HBS Admissions Director to Offer Feedback for Denied Candidates

In her Director’s Blog, Harvard Business School (HBS) Dean of Admissions Dee Leopold said she would provide feedback regarding Round 2 decision notifications following notice given to successful candidates on March 29. Her office will be able to make offers to between 25 and 50 candidates on the waitlist, some from each Rounds 1 and 2.

HBS doesn’t make financial aid awards at the time of admission. The school provides generous financial aid to both U.S. and international students based on demonstrated financial need regardless of the round in which candidates are admitted.

Source: HBS Director’s Blog

Booth Boosts Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital

The Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (EVC) at Group at University of Chicago Booth School of Business is pushing forward with entrepreneurship and venture capital opportunities through promoting conferences, guest speakers, recruiting sessions and experiential learning.

The group, one of the largest full-time student groups at Chicago Booth, seeks to educate student members about relevant career paths and connect them with professors and professionals in the EVC space. The student group also partners with Booth’s Michael P. Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship  to develop EVC-related programming, events and classes.

In the fall, the EVC Group hosts the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Conference, or SeedCon, a two-day event featuring a fast-pitch competition as well as panels and keynotes by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from Chicago and beyond. Each winter quarter the group helps put on the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) – to give students a chance to think and act like venture capitalists while identifying top students to represent Chicago Booth at regional and national intercollegiate competitions – and the Bay Area Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Trek – a networking opportunity with the Silicon Valley Venture Capital community.

Next month, the group will host the finals of the annual National Venture Competition (NVC), one of the nation’s top business competitions. Organized by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship with support from the EVC Group, the NVC is a year-long process featuring two initial phases and a May finals event. Now it its 16th year, the NVC features traditional, global and social tracks and has awarded $750,000 and helped launch more than 65 companies.

Source: Chicago Booth EVC Website

U.S. News & World Report 2013 Business School Rankings

Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business once again tied for first, marking the fourth time in five years those two schools have shared the top spot. Last year, Stanford edged ahead enough to bump HBS down to number two.

U.S. News rankings are based on a weighted average of several indicators, including overall program quality, peer assessments, recruiter assessments, placement success, mean starting salary and bonus, average GMAT score and GPA and more.
 

The rankings track 441 master’s programs accredited by AACSB International.

Rounding out the top 10 full-time programs this year were the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (3), MIT Sloan’s School of Management (4), Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management (4), the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (4), UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business (7), Columbia Business School (8), Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business (9), and the Yale School of Management (10). The only significant shifts here were that Tuck slipped down two spots (falling from 7th last year) allowing Haas and CBS to each climb, and that New York University’s Stern School of Business, which tied for 10th last year with Yale, fell to 11th.
 

Source: US News & World Report

Do We Need an MBA Oath?

The Harbus has just published a very interesting pro and counterpoint the MBA Oath issue, that originated in 2009 in HBS.

Cconfronted with the global financial crisis a group  of HBS students  developed a “Hippocratic Oath for Managers” to “transform the field of  management into a true profession.” The oath defined a social contract between business leaders and society as a whole to effectively behave in an ethical fashion.  

Years later students are still discussing whether the oath is needed. Please read the Harbus article for

Source: The Harbus

MBA Applications Defy U.S. Trends

Bucking a nationwide trend of declining interest in MBA applications to Georgetown’s MBA program have increased in recent years.

A 2011 survey released by the Graduate Management Admission Council reported that more than two-thirds of participating full-time MBA programs saw application numbers drop from 2009 to 2010 and 2010 to 2011.

According to Assistant Dean and Director of the McDonough School of Business Admissions Kelly Wilson, Georgetown’s application numbers have risen from last year at this point in the admissions cycle, while most comparable business schools have seen no change or a dip in application numbers. Georgetown’s full-time MBA program received 1,438 applications for the class that began studying in fall 2011.

Wilson credited the university’s adaptations in a changing MBA recruitment landscape for the rise in applications. The MBA program offers virtual visits, web seminars, and a customized web portal for prospective students.

The study also reported that the volume of applications for executive programs, intended for people with eight years of managerial experience, has held steady on average. Among participating schools, 42 percent reported a rise in applications, while another 42 percent reported a decline.

Bloomberg Businessweek identified 30 schools as in its top tier. The magazine currently ranks Georgetown’s full-time MBA program as the 33rd-best program in the country, placing it in what it deems the second tier of schools. 

Source: The Hoya

Business Majors Face an Uphill Battle

The fastest-growing segment of bachelor’s degree holders applying to MBA programs is former business majors who reached 54% percent in 2010. Former business majors taking the GMAT increased an average of 5.3 percent each year, a rate at least twice as fast as any other major. GMAT test takers are seen as a gauge of who is applying to graduate business school.

But schools don't like business majors in many cases.  The University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business as well as Harvard Business School and Oxford’s Saïd Business School, report that they have accepted more engineers in recent years.

Engineering graduates are, and have been, the second-largest group of undergraduate majors interested in applying to MBA programs. But as a portion of GMAT test takers, they’ve become increasingly scarce. Engineers taking the test grew an average of 0.6 percent each year from 2006 to 2010—more than four times slower than test takers overall.

Source: Bloomberg Businesweek

UNC Online MBA Programs are Credibile

UNC Kenan-Flagler's online MBA program is gaining credibility. Kenan-Flagler's program is is the first time a top 20 school has put together an online effort with the publicly stated goal of making it the world's best MBA program delivered over the Internet.

UNC's partner, 2tor Inc., is a startup with over $68 million in venture funding, is investing more than $10 million into the program. It also has online degree programs in nursing at Georgetown University as well as social work and education at the University of Southern California. Kenan-Flagler has 20 of its full-time professors, many of them considered the school's best faculty, deeply involved in the online initiative, developing and recording special lectures and teaching live classes online.

Together, 2tor and UNC aim to make online education both respectable and credible. If they succeed, the number of MBA candidates in this two-year, $92,725 program will vastly exceed Kenan-Flagler's full-time MBA student population on-campus and the program will reach a worldwide audience.

So far, UNC has signed up 134 students for MBA@UNC since taking on an inaugural class of 19 students in the fall of last year. The school enrolls a new group of candidates every quarter and, on April 4, it will bring in some 45 new students as part of a fourth cohort.

A typical webinar session has little more than a dozen. "These guys are being taught in groups of no more than 15 students," he says. "It's an intense experience. Everyone sits in the front row so there is nowhere to hide."

Kenan-Flagler's professors have developed 32 hours of asynchronous teaching material and have another 36 hours under development. Three professors -- including two adjunct hires -- are teaching their live sessions from India, Israel, and France. The students, meantime, hail from all over the country and the world, including China and Kuwait.

A few field trips to keep things personal

The San Francisco experience -- which runs from a Thursday to Sunday evening -- is one of four in-person immersions in the program. Another one is devoted to leadership development and held at the school's Chapel Hill campus in North Carolina. Two more will be global, with an immersion in San Paulo, Brazil, focused on managing in a high-growth environment, and one in London centered on global markets. Each student is required to do two immersions during the two-year program.

Source: CNN

Berkeley-Columbia to End Executive MBA Program

The February 2013 will be the last graduating class of the joint Executive MBA (EMBA) program of the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and the Columbia Business School (CBS).

The Haas School will launch a stand-alone EMBA program in 2013 to complement its existing full-time MBA and evening & weekend MBA programs.

CBS recently launched a Saturday-only option to augment its EMBA-New York program. It also has EMBA-Global partnerships with London Business School and the University of Hong Kong as well as its full-time MBA program.

The Berkeley-Columbia EMBA Program enrolled its first class in May 2002. When it concludes next February, it will have graduated more than 600 students.

Source: Berkeley Haas School of Business

MBA Employment Reaches Pre-Recession Levels

Employment statistics for recent graduates of MBA programs are better than they’ve been in two years, according to a recent report from U.S. News. 

Of the business schools that provided job placement data for their 2011 full-time MBA graduates, 78.8 percent of graduates were hired within three months of graduation, up from 75.5% of 2010 grads and 70.8% of 2009 grads.

Of the 102 MBA programs surveyed by the council, 70% reported increases in on-campus recruiting in 2011.

The technology sector is the hottest right now in terms of hiring. More than 60% of respondents to the MBA Career Services Council survey reported an increase in recruiting for full-time tech positions in 2011, compared to 37% in 2010. 

Of schools submitting employment data to U.S. News, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management had one of the highest job placement percentages, with 93.5% of 2011 grads finding work within three months of graduation.

Source: US News & World Report

UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School Launches New Undergraduate Summer Program

The Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has announced the launch of a new summer program designed for undergraduate college students from around the world to business studies at the school.

The new five-week, for-credit “Summer Business Immersion” program will include entrepreneurship and finance courses, presentations by Kenan-Flagler professors and guest speakers, company visits and leadership skills development. Participants will also take part in an orientation program, a weekend trip to Washington, DC, and networking, cultural, sports and other activities. 

As part of the entrepreneurship course, participating students will meet with serial entrepreneurs, work in teams to develop a business plan for students’ ventures and practice presentation skills to make a business pitch. The finance class will be taught in UNC Kenan-Flagler’s state-of- the-art Capital Markets Lab, which provides a real-world setting for students to use information and complex analytical tools to manage assets and add value for future clients.

The inaugural “Summer Business Immersion” will take place from June 18 –July 27, 2012, and will include housing in UNC’s Old East residence hall. 

Source: UNC Kenan-Flagler 

More U.S. B-Schools Offering 1-year MBAs

The one-year full-time MBA, popular in Europe, is starting to become a more prevalent offering in the U.S. as institutions target new markets.
Applications to MBA programs are historically counter-cyclical to economic conditions: applications rise in bad times and fall in good. But the recent global economic downturn has been a different story. According to a survey by the Graduate Management Admission Council, applications to two-year, full-time MBA programmes declined in 2011 for the third consecutive year.
Schools that offer accelerated courses appeal to older, more seasoned students but not Executive MBA (EMBA) programs.
Some schools, like Emory’s Goizueta Business School, have offered an accelerated programme for years; several top-tier schools, including Cornell’s Johnson School and Northwestern’s Kellogg, have one-year programmes. 

For more, see the Financial Times

NYU Opens Center for Global Economy and Business

Center for Global Economy and Business

For more than a quarter of a century, the NYU Stern Center for Japan-U.S. Business and Economic Studies served as a valuable academic bridge between Japan and the United States. With the evolution of the global economy over this period and the refocusing of economic growth to the emerging economies, both countries have had to adapt. Accordingly, the Center’s mandate has been widened to encompass broad themes in international business, growth and economic policy that played a key role in the original Japan – U.S. focus, and accordingly, starting in academic year 2011, the Center is renamed to the Center for Global Economy and Business.

The Center supports substance-driven, cohesive faculty research groups and development initiatives, as well as programs that leverage NYU’s global sites.

Source: NYU Stern  

NYU School of Medicine and NYU Stern School of Business Jointly Offer MD/MBA Dual Degree Option

 

A changing healthcare environment increasingly requires physician leaders to manage the business of medicine as part of patient care.

With an increasing demand on physicians to manage both patient care and the business of medicine, NYU School of Medicine and NYU Stern School of Business now offer an MD/Master of Business Administration (MBA) dual degree program in which students can complete both degrees within five years to pursue a combination of interests during their medical education.

Source: NYU Stern 

Harvard Business School Opens New Classroom in Mumbai

Harvard Business School (HBS) has announced the launch of a new, permanent classroom in Mumbai.

The new classroom, which offers seating for 82 students and provides state-of-the-art multimedia facilities to improve the learning experience, is virtually indistinguishable from the school's MBA classrooms in Boston.

According to an HBS press release, the new classroom represents a permanent foothold in India, and will facilitiate an expansion of teaching and research activities in the country to meet its quickly-developing business education needs.

Source: Harvard Business School 

NYU Stern Adds MBA Concentration in Digital Marketing

NYU Stern has recently announced plans to add a new MBA specialization in Digital Marketing.

The new specialization, which launches this spring, allows MBA students to take a range of courses in the fields of marketing and digital commerce, and leverages insights from information systems. Some course offerings in this specialization include "Data Mining for Business Analytics," "Social Media for Brand Management ," and "Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World."

According to the NYU Stern website, the new specialization "provides students with the strategic and analytical skills to guide organizations navigating in a digital world that is overflowing with data on customers, products, and interactions."

Source: NYU Stern