MBA ニュース：Harvard University Appoints Jodi Goldstein New Managing Director of I-Lab

Harvard Business School (HBS) has appointed Jodi Goldstein, a long-time investor and entrepreneur, will become Harvard i-lab’s new Evans Family Foundation Managing Director this June.

Last year she spearheaded the Launch Lab, a business incubator for Harvard alumni, which is putting Allston, MA—where the i-lab is located—on the map as a solutions-centered hub swirling with interdisciplinary collaboration.

Goldstein has been a high-tech entrepreneur and investor for the past 15 years, with a focus on innovative consumer technologies. With industry expertise in consumer, e-commerce, mobile, social networking and luxury goods, she’s been on the management team of several venture-backed startups including iMarket (sold to D&B), Planetall (sold to Amazon for more than $100M), Send.com, Hoteluxury.com and Mobicious. 

Most recently, she was a co-founder of Drync, a mobile app for wine (a 2011 MassChallenge winner). She’s also an HBS alumna.

For more see the Harvard Innovation Lab press release. 

ハーバード・ビジネス・スクール Dean Fights to Keep MBA Relevant

Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria admits the traditional elite U.S. MBA faces problems.  

1. MBAs are no longer essential for a career at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey & Co. 

2. $100,000 is seen as expensive.

3. The rise of Asian business schools poses another challenge. Many Asian students and successful entrepreneurs have opted to stay closer to home to hone their skills. Business schools have mushroomed in India and China, offering courses and networking opportunities that are more relevant to their home markets.

4. Top U.S. business schools have responded by introducing shorter and more specific business programs, and adding international business cases for study.

Harvard's Strategy: 

a) Expand in Asia. Harvard opened its first research center in Hong Kong 15 years ago. About 10% of our business cases then were international. Now it has eight research centers around the world, including Mumbai, Tokyo and Shanghai, and 60% of our cases are global cases. 

b) Attract Asian donors: aim to get 100 people who can give $1 million each to support the international activities of the school. I want to build a broad base. My dream will be 30%-40% of that group will be from Asia.

c) Tap into the explosive Asian market. Japanese students used to be 30 or 40, now down to to four to five. 

As for Greater China, our mix has shifted to mainland. Now a quarter of the students are from Hong Kong, and three quarters from China. It used to be the vast majority of Chinese students were from Hong Kong.

d) Increase financial aid. Tuition has been going up by 4%, and HBS is increasing financial aid, at a rate of almost 5%-7%. Almost 28% of HBS tuition is now given away as scholarship. Last year 50% of students receive some forms of financial aid. Twenty years ago it was almost impossible to imagine.

e) Demand for 2-year MBA programs has declined 20% from year 2000.

For the full article see WSJ

ハーバード・ビジネス・スクール：GMAT vs GRE

Harvard Business School (HBS) accepts both the GMAT and the GRE and does not prefer one over the other. 

HBS Admissions Director Dee Leopold in her Director’s Blog has explained this issue in detail.

The vast majority of applicants opted to submit GMAT scores, the percentage of matriculating admits as compared to total applicants broken out by test were within close range.

But candidates will no longer have the option to submit both test scores. 

• HBS cares less about the overall score than the components
• HBS looks at subscores in the context of the candidate’s profile.”
• The GMAT or GRE-Q score of an engineer with top grades who has been doing highly quantitative work on the job is of less consequence that that of an English major with no quantitative coursework or professional experience. 
• The English major would be helped by a strong GMAT/GRE quant score because it would serve to show Leopold’s team that he or she will be able to handle the quant work at HBS.
• Candidates who don’t have a background that demonstrates extensive practice in reading and writing may be helped by strong verbal subscores. 

HBS does not accept LSATs, MCATs, SATs or undergraduate grades.

Unofficial scores are fine for the application, and official scores will be accepted after the deadline.

MBA@UNC: スタンフォード、ハーバード、シカゴ大学 ブース Stanford, Booth Harvard Highest 5-year ROI

unc_roiMBA@UNC, the online MBA program at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, has created an in-depth infographic that shows the demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) of the MBA degree.

• Stanford Graduate School of Business topped the list, with a total five-year MBA gain of $99,700. At Stanford, graduates can expect to begin realizing ROI after 4.1 years. 
• The University of Chicago Booth School of Business came in second, with a five-year gain of $92,600 and graduates recouping their investment after 3.7 years. 
• Harvard Business School came in third, with a five-year gain of $79,600 and 4.0 years to pay back. Kenan-Flagler, for its part, ranked 11th on the list, providing a five-year gain of $67,100 and 3.7 years to pay back.

To determine ROI of the MBA degree, MBA@UNC compared total compensation in the first five years after graduation (salary, bonuses, exercised stock options) to the total cost of earning the degree (tuition, fees, two years of foregone earnings).

• 96 percent of MBA graduates rate the value of their degree as outstanding, excellent or good and would recommend a graduate management education to others, citing data from the Graduate Management Admissions Council. Three out of four of those surveyed by GMAC said they could not have obtained their current job without their degree.

For more information see MBA@UNC

MBA 二ユース：ハーバード・ビジネス・スクール Introduces Coding

Harvard Business School is planning to offer a computer programming elective within the next few years since students have formed coding clubs, and dozens take the introductory computer science class at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

Coding skills are going to become increasingly important over the next 10-20 years, the school believes.

Elite MBA programs have been slow to adapt, though some schools have started specialized master’s programs in big data and analytics. A pair of springtime reports by the Graduate Management Admission Council revealed a disconnect between the skills MBA programs give students and what employers want. 

U.S. employers said they coveted “technical and quantitative skills” third out of 10 criteria.

Companies need managers who know the basics of code to work with technical staff, who can understand data and be technically conversant.

At New York University’s Stern School of Business, economics professor David Backus plans to start a course that will teach students how to visualize data and use the programming language, Python.

Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business has no coding classes. But students have been able to take computer science courses at the university since fall 2012. Last year, the B-school and the School of Engineering launched a joint degree that confers an MBA and an MS in computer science.

One downside of learning to code at B-school: Coding is hard. HBS students who took the university’s introductory computer science course said that they spent 16.3 hours a week on the course.

See Bloomberg BusinessWeek for more details

MBA 留学 ニュース: ハーバード・ビジネス・スクール Starts Guidance for Class of 2017!!!

Getting started: The Class of 2017

Harvard Business School (HBS) Admissions Director Dee Leopold has already starting issuing information for the application season for the Class of 2017.

This is what the (optional) “essay” question will be:

"You're applying to Harvard Business School. We can see your resume, academic transcripts, extracurricular activities, awards, post-MBA career intentions, test scores, and what your recommenders have to say about you. What else would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy?”

Use your judgment as to how much to tell us. We don't have a "right answer" or "correct length" in mind. We review all the elements of your written application to decide who moves forward to the interview stage.

Why are we repeating this question when we usually dream up something new? In fact, I went on record last year as saying that we’d ALWAYS be changing the essay question. I was wrong. We liked it. When we look at the responses of admitted candidates, there was a wider-than-usual range of how folks approached it. Some are completely about professional lives, others barely mention work experience. Some are very brief, others are not.

And, sorry to repeat myself, but getting into HBS isn’t an essay-writing contest. If we were to publish 50 “essays that worked” and another 50 that “didn’t work”, I would challenge anyone to make a perfect distinction. It’s just one element of the application.

Now, on to recommender questions:

• How do the candidate's performance, potential, background, or personal qualities compare to those of other well-qualified individuals in similar roles? Please provide specific examples. (300 words)

• Please describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant's response. (250 words)

The application itself will go “live” in mid-June. I’ll post here when we’ve got a definite date. And please watch our website for both our in-person information sessions around the world and our informational webinars.

And finally, something you may want to know: Round One application deadline will be September 9, 2014. Interviews, by invitation only, will be conducted from mid-October through end of November. Notification will be on or around December 10.

For more information please see the: From the Admissions Director's Blog!

MBA 留学 ニュース：ハーバード・ビジネス・スクール・Harvard Business School Case Study Explores E-Cigarettes

Harvard Business School Case Study Explores E-Cigarettes
 

Harvard Business School has recently announced a new MBA case study ‘E-Cigarettes: Marketing Versus Public Health,’ which will see business and public health students at the school analyzing the growing popularity of the electronic cigarette market as well as looking at the tension between public health and marketing.

The case study will explore the ways in which tobacco companies and regulators are responding, while also considering how businesses can ensure corporate social responsibility and profit.

Public health advocates, who assert that the so-called cure to harmful cigarette addiction is not a cure at all, enabling further addiction and acting as a gateway for new – as well as reformed – smokers.
 

Electronic cigarettes have led to a net decrease in traditional smoking of 2.2 million in the US, or 5% of the smoking population. But these statistics only tell half of the story, failing to highlight the influence that the marketing of e-cigarettes has had.

John A. Quelch, a professor in business administration at Harvard Business School, who also holds a joint appointment with the Harvard School of Public Health, will be teaching the new MBA case study to all who enroll in the course, ‘Consumers, Corporations and Public Health’, debuting at the business school and the School of Public Health next year.
 

The question is how many nicotine addicts is it worth the risk of creating to have one tobacco smoker quit?

For more information please see Harvard Business School Working Knowledge: Are Electronic Cigarettes a Public Good or Health Hazard?