International MBA Students React to Executive Order

Could a ban on travel from certain countries adversely impact MBA students?

Read about Harvard Business School’s phenomenal fundraising goals, the do’s and don’ts of group interviewing, and why international MBA students are worrying over Trump’s recent executive order. Here’s the latest on the management education landscape.

Harvard Business School surpasses $1B in fundraising

You’ve got to give it to Harvard Business School. In additional to being a top destination for aspiring MBAs and typically landing towards the top of every major MBA rankings lists, it’s also a fundraising juggernaut. The school announced last week that it’s raising an additional $300M before its fundraising campaign ends next year—after it already raised $1B a year early! HBS has the largest endowment of any business school, standing at $3.3B, more than twice the amount of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Management’s $1.4B, which is not small change either.

“As we look to the next two years, we have identified an additional goal of $300 million we seek to raise, reflecting the importance of sustaining the initiatives we have launched, providing future flexibility, and strengthening the core,” says HBS Dean Nitin Nohria. The money will go to support priorities such as financial aid, faculty research and sprucing up the residential campus. (Poets & Quants)

The group interview

As any MBA student will tell you, business school experience includes a lot of group work and collaborative projects. It makes sense, considering that you will have to work with many different people with diverging backgrounds and interests once you enter the business world. This explains why, naturally, business school admissions officers want to see how you operate in a group. That’s where the group interview comes in. Keep in mind there are some real difference between the group interview and the solo interview. Here are some pointers.

Do’s:

• Prepare beforehand. Gather together a few friends and/or family members for a mock interview.
• Prioritize the group’s goals. Forget petty differences and perceived personality clashes. Put your goal front and center. Groups that work together will impress admissions officers.

Don’ts:

• Eliminate any need to be the center of attention and dominate. Let others speak. No need to show them you are “the smartest person in the room.”
• Don’t let poor body language send the wrong signal. This means not making eye contact and folding your arms. These types of gestures will put others off. (U.S. News & World Report)

Finding a truly international experience

If you want the ultimate international business school experience, look no further than Maastricht School of Management (MSM) in the Netherlands. For starters, its location is historic. In 1992, several Western European states signed a treaty there which paved the way for the integration of the Continent, leading to the current European Union. Perhaps because of that history, MSM’s 100 percent of full-time MBAs there come from all over the world. Like many other European business school programs that emphasize international recruiting, it only lasts one year—in contrast with American programs, which generally last two years.

“Our students come from across the world, and so do our faculty,” says the school’s dean, Prof. Wim Naudé, a native of South Africa. “We also run joint MBA programs across the world in emerging economies such as China, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Kuwait, Egypt, Ethiopia, Romania, Peru and collaborate in education and research with institutions in advanced economies such as the UK, USA, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. We learn from these countries, share experiences, and adapt the content of our curricula to suit local needs.” (BusinessBecause)

Executive order may impact some MBA students

Call it a “ban.” Call it a “pause.” Whatever it is, it’s having an impact on the MBA students in the United States who come from one of the seven predominantly Islamic countries named in President Donald Trump’s executive order. Meet Saaedah Shiravany (an alias), a native of Iran who attends a top business school in the U.S. A mandatory part of her coursework is an overseas corporate assignment. Her fear is that if she leaves the United States to meet this requirement, she won’t be able to return. “This ban has robbed me of the experience I came here to have,” she says.

Research has shown that while the executive order has already affected tens of thousands, relatively few MBA students are presently affected. Less than half a percent of all overseas business school students at 80 U.S. business schools covered by the the Financial Times’ rankings are citizens of the countries targeted in the executive order. (Financial Times)

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