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28 Jan 2016, 12:01
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Diamonds in the Rough: Core Values at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management |
MBA applicants can get carried away with rankings. In this series, we profile amazing programs at business schools that are typically ranked outside the top 15. First years at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management begin their MBA experience within a cohort of just approximately 100 students, enjoying a close-knit classroom environment in which they gain exposure to broad management skills, with a particular emphasis on business ethics. Both the curriculum and the student community at the school engender a set of core values: “honesty and integrity,” “mutual respect,” “pursuit of excellence,” and “personal accountability.” In addition to taking a class on public speaking and a structure, analysis, and integration workshop, students at the Carroll School must complete at least 20 hours of community service, which the school requires to help instill an appreciation for and a spirit of community service in its MBAs. These values are also reflected in the school’s core “Management Practice” course sequence—taken throughout the first year and into the first semester of the second year—in which students learn to think critically about the challenges involved in business leadership. As one graduate commented in Bloomberg Businessweek’s 2012 profile of the Carroll School, “In the background of your core classes, and many electives, is a strong consideration on the moral and ethical dilemmas that often arise in the business world. I never felt that ‘morality’ was being pushed on us, but the consequences of each decision we make were always placed in front of us and we were left to make up our own mind.” The post Diamonds in the Rough: Core Values at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
29 Jan 2016, 09:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Friday Factoid: “Doing Business in…” at NYU Stern |
 DBi students visiting Yuyuan Garden in Shanghai; Photo Credit Vay Kothari For candidates seeking global immersion during their MBA experience, New York University’s (NYU’s) Stern School of Business provides ample opportunity to study abroad, with one- or two-week trips, through its “Doing Business in…” (DBi) program. DBi trips take place between the fall and winter semesters, during spring break, and in May (after classes conclude). Each course (trip) is tailored to its specific locale and includes a mix of lectures given by Stern faculty as well as by local business practitioners and/or government representatives. Complementing the classroom learning are hands-on field experiences at corporate headquarters, factories, ports, development sites, and other such locations. DBi destinations in recent years have included Costa Rica, Spain, Brazil, Singapore, Morocco, and Hong Kong, just to name a few. Students who participate in the DBi program gain a new perspective on conducting business in a different culture while making some great memories with fellow “Sternies” along the way. For more information on other defining characteristics of the MBA program at NYU Stern or one of 15 other top business schools, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides. The post Friday Factoid: “Doing Business in…” at NYU Stern appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
29 Jan 2016, 12:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Fashion Entrepreneur Shares Her Journey from Kyrgyzstan to Harvard and Shoptiques.com |
 Olga Vidisheva Today, many aspiring MBAs and MBA graduates want to join start-ups or launch such companies themselves. Is entrepreneurship as exciting as it seems? Is it really for you? mbaMission Founder Jeremy Shinewald has teamed up with Venture for America and CBS Interactive to launch Smart People Should Build Things: The Venture for America Podcast. Each week, Shinewald interviews another entrepreneur so you can hear the gritty stories of their ups and downs on the road to success. One of the most fascinating guests on the podcast series yet, Olga Vidisheva hails from Kyrgyzstan and is the founder of Shoptiques.com—which allows shoppers to browse boutiques from around the world. Her business began by representing 25 stores and has evolved to encompass the thousands available on the company’s Web site today. Vidisheva, a Harvard Business School graduate and a prime example of the “American Dream” at its most lucrative, sat down with Jeremy Shinewald to share her story. Tune in to hear these details and more:
The post Fashion Entrepreneur Shares Her Journey from Kyrgyzstan to Harvard and Shoptiques.com appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
30 Jan 2016, 09:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: Class Visits Are Not a Factor! |
Some MBA programs—Harvard Business School, for example—have gone on record stating that class visits are not a factor in their admissions decisions. But does this mean that you have nothing to gain from visiting those campuses? Imagine that you are considering buying a $250–$500K home. Would you not want to visit it before purchasing it? Perhaps you would turn on the taps, open and close the doors and windows, and walk around the yard, making sure your planned investment would be a good one, right? Well, your business school education—when you take into account tuition, living expenses, and the opportunity costs of leaving your current job—will probably cost you somewhere in that dollar range. So, visiting your target school(s) to ensure that your potential “home” for the next two years is right for you is just as important. We feel that visiting the campus of the school(s) to which you plan to apply is a crucial step in the application process. Doing so allows you to gain a firsthand perspective into a program’s environment, pedagogy, facilities, student body, and professors. The dollars you will spend on transportation and lodging are the MBA program equivalent of hiring an inspector when buying a home. To the extent that your budget and available vacation days allow, make the effort to visit your target schools, whether doing so will help you gain a letter of acceptance or not. It will help ensure that the school you ultimately attend is a good fit and will increase your chances of a happy future there The post MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: Class Visits Are Not a Factor! appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
30 Jan 2016, 12:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: What I Learned at…UVA’s Darden School of Business, Part 3 |
 Sarah Rumbaugh, CEO and founder of RelishMBA In our “What I Learned at…” series, MBAs discuss the tools and skills their business school provided as they launched their career. Sarah Rumbaugh is the CEO and founder of RelishMBA, the marketplace for MBA hiring, which connects MBA candidates and the companies that hire them through the recruiting process. Sarah founded RelishMBA while completing her MBA at the Darden School of Business and continued to work full-time on the venture after graduation. In Part 3 of this three-part series, Sarah discusses how Darden helped her grow her venture to a point where she could pursue it full-time after graduation. I wouldn’t say we (my cofounder Zach and I) set the best metrics to evaluate whether we were “successful” at the end of the ten-week accelerator in the i.Lab at UVA Incubator, but we definitely gathered the data that we felt indicated we should keep pursing the business. The idea of setting key metrics, milestones, and/or key performance indicators is another thing I learned the importance of at Darden. How else can you measure your venture’s success? The problem is that it’s really hard to determine what the best metrics are and to determine a benchmark for “success”—especially if you’re setting these standards when you’re at zero and you may still not know what the best solution is for the problem you’re trying to solve. The i.Lab helped us work through all this. Among the other valuable resources that helped us get from point A to point B were the mentors, workshops, other start-ups, and the entire UVA-Darden ecosystem (not to mention the free food). Going into Darden my second year, I had a cofounder, a tested MVP [minimum viable product], our first revenue, a significant number of users on our software platform (we defined this as the majority of Darden students), and a decision—a decision to continue pursuing the business. I loaded up my academic schedule with entrepreneurial classes and divided my time 50-50: 50% in the i.Lab, working on the business, and 50% on academics. However, as many entrepreneurs will tell you, the business quickly took over my life, and you could really call it 100% focus on the business. In our second year, Zach and I wanted to rebuild our software (based on lessons from the MVP), raise capital (to fund the software, marketing, and sales), and form the biggest sales pipeline possible (of MBA recruiter customers). Darden classes were helpful for all three. One important note, though—I don’t believe learning in the classroom can teach you how to be an entrepreneur. You learn by doing it, by actually starting a business and iterating on your experiences. No two ventures are the same. Markets and processes change, and people (their skills and the way they operate) are different, so there’s no exact template for how to be an entrepreneur. So my Darden classes were most helpful in learning how to start a business because I was actually in the process of starting a business at the same time I was learning the disciplines in the classroom. I took a class on software development (not one on how to code, but on the process and how to go about it), several classes on financial statements and raising capital, and one on B2B [business-to-business] sales. And the biggest benefit was taking the disciplines and implementing them in real time. Raising capital was hard. People told me it would take twice as long as I anticipated, and they were mostly right. In retrospect, it makes sense that it took longer than I had hoped. When you first start trying to raise investment—in particular with angel investors (who invest their own money, unlike venture capitalists, who invest on behalf of a fund)—you’ll meet possible investors, and before long, you’ll ask them, “So, are you going to invest?” If you’re still around a few months later and you’ve accomplished a lot in that time, that makes the decision much easier for the investor. You have to create a sense of urgency for them. For example, if you have a few investors on the edge of a decision, set a deadline so there’s a sense of “missing out” if they don’t commit by that time, or set investment tranches; these are milestones you have to meet to get more money. It generally works like this: the investor invests a small amount, and if you meet an agreed-upon milestone, you get more money; if you don’t meet it, the investor gets more equity. RelishMBA doesn’t currently have any tranches in place, but we’d consider them for the right deal. The Batten Institute staff and lawyers (whose services we won through a business competition) helped us structure terms with investors. We were working around the clock during our second year, pushing RelishMBA forward and being full-time MBA students. Sometimes it feels like it’s easier to get things done when you’re crazy busy because there’s absolutely no time to procrastinate—so you don’t. This is what my Darden second year felt like. I thought that if I was going to pursue the venture full-time (and I had already decided to) and pass up a high salary, then I was going to do as much as possible to grow the business while I was still in school. For me, this meant ramping up the sales pipeline by having initial calls and conducting Web demos with Fortune 500 recruiters. For Zach, it meant finishing up our newly developed Web platform (we mostly outsourced our Web development, and Zach was/still is the day-to-day product manager). A couple classes we took our last quarter featured entrepreneurial speakers talking about their struggles to get to where they are now. These discussions kept us going through those last few months. Takeaways like “you’ll regret it if you let it go” made us realize there was no way we were quitting. Now it’s been half a year since graduation. We’re in the i.Lab for a second year (you can be in it for up to three years, but you don’t get the same financial benefits as you do in the first year). We’ve grown our user base (MBA candidates) to 45 schools with seven times user growth, signed up a bunch more customers (MBA recruiters) with recurring revenue, hired more people for our team, and been working our butts off trying to scale RelishMBA to be a mainstream factor in the MBA recruiting process. Darden’s entrepreneurial ecosystem has been invaluable to our success (both personally and related to the venture), so much so that we continue to rely on its support and resources today. I’m not sure how we would have started RelishMBA without the resources and support that Darden offers. The post What I Learned at…UVA’s Darden School of Business, Part 3 appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
31 Jan 2016, 09:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: GMAT Impact: The Master Resource List for Reading Comprehension (Part 3 of 4) |
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With regard to the GMAT, raw intellectual horsepower helps, but it is not everything. In this blog series, Manhattan Prep’s Stacey Koprince teaches you how to perform at your best on test day by using some common sense. Part 1 of this series covered how to read Reading Comprehension (RC), and Part 2 introduced the first two major question types: Main Idea and Specific Detail. Start with those posts and then continue with this post.  Inference In this section, we are going to talk about two big things: how to handle inference questions and how to analyze RC problems in general (you can then use these techniques on any question type). Inference questions ask about specific details in the passage, but they add a twist: we have to deduce something that must be true, given certain facts from the passage. For example, if I tell you that my favorite type of book to read is biography, what could you deduce? Watch out for the trap: do not use your “real world” conclusion-drawing skills. In the real world, you might conclude that I like reading books in general or perhaps that I am interested in history or maybe that I am a nerd. (Really? Biographies are my favorite?) These things do not have to be true, though. What has to be true? I do not like fiction as much as I like biographies. I have read at least one book in a nonbiography category (otherwise, I would not be able to tell that I prefer biographies, which implies a comparison). What is the difference? GMAT deductions are usually things that would cause us to say “Duh!” in the real world. “My favorite category of book is biography.” “Oh, so you must not like fiction as much as you like biographies.” “Uh… well, yeah, that’s what ‘favorite’ means. I don’t like anything else better.” A GMAT deduction should feel like a “duh” deduction—something totally boring that must be true, given the information in the passage. Here, try out an Inference question. That article also explains how to analyze your work and the problem itself. Did you miss something in the passage? Why? How can you pick it up next time? Did you fall for a trap answer? Which one? How did they set the trap, and how can you avoid it next time? And so on. Why Questions Specific questions can come in one other (not as common) flavor: the Why question. These are sort of a cross between Specific Detail and Inference questions: you need to review some specific information in the passage, but the answer to the question is not literally right in the passage. You have to figure out the most reasonable explanation for why the author chose to include a particular piece of information. Test out this Why question to see what I mean. The post GMAT Impact: The Master Resource List for Reading Comprehension (Part 3 of 4) appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
31 Jan 2016, 12:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: mbaMission’s Exclusive Interview with Jodi Gernon, Director of Harvard Business School’s Rock Center for Entrepreneurship |
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mbaMission Founder and President Jeremy Shinewald recently connected with Jodi Gernon, director of the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School [HBS], to discuss some of the latest trends in entrepreneurship among MBA students in general and at HBS in particular. Read on to learn about the various resources available to aspiring entrepreneurs at HBS, including an incubator, notable professors and courses, business plan competitions, and experienced on-campus mentors. mbaMission: Thank you so much for talking with me today, Jodi. Why don’t you start by telling us about your journey to the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship? Jodi Gernon: Sure. I guess I kind of found entrepreneurship about five years after graduating from HBS. I have an engineering undergrad and worked for GE between undergrad and business school, and then I graduated from HBS in 1991. And when I was at business school, I actually said, “Oh, I want to try to explore something a little more creative,” so I started looking at some companies like Pepsi and actually went there for a while. I was able to get a taste there for the more creative types of opportunities, and then after Pepsi, I decided to go back into more of a health care–related field, which is where I had come from. I always said I never drank a lot of soda, so I decided to go back into that realm. From there, I worked in health care but missed the creative piece, and after a couple moves, I ended up at a start-up called Physicians Online, which was really the ideal place for me to combine both my creative interests and my consumer interests with my health care interests, and it was in a start-up. So I got the start-up bug at that point. I loved the energy and enthusiasm and fast-paced nature of a start-up, and from there, I continued to get a great appreciation for what it’s like to be in the start-up world. After my husband and I moved again, I ended up at a couple of other start-ups, Physicians Online and then Mediconsult—both were acquired by WebMD—and then MotherNature.com, which IPOed. And that’s really the history of my early start-up experience. After MotherNature.com, I started doing more consulting to the founders of start-ups. And one of my first companies was a venture-backed company called Revenio which was a CRM [customer relationship management] company. I was part of the founding team and helped refine their value proposition and define their product characteristics. I was also raising kids at the time, so I just continued to either consult to or mentor start-ups. And after moving to Toronto and back, and trying to start my own company, which I decided to pivot away from, I came to the [Arthur] Rock Center [for Entrepreneurship], where I could apply both my founding experience and all my other start-up experience to helping students who are trying to start their own businesses. mbaMission: Sure. So entrepreneurship is pretty hot right now, and of your Class of 2013, roughly 7% of students—so, ballpark, close to 70 students or so—started their own ventures. Would you say that is a lot? JG: I think that’s a lot. I think the number I heard was 9% of this past class [Class of 2015], and that was up from 7% in 2014. I think it reflects the Millennial generation’s desire be their own bosses and have a significant impact on the world. So we’re seeing demand for it, and we’re providing the resources and support and programs to help meet that demand. I just think it’s reflective of a lot of students who really want to run their own companies. However, we are not seeing a major surge in start-ups like we saw in the late ’90s. It has been a steady and healthy growth. mbaMission: Is there a target percentage as far as the proportion of students you want going into entrepreneurship? As in, would the Rock Center like to see more students starting their own businesses? JG: No, I don’t think that’s what we’re about. We’re about fostering those students who are interested in doing that. HBS approaches this whole idea of entrepreneurship as a great way to teach innovation, whether people go off and decide to run their own company or go into a larger, more established company, they can apply some of the learnings they’ve gained about entrepreneurship at HBS into an existing environment. We talk a lot about the whole process of making sure you have a value proposition that really solves a problem and that outlines the problem and the solution and the product/market fit. And we also talk about how you differentiate yourself from others and how you can take your idea or product to market and test it, in a way, so that you can fail quickly—which is a mantra on the West Coast—and learn from it. Everything we teach can be applied in many different work situations, not just at a start-up. mbaMission: Right. So this may be a potentially sensitive question, but you’ve got a rival across the continent that has about 17% of its graduates starting businesses. How do you explain that disparity? Does that program just attract more entrepreneurial students, or does it perhaps foster entrepreneurship better? Is it simply a matter of different interests? And is geography an advantage or disadvantage? JG: No, that’s okay. [The] Stanford [Graduate School of Business] is in a very unique environment—that whole West Coast environment, where money is flowing very rapidly. People there have a different approach to investing, so students are given more access to funding much faster out in California. I would have to say that is absolutely true, whereas on the East Coast, you’ve got investors who want to see more traction before investing but are still putting the big dollars into investing. It is also important to note that Poets and Quants came out with a list in 2015 of the top 100 companies in the past five years that were funded with more than $2 million, and HBS had 42 companies, versus about 32 for Stanford. Considering our average percentage of students who go into entrepreneurship at about 8% versus Stanford’s 17.5%, HBS is doing pretty well at generating businesses with high potential. So am I surprised at those numbers? No, because I think Stanford’s known as a place to go and start companies, but HBS, in the past five years, has made some significant increases, in large part because of the programs we offer. mbaMission: I want to talk about those programs in a second, but first, does the Rock Center engage with the admissions department at all to ensure that more promising entrepreneurial applicants are coming to campus? JG: We participate in the student interview days, where we give a presentation outlining our programs. So we talk about what those programs are, what kinds of things we do, and the alumni that they [students] have access to. Something like 25% of venture capitalists are HBS grads, and we definitely point those things out and highlight some of our more recent successes, especially in the area of women entrepreneurs. We also are asked occasionally to speak with students who have been admitted to both HBS and Stanford, and we pretty much give them an understanding of how the two schools are different—they need to then decide which school’s culture and atmosphere meet their own interests. mbaMission: So let’s talk about some of the programs that are available through the Rock Center, such as the New Venture Competition. What can you tell us about how students would enter that competition and what happens after that? JG: Sure. That’s definitely one of our flagship programs. We get more than a hundred teams, which is pretty significant, that apply or decide to go on this year-long journey. The whole focus is to encourage students to try out presenting an idea or a concept or a business that they’ve started and to use this opportunity to get extensive feedback and work on the opportunity in a very rigorous and supportive environment. And we really give them help and understanding on issues like how do you go about doing market research to ensure your idea is viable? We also give them something we call a Baker Bootcamp. We have a knowledge and learning services group with amazing databases and resources to basically go and find information on market size and competitors and do all that kind of analysis to show that there is a market and how you’re different from your competitors. We also provide legal clinics on all the questions you have to have answered. How do you incorporate yourself? How do you develop an equity agreement with your founders? How do you go about looking at getting funding or angel funding? And then we have a series of pitch clinics where students can get up and present their ideas to investors who can give them feedback—verbal feedback and written feedback both—that allows them to really refine their ideas and learn to be more effective in their presentation. So all these students, whether they win or not, get that kind of attention if they ask for it, and they all have access to those programs. That’s why we like to call it a journey. And eventually we get to Super Saturday, where we have 140 judges come in and sit in different panels of four to five judges and give these students even more compelling feedback on their ideas. We had a group last year, RapidSOS, that went through the whole process, and that kind of feedback helped support them in winning both the New Venture Competition and the President’s Challenge for Harvard, plus the MIT challenge [the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition]. I think they actually won a variety of other challenges as well. So we have three winners of the competition, but so many students go through the program, and a lot of times they’re first-year students who come back in the second year and make it even further and will be very seasoned presenters by the time they get in front of potential investors. mbaMission: And there’s an alumni version of this as well, right? JG: Yes. We have 14 different regions around the world where this is held, and each region sends a regional finalist to the New Venture Competition finale in April. With the New Venture Competition, we also have a social enterprise track in addition to a business track and an alumni track. The business track is purely about a for-profit business that’s out there to become a profitable venture. And then you have the social enterprise track, which we find is kind of getting murky with respect to the business and the social aspects, because students are looking for things that have significant impact but can also be self-funded in a way that they can just feed money back into the business to support social ventures. And you have the alumni track. mbaMission: On the school’s Web site, I see roughly 20 courses in the second-year elective curriculum that are related to entrepreneurship. Can you tell us about any particular standouts and explain a little why they are so popular with students? JG: Well, one of the most popular classes is “Founder’s Dilemma,” which was created by Noam Wasserman, based on his book and research, and that program is taught by Shikhar Ghosh, who is a senior lecturer here. He has a tremendous amount of people wanting to take his class, and he was one of the founders of Open Market. He was also chairman of the Mass Technology Leadership Council and has founded quite a few different companies. That’s definitely one of the most popular classes. And then we have Tom Eisenmann’s class on “Product Management.” He takes a select group of students and guides them through the whole process of coming up with an idea and doing the customer discovery and launching the product and making sure they’re testing for a minimally viable product. That’s an extremely popular course, and it very much corresponds with some of the programming that we do. Probably another one that’s really popular is Bill Sahlman’s “Entrepreneurial Finance” course, which is always oversubscribed—he could probably add four more sections. He’s a very engaging teacher with a lot of history who’s been here for almost 30 years and has seen a lot of different companies get started. The last one I would mention is Jeff Bussgang, who’s also a senior lecturer here and teaches the “Launching Technology Ventures” course, which is another way oversubscribed course that every student wants to take. And for all these courses, they bring in different case protagonists and people who have gone on to develop very successful opportunities. mbaMission: Great. Can you talk a bit about the Entrepreneurs-in-Residence program? For example, how do students gain access to such accomplished mentors, and are these entrepreneurs really able to dedicate significant time to the program? JG: Sure. The Entrepreneurs-in-Residence program is a tremendous program, and people who are selected as Entrepreneurs-in-Residence [EiRs] are actually appointed by the dean. So they really need to take the role seriously. What they are required to do is hold a minimum of four hours of office hours here on campus each month, and many actually go beyond that. They’ll have the four hours, plus they might Skype with students, or if they’re in for the day, they’ll have office hours all day long. They really are here. They’re on campus. The students—not just HBS students, but all Harvard students—have access to them, and they just love giving back and helping these students become more successful. In many cases, I should say, the EiRs will co-teach a class with a professor as well. That’s actually how Jeff Bussgang and Shikhar Ghosh both got started. They came in as EiRs and started teaching some classes and helping with research. mbaMission: So they enjoyed it and decided to stick around? JG: Yeah. They’re still doing what they’re doing outside of HBS, but they come in and teach these classes, too. And we really encourage our students to go to the different EiR events. We have a big kickoff event with our EiRs and our staff, and we learn a lot from them as well. And many of them also work with our Rock Accelerator Program and work with some of our teams that are much further along in their idea development, providing feedback there. They will be mentors to some of the teams, and they provide a lot of feedback to us on how to refine our programs. mbaMission: Another really interesting program I saw that you offer is the Rock Summer Fellows program, which offers grants to aspiring entrepreneurs so they can sustain themselves over the summer. How many fellows are typically accepted into the program, and can you give a few examples of successes that have emerged from that program? JG: Oh, sure. We had 85 students take advantage of the Rock Summer Fellows program last year. mbaMission: Wow! That’s amazing. JG: Half of those were interested in founding a company, and the other half were students who wanted to join an early-stage start-up. The students founding companies are actually eligible for up to $7,200 to offset expenses while they do their research and build their products over the summer. And the students who were joining early-stage start-ups received up to $7,200 in matching funds as well. In those cases, we asked the start-up to provide funding to the students, but we would go up to $7,200 in matching funds. The whole idea is to support students who want to try different programs or opportunities. The time between their first and second year here really allows them a chance to do something outside their comfort zone, and the school is really committed to providing students with the opportunity to take advantage of those types of things. We also have programs in cities where we have a good concentration of Rock Summer Fellows, such as New York, Boston, and San Francisco. We’ll have social hours with them and connect them with mentors in those cities so that if they have any issues or questions, they can be in touch with someone they can work with. mbaMission: Got it. We talked a little about how entrepreneurship is hot right now and finance was hot for a while. Do you think MBAs ride these kinds of industry waves? Are we just in the midst of an MBA entrepreneurship bubble rather than a broader financial bubble in certain parts of the country? JG: You could say that that might be the case. I was talking to Hayley Barna, a founder of Birchbox, and asked her that question—“What do you think?”—and she said, “You know, Jodi, we started our company when the market was down.” It was after 2010 when she was at business school, and the job market had really tanked, and at that point, she and her partners were like, “Look, we’ll start a company.” I think it’s really interesting. Will there be people who say, “Maybe this isn’t for me?” Absolutely! But I think that in times when the market has really tanked, people tend to want to look for alternatives to traditional jobs. So they will look to starting their own company. It could die down after a while, but I think that people are seeing that there’s tremendous opportunity to write your own career path with entrepreneurship. I think there’s also been a big emphasis on the idea that failure isn’t a bad thing, so people are willing to risk things more in a way that’s “How do I learn from this if it does go south?” But I think it’s interesting. You hear this out in San Francisco, even. The people are saying, “Is the bubble about to burst?” And Tom Eisenman, one of our faculty chairs for the Rock Center, says, “There’s always a bubble lurking out there.” It’s just how you manage through those bubbles or those bursts, I guess. mbaMission: Right. I believe there’s never a bad time to launch a good idea, but I also think there are some companies out there that aren’t real companies and will likely fall apart in the next little while. JG: Sure. I think what we see are students coming in with these bright eyes, thinking, “Hey, I want to start a company.” And they may be excited about the allure of starting a company and what that means, but when it comes down to it, the students who understand that it is hard work beyond anything they’ll ever have to do but are not deterred by this—those are the ones who are going to continue. Some of those students realize that they’re totally up for the challenge, but others might just say, “You know, it sounded good, but it’s not really for me.” And that is totally fine with us. I think when you come here, you get that exposure, and you understand what starting a company is all about. We give students a chance to really try it out and go down that rigorous path—or journey, as we say—and it helps them make a decision whether it’s right for them or not. mbaMission: Absolutely. So, to wrap up, is there anything you’d like people to know about the Rock Center that we haven’t covered? JG: Well, one of the programs we briefly mentioned but that I would really emphasize is the Rock Accelerator Program, which is an incubator program here at HBS for students who really show promising business ideas and have put together a team. We actually give them funding to take their business to the next level. There is no equity involved or anything, but the whole idea is that we give them funding and a lot of really deep support to make sure that they can at least be successful. That program has only been around for about three or four years, and we’ve had 85 students or teams come through it, and they’ve gone on to raise more than $31 million in those three years. And 41% are still working on their start-ups. So that’s a pretty significant effort that’s happening. Another thing that we’re really focused on these days is that while you’re here at HBS, it’s great and everything, and you get a lot of access to resources, but we found that our alumni are really interested in keeping that connection going and finding other HBS alumni who are going through the same kinds of challenges. So we launched a program for alumni that’s called Rock 100, which is really focused on unlocking the power of the HBS network and helping founders connect with each other. We like to say that we’re not just supporting you when you’re a student, we continue that support into the alumni world. mbaMission: Right, fantastic. I really appreciate your time. Thanks so much. JG: No problem. Thank you. The post mbaMission’s Exclusive Interview with Jodi Gernon, Director of Harvard Business School’s Rock Center for Entrepreneurship appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
01 Feb 2016, 09:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Monday Morning Essay Tip: Be Honest, but Avoid Negativity |
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Sincerity. Honesty. Candor. We encourage MBA candidates to incorporate these attributes into their applications, and when they do, successful essays tend to follow. Yet, can an applicant go too far? The answer is “yes,” especially when candor turns to negativity. Sometimes, when MBA candidates believe they are being candid, they are in fact revealing themselves to be predisposed to pessimism; as a result, the admissions committee has difficulty identifying with their file. Such situations are unfortunate, but luckily, they are often also avoidable; an ostensibly “negative” idea can almost always be expressed in a positive and optimistic manner. Example: “In my current position, I am no longer learning and am afraid I will continue to stagnate without my MBA. I cannot achieve my objective of becoming a leader in the marketing department at my firm unless…” Common sense would say that the admissions committee would likely not be very excited about accepting an applicant who believes he/she has stopped learning or that his/her career progress can be thwarted by basic obstacles. Revised Example: “As I look to the future, I recognize that with MBA training, I could dramatically increase my impact on my firm. With an eye toward a leadership position in our marketing department, I am…” In this revised example, the candidate is expressing the exact same need for an MBA in positive terms and is thus making him-/herself a more warm and engaging prospect, while still candidly stating a need for further education. Before submitting your file, check for unnecessarily negative statements. Although we would never suggest that every line in your essays must be full of sunshine, you should certainly take steps to avoid portraying yourself as a pessimist. The post Monday Morning Essay Tip: Be Honest, but Avoid Negativity appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
01 Feb 2016, 12:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: In Other News… MBA Satisfaction, the Changing B-School Landscape, and La Salle’s New $35M Building |
The business school world is constantly buzzing with change and innovation. Each week, in addition to our regular news posts, we briefly touch on a few notable stories from this dynamic field in one roundup. Here is what caught our eye this week:
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02 Feb 2016, 08:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Mission Admission: Be Sincere—the MBA Admissions Committee Will Believe You |
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Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday. Candidates are often skeptical about whether MBA admissions committees will believe their stories. After all, is anyone available to corroborate that what made the difference in a particular situation was truly you—that you had that particular innovative idea? The response to this concern is pretty simple: if what you are describing actually happened, do not worry about credibility. You simply need to write about your experience with sincerity. If you can offer details about the events as part of a narrative, the story will unfold logically and truthfully and will have its desired impact. Conversely, if your story is basic and vague, it will not come across as compelling, regardless of its veracity. An equally important point is that you are innocent until proven guilty. The admissions committee will not assume that you are a liar and read your application seeking proof of facts that are in doubt. The admissions reader will take your stories at face value, recognizing that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction and that strong candidates will stand out on the strength of their experiences. In addition, if you accomplished something truly remarkable, you can always ask your recommender to emphasize this in his/her letter. This does not mean that the committee is seeking proof and that if something is not highlighted in a reference, it will not be believed. Still, your recommender can play an important role in legitimizing certain accomplishments. The post Mission Admission: Be Sincere—the MBA Admissions Committee Will Believe You appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
03 Feb 2016, 08:01
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Professor Profiles: Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School |
Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school, but the educational experience you will have is what is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Each Wednesday, we profile a standout professor as identified by students. Today, we focus on Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School (HBS). With research interests in the areas of technology management and innovation management, Clayton Christensen (MBA ’79, DBA ’92) joined the HBS faculty in 1992, after having cofounded CPS Technologies (where he was chairman and president) in 1984, working as a consultant for Boston Consulting Group (1979–1984), and serving as a White House Fellow (1982–1983). Christensen’s “Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise” course is an elective he designed that shows students how to manage a successful company using theories of strategy and innovation to better understand which tools may be effective in various business situations. Students address such questions as “How can I beat powerful competitors?” and “How can we create and sustain a motivated group of employees?” In 2010, Christensen, who is the author of numerous books—including The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business (Harvard Business Review Press, 1997), The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Harvard Business School Press, 2003), Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (McGraw-Hill, 2008), and How Will You Measure Your Life? (HarperBusiness, 2012)—received an Extraordinary Teaching Award from the HBS Class of 2010 as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award. In both 2011 and 2013, Thinkers50, a ranking released every two years by the consulting group CrainerDearlove, named Christensen the World’s Most Influential Business Thinker, and in 2015, he received an Edison Achievement Award for his contributions to the field of innovation. For more information on the defining characteristics of the MBA program at HBS or one of 15 other top business schools, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides. The post Professor Profiles: Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
03 Feb 2016, 12:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: MakeSpace Founder Sam Rosen Chats About Revolutionizing the Storage Business |
 Sam Rosen, founder and CEO of MakeSpace Today, many aspiring MBAs and MBA graduates want to join start-ups or launch such companies themselves. Is entrepreneurship as exciting as it seems? Is it really for you? mbaMission Founder Jeremy Shinewald has teamed up with Venture for America and CBS Interactive to launch Smart People Should Build Things: The Venture for America Podcast. Each week, Shinewald interviews another entrepreneur so you can hear the gritty stories of their ups and downs on the road to success. What does a podcast host do when a guest is so interesting that time runs out before discussion topics do? He gives the guest a two-part episode, of course! In the first double-episode interview of the series’ history, Sam Rosen, the founder and CEO of the storage solution company MakeSpace, takes Jeremy Shinewald and podcast listeners on a trip through his journey in entrepreneurship. Download or stream both episodes to hear these highlights and more:
The post MakeSpace Founder Sam Rosen Chats About Revolutionizing the Storage Business appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
04 Feb 2016, 08:01
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Beyond the MBA Classroom: MBgAy Party at Michigan Ross |
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When you select an MBA program, you are not just choosing your learning environment, but are also committing to becoming part of a community. Each Thursday, we offer a window into life “beyond the MBA classroom” at a top business school. The student group Out for Business at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business hosted its first school-wide event, called MBgAy, in 2009. The party/fundraiser, which sold out very quickly, was held at a club in Ann Arbor and featured a drag fashion show followed by dancing. Since then, the event has become an annual affair. Profits are split between a selected charity and the club’s scholarship fund for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. One first-year student we interviewed just days after the February 2011 party described the event as a “must see—for everyone.” At the upcoming 2016 event, a portion of the proceeds raised will support the Jim Toy Community Center in Ann Arbor, which provides resources to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and allied local residents. For in-depth descriptions of social and community activities at Michigan Ross and 15 other top MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides. The post Beyond the MBA Classroom: MBgAy Party at Michigan Ross appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
04 Feb 2016, 12:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Diamonds in the Rough: 12-Month MBA in Sustainability at Duquesne |
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MBA applicants can get carried away with rankings. In this series, we profile amazing programs at business schools that are typically ranked outside the top 15. [img]https://www.mbamission.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Duquesne-University’s-Palumbo-Donahue-School-of-Business-300x225.jpg[/img] Appealing to professionals at all stages of their careers, Duquesne University’s Palumbo Donahue School of Business offers an accelerated, 12-month MBA degree with an “integrated” focus on sustainability and the environment. With core course work centered on four foundational areas—social, economic, environmental, and ethical—students gain exposure to the basic problems and frameworks of sustainable development beyond conventional notions of “green” business. In addition, the program includes global study trips, in which students travel abroad to examine global sustainability practices firsthand; two required sustainability consulting projects with sponsoring nonprofit or governmental organizations; and a capstone practicum course that challenges students to develop strategy and management skills. The post Diamonds in the Rough: 12-Month MBA in Sustainability at Duquesne appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
05 Feb 2016, 09:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Friday Factoid: Campus Development at MIT Sloan |
 Building E62 In 2006, MIT’s president at the time, Susan Hockfield, announced a major campus development program that would invest approximately three-quarters of a billion dollars in new and renovated facilities on the school’s 154-acre Cambridge campus, and which included the Sloan School Expansion. This expansion added a new classroom building, E62 (address: 100 Main St.), with approximately 210,000 square feet of space that houses 205 offices, 6 classrooms, more than 30 group study rooms, a dining area, an Executive Education suite, lounge areas, and new, usable outdoor spaces. It was completed in time for the start of classes in fall 2010 and dedicated in May 2011, to coincide with MIT’s 150th anniversary. The classroom building is described on the MIT Web site as “the ‘greenest’ building at MIT.” A student from the Class of 2012, the first class to enter Sloan after the new building opened, described E62 to us at mbaMission as “the social hub at Sloan. It’s where students meet to socialize, eat—the cafeteria provides some of the best food in the neighborhood—and work on class projects. It’s probably one of the more significant things Sloan has done recently, as it provides the ideal networking space not only for students but also for the many professionals who come to check out the new building and recruit MBAs. The new building really adds to the Sloan experience, and I can’t imagine life before it!” For a thorough exploration of what MIT Sloan and other top business schools have to offer, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides. The post Friday Factoid: Campus Development at MIT Sloan appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
06 Feb 2016, 08:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: I Have No Real Options! |
In the late 2000s, Harvard Business School (HBS) made a change to its application essay questions that surprised many. Its previously mandatory “long- and short-term goals” essay prompt changed its focus more broadly to “career vision” and became one of four topic choices from which applicants could select two. Immediately, MBA candidates tried to read between the lines and decipher HBS’s hidden agenda behind the change. As a result, many applicants called us, perplexed, asking, “Every other school asks about goals, so HBS must want to know about them, too. I need to answer the essay question option about career vision, right?” This question, in turn, compelled us to ask rhetorically: Why would HBS make a question an option if the admissions committee expected you to answer it? If it did, why would the school not simply designate the question as mandatory, as it had been previously? We believe that in this case, HBS made the question an option because the admissions committee did not feel that applicants must have a definite career vision to be admitted. Essentially, HBS was saying, “If you have a well-defined career vision that would help us better understand who you are as a candidate, tell us about it. If not, we would love to hear something else that is interesting about you.” Note that HBS no longer poses this particular essay question, but we offer it here as a way of illustrating how candidates can sometimes overthink or misinterpret the “optional” elements of a school’s application. Essay options are just that: options. None of HBS’s essay choices—or those of any other MBA program—are necessarily “right” or “wrong.” The admissions committees are not trying to trick you, nor does a secret answer exist that will guarantee your acceptance. The programs offer multiple essay question options because they know that each applicant is different, and they want to provide an opportunity for each candidate to tell his/her unique story. So, as you approach your essays, focus on what you want to say—not what you think the admissions committee wants to hear. The post MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: I Have No Real Options! appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
07 Feb 2016, 09:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: GMAT Impact: The Master Resource List for Reading Comprehension (Part 4 of 4) |
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With regard to the GMAT, raw intellectual horsepower helps, but it is not everything. In this blog series, Manhattan Prep’s Stacey Koprince teaches you how to perform at your best on test day by using some common sense. Part 1 of this series covered how to read Reading Comprehension (RC), and Part 2 introduced the first two major question types: Main Idea and Specific Detail. In Part 3, we discussed Inference questions and Why questions. If you have not already done so, start by reading those posts, and then continue with this final post in the series.  Put It All Together All right, now you have all the pieces:
Next, test your understanding of the passage on this Inference question, and then try this Why question. Timing As I mentioned earlier, we really do not have much time to read RC passages. Aim for approximately two to two and a half minutes on shorter passages and closer to three minutes for longer ones. Of course, you cannot possibly read everything closely and carefully in such a short time frame—but that is not your goal! Our goal is to get the big picture on that first read-through. Aim to answer main idea questions in roughly one minute. You can spend up to two minutes on the more specific questions. In particular, if you run across an Except question, expect to spend pretty close to two minutes; Except questions nearly always take a while. As always, be aware of your overall time. If you find that you are running behind, skip one question entirely; do not try to save 30 seconds each on a bunch of questions. Also, if RC is your weakest verbal area, and you also struggle with speed, consider guessing immediately on one question per passage and spreading your time over the remaining questions. Great, I Have Mastered RC! Let us test that theory, shall we? Your next step is to implement all these techniques on your next practice test while also managing your timing well. Good luck! The post GMAT Impact: The Master Resource List for Reading Comprehension (Part 4 of 4) appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
08 Feb 2016, 08:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Monday Morning Essay Tip: Captivate with Experience, Not Extreme Descriptions |
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This week, we discuss an oxymoron of sorts: extreme humility. One candidate could be more humble than the next, we imagine, but one could never refer to oneself as “extremely humble,” because doing so would undermine the very claim to humility. Our philosophy at mbaMission is that candidates should let their experiences, not just their word choices, captivate the admissions committees. Sometimes we find that applicants attempt to emphasize their actions with “extreme” adjectives and adverbs—an approach we strongly discourage. Example: “As others withdrew their support, I remained remarkably dedicated to our crucial fundraising efforts. I dramatically increased my participation in our strategic planning meetings and insisted that we push forward with a wildly creative guerrilla marketing plan, which brought forth tremendous results—$1M in ‘instant’ proceeds.” In these two sentences, the writer uses the descriptors “remarkably,” “dramatically,” “wildly,” and “tremendous” to make his impression. We find that a more effective approach is to eliminate these “extreme” descriptions and let the experiences do the “talking.” Example: “As others withdrew their support, I remained dedicated to our fundraising efforts. I increased my participation in our strategic planning meetings and insisted that we push forward with a guerrilla marketing plan that brought $1M in ‘instant’ proceeds.” In this second example, the writer does not need to say that the results were “tremendous,” because the $1M in proceeds speaks for itself; we do not need to be told that the marketing campaign was “wildly creative,” because this is implied in the nature of guerrilla marketing. In addition to truly showing a level of humility on the part of the candidate, this approach is also less wordy. Although the eight words saved in the latter example may seem inconsequential, we removed them from only two sentences. If you can remove four words from every sentence in your original draft, you could significantly but humbly augment your essay with other compelling ideas. The post Monday Morning Essay Tip: Captivate with Experience, Not Extreme Descriptions appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
09 Feb 2016, 08:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Mission Admission: What About European Business Schools? |
Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday. Cambridge Judge Business School This week, we consider another option for MBA candidates looking to broaden their business school choices: European business schools. Although many applicants who are competing for places at the top U.S. business schools are well aware of the strengths of the MBA programs at INSEAD and London Business School, even more options are available beyond these two, including IESE, ESADE, Oxford (Said), and Cambridge (Judge). These four schools in particular have been aggressively playing “catch-up” with their better-known brethren by raising funds and dedicating them to scholarships and to enhancing their global brands. Those who know their business schools are also aware that IMD offers a boutique MBA program with remarkable international diversity, very highly regarded academics, and a stellar reputation with international employers. So, numerous options are available, and each can be explored on its own academic merit, but is earning your MBA in Europe, in itself, a good choice for you? For many, the key issue in determining this is where they would like to be after completing their education. If you are seeking to work in Europe, then clearly, these schools offer an advantage over all but the top five or six schools in the United States—Harvard Business School, for example, can probably open as many doors in Europe as INSEAD can. However, if you are seeking to work in the States, then the European schools will not provide the pipeline of opportunities that a top-ranked American school could provide, particularly for those who hope to work in a niche industry or with a company that is not a well-known international brand. Still, beyond the employment picture, studying abroad offers intrinsic value. Spending two years in London, Fontainebleau, or Lausanne could certainly be its own reward. The post Mission Admission: What About European Business Schools? appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
09 Feb 2016, 10:01
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Wharton To Release Interview Invitations Today |
The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania plans to send out Round 2 interview invitations today, and once again the school is using its team-based discussion format to evaluate MBA candidates, in place of a traditional business school admissions interview. Understandably, Wharton applicants get anxious about this atypical interview, because the approach creates a very different dynamic from what one usually encounters in a one-on-one meeting—and with other applicants also in the room, one cannot help but feel less in control of the content and direction of the conversation. Yet despite the uncertainty, here are a few things that interviewees can expect:
To give candidates the opportunity to undergo a realistic test run before experiencing the actual event, we created our Team-Based Discussion Simulation. Via this simulation, applicants participate anonymously with three to five other MBA candidates in an online conversation, which is moderated by two of our experienced Senior Consultants familiar with Wharton’s format and approach. All participants then receive feedback on their performance, with special focus on their interpersonal skills and communication abilities. The simulation builds confidence by highlighting your role in a team, examining how you communicate your ideas to—and within—a group of (equally talented) peers, and discovering how you react when you are thrown “in the deep end” and have to swim. Our Wharton Team-Based Discussion Simulation allows you to test the experience so you will be ready for the real thing! To learn more or sign up for a session, visit our Wharton Team-Based Discussion Simulation page. The post Wharton To Release Interview Invitations Today appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
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Hi Generic [Bot],
Here are updates for you:
ANNOUNCEMENTS
 Wednesday, Apr 24, 2024 11:30am NY / 3:30pm London / 9pm Mumbai Watch earlier episodes of DI series below EP1: 6 Hardest Two-Part Analysis Questions EP2: 5 Hardest Graphical Interpretation Questions
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AGSM at UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE
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