing, never fear! It’s true that traveling to a school’s campus is the ideal way to learn about their MBA program, but visiting is often not a viable option for applicants who are located remotely or unsure of their level of interest in a given school. The good news is that business schools might very well come to them. Many b-schools are getting ready to hit the road and embark on worldwide tours to dispense information and recruit qualified applicants. Such events offer a great opportunity for interested students to meet with admissions staff (and sometimes with current students and/or alumni), learn about the program and ask specific questions.

Some of the top schools are already on the road, so we recommend looking into the travel schedules for programs of interest and planning accordingly. Keeping in mind that these schedules are updated and amended throughout the fall, here are some of the top programs’ itineraries for the months ahead:

Berkeley / Haas:
https://ssl.haas.berkeley.edu/Admissions/Events/index.cfm

Chicago Booth:
http://www.chicagobooth.edu/fulltime/admissions/events/

Columbia:
http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/events

Duke / Fuqua:
https://www.fuquaworld.duke.edu/www/public/infosess_all_view.jsp

HBS:
http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/events.html

Northwestern / Kellogg:
http://bit.ly/Zrg7b

Michigan / Ross:
http://www.bus.umich.edu/Admissions/Mba/forumsreceptions/RossReceptions.htm

MIT / Sloan:
http://mitsloan.mit.edu/academic/events.php

Stanford GSB:
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/outreach/info_sessions.html

NYU / Stern:
http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/admissions/cgibin/sched_events.cgi

Dartmouth / Tuck:
http://www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/admissions/events.html

UCLA / Anderson:
http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/x5525.xml

UNC / Kenan Flagler:
http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/Programs/MBA/infoSessions/index.cfm

UVA / Darden:
https://apply.darden.virginia.edu/admissions/events/EventsSchedule.tap?sp=103

U Penn / Wharton:
http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/mba/admissions/admission-events.cfm

Yale SOM:
http://mba.yale.edu/MBA/admissions/events.shtml

IESE:
http://www.iese.edu/aplicaciones/emba/events/events_emba.asp?lang=en

IMD:
http://www.imd.ch/programs/mba/infosessions/index.cfm

INSEAD:
http://www.insead.edu/mba/offevents/index.cfm?fuseaction=offcampus

LBS:
http://www.london.edu/programmes/infoevents/do?progSelect=MBA&locationSelect=

2010-2011 Clear Admit MBA School Guides to Darden, INSEAD, Johnson, Kenan-Flagler, London Business School and Tepper Now Available!

Clear Admit — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 19:00:40 +0000

We are pleased to announce the release of the 2010-2011 Clear Admit MBA School Guides to Darden, INSEAD, Johnson, Kenan-Flagler, London Business School and Tepper! As previously announced in this space, also available are the updated versions of the Clear Admit MBA School Guides to Chicago Booth, Columbia, Fuqua, Haas, Harvard, Kellogg, MIT Sloan, NYU Stern, Ross, Stanford, Tuck, UCLA Anderson, Wharton and Yale, which were released earlier this summer.

All twenty of the 2010-2011 Clear Admit MBA School Guide titles feature the most current information from the programs, including the latest admissions guidelines, class demographics and placement statistics, and offer insight into year-over-year trends.

Applauded by admissions officers and applicants alike, the Clear Admit MBA School Guides are informative and detailed profiles of leading business schools that combine the views of faculty, students, alumni and the popular press. They are available electronically (in PDF format) to help you meet your tight time constraints.

The Clear Admit MBA School Guides will help you to:

-Become an expert on your target schools overnight
-Use your newfound expertise to craft essays that stand out in the admissions process
-Compare schools head-to-head using objective data that goes beyond published rankings
-Get beyond the marketing pitch that schools push in their viewbooks and on their websites
-Prepare for your admissions interviews by knowing your target schools inside and out

Our entire line of MBA School Guide titles has now been updated for the 2010-2011 year, and all twenty of these publications are currently available for immediate purchase and download in the Clear Admit shop.

Updated versions of our corresponding Interview Guides are slated for release in early fall, so stay tuned to this blog for more details!

Indian School of Business Begins Construction of New Mohali Campus

Clear Admit — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 17:00:46 +0000

Construction work began this week on a new 70-acre campus for the Indian School of Business in Mohali, Punjab, the Financial Times reported.

The campus, the school’s second, will enroll 200 students when completed in spring of 2012. ISB’s first campus was established in Hyderabad in 1999 with the help of top international business schools including the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and London Business School.

A number of ISB’s initial investors have contributed an additional $42.9 million (2bn rupees) for construction of the new campus in Mohali. It will be home to four separate institutes focused on healthcare management, public policy, manufacturing excellence and innovation and physical infrastructure management, according to the FT report.

MIT Sloan School of Management will provide academic support to two of the institutes, the BML Munjal Hero Honda Institute of Manufacturing Excellence and the Punj Lloyd Institute of Physical Infrastructure Management. Wharton, meanwhile, will support the Max India Institute of Healthcare Management. An academic association for the Bharti Institute of Public Policy is still being finalized.

Savita Mahajan, who is deputy dean of ISB, will serve as chief executive of the Mohali campus, the FT reports.

For the full FT article, click here.

Trivia Tuesday: London Business School’s Shadowing Project

Clear Admit — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 07:00:16 +0000

In this week’s Trivia Tuesday column we turn our attention to experiential education across the pond, examining the Shadowing Project at London Business School.

The shadowing project at LBS enables students to gain a firsthand perspective on the daily role of a high ranking manager by “shadowing” that person for up to a week as they perform their job. Students report that they benefit immensely from this exposure, which illuminates skills they need to develop to succeed as managers.

Before entering the workplace of their “shadowees,” as they are called, students examine key studies and concepts in managerial behavior, building a theoretical framework to help them assess the management situations they will witness during the project. After the shadowing period, students synthesize their observations in a graded report that objectively profiles the leadership style of their shadowee.

To set up the Shadowing Project, students are expected to initiate contact with a manager of their choosing, and to arrange mutually acceptable dates for the shadowing to take place. While the task of contacting a high-level manager and pitching the shadowing idea may seem daunting, LBS explains that learning to harness the LBS network and preexisting professional contacts is one of the project’s key takeaways for students. The shadowing project can be completed between January and May in either the first or second year. The actual shadowing need not occur over five consecutive days, so students and their shadowees may decide to schedule the shadowing dates around critical meetings or events that it would be most helpful to witness.

Of the managers LBS students have shadowed over the past few years, about 15% have been CEOs, 25% Managing Directors, General Managers or Vice Presidents, and 10% have held the highest ranking finance post in their organizations. In addition to the more traditional shadowees at investment banks and pharmaceutical companies, students have shadowed prominent figures in politics, as well as the management of a symphony orchestra. More than one-third of students travel outside the UK for the project.

For more on the projects and experiential learning opportunities at London Business School or other leading MBA programs, be sure to check out the Academics and Special Projects sections of the Clear Admit School Guides!

Top Business Schools Add Social Media Courses to MBA Curricula

Clear Admit — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:43:58 +0000

At least six top business schools have added courses focused on internet marketing and social media to their MBA curricula in the past year as part of an effort to help students stand out to employers in a tight job market, a recent Bloomberg BusinessWeek article reports.

Harvard Business School, Columbia Business School and the Carroll School of Management at Boston College each will offer one or more social networking courses this fall, according to the report. And in Europe, INSEAD, London Business School and the École des Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC Paris) also have added or soon will add related course offerings of their own.

The BW Bloomberg report credits Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, as one of the earliest pioneers of Internet marketing courses, reporting that social media has been a part of the MBA curriculum there since 2000. According to Elaine Young, an associate professor of marketing at Champlain, students who have mastered digital tools add to a company’s bottom line, which improves their chances of getting a job.

“Companies want students to know this stuff,” Young told BW Bloomberg. “But it’s not just about having a Facebook page. Students have to ask themselves: ‘Do I know how to set up an official Facebook page and run it and engage people on it?’ ”

MBA students are clamoring to take the new social media courses as fast as the schools themselves can offer them. At HBS, 172 students enrolled last fall when professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski introduced a second-year elective course, “Competing with Social Networks” – three times the number of seats available. “Students know these tools are too hard to ignore,” Piskorski told BW Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, at INSEAD, professor Andrew Stephen created a new two-month course called “Advertising and Social Media Strategy” after joining the faculty in June 2009. “My feeling was that all the B-schools were lagging behind in preparing MBA students for dealing with the new media landscape,” he told BW Bloomberg. In less than six months, according to Stephen, attendance in the course more than tripled, from 27 students in January to 45 in March and 93 in May.

For more on these and other social media courses being added to top MBA programs, click here.

London Business School Receives Generous Anonymous Donation to Fund Scholarships for Brazilian MBA Students

Clear Admit — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:00:30 +0000

London Business School (LBS) announced last week that it has received a generous scholarship donation from an anonymous donor to support Brazilian students.

The donation will support the Wili and Ilse Scholarship, a fund providing tuition assistance to students of Brazilian nationality who enroll in the school’s MBA program. “This gift will have a real impact on the lives of future generations of Brazilian students at London Business School,” Sir Andrew Likierman, dean of LBS, said in a statement announcing the donation.

Likierman went on to thank the anonymous donor for his or her support, stressing that scholarships are critical in enabling LBS to attract and retain talented and deserving students from around the globe. According to a release from the school, LBS awarded more than 100 scholarships in the past year alone, totaling more than £1 million in student support.

For a full list of scholarship opportunities at LBS, click here.

President of Switzerland’s IMD Business School Steps Down, New Interim President Named

Clear Admit — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:00:58 +0000

John Wells, who has served for the past two years as president of IMD in Switzerland, has stepped down, the Financial Times reported last week. IMD has named Dominique Turpin, a French professor of management and strategy at the school for the past 20 years, as interim dean. Turpin is expected to assume to role on a permanent basis after the interim period, the FT added.

Wells’ departure from IMD after so short a stint calls to mind the effective ouster of Dean Robin Buchanan by faculty at London Business School in December 2008, the FT noted. Buchanan, who like Wells was deemed a “non-academic” dean, was forced out after just 16 months on the job. Meanwhile, INSEAD, a third top European school with a businessman rather than an academic as its dean, may follow suit, the FT report continued. Frank Brown, INSEAD’s dean, is expected to step down in 2011 at the latest, at the end of his five-year term.

Wells, who came to IMD from Harvard Business School, met with criticism from the start, in great part because he appointed an anglo-American management team, according to the FT report. Of five senior positions, Wells appointed two Irish professors, one British professor, one American professor and, notably, no French or Belgian professors, though they are numerous on the faculty, the FT reported.

Wells, like Brown at INSEAD, also has faced difficult management decisions as a result of the global financial crisis. Both schools draw a large percentage of their revenues from executive short programs, which have been hard hit in recent years.

Adding further to the challenges faced by Wells is the fact that Peter Lorange, the former president of IMD, in July 2009 set up his own nearby business school. The Lorange Institute, in Zurich, also focuses on executive students, the FT noted.

For more on Wells’ decision to step down, click here. For more on Turpin’s appointment as interim president, click here.

London Business School Essay Topic Analysis 2010-2011

Clear Admit — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 07:00:47 +0000

Although London Business School’s first four essay topics are relatively unchanged from the prompts on last year’s application, the school has introduced two new potential essay topics for the fifth question. The new essay questions continue to indicate the school’s emphasis on international experience, as well as its interest in a candidate’s past and proposed leadership experience. In addition, more than most programs, LBS asks applicants to share specific details of their future involvement on campus and contribution to the community. From this, one can extrapolate and assume that LBS is interested in candidates who’ve spoken to students and learned a good deal about the program to better understand how and where they might fit.

Question 1 (750 words)
Give us a brief assessment of your career progress to date.
In what role do you see yourself working in immediately after graduation and what is your longer term career vision?
How will your past and present experiences help you to achieve this?
How will the London Business School MBA Programme contribute to this goal?
Why is this the right time for you to pursue an MBA?
While last year’s LBS application had the career goals essay broken down into two separate questions, this year’s prompt maintains the compartmentalization format by including individual questions within this one essay topic. At its heart this is a standard career goals essay, although applicants will need to make sure that they respond to all of the questions posed in this prompt. In responding to the fourth question, applicants will benefit from learning about the school’s academic offerings and other curricular and extracurricular programs, whether through a campus visit, conversation with alumni or reading the Clear Admit School Guide to London Business School.

Question 2 (300 words)
Give a specific example of when you have had to test your leadership and team working skills. Given this experience what role will you play in a first year study group?
Based on this prompt, applicants should discuss an experience in which they faced challenges to their leadership and teamwork skills, such as a time when a team member refused to get on board with a group plan. After clearly outlining the situation, it’s crucial that applicants explain how they persevered through the challenge, as doing so shows one’s maturity and ability to overcome obstacles. It would therefore make sense to end this essay by explaining the strategies you’ve subsequently developed to navigate difficult situations, and explain how you can apply these processes to future work at LBS. Note that the question about LBS study groups offers applicants a great chance to showcase their familiarity with the program and prove that they’ve done their homework, as well as demonstrate that they’ve thought through the contribution they would make and the strengths they could bring to the program. With only 300 words allotted for this essay, applicants will need to be highly efficient with their writing to ensure that they can respond to each component of the prompt.

Question 3 (300 words)
Student involvement is an extremely important part of the London Business School MBA experience and this is reflected in the character of students on campus. Please describe how you will contribute to student clubs and the community and why?
This question asks candidates to broadly discuss the clubs and events in which they would like to participate. This framing gives candidates a wide berth to discuss how their interests and experiences to date would translate to contributions on several fronts. As with any essay of this sort, it would be ideal to link the clubs and events you cite to established interests or elements of your career goals, as these will help the admissions committee readily see how you are poised to make a contribution. Taking the time to learn about the school’s special programs and extracurricular activities – whether through a visit to campus, conversation with alumni or reading the Clear Admit School Guide to London Business School – will pay dividends here.

Question 4 (300 words)
London Business School offers a truly global and diverse experience. Describe any significant experiences outside of your home country or culture. What did you gain and how will your experience contribute to London Business School?
With the prompt expanded from last year’s application, this question allows applicants the opportunity to showcase their international experience, both professionally and personally, and is designed to gauge the applicant’s ability to navigate unfamiliar terrain and resolve cross-cultural issues. In order to answer both components of this question, we suggest that applications quickly outline important experience abroad, and then focus on providing detail about the lessons and skills gained from these situations, as well as how the experiences would help the applicant benefit from and contribute to LBS. Based on the first sentence of this prompt, it will be important for applicants to show that not only can they contribute to the diversity at LBS, but also that they will thrive as a member of the diverse student body.

Please choose ONE of the following options.

Question 5a (150 words)
You have decided to stand for the role of Student Association President. Announcing your campaign to the London Business School community for the first time, please describe your manifesto.
New to the LBS application, this essay question offers applicants the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge of LBS’s Student Association program, highlight the past experiences that make them suited to take on this significant leadership role, and showcase a passion for contributing to the school. Due to the 150 word limit, focusing on two or three action items will allow applicants to provide a focused and effective answer to this question. In describing your vision – by clearly explaining your plans as well as their intended impact – it’s important that you do not inadvertently suggest that the program needs “fixing” and thus potentially offend members of the LBS adcom and damage your chances of admission. To select effective topics of discussion, we encourage applicants to conduct in-depth research on the history and current role of the Student Association.

Question 5b (150 words)
What is your most substantial achievement to date and why?
This is a fairly tall order for a 150 word essay, so brevity will be key here. This question leaves the door open for a wide range of examples; an applicant might discuss a major professional accomplishment or a more personal triumph. The “why?” element of the question is a reminder that the adcom is not just interested in what was done, but the reason it is a source of ongoing pride for the candidate, so when selecting a subject for this essay, its significance will be a key element to keep in mind. An example from the workplace could be a great topic if there was some important lesson learned, skill gained or impact made. Meanwhile, a more personal anecdote could be quite beneficial if a candidate has some meaningful experience that could help him or her stand out from others and demonstrate distinguishing qualities that might not be evident elsewhere in the application. One’s choice of topic here will likely depend on what has been covered elsewhere in the application up to this point.

London Business School Essay Topics 2010-2011

Clear Admit — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:38:52 +0000

The London Business School essay topics for the 2010-2011 admissions season have been released. With only minor changes from last year’s essay topics, this year’s applicants are required to answer five essays. The LBS essays are as follows:

Question 2 (300 words)
Give a specific example of when you have had to test your leadership and team working skills. Given this experience what role will you play in a first year study group?

Please choose ONE of the following options.
Question 5a (150 words)
You have decided to stand for the role of Student Association President. Announcing your campaign to the London Business School community for the first time, please describe your manifesto.
OR
Question 5b (150 words)
What is your most substantial achievement to date and why?

Question 6 (300 words)
(This question is optional)
Is there any other information that you believe would help the MBA Admissions Committee when considering your application?

Question 7 (300 words)
(This question is for re-applicants only)
How has your candidacy for the London Business School MBA improved since your last application? Have your views of London Business School or the MBA programme changed since you last applied?