Goizueta to Help Applicants Prepare for GMAT

The Evening MBA admissions office at Emory’s Goizueta Business School is planning to help applicants with GMAT, a GMAT strategy course for prospective applicants who have completed portions of their application. 

The school is offering a free four-day course, designed to supplement individual GMAT study plans, will be held over two weekends, April 28th-29th and May 5th-6th. Participants will review more than 60 math concepts tested on the GMAT, learn simple tips and techniques to solve high-level GMAT problems and understand how to develop a study plan to achieve a target score.
 

Applicants to Goizueta’s evening MBA program must submit their completed application, except for GMAT scores, by April 27th. They then take part in the GMAT strategy session, take the GMAT exam and submit their score by the June 15th deadline for admission and scholarship review.

Source: Goizueta Business School

B-Schools Fight Plagiarism with Turnitin

UCLA Anderson School of Management thas rejected 52 applicants to its MBA program  this year on suspicion they had plagiarised more than 10 per cent of their admissions essays, according to the Financial Times. 

Many business schools are now seeing an increase at the admissions stage. Turnitin software is the main weapon to detect cheating as it has the largest English-language database: 20bn web pages, 110m “scholarly items” secured through partnerships with publishers, and 200m papers submitted to the service. About 300,000 dissertations have just been added from ProQuest, the clearing house for English- language theses. Any thesis or dissertation published since 2008 is now indexed in the Turnitin database.

More than 70% of higher education institutions in North America and almost 95% n the UK have a Turnitin licence. Faculty staff checking essays against the Turnitin database are given a plagiarism percentage score, leaving it to them, or their institution, to decide what is acceptable.

Grenoble Graduate School introduced Turnitin to the school and this resulted in a drop in plagiarism from about 1 in 10 essays to 1 in 100.

Turnitin costs about $2 per student per year.

Some have questioned the ethics of a supplier that also markets software to students (WriteCheck) that enables them to check their work against the database – essentially arming both sides in the plagiarism war. 

Source: FT

Price of a "Top 20" MBA

Poets and Quants has an excellent report on the costs of a "Top-20" MBA.

After years of price inflation for all the top schools, Columbia works out as the most expensive at a staggering $168,307. At the same time, Columbia reports the lowest percentage of MBA students who are receiving financial aid from the school–at 55%, well below 81% at Duke, 80% at Dartmouth, and 75% at Stanford.

But the real figure for most MBA students would appear to be much higher as the estimates for schools factor in "frugal" lifestyles that most people who have already come from well-paid jobs would find it difficult to live on- for example Cornell says its estimate of $11,250 a year for living expenses is “based on the cost of sharing a moderately priced apartment” at a cost of $700 a month rent and putting aside $425 a month for food. Try living on that in a major U.S. city!

Other notes:

In most cases, the  real cost of your MBA will be 10% to 20% higher, given your lifestyle, than the advertised costs.  

Also watch out for catches: 

 

1. Wharton’s $168,000 does not include the cost of its Global Immersion Program, which ranges from $5,800 to $7,800, or the cost to join clubs, attend conferences and “parties." 

2. Stanford’s estimate doesn’t include a required $4,000. “global study tour.” 

Source: Poets and Quants

Why an MBA Is Not Always the Right Choice

Businessweek has featured a guest post from Rose Martinelli, former admissions director at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, where she wrote a popular admissions blog, The Rose Report.

 Martinelli believes if candidates do not  undergraduate business degree, the MBA may be a good option because of its focus on the fundamentals of business and experiential opportunities, as well as the breadth of career support available. "Even students who have pursued economics majors or who have done consulting can benefit from the MBA degree if one of the driving reasons for pursuing education is the chance to explore and experiment," she says.

But: "If you have an undergraduate business degree and want additional depth in a particular area, a subject-oriented masters degree may be ideal, however," she says.

To read more, please go to the Businessweek article.

Georgetown McDonough Pushes Real Estate Finance Initiative

Georgetwown's  McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University has raised $6.5 million of $15 million for its Real Estate Finance Initiative, thanks to a $5 million gift by Lauren and Robert Steers (BSBA ’75), the school announced this week. 

The Real Estate Finance Initiative is supposed to be a knowledge-sharing forum where industry leaders and policymakers come together to examine changing trends in the real estate finance sector.

Robert Steers is co-CEO of Cohen & Steers Inc., a global investment firm specializing in real estate investment securities, listed infrastructure, large cap value and preferred-stock portfolios. Steers is also chair of the McDonough School of Business Board of Advisors and a member of Georgetown University’s Board of Directors. Several other alumni have also contributed toward the Real Estate Finance Initiative, putting it well on its way to its fundraising goal.

Source: Georgetown McDonough

.

LBS Appoints New Associate Dean

LBS has Wendy Alexander former Member of the Scottish Parliament, has been appointed Associate Dean, Degree Programmes and Career Services, effective 30 April 2012.

She will be responsible for directing the Degree Programmes and Career Services’ departments and for the strategic development, operational management and academic oversight of the Masters programs. She began her business career at Booz & Co, specializing in strategy and organizational issues for global clients, after gaining an MBA from INSEAD. 

Following the 1997 elections, Wendy was appointed Special Adviser to Donald Dewar when he became Secretary of State for Scotland. She went on to become an elected politician in the first Scottish Parliament, subsequently serving as Cabinet Minister with responsibility for both business and higher education.  She was later named as Leader of the Opposition.

For the last nine years, Wendy has been a Visiting Professor at Strathclyde Business School In addition, Wendy has also been working in venture capital and private equity in the energy field. 

Source: LBS 

MBA Program Admissions Deadlines in April

Here are upcoming Round 3 (or 4 or 5) deadlines:

April 4: Darden R3, Chicago R3, Stanford R3
April 5: Kellogg R3
April 10: HBS R3
April 11: INSEAD R1 (January intake)
April 11: CBS RD
April 12: Yale R3
April 18: LBS R4, UCLA R3
April 20: Judge R5
April 23: Tepper R4
April 27: Said R3