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.

Oxford Saïd Essay Topics 2012-2013

Oxford  Saïd has announced its essay topics for 2012-2013!  They are as follows:

Essay 1:  Explain why you chose your current job. How do you hope to see your career developing over the next five years? How will an MBA assist you in the development of these ambitions? (750 words)

Essay 2: What should Oxford expect from you? (750 words)

Re-applicant Essay: What improvements have you made in your candidacy since you last applied to the Oxford MBA? (250 words)

The deadlines for the 2012-2013 admissions season have also been released.  

Source: Oxford Saïd’s admissions website.

Cambridge Judge Essay Topics 2012-2013

The 2012-2013 Cambridge Judge essay topics for 2012-13 have been announced. 

The three essays are as follows:

1. What did you learn from your most spectacular failure? (200 words)

2. What are your short and long term career objectives? What skills/characteristics do you already have that will help you to achieve them? What do you hope to gain from the degree and how do you feel it will help you achieve the career objectives you have? (please do not exceed 500 words)

3. If you could change one thing about your current organisation, what would you make different? How would you overcome obstacles to this change, and what impact would this change have in the short-term and long-term? (300 words)

Source: Cambridge Judge admissions website.

UCLA Anderson Essay Topics 2012-2013

Following up on their earlier announcement of the 2012-2013 application deadlines, UCLA Anderson has announced its essay questions for the 2012-2013 admissions season.

Essay 1: What is your proudest achievement outside the workplace, and how has it impacted you? (700 words maximum)

Essay 2: What are your short-term and long-term career goals, and how will an MBA from UCLA Anderson specifically help you achieve these goals? (700 words maximum)

Re-applicant Essay: Please describe your career progress since you last applied and ways in which you have enhanced your candidacy. Include updates on short-term and long-term career goals, as well as your continued interest in UCLA Anderson. (700 words maximum)

Optional Essay: Are there any extenuating circumstances in your profile about which the Admissions Committee should be aware? (250 words maximum)

Source: UCLA Anderson 

INSEAD MBA エッセイTopics 2012-2013

INSEAD has just released its MBA Essay Topics for the 2012-13 season: 

Job Description:

1. Briefly summarise your current (or most recent) job, including the nature of work, major responsibilities, and, where relevant, employees under your supervision, size of budget, clients/ products and results achieved. (250 words maximum)

2. Please give a full description of your career since graduating from university. If you were to remain with your present employer, what would be your next step in terms of position? (250 words maximum)

3. If you are currently not working, what are you doing and what do you plan to do until you start the MBA programme if applicable? (250 words maximum)

Essays:

1. Give a candid description of yourself, stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors, which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary. (600 words maximum)

2. Describe what you believe to be your two most substantial accomplishments to date (if possible specify one personal and one professional), explaining why you view them as such. (400 words maximum)

3. Describe a situation taken from your personal or professional life where you failed. Discuss what you learned. (400 words maximum)

4. a) Discuss your short and long term career goals. (300 words maximum) and b) How will studying at INSEAD help you achieve your vision? (250 words maximum)

5. Please choose one of the following two essay topics:

a) Have you ever experienced culture shock? What insights did you gain? (250 words maximum)

b) Describe the ways in which a foreigner in your country might experience culture shock. (250 words maximum)

6. Is there anything that you have not mentioned in your application that you would like the Admissions Committee to know? (350 words maximum) This section is optional.

7. In case of reapplication, please provide an update on any new aspects of your professional, international, academic or personal profile that would not have been included in your previous application. Please also explain your motivation for re-applying to INSEAD. (400 words maximum)

Source: INSEAD 

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

Interview Mistakes to Avoid!

BusinessWeek has just published a short and humoros piece on interview mistakes. Some of these seem very obvious

- Don't cry! 

Even if you feel the pressure, anticipate the obvious questions and prepare your answers

- Don't interview the interviewer!

Too much confidence is too much of a good thing. 

- Don't touch!

-Hugging the interviewer is out!

-Don't perform!

Don't bring an easel, don't bring props

-Don't forget your manners

Don't sniff, pick your nose, don't forget to switch your cell phone off.

For more on this article, please see:
 MBA Admissions Interviews Gone Bad—Really Bad