{"id":52327,"date":"2021-06-13T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-13T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/?p=52327"},"modified":"2021-06-13T04:32:41","modified_gmt":"2021-06-13T11:32:41","slug":"all-about-becoming-a-georgetown-mcdonough-mba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/all-about-becoming-a-georgetown-mcdonough-mba\/","title":{"rendered":"All About Becoming a Georgetown McDonough MBA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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What every applicant to Georgetown McDonough should know [Show summary]<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Shelly Heinrich, Associate Dean of MBA Admissions at Georgetown McDonough<\/a>, explores what\u2019s new with the school\u2019s full-time and flex MBA programs and how applicants can stand out to the admissions committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make your application to Georgetown McDonough shine! [Show notes]<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Interested in an MBA focused on international business with rigorous academics and a supportive collaborative culture? Pull up a chair. Today\u2019s guest is the Dean of Admissions at Georgetown McDonough\u2019s MBA program, and it fits your bill perfectly.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shelly Heinrich is Associate Dean of MBA Admissions and Director of Marketing at Georgetown\u2019s McDonough School of Business. Shelly has been leading Georgetown\u2019s admissions efforts since 2014 and became Associate Dean in 2017. She earned her BBA from Texas Christian University, her master\u2019s in educational administration from UT Austin, and her executive MBA from Georgetown McDonough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you give us an overview of Georgetown\u2019s full-time and flex MBA programs for those listeners who aren\u2019t that familiar with these programs, and focus on their more distinctive elements? [2:13]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The great thing about our full-time and flex program is that they are both 54-credit degrees, and they both follow the same exact curriculum. You have the same access to the career center, which is unique sometimes for a part-time MBA<\/a>, the same access to professors and the global consulting experience. The real difference is the timing and the format. The full-time MBA is a standard full-time MBA. It\u2019s 20 months with an internship the summer between year one and year two. Our flex MBA program, you can complete in two and a half to five years, really crafting your own schedule. If you want to take two to three classes at a time, you can speed it up. If you want to stretch it out, taking maybe one or two classes at a time, you can do that as well. With the flex MBA, you also have different course delivery options in order to make it more flexible. You can choose between electives that are on Saturday, that are in the evening, that are hybrid and also do more of our intensive learning experiences, the intense one-week electives to get an entire credit knocked out. You do have a little bit more flexibility. But in general, both are standard MBAs and when you graduate, your degree says \u201cMBA.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s new at McDonough, other than the pandemic and the new reality that we\u2019re all dealing with? [3:35]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

What I love so much about Georgetown and our Dean Almeida is his energy. Even while we were dealing with the pandemic, we were still continuing to forge ahead and launch the new initiatives that we had wanted to launch and then even launch some new ones. We launched in December our MBA advanced access program, which is our deferral program<\/a>. We launched an MBA mentorship program, which is a mentorship program between alumni and MBA students to get professional mentorship and guidance. Our students launched a McDonough Talks podcast to give you the real story of what it\u2019s like to be a student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, because of the pandemic, we launched operation cura personalis. We have the academics, you have the career, and then you have the community aspect of an MBA. Operation cura personalis is true to our Jesuit roots and focuses on cura personalis, which is \u201ccare of the whole person,\u201d and looks at programming that we could bring to our students to develop the mind, body, and spirit. What is it that makes you a successful leader? Yes, it\u2019s functional intelligence and certainly career aspiration and motivation, but you also have to have the rest of yourself that you develop as a leader so that you can be an effective leader of your team. A lot\u2019s been launched over the last year, which is really exciting and just one of the great things I love about McDonough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are some of the elements of cura personalis? [5:05]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We realized shortly after a few months into the pandemic that, yes, we\u2019ve always embodied the care of the whole person, the cura personalis. To be an effective leader, you have to understand how to lead people with empathy and to take care of them as a person and to make sure their mental health, their wellbeing, their spiritual wellbeing, if they have a spiritual wellbeing, that you\u2019re thinking about and taking care of that, because ultimately that will lead you to be a more resilient and a more effective leader. We\u2019ve brought in diverse programming, everything from sleep seminars, recognizing that sleep has a great output on your effectiveness, to things like yoga, things like meditation, comedy shows, different speakers coming in to talk about different ways that you can improve yourself as a person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way I think of it is, yes, right now you may be in the middle level of your career or maybe the entry level of your career. But one day you might be managing 300 people or 20 people or 500 people or thousands of people, and to get the most out of your people, you should reflect back on those things that make them strong personally and that allow them to take care of their staff and employees. It\u2019s been great, and they\u2019ve opened it up not just as students but to staff and faculty. And because of the success we had at McDonough, other parts of the university are implementing it as well. That is something that we will actually take into next year, post-pandemic. We realized students really appreciate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How have the pandemic restrictions affected the MBA experience and program at Georgetown McDonough? [6:49]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Every week has been exciting and has changed, and we\u2019ve had to problem-solve. Maybe \u201cexciting\u201d is not the right word, but change is. Right now, any MBA student that wants to be on campus, who has met the COVID testing protocol of the university, is able to be on campus. Now, not every professor is teaching on campus at this point, but any student that wants to be can. That\u2019s where we are now. When we started a year ago, we were very much virtual. This time last year and in the spring, we were very much virtual. We went into the fall in a hybrid model, with international students being on campus. It really wasn\u2019t until the spring semester that domestic students who met COVID protocols could be on campus. The president has just announced in the fall that we will be back in person. We\u2019re really excited and planning towards that. He\u2019s also announced an in-person graduation, so that\u2019s exciting. He just announced it a couple of weeks ago. What that looks like, we\u2019re still figuring out, but we will be in person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are certainly students who this year decided to stay at home, to stay in their home state or home country. Not every student is physically living in DC because the changes were announced mid-semester, but the students that want to be are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students can have casual interactions? The cafeteria is open, the lounges are open, the clubs are meeting, etc., for those people who are on campus? Or are there still restrictions in that regard? [8:34]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A lot of the social activities are still, at least those that are sponsored by Georgetown, very restricted. Those are still virtual. Any type of club activities, career activities, anything like that is still virtual. The focus has really been on the classes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What don\u2019t people know about Georgetown McDonough that you would like them to know? What\u2019s a common misconception or myth that you\u2019d like to puncture? [9:09]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Every year we try to dispel these myths, but I think they continue to be here. There\u2019s three, really. One is that because we\u2019re in Washington DC, we\u2019re more of a public policy-focused MBA program, which is so far from the truth. The highest percentage of our graduates still go into finance and consulting and technology. Yes, we do have perhaps a larger percentage than other schools that will pursue social impact or nonprofit, but it\u2019s a small sliver, typically 3% or 4%. At our core, we are an MBA program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related to that, people assume, and maybe this is the case for all MBA programs, but they assume that most of our alumni go to work in DC after graduation. But we are a global program. Our alumni go all over the world, where employers and jobs take them. We\u2019re very much a global alumni program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then the third: People are interested to learn, \u201cWhat does Jesuit education mean? If I\u2019m not Catholic, if I\u2019m Hindu or Muslim or not practicing a faith, what does that mean?\u201d Jesuit education is focused on the learning and the care of the whole person. We have people of all different faiths. Our deans, our faculty, our students, and staff come from all different backgrounds<\/a>. It\u2019s a very welcoming, inclusive environment that focuses on the teaching and the well-roundedness versus the religious aspect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n