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Limited work experience? You can still make your business school application stand out.
Which business schools come out on top in the latest MBA rankings? How can you impress the admissions committee when you have limited work experience? Why are so many applicants still plagiarizing their essays? Learn the answers to these questions and more in our roundup of top business school news.
Poets & Quants MBA rankings
Business school blog Poets & Quants has released its latest MBA rankings. Taking the number one spot is a familiar name: Harvard Business School. According to the rankings, “No rival beats Harvard in the formidable resources it brings to the game: more superstar professors than any other school, the diversity of its course offerings, the stellar quality of its students, the size and scope of its campus, and the career achievements of its alumni spread all over the world.” We at Kaplan encourage you to look at the rest of their list and the reasoning for it. Remember that a school’s ranking alone should not determine where you ultimately apply and enroll. Even top-ranked business schools and the publishers of MBA rankings will tell you that. It should be one of many key factors that influence this important decision. (Poets & Quants)
Applying without work experience
One of the things that business school admissions officers look for in an applicant is relevant work experience. It’s an important admissions factor, but not as important as, say, your GMAT score or undergraduate GPA. With that in mind, ANYTHING that helps you positively stand out in the application process is a plus. So, what do you do if you have limited working experience? Highlight leadership, for example. Another thing to keep in mind is that many business schools want to recruit applicants directly from undergraduate institutions, so lack of work experience may be something they are not too concerned about. (U.S. News & World Report)
Admissions essay plagiarism
Despite dire warnings from business school admissions offices that plagiarizing on your personal essays will get you automatically dinged, applicants are still doing it. This insight comes from Carrie Marcinkevage, MBA managing director at at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business. She expresses incredulity about the whole thing. “The audience, those who are seeking admission to an MBA program, changes every year. You can never ask the question, ‘When will they learn?’ You start dealing with things as the standard state of affairs.” She points out that anti-plagiarism efforts haven’t reduced the number of cheaters, BUT they have had the effect of admitting fewer cheaters into the classroom. “If you stop it at the door, there is less plagiarism in the classroom, and hopefully, less plagiarism in the workplace,” she says. (Fortune)
Indian business schools
India is home to some of the most exciting, innovative MBA programs in the world and boasts a six-decade long history of business school education. So, what it explains its lack of real estate on global MBA rankings lists? One key reason: Graduates in India earn lower salaries than graduates from U.S. business schools. For example, the graduating cohort of IIM Ahmedabad had an average annual salary of about $33,000, only about a quarter of that reported by graduates of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Indian analysts give other reasons too. (The Wall Street Journal)
Record compensation
It’s good to be a new graduate from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. The school just reported that members of the class of 2015 landed record-breaking pay packages of $160,287. This record compensation package comes on the heels of a 4% jump in median base pay—up to $130,000—after being stagnant for several years. Bonus pay jumped a whopping 67% to $52,500. Yes, average pay is something to consider when thinking about where to apply to business schools! Keep in mind that other business schools recently reported pay bumps too, signaling a strengthening job market. (Poets & Quants)
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The post HBS Tops MBA Rankings, Stanford Grads Earn More appeared first on Business School Insider.
