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FROM Naija MBA Gal: Plans, Plans & more Plans |
That seems to be all my life is about now. I really wish I could afford to go on funemployment right now so I can fully focus on preparing for school but I can’t for two reasons, only one of which is money. *sigh*. I’ve recently realised that I’m not as disorganised as I thought but […] |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: HBR: Reality Check at the Bottom of the Pyramid |
HBR: Reality Check at the Bottom of the Pyramid: If companies wish to launch flourishing ventures capable of transforming the lives of millions of low-income people across the developing world, they must get back to basic business tenets. However laudable its mission, a business built on unrealistic expectations will fail just as surely at the bottom of the pyramid as in a developed market. Because the high costs of doing business among the very poor demand a high contribution per transaction, companies must embrace the reality that high margins and price points aren’t just a top-of-the-pyramid phenomenon; they’re also a necessity for ensuring sustainable businesses at the bottom of the pyramid. |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: The Atlantic: The Disintegration of the World |
The Atlantic: The Disintegration of the World: Business leaders are being reminded of the extent to which the global markets and labor forces they have so enthusiastically embraced over the past three decades are a political construct. They exist only thanks to the geopolitical order that the West set up for itself after the Second World War and that the former Soviet Union, China, and the other BRICs joined after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The snarling bellicosity of a fading Russia and the chaotic remaking of the Middle East suggest that this geopolitical order is fraying. |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: Time to Reengage with, Not Retreat from, Emerging Markets |
Time to Reengage with, Not Retreat from, Emerging Markets: Despite their many challenges, emerging markets will continue to drive global growth in many industries. Rather than scale back, companies must adapt to tougher competition. |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: Can the Private Sector Replace NGOs in the Developing World? |
Can the Private Sector Replace NGOs in the Developing World?: Vestergaard had stumbled upon a striking discovery: He could improve people’s chances in the world and make money doing it. Back home, he focused on product innovation. A mosquito net imbued with long-lasting insecticides called the “PermaNet” was recommended for use in malaria prevention by the WHO in 2004. Within a few years, it was in over 200 countries. The PermaNet and other insecticide-treated nets are widely thought to have cut global malaria deaths by about 50 percent from 2000 to 2014.A man filters water using a ‘Lifestraw’ filtration device at his house at **** village, Mumias, in Kenya’s western Province, May 30, 2011. A filters provide an alternative to boiling water for purification, which requires the chopping for trees for firewood. TONY KARUMBA/AFP/GETTYIn 2005, Vestergaard scored again with the invention of the LifeStraw, a thick plastic straw that weighs two ounces and can strain out over 99.9 percent of bacteria and other parasites from 264 gallons of water. In 2005, Esquire named it the “Innovation of the Year,” and in 2008, it won a prestigious Saatchi & Saatchi Award for “World Changing Ideas.” It was deployed extensively after the 2010 Haiti earthquake and Pakistan floods. Vestergaard’s biggest hope is that his company can prove that development work can be profitable; that other innovators in the private sector will take up the mantle; and that young talent will be drawn to the developing world instead of to Silicon Valley. He reminds me over and over that the average life expectancy is 80 years in the richest countries and 40 years in the poorest. (According to the World Health Organization, it’s actually 84 and 46.) “That is an intolerable gap,” he says, “but also represents a lot of opportunities for companies to come in and really make a big difference.” |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: State Department: 2014 Awards for Corporate Excellence |
State Department: 2014 Awards for Corporate Excellence: The Coca-Cola Company in the Philippines…received its award for providing disaster relief services to areas devastated by Typhoon Haiyan. The company also improved water quality through its efforts to support watersheds, increase access to safe water, and educate communities on water conservation. Additionally, the company partnered with the Philippine Department of Education to increase access to primary education for more than 60,000 disadvantaged children. |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: Exploring the Root Causes of Inequality |
If you don’t have the time to digest all 700 pages of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, here’s a quick summary courtesy of The Economist. As a general rule wealth grows faster than economic output, [Piketty] explains, a concept he captures in the expression r > g (where r is the rate of return to wealth and g is the economic growth rate). Other things being equal, faster economic growth will diminish the importance of wealth in a society, whereas slower growth will increase it (and demographic change that slows global growth will make capital more dominant). But there are no natural forces pushing against the steady concentration of wealth. Only a burst of rapid growth (from technological progress or rising population) or government intervention can be counted on to keep economies from returning to the “patrimonial capitalism” that worried Karl Marx. Mr Piketty closes the book by recommending that governments step in now, by adopting a global tax on wealth, to prevent soaring inequality contributing to economic or political instability down the road. Of course, if you want to understand Piketty’s argument, you need to get your head around the range of activities that comprise r. According to Piketty, r includes profits, dividends, interest, rents and other income from capital. But what if most of those activities don’t actually have a higher rate of return that economic growth? That’s the argument made by 26-year old MIT graduate student Matthew Rognlie. Rognlie’s data suggest that housing is in fact the only return on capital that routinely outpaces economic growth. This, of course, has major implications for policymakers. Whereas Piketty argues that government needs to increase taxes on the wealthy, Rognlie argues that what’s really needed are new housing policies. Rather than taxing businesses and wealthy investors, “policy-makers should deal with the planning regulations and NIMBYism that inhibit housebuilding and which allow homeowners to capture super-normal returns on their investments.” In other words, the government should focus more on housing policy and less on taxing the wealthy, if it wants to properly deal with the inequality problem. This is not necessarily good news. Housing and land use policies tend to be no less controversial than tax policies. Still, a constructive debate over the root causes of inequality and policy prescriptions is good for everyone…and something that future MBAs (particularly those heading into finance and real estate) should be mindful of. |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: The business of an Unequal Economy | Thomas Piketty at London... |
The business of an Unequal Economy | Thomas Piketty at London Business School, February 4, 2015 |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: Business Leaders Worry About Income Inequality And Revolution |
Business Leaders Worry About Income Inequality And Revolution: HBS’s Michael Porter and Jan Rivkin on inequality and the structural challenges confronting the American economy: The U.S. economy has structural weaknesses that show up in a host of disturbing, long-run trends. In the lower and middle strata of the income distribution, household incomes have remained stagnant in real terms for decades. Long-run growth rates in private-sector jobs started falling from historical levels around 2000 and remain low. The meager job creation that has occurred has been overwhelmingly in local industries, not those facing international competition. Labor force participation in America peaked in 1997 and has now fallen to levels not seen in three decades. Real hourly wages have stalled even among college-educated Americans; only those with advanced degrees have seen gains. Notably, all of these trends began well before the Great Recession. They are structural, not cyclical. |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: Tackling the world’s affordable housing challenge |
Tackling the world’s affordable housing challenge: McKinsey Global Institute on affordable housing |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: Governor Jack Markell on business, politics, and inequality |
Governor Jack Markell on business, politics, and inequality: Long-term success requires an active government that partners with business to ensure that the bounty of economic growth is shared broadly. Sharing this bounty is not about having a “bleeding heart.” It’s a matter of cold economic sense. I am hugely bullish about the future of the American economy because I believe in investing in people, engaging with the world and sharing broadly the bounty that economic growth will generate. Growing without sharing won’t get it done. And neither will redistribution without growth. Americans really are in this together. |
FROM Naija MBA Gal: Divergent Roads |
“The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, […] |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: Does Finance Benefit Society? |
Does Finance Benefit Society?: Academics’ view of the benefits of finance vastly exceeds societal perception. This dissonance is at least partly explained by an under-appreciation by academia of how, without proper rules, finance can easily degenerate into a rent-seeking activity. I outline what finance academics can do, from a research point of view and from an educational point of view, to promote good finance and minimize the bad. |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: Nine Charts about Wealth Inequality in America - NPQ - Nonprofit Quarterly |
Nine Charts about Wealth Inequality in America - NPQ - Nonprofit Quarterly |
FROM MBA Data Guru: MBA Acceptance Rate by Concentration |
MBA Acceptance Rate by Concentration With the current semester just about over, next years application essay questions will start being posted in the coming weeks for many schools. Round one applicants should start figuring out their story and crafting their essays. The most important essay for most schools is the question: Why get an MBA and why is (insert school name here) the right choice for you? In order to answer this question you need to have a plan for how an MBA is going to help you achieve your goals. The vast majority of MBA students are looking to switch careers. Why else pay $120,000 in tuition and give up two years of salary? If you wanted to stay in the same industry, you would probably just go for a promotion or switch companies. I was curious if the industry an applicant is trying to transition into impacts their MBA acceptance rate. My theory was that there are a lot of people trying to transition into consulting, banking and technology, so there may be oversupply for those concentrations. Perhaps a candidate would stick out if they are pursuing a more unique career. I took the business school admissions data from GMAT Club and looked at the acceptance rate by stated concentration. First I decided to look at the top 20 schools in aggregate, to ensure the results were statistically significant. I was surprised by how much the acceptance rate varied depending on MBA concentration. MBA Acceptance Rate by Concentration The average acceptance rate for top 20 schools is 23%. Many of the concentrations towards the top are fairly small with the exception of Marketing. As you can see, there is a huge range in the acceptance rates based on school focus. With Social Entrepreneurship 2.5 times more likely to be admitted than Technology or Operations. Most of the results don’t surprise me, business schools seem to be trying to help the world right now, so it is no shock that Social Entrepreneurship, Nonprofit and Sustainability are all in the top half. With the crisis in the Healthcare industry, the high acceptance rate for Healthcare applicants also makes sense. I am a little surprised that Real Estate is so high and Technology is so low. There is not a lot of focus on Real Estate that I have seen in business school, so I didn’t expect it to be the concentration with the second highest acceptance rate. On the other hand, Technology is very hot right now, so it is shocking the admissions rate is so low. Since this data does not have gender included, it is possible that the acceptance rates are skewed by gender concentrations. More women tend to focus on Nonprofit, Social Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Healthcare, which could have bumped up the acceptance rate. Many schools are trying to increase their female enrollment, so women tend to have higher acceptance rates. At the other end of the spectrum, industries such as Operations and Technology are more dominated by men, which could have led to such low acceptance rates. In the end, I wouldn’t recommend outright gaming the system. Don’t say you want to pursue Social Entrepreneurship rather than Technology if Tech is really what your passionate about. It will likely show in your application. However if you are unsure of what you want to focus on, it would make sense to chose the concentration you are interested in that has the highest acceptance rate. There was a lot of variance by school. The chart below shows some of the highest and lowest acceptance rate concentrations by school. Take these findings with a grain of salt because sample size is pretty small. SchoolIncrease Acceptance RateLower Acceptance Rate StanfordSocial EntrepreneurshipFinance, Entrepreneurship HarvardEntrepreneurshipFinance* WhartonHealthcare*Finance, Entrepreneurship, Marketing BoothHealthcare*, Marketing*Entrepreneurship, Finance, Operations* SloanMarketing, Social Entrepreneurship*Technology*, Operations* KelloggEntrepreneurship, Marketing, Social EntrepreneurshipOperations*, Technology* HaasEntrepreneurship, HealthcareOperations*, Technology* ColumbiaSocial EntrepreneurshipEntrepreneurship, Marketing, Healthcare TuckHealthcare, MarketingFinance, Technology* DardenMarketingEntrepreneurship, Finance NYUEntrepreneurship, Finance, Marketing* RossEntrepreneurship, Marketing, Healthcare*, Social Entrepreneurship*Finance, Operations*, Technology* DukeHealthcare, Marketing, Social Entrepreneurship*Finance, Operations*, Technology* YaleMarketing*, Social Entrepreneurship*Entrepreneurship AndersonFinance, MarketingEntrepreneurship, Technology CornellFinanceEntrepreneurship, Operations McCombsEntrepreneurship, MarketingFinance Kenan-FlaglerFinance, Healthcare*, Marketing* TepperEntrepreneurship, Operations, Marketing*Finance EmoryMarketingFinance *This concentration had a very large increase or decrease. MBA Data Guru - MBA admissions data and analytics critical for business school applications |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: HBS Essay: Introduce Yourself |
HBS rolled out its admissions essay prompt for the class of 2018on Friday. Dee Leopold says it’s “just about as straightforward and practical as we can make it.” But is it? It’s the first day of class at HBS. You are in Aldrich Hall meeting your “section.” This is the group of 90 classmates who will become your close companions in the first-year MBA classroom….Introduce yourself. Hmmm…how would this play out in real life? UC: Hi, my name’s Unlikely. What’s yours? [End of introduction.] If one of my sectionmates were to actually introduce him/herself with a 5-minute soliloquy highlighting his/her crowning pre-MBA achievements, career goals, or hardships overcome, this blogger would make damn certain to find a seat on the other side of the auditorium for every class session during that RC year. And then there’s this: We suggest you view this video [intro to the HBS case method] before beginning to write. What does that mean?!? Am I supposed to demonstrate an aptitude for the case method in my introduction? How does one even do that? Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea here. Can’t blame the HBS admissions committee for pushing applicants to find a more natural, authentic voice. And I like the case method…I like its emphasis on critical thinking and its ability to transform a classroom into a dynamic, interactive learning environment. But I just can’t love this question. To your humble blogger, “Introduce yourself” seems only slightly less wacky than MIT Sloan’s “Write your own letter of recommendation!” |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: HBS Essay: Introduce Yourself |
HBS rolled out its admissions essay prompt for the class of 2018on Friday. Dee Leopold says it’s “just about as straightforward and practical as we can make it.” But is it? It’s the first day of class at HBS. You are in Aldrich Hall meeting your “section.” This is the group of 90 classmates who will become your close companions in the first-year MBA classroom….Introduce yourself. Hmmm…how would this play out in real life? UC: Hi, my name’s Unlikely. What’s yours? [End of introduction.] If one of my sectionmates were to actually introduce him/herself with a 5-minute soliloquy highlighting his/her crowning pre-MBA achievements, career goals, or hardships overcome, this blogger would make damn certain to find a seat on the other side of the auditorium for every class session during that RC year. And then there’s this: We suggest you view this video [intro to the HBS case method] before beginning to write. What does that mean?!? Am I supposed to demonstrate an aptitude for the case method in my introduction? How does one even do that? Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea here. Can’t blame the HBS admissions committee for pushing applicants to find a more natural, authentic voice. And I like the case method…I like its emphasis on critical thinking and its ability to transform a classroom into a dynamic, interactive learning environment. But I just can’t love this question. To your humble blogger, “Introduce yourself” seems only slightly less wacky than MIT Sloan’s “Write your own letter of recommendation!” |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: Finance and Social Good |
Think for a moment about the “do-gooders” and “save the world” types who apply to MBA programs. What comes to mind? Peace Corps volunteers. Teach for America alumni. Military veterans. USAID employees. Nonprofit managers. How about investment bankers? Goldman Sachs alumni? Probably not. Finance has a bad rep (or “bad rap” depending on your point of view). That’s not entirely undeserved. After all, one cannot talk about the economic disaster of the last decade without mentioning the “financial collapse” of 2008. Still, finance is the grease that keeps the gears of capitalism moving and, as this blog maintains, “capitalism is the greatest force for prosperity and opportunity the world has ever known.” So what is a reasonable person to make of finance? Properly regulated, finance has enormous capacity to do good. Finance is needed to build the roads, sanitation systems, and telecoms infrastructure needed everywhere–particularly in the developing world. Finance enables businesses to take risks. It helps big businesses research and innovate and small ones get started. Of course, the key words are “properly regulated.” Bad regulation comes in two main varieties: inadequate (what we had before 2008…and arguably still have today) and inappropriate (cumbersome red tape that impedes the flow of capital). This week’s posts reflect an attempt to capture some of this complexity. Academics examining the role and perceptions of finance in society, the need for finance in emerging markets, and importance of quality regulation. |
FROM The Unlikely Capitalist: Finance and Social Good |
Think for a moment about the “do-gooders” and “save the world” types who apply to MBA programs. What comes to mind? Peace Corps volunteers. Teach for America alumni. Military veterans. USAID employees. Nonprofit managers. How about investment bankers? Goldman Sachs alumni? Probably not. Finance has a bad rep (or “bad rap” depending on your point of view). That’s not entirely undeserved. After all, one cannot talk about the economic disaster of the last decade without mentioning the “financial collapse” of 2008. Still, finance is the grease that keeps the gears of capitalism moving and, as this blog maintains, “capitalism is the greatest force for prosperity and opportunity the world has ever known.” So what is a reasonable person to make of finance? Properly regulated, finance has enormous capacity to do good. Finance is needed to build the roads, sanitation systems, and telecoms infrastructure needed everywhere–particularly in the developing world. Finance enables businesses to take risks. It helps big businesses research and innovate and small ones get started. Of course, the key words are “properly regulated.” Bad regulation comes in two main varieties: inadequate (what we had before 2008…and arguably still have today) and inappropriate (cumbersome red tape that impedes the flow of capital). This week’s posts reflect an attempt to capture some of this complexity. Academics examining the role and perceptions of finance in society, the need for finance in emerging markets, and importance of quality regulation. |
FROM The MBA Manual: Tips for MBA Video Interview Questions (Yale/Kellogg) |
A new piece of the MBA application that you might encounter is a set of video interview questions. The format is similar to a Skype call but with instead of a person on the other end you have a pre-recorded prompt/question to which you’ll respond. Once the prompt is finished, applicants have 20 seconds (for both Yale and Kellogg) to think of an answer and then a time to respond (up to 90 seconds for Yale and 60 seconds for Kellogg). Applicants complete 3 questions for Yale and 2 for Kellogg. I’ve personally been through the experience and can attest to the fact that it can be very stressful. There is no feedback, no body language to read, and no one to interject and ask for clarifications. However, there are many things that you can do to make sure you’re as ready as possible when that camera starts recording.
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Hi Guest,
Here are updates for you:
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R2 Decisions Are Coming Out - Join Chatrooms!
✅ Duke Fuqua : Mar 12, 2024
✅ UVA Darden : Mar 13, 2024 ✅ Dartmouth Tuck : Mar 14, 2024 ✅ Michigan Ross : Mar 15, 2024 ✅ IESE: Mar 15, 2024 ✅ Johnson (Cornell): Mar 15, 2024 ✅ Georgetown McDonough : Mar 18, 2024 ✅ Emory Goizueta : Mar 20, 2024 ✅ UT Austin McCombs : Mar 21, 2024 ✅ Chicago Booth : Mar 21, 2024 ✅ UC Berkeley Haas : Mar 21, 2024 ✅ UCLA Anderson : Mar 22, 2024 ✅ Yale SOM : Mar 26, 2024 ✅ Wharton : Mar 26, 2024 ✅ Kellogg : Mar 27, 2024 ✅ HBS : Mar 27, 2024 ✅ Stanford GSB : Mar 28, 2024 ✅ UW Foster : Mar 29, 2024 ✅ USC Marshall : Mar 31, 2024 ✅ MIT Sloan : Apr 5, 2024 ✅ Cornell Johnson : Apr 5, 2024
Tuck at Dartmouth
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