MBA 留学 ニュース: GMAT Test Takers Can Now Preview Scores Before Reporting or Canceling Them

GMAT applicants now have the ability to preview their unofficial scores before deciding whether to report or cancel them, the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), which owns and administers the exam. 

This new score reporting feature, available to all test takers, went into effect at all 600 test centers worldwide that administer the exam.

Under this new process, test takers will be able to view their unofficial scores – Integrated Reasoning, Quantitative, Verbal and Total – and then will have two minutes to decide whether to accept them. If they do not make a choice, their scores will be cancelled. 

Test takers will have 60 days to reinstate a score they cancel in the event that they decide later they want to send it, for a $100 fee. After 60 days, scores will no longer be retrievable.

Analytical Writing Assessment scores will not be available immediately and so are unaffected by the change. They will be reported on official score reports delivered within 20 days.

Test takers should note that all sittings of the test will still be reported to the schools. In other words, if you see your score, then opt to cancel, the schools will still see that you did take the test (and that you canceled the score).

For more information please see the Graduate Management Admissions Council webpage

Registration Open Winter Visits to Stanford GSB/ スタンフォード大学ビジネススクール,

Registration is now open for winter information sessions and class visits at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), according to Stanford GSB admissions blog.

Invited  prospective applicants to the MBA program to come see campus for themselves when the Class Visit Program resumes on January 14th.

Weekly information sessions will resume on January 7th. These are held each Monday and Friday, and are 85-minute-long sessions feature MBA admissions officials providing an overview of the Stanford GSB MBA program and admissions process. 

The sessions conclude by 12:10 p.m. to allow interested parties to also take part in tours of the Knight Management Center, which depart from the Bass Center at 12:15 p.m. Registration for information sessions is required.

Interested applicants can register now.

Only one class visit is available per quarter. Visitors must stay for the full duration of the class and not participate in the class.

Prospective applicants visiting campus can also take part in the Meet a Student Program. 

Current MBA students are available most Mondays and Fridays at 10 a.m. when classes are in session. 

These students conduct half-hour group conversations with interested applicants, sharing their first-hand experiences at Stanford GSB. No registration is required for this offering. Interested students can check at the Bass Center at 10 a.m. to see if a student is available.

Source: Stanford GSB 

50 years of women at HBS

Harvard Business School (HBS) have started a yearlong celebration of the 50th anniversary of the School’s first class of female M.B.A.s. 

Women have gone from claiming just eight spots in that initial cohort to being 40 percent of the M.B.A. program.

But speakers say the world is still unfair for women; for example, at home, women still face a set of expectations as demanding as in the 1950s and ’60s. 

Source: Harvard Gazette

The Economist Latest MBA Rankings Out!

The Economist has just revealed its latest  2012 Full time MBA ranking, and it makes for very interesting reading, with, as expected, The Economist's way of doing things making for different results than other famous ranking systems. Every ranking system is full of flaws, for example, critics note that 80% of the Economist's rankings are based on unaudited data submitted by the participating schools. That leaves the door wide open to self-serving submissions that fudge the numbers, according to Harvard. 

You can also click on a button to jump to the rankings in your area or country. This blog notes that Japan is not even mentioned as a country in Asia. 

The Economist's methodology is here: The Economist ranking of full-time MBA programmes was based on an initial selection of 135 leading business schools around the world. All 135 schools were invited to take part in our two-stage survey, which requires input from schools and students/alumni. Of these, we were unable to rank 17 schools, either because the failed to respond to our survey or did not provide enough data to be ranked. The global top 100 schools were gleaned from the remaining 118. Schools outside the top 100 receive a regional ranking only.

To qualify for inclusion in the ranking, the schools with full-time MBA programmes that responded to our survey had to meet various thresholds of data provision, as well as attaining a minimum number of responses to a survey gauging the opinion of current students and alumni who graduated within the last three years. These were set as a proportion of the annual intake of students to the programme as shown in the table below.

Data were collected during spring 2012 using two web-based questionnaires, one for business schools and one for students and recent graduates. Schools distributed the web address of the latter questionnaire to their own students and graduates. A total of 15,550 students and graduates participated. All data received from schools were subject to verification checks, including, where possible, comparison with historical data, peer schools and other published sources. Student and graduate questionnaires were audited for multiple or false entries.

Memory has been built into the rankings by taking a weighted average of 2012 (50%), 2011 (30%) and 2010 (20%) data to provide a rounded picture of the school. Sudden movements in data, which might not produce an immediate increase in quality, are thus reflected gradually, much as the improvement would affect students.

The table below summarises the measures used to calculate the rankings together with their respective weightings. Salaries were converted at average 2011 exchange rates. Student and alumni ratings make up 20% of the total ranking, and 80% is based on data provided by schools. The statistical methodology adopted for the ranking gives each business school a unique score (known to statisticians as a z-score). Unlike some other rankings, we do not include any “equal” schools (for example, four schools ranked equal sixth followed by one ranked tenth). However, it should be noted that differences between some schools might be slight. 

For more details, please see The Economist. 

http://www.economist.com/whichmba/full-time-mba-ranking

HBS Reveals Some R1 Details

Harvard Business School (HBS) Dean of Admissions Dee Leopold has given a preview of how Round 1 works.

Details: 

* R1 deadline is September 21

* No need to submit earlier

* Interview invitations on October 17 and 24

* Planned interview locations for Round 1include London, Paris, Dubai, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, Palo Alto, New York City and on campus in Boston

* Some candidates will also be invited to join the waitlist on that date and may be invited to interview in Round 2.

*Interviews will then take place from the last week in October through mid-November

* Round 1 decisions – admit, deny or waitlist – will go out on December 12.

Source: Dean's Blog

Oxford Saïd Deadlines 2012-2013

The application deadlines for the 2012-2013 admissions season at Oxford Saïd are as follows:

Round 1
Deadline: October 12, 2012
Interview Decision Notification: November 9, 2012
Final Decision Notification: December 7, 2012

Round 2
Deadline: January 11, 2013
Interview Decision Notification: February 1, 2013
Final Decision Notification: March 15, 2013

Round 3
Deadline: March 8, 2013
Interview Decision Notification: March 22, 2013
Final Decision Notification: April 19, 2013

Open Field Round
Applications accepted: March 23 – June 28, 2013
Notifications sent within four weeks of submission

Source: Oxford Saïd admissions website.

MBA IQ Service for Pre-MBA Study.

Poets&Quants has a very interesting article about pre-MBA courses for people anxious about entering an MBA program

The MBA IQ service is an interactive online curriculum designed to give students baseline knowledge in 12 core areas of business before they start their graduate degrees.

For a fee of $195 per person, enrollees receive 60 days' use of MBAIQ.com. There, they can take quizzes to determine their own MBA IQ scores-- quantitative figures demonstrating an overall knowledge of business as well as individual scores for each of the dozen areas, or "modules."

Students can identify their weaknesses and study them, for example learning such things as the difference between static budgets and continuous budgets, the finer points of penetration testing, and how to calculate weighted-average cost of capital.

Students also have access to other self-assessment quizzes, 134 reading assignments, 1,000 E-flashcards, short daily lessons (example: "What is a Type I error?") and a 353-page workbook. 

Many of the best business schools hold pre-MBA summer boot camps for students who need a little extra help but they are often cursory reviews of the most common accounting or finance concepts.

The service already has several hundred customers and some are business schools, which get a bulk rate and offer the online program to their students either for free or at a discount as well as companies that pay a licensing fee and incorporate the program into their corporate universities. 

Ten corporations have subscribed, some of them using MBA IQ as their own "business acumen" programs. And MBA IQ is currently working out an agreement with book-publisher Wiley to sell the program directly to business schools and share the profits.

The University of Chicago's Booth School of Business recently began offering the MBA IQ to newly admitted and returning students for $175 per person. 

Source: CNN Money