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07 Oct 2014, 10:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: MBA Career Advice: Getting Personal, Part 2 |
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In this weekly series, our friends at MBA Career Coaches will be dispensing invaluable advice to help you actively manage your career. Topics include building your network, learning from mistakes and setbacks, perfecting your written communication, and mastering even the toughest interviews. For more information or to sign up for a free career consultation, visit www.mbacareercoaches.com. Last week, we discussed the importance of a personal section of a resume – a section which can potentially allow you to find common ground with your interviewer before you arrive in his/her office. Today, we go a little deeper and help you overcome the big mistake that candidates make in this section – stating their personal interest in incredibly vague terms. Let’s take a look at a sample personal section: Personal
The key to writing a strong personal section (and any section, for that matter) is getting down to details. You don’t need to write about a hobby that is wildly different. You just need to reveal that you have an inordinate passion for the hobbies that you have chosen. Let’s do a little bit better by expanding on these hobbies above: Personal
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07 Oct 2014, 15:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Mission Admission: Visit Your Target Business Schools |
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Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday. Every year, we get many inquiries from MBA candidates who have just started the application process and are curious about whether they should invest the time and resources needed to visit their target programs. Is visiting really worth the effort? Will doing so impress the admissions committee(s)? Of course, one thing to keep in mind is that a class visit has tremendous relevance beyond the formal admissions process—it is a chance for you to give the school a thorough “test drive.” You probably would not invest $30,000 in a car without driving it first, would you? So why would you commit to spending two years of your life, many years as an alumnus/alumna, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct and opportunity costs without first knowing what you are getting? We do not think that you need to visit at all costs, however. If you have limited funds or time, you should not deplete your resources by visiting. You have many other ways of getting to know your target schools without traveling to campus, such as Web sites, podcasts, conversations with alumni, and outreach events. However, if you do have the time and money, we strongly recommend that you travel to your target schools and gain that firsthand experience—a brief trip could pay a lifetime of dividends. |
08 Oct 2014, 12:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Professor Profiles: Sharon Oster, Yale School of Management |
Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school to attend, but the educational experience itself 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 profile Sharon Oster from the Yale School of Management. A second-year student we interviewed at the Yale School of Management (SOM) remarked that Sharon Oster (“Competitive Strategy”) “loves teaching almost more than [she loved] being dean!” Oster is the Frederic D. Wolfe Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship and has taught “Basics of Economics,” part of the first-year core—for a while giving everyone, as one second year told mbaMission, “a chance to get cold-called by their dean!” Oster’s expertise lies in economics and nonprofit management. She is the author of several widely used business school textbooks, including Modern Competitive Analysis (Oxford University Press, third edition, 1999), and has co-authored introductory economics texts such as Principles of Microeconomics (with Karl E. Case and Ray C. Fair; Prentice Hall, tenth edition, 2011) and Principles of Economics (with Karl E. Case and Ray C. Fair; Prentice Hall, tenth edition, 2011). In addition, Oster is an expert in nonprofit management. Her text Strategic Management for Nonprofit Organizations: Theory and Cases (Oxford University Press, 1995) is used in the SOM course “Non-Profit Management,” which a second year described to mbaMission as “always heavily oversubscribed.” For more information about the Yale SOM and 15 other top-ranked business schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides. |
08 Oct 2014, 17:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Our Favorite Advice from MBA Admissions Directors, Part 2 |
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At mbaMission, we constantly strive to learn more about what makes a successful application and what the leading schools want—and do not want—from prospective students. To accomplish this, we communicate regularly with admissions directors at the top MBA programs, and in this two-part blog series, we want to share with you some of our favorite advice we have collected from these experts over the past few application seasons. Liz Riley Hargrove, Associate Dean for Admissions at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business “It’s incredibly important to be authentic in this process. The worst thing an applicant can do in the business school application process is to misrepresent who they are and what they’ve done. You don’t have to be anyone other than who you are, but you do have to be able to articulate your story. You are more than your GMAT score or the sum of your years of work experience. We may admit students who have lower GMAT scores because they are amazing in all other aspects of their candidacy. We may also deny candidates with very high GMAT scores because they are one-dimensional and are not as competitive on those other important dimensions. Applicants really have to take the time to understand what our program is about and then make the connections throughout their application. Be who you are.” Hima Bindu, Associate Director of Admissions and Financial Aid at the Indian School of Business “Inconsistencies in performance, immaturity, and lack of focus as to why they want to do an MBA are a few pointers that spell trouble. Chance is that many applicants see an MBA more as a natural progression than as a conscious choice which adds value to their career and business. If essays and recommendations of the student are things that speak volumes about the skills he or she is going to bring to the table, a history of no achievements, awards or credentials holds up the red flag.” Amanda Carlson, Assistant Dean of Admissions at Columbia Business School “One thing that raises not a red flag but more like a yellow flag is when somebody’s really interested in making a career change—and I know that a lot of people come to business school to make a career change—but there needs to be some consistency in their story. So if … somebody wants to go from working in marketing at a financial services company to working in real estate development, what can they claim that shows demonstrated commitment to this interest in real estate development? I mean, is there volunteer work? Is there academic background? Are there continuing education classes? Is there a membership in some type of professional organization that would show that this is actually coming from some place genuine and it’s not just a pie-in-the-sky idea of what they think they might want to do with their MBA?” Dustin Cornwell, Director of MBA Admissions at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University “If you look at any of the schools in the top ten, for example, or even the top 30, you’re going to get a great education at just about any of them. In terms of the faculty there, in terms of the resources the schools can provide, you’re very likely to get a good education and learn a lot at any of those programs. What you have to kind of drill down and look at, though, is what experience do you want? Some people thrive in a large environment. They want to meet a lot of people. They want to have hundreds of companies recruiting on campus. They really want that type of an experience, and there are a number of schools that have anywhere from 300 to upward of 800 students per class. That might be a great fit for that type of student. We hear a lot of our candidates say, ‘I want that personal attention. I want to have a small class size. I want to know my classmates. I want to know my professors personally, and I want to make sure that I’m not lost in the crowd.’ And so a [smaller] program … fits that person well. They’re able to know their classmates very well and to really have an impact on campus, maybe be a club leader, maybe get involved in student government and leave their mark on the school. So I think you can use rankings as a starting point, but you really have to look a lot more closely at other factors when you’re making a decision.” Isser Gallogly, Assistant Dean of MBA Admissions at the Stern School of Business at New York University “You should really have a super clear goal when you’re applying to … business school. I don’t know why anyone would make a $100,000 or so investment in anything without carefully reading the prospectus and doing a lot of investigation. There are those who haven’t researched themselves, their future careers, and also haven’t researched the schools. You can tell people who are just throwing applications out there to everybody versus those who have taken the time to do it right. All the great schools are going to give you a great education and opportunities, but there are schools where you’re going to excel, where you are going to thrive and become the best you can be, and there are other places where it’s going to be a bad fit. People really need to investigate a lot more than they think they do. There is nothing like going and visiting the school, even if it has to be virtually.” Rodrigo Malta, Director of MBA Admissions at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin “I always advise applicants to take a close look at the letter of recommendation process and make sure that they’re selecting the right people to be their recommenders, making sure that their recommenders are able to really talk about why they want an MBA and what their differentiators are. Probably the biggest flag that we see is whenever we open those letters of recommendation, and they’re either very skimpy or negative. Letters of recommendation are outside of the applicant’s control from a writing perspective, but the applicants do have a say in who they select and what they’re able to share about their candidacy with those folks that write them.” Niki da Silva, Director of MBA Recruitment and Admissions at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management “I think the worst thing people can do is not be authentic. I’m not sure why [applicants do this]. I know candidates continue to do it, but you just think, you’re going to be in this program for two years of your life, and it’s going to be exhausting to have to be someone that you’re not. So just embrace who you are and have fun with it.” Soojin Kwon, Director of Admissions at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan “There are two main things [applicant mistakes] that come to mind. On their resumes: applicants often give us a job description or a list of responsibilities rather than highlighting results and impact. The second common mistake I see is that applicants use the essays to tell us about us rather than themselves. They cite a laundry list of classes, clubs, and faculty in their essays—sometimes from the wrong school—and use that as evidence of school research without really understanding what they’re about. We already know what we’re about. What we want to know is what the applicant is about and why he or she will benefit from and contribute to our community.” Sara Neher, Assistant Dean of MBA Admissions at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia “Never be afraid to interview because you think it’s going to be competitive. Don’t try to differentiate yourself from others; try to be your best self. These are sort of cliché, but people get caught up in ‘There are so many consultants applying’ or ‘There are so many bankers applying.’ I still want the best and most interesting bankers or the best and most interesting consultants, so don’t let that dissuade you.” Bruce DelMonico, Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions at the Yale School of Management “One thing I frequently tell people when asked is, we’re good at reading applications and we know that everybody has weaknesses. Very few candidates are strong across the board in every respect, and I think there’s a tendency for applicants to run away from the weaknesses to try to avoid them and hide from them, which is a natural tendency. But actually, what I find so very refreshing, and actually can be a net positive, is for applicants to actually address their weaknesses. Not dwell on them. You don’t want to lead with the weakness necessarily, but try to explain it and contextualize it, and I think applicants who do that in a good way and can do that successfully—actually, they stand out in a number of regards. It shows self-awareness, it shows interest in self-improvement, and it really can put someone in a much better position in terms of their application. One of the things I tell people is a lot of the time, if we see a weakness, if we see a gap—for example, you don’t have a recommendation from your current supervisor even though we ask for one—and you don’t explain that, we’ll likely draw a negative interpretation based on that. But if you explain it for us and contextualize it and make us understand why that’s the case, we’ll be much more forgiving.” |
09 Oct 2014, 10:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: B-School Chart of the Week: Which MBA Ranking Do You Trust the Most? |
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Although quantifying a school’s profile certainly does not tell you everything, it can sometimes be helpful in simplifying the many differences between the various MBA programs. Each week, we bring you a chart to help you decide which of the schools’ strengths speak to you. We recently surveyed a number of visitors to our site to get a feel for the concerns, plans, and mind-sets of this season’s MBA applicants. Now the results are in, and for those who are curious about their fellow applicants’ views on business school, we will be sharing some of the collected data in our B-School Chart of the Week blog series. As part of our informal survey this year, we posed the question “Which business school ranking/survey do you trust the most?” Given that Bloomberg Businessweek has long been considered by many the premier MBA ranking, we were quite surprised to see that only 5.1% of responders picked it as their most trusted source. Instead, a whopping 46.1% indicated that they view the U.S. News & World Report survey as the most trustworthy, while the Poets & Quants aggregate received the next greatest percentage of the votes, with 33.3%. With just 10.2% and 5.1% of responses, respectively, the Financial Times and The Economist rounded out the survey. 
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09 Oct 2014, 13:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Beyond the MBA Classroom: TG(IF) at Kellogg |
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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. TG is an abbreviation of the longer abbreviation TGIF (aka “Thank God It’s Friday”) and is the name of a popular weekly social event at Kellogg, hosted by various student clubs throughout the year. Held in the school’s atrium, TG is an opportunity for students to wind down the week with beers and appetizers and to interact with professors and members of Kellogg administration in an informal atmosphere. The event attracts primarily first-year students, but second years are known to occasionally make an appearance as well. For in-depth descriptions of social and community activities at Kellogg and 15 other top MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides. |
09 Oct 2014, 19:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Diamonds in the Rough: Experiential Learning at the Carlson School of Management |
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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. With 20 Fortune 500 companies located nearby—including UnitedHealth Group, Target, and U.S. Bancorp—the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management boasts a robust network of corporate ties and high-profile recruiting opportunities. In fact, the Twin Cities placed first in Forbes’s 2011 rankings of the best U.S. cities for finding employment. Carlson also prepares its students with a pronounced hands-on approach to building leadership, management, and problem-solving skills. Among the school’s more distinctive offerings, Carlson’s four Enterprise programs expose students to the areas of brand, consulting, funds, and ventures. The Enterprise learning experience is rather unique insofar as it operates as a full professional services firm, serving multiple clients and allowing students to work through real-world business challenges with senior management at major companies. In the Brand Enterprise program, for example, Carlson students have developed key marketing strategies for such brands as Cargill, Boston Scientific, Target, 3M, General Mills, and Land O’Lakes. Students in the Consulting Enterprise program have offered services to such companies as Best Buy, Northwest Airlines Cargo, Medtronic CRM Division, and Polaris. With $38 million in managed assets, the Carlson Funds Enterprise program places among the three largest student-managed funds in the world. Finally, the Carlson Ventures Enterprise program puts aspiring entrepreneurs in contact with experts, professionals, and investors. |
10 Oct 2014, 12:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Friday Factoid: Faculty Mentoring and Development at HBS |
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Harvard Business School (HBS) is well known for using the case method, through which virtually all the school’s classes are taught. Rather than resting on their laurels with regard to teaching the case method, however, HBS faculty members work hard to stay at the top of their game. Complementing the school’s tradition of faculty-to-faculty mentoring, HBS established the C. Roland Christensen Center for Teaching and Learning (named for the late HBS professor) in 2004 to promote and support teaching excellence and innovation. The center conducts research on pedagogical innovation and teaching effectiveness related to gender and diversity issues and helps faculty members refine their teaching styles and techniques. The center also offers professors classroom observations and the opportunity to do pre-class planning, receive within-term troubleshooting/post-term feedback, and conduct case and course development. For more information on HBS or 15 other leading MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides. |
10 Oct 2014, 17:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: Round 1 Is Everything |
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Many MBA admissions officers will tell candidates that if they can complete their applications and submit them in Round 1, then they should do so. Most programs will also tell candidates that they should try to avoid Round 3, because the majority of the places in their classes will have been filled by then. So, what does that say about Round 2? A strange trend seems to have manifested: candidates have been calling mbaMission to ask whether submitting an application in Round 2 is worth the effort or whether the opportunity has passed at that point. Unfortunately, when one is being compared against a group of unknown competitors, being concerned about every perceived difference or deficiency is only natural. Some candidates grow concerned if they are a year older than the average at their target school, while others fret if they are a year younger. Many applicants worry if their GMAT score is ten points below a school’s average. And, of course, some worry about submitting their application in Round 2. However, the overall strength of your candidacy, which is a measure of many factors, is far more important than where you fit in relation to any single statistic—not to mention whether you apply in Round 1 or 2. So, although we would encourage candidates to apply early, if they are ready, we do not believe anyone should give up on their MBA dreams for a year if applying in Round 1 is just not practical. You may be surprised to discover that admissions committees encourage early applications but also concede that the difference in selectivity between the first and the second rounds is very small. To back up this statement, we offer a small selection of quotes from mbaMission’s exclusive interviews with admissions officers: “People ask, generally, is it better to apply in the first round or the second round or third round? We definitely advise people to avoid the third round if possible, because space can become an issue by the time the third round rolls around. But we do view the first two rounds as roughly equivalent.” – Bruce DelMonico, Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions, Yale School of Management “[We] get about a third of our applications in Round 1, about 55% in Round 2, and the remainder in Round 3 … We encourage people to submit their application when they feel that they offer their best possible applications. … So, if you can get everything lined up and completed and you feel really good about it …, then I would encourage you to apply in Round 1. But if it takes you a bit longer, and you want to take the time to look at your application again and maybe have somebody else look at it, then Round 2 is fine, too.” – Soojin Kwon, Director of Admissions, Michigan–Ross “We look at statistics over the years—how many applications we got, how many we admitted, and how many we yielded—and we try to even it out so we’re not being too generous in one round at the expense of another round.” – Dawna Clarke, Director of MBA Admissions, Dartmouth–Tuck |
11 Oct 2014, 12:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: MBA News: Full-Time MBA Applications Up for Second Year in a Row |
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According to statistics released recently by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), applications to full-time graduate programs are up for the second consecutive year. The 2014 Application Trends Survey—which contains data from more than 300 schools and nearly 750 graduate business and management programs worldwide—shows that 61% of two-year, full-time MBA programs report growing or stable application numbers for 2014 – 2015 (up from 50% of schools reporting growth last year). This development offers encouragement to B-school deans worried about the rising popularity of online offerings. In an interview with the Financial Times after the report’s release, GMAC president Sangeet Chowfla stated, “This echoes other research that tells us how highly students value their two-year MBA degrees for the personal, professional, and financial advantages it conveys.” |
12 Oct 2014, 12:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: GMAT Impact: How to Solve Any Sentence Correction Problem, Part 1 |
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With respect to the GMAT, raw intellectual horsepower helps, but it is not everything. In this blog series, Manhattan GMAT’sStacey Koprince teaches you how to perform at your best on test day by using some common sense. Manhattan GMAT has been developing a new process for Sentence Correction (SC). Read on and let us know what you think! The Five Steps for Sentence Correction The full article on the MGMAT blog goes into more detail on each step. 1. Take a First Glance 2. Read the Sentence 3. Find a Starting Point 4. Eliminate Answers 5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 As with any process, you will sometimes decide to deviate for some good reason. For most questions, though, you will follow this basic process. In this post, I briefly introduce each step, but the full article goes into more detail, so make sure to follow up by reading that. 1. First Glance The idea here is to take a “holistic” glance at the entire screen: let your eyes go slightly out of focus (do NOT read!), look at about the middle of whatever text is on the screen, and take in three things: – the problem type (in this case, SC) – the length of the whole sentence – the length of the underline (or the length of the answers) This first glance will help you formulate a plan of attack. 2. Read the Sentence Next, read the sentence as a complete sentence, not just a collection of potential grammar issues. Pay attention to the overall meaning that the sentence is trying to convey. 3. Find a Starting Point 4. Eliminate Answers When you spot something you know is wrong, immediately cross off answer (A) on your scrap paper. Check that same issue (and only that issue!) in the remaining answer choices; eliminate any answers that repeat the error. 5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 SC is a bit annoying in that your initial starting point often will not allow you to cross off all four wrong answers. You usually have to find multiple starting points. Once you have dealt with one issue, return either to the original sentence or to a comparison of the answer choices, wherever you left off. What to Do When You Are Stuck In general, once you get stuck, give yourself one shot to “unstick” yourself. Try comparing different answers to see whether anything new pops out at you. If not, guess and move on. Half of the battle on the GMAT is knowing when to stop trying. Set explicit “cutoffs” for yourself—rules for when to let go—and stick to them! Next Steps Got all of that? Good! In the second and third parts of this series, I will give you some drills that you can use to build the different skills needed to get through a sentence correction problem. Until then, go ahead and practice the overall process until you internalize the different steps. Good luck! |
13 Oct 2014, 08:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Monday Morning Essay Tip: How Far Back Is Too Far Back? |
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Because business school candidates must share examples of a variety of experiences with MBA admissions committees, we encourage applicants to truly reflect on their lives and consider all potential stories, including academic, professional, community, extracurricular, athletic, international, and personal. However, candidates inevitably have questions about which anecdotes are truly appropriate and effective.“Can I use stories from high school and college?” “Can I use a story from four years ago?” “How far in the past is too far in the past?” Although no definitive rule exists, with the exception of questions that specifically ask about personal history or family background, schools generally want to learn about the mature you—the individual you are today. So we ask you, “How long have you been the you that you are today?” When considering experiences that occurred long ago, ask yourself, “Would this impress an MBA admissions committee today?” If you ran a few successful bake sales six years ago when you were in college, this clearly would not stand the test of time and impress a stranger today. However, if, while you were still a student, you started a small business that grew and was ultimately sold to a local firm when you graduated, you would have a story to tell that would likely impress an admissions reader. Inevitably, judgment is always involved in these decisions. Nonetheless, we offer this simple test as a starting point to help you decide which stories to share. |
13 Oct 2014, 12:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: MBA News: Stanford GSB Class of 2016 Sets Multiple Records |
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On October 7, the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) published its profile of the students who make up its Class of 2016. The school’s most recent incoming class set several school records, and the data reveal a few exciting trends, including rising international and female student numbers. At 410 members, the class is the largest in the Stanford GSB’s history. The constituency also boasts record-breaking diversity—with 42% of the incoming first years being women and 44% representing countries other than the United States (up from 36% and 41%, respectively, for the Class of 2015). In addition, the class includes students from 62 different countries, and the GSB saw a 3.5% increase in applications from last year. To learn more about the Stanford GSB’s Class of 2016, see the full profile on the school’s Web site or read a summary of the statistics on Poets & Quants. |
13 Oct 2014, 17:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: MBA News: Kaplan Survey Implies That Importance of GMAT’s IR Section Still Unclear |
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A recent Kaplan survey suggests that the Integrated Reasoning (IR) section of the GMAT exam still has only a limited—if any—influence on B-school application decisions. According to an October 9 press release, Kaplan Test Prep surveyed more than 200 U.S. graduate program admissions officers between August and September of 2014. A sizeable 60% of those surveyed (including respondents from 11 of U.S. News & World Report’s top 30 MBA programs) claim that an applicant’s IR score is not an important part of their prospect evaluation process. The IR section was introduced in 2009, which means MBA candidates who applied in 2014 or earlier years may have submitted GMAT scores without IR results (scores are valid for up to five years). With little data to compare, admissions representatives hesitate to base major acceptance decisions on this criteria. While numerous admissions representatives may say they place minimal significance on applicants’ IR results at this point, our friends at Kaplan (and we here at mbaMission) encourage all MBA hopefuls to thoroughly prepare for and strive to do their best on every portion of the GMAT. Comprehensive test scores and proven reasoning skills can only help your chances! |
14 Oct 2014, 10:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Mission Admission: The B-School Interview Is Not a Quiz Show |
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Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday. This time of year, business school candidates are starting to interview with their target MBA programs. Many of these applicants inevitably fret and ask themselves, “What if I don’t know the answers to my interviewer’s questions?” The good news is that, as the title for this blog post states, a business school interview bears no resemblance to a TV quiz show. The admissions officer, alumnus/alumna, or student interviewing you will not ask you about esoteric topics and will not expect you to answer questions pertaining to business management. The vast majority of the questions you will encounter in your interview will pertain to your life and experiences—in other words, the interviewer will be asking you about you—so you will already have all the answers in hand from the beginning. As a first step in preparing for your interviews, take time to reacquaint yourself with your own story, especially as you have thus far presented it to the school in your application. Go back and reread your essays, contemplate pivotal moments in your life, and consider your major accomplishments and failures. By doing so, you will be sure to have the basic knowledge necessary to perform at your very best during your interview. For more guidance with your business school interviews, sign up for an mbaMission mock interview session! |
14 Oct 2014, 15:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: MBA News: Darden Grad and Bowlmor President Talks Business Success |
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When Tom Shannon graduated from UVA Darden in 1992, he had no idea he would soon purchase a bowling alley—nor did he know that he would ultimately transform that single lane into the largest bowling franchise on the market. As Shannon explains on the About page of the Bowlmor Web site, he attended a birthday party at the Greenwich Village establishment in 1994. Looking past the run-down lanes and building, the outdated ambiance, and the floundering business, Shannon could see an irresistible charm and rich history that made the brand worthy of revamping. He secured funding and purchased Bowlmor in 1997, then quickly began working toward his goal of “mak[ing] bowling cool again.” To realize his dream, Shannon completely rebuilt the alley. He introduced impressive architecture, gourmet food offerings, upscale ambiance, lane-side dinner/drinks, large video screens, and fun glow-in-the-dark lanes. He also eliminated bowling leagues—a move that completely differentiated his company from its competitors. By 1999, Bowlmor had become the most profitable alley in the United States. Today, Shannon owns multiple locations across the country and recently announced a merger with AMF Bowling Worldwide, Inc. Bowlmor AMF now represents 20% of the bowling market, making Shannon CEO of the largest bowling operator in the world. To learn more about Shannon’s journey, business practices/outlook, and future plans, read his recent interview with the Wall Street Journal. |
14 Oct 2014, 19:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: MBA Career Advice: Stop Talking About Work at Networking Events |
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In this weekly series, our friends at MBA Career Coaches will be dispensing invaluable advice to help you actively manage your career. Topics include building your network, learning from mistakes and setbacks, perfecting your written communication, and mastering even the toughest interviews. For more information or to sign up for a free career consultation, visit www.mbacareercoaches.com. We have this silly idea that when we meet people at networking events we should be talking about work. We are there to forward our career after all, so it stands to reason that the conversation should focus on what outstanding professionals we are, right? Wrong!!! A networking event is not an interview, and you should stop treating it that way. What matters in making that first connection with someone is whether or not they like you, whether they want to talk to you again, whether they could imagine enjoying coffee or a drink with you after work. Networking events are social more than they are professional. You don’t want people to be impressed by you. You want them to relate to you. You could call this a common interest or common ground, but it is not simply a surface-level shared passion for, say football, travel, or crime novels. Being relatable is a function of sharing something real about yourself, quite the opposite of what you would say if you were trying to impress someone with your professional accomplishments. Since in general people prefer positive emotions to negative ones, here are some ideas for things to talk about that make you relatable while focusing on the positive.
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15 Oct 2014, 10:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Professor Profiles: Teck H. Ho, Haas School of Business |
Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school to attend, but the educational experience 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 Teck Ho from the Haas School of Business at the University of California (UC) Berkeley. Winner of UC-Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2010 as well as the Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching (an annual award determined by students) for the full-time MBA program in 2004, 2005, and 2006, Teck H. Ho (“Pricing” and “Experimental Economics”) is the William Halford Jr. Family Chair in Marketing at Haas. With the school since 2002, Ho also serves as director of the Asia Business Center and chair of the Haas Marketing Group. A second-year student with whom mbaMission spoke liked that Ho “takes complex ideas and makes them easier to understand.” In addition, mbaMission learned that Ho’s “Pricing” class—part case and lecture format, part group presentation—has long been one of the most popular electives on campus, often a “sell-out.” Students taking the course quickly learn to bring $1 bills with them to class—Ho often requires students to chip in money to participate in course games, and after matching the amount out of his own pocket, he gives the money to the game’s winning team. Group projects in Ho’s course can focus on a range of products and projects, from something as large as a BART station to as small as a half-day pass at a nearby ski resort. In a You Tube video on the pricing program, Ho calls his courses “hands-on and practical,” noting that companies bring their pricing problems to class, where the students then act as “mini consultants” to assist in solving real-life issues. Ho described his teaching philosophy in an April 2010 post on The Berkeley Blog by saying, “My vision is to have students leave the class with the ability to think strategically about pricing and with the practical tools they need for their future careers” (read the entire post). Noting how dynamic Ho’s classes are, one second year praised, “An hour-and-a-half class feels like it takes 30 minutes!” Ho even has a Facebook fan page, and a second year commented on the professor’s sense of humor the Berkeley MBA Students Blog, saying, “Like many other Haas professors, Teck Ho could easily get a job at Comedy Central.” For more information on the defining characteristics of the MBA program at UC-Berkeley Haas or one of 15 other top business schools, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides. |
15 Oct 2014, 17:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: B-School Chart of the Week: Are You Confident You Will Be Admitted? |
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Although quantifying a school’s profile certainly does not tell you everything, it can sometimes be helpful in simplifying the many differences between the various MBA programs. Each week, we bring you a chart to help you decide which of the schools’ strengths speak to you. We recently surveyed a number of visitors to our site to get a feel for the concerns, plans, and mind-sets of this season’s MBA applicants. Now the results are in, and for those who are curious about their fellow applicants’ views on business school, we will be sharing some of the collected data in our B-School Chart of the Week blog series. When we asked MBA candidates visiting our site to respond to the question “On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the most), how confident are you that you will be admitted to at least one business school this application season?” we were somewhat surprised at the results. The data we collected suggested extremely high applicant confidence—the most common responses were 10 and 9, with each representing 23.1% of the votes. By contrast, when we posed this same question in 2013, the most common response was 7 (22.8%). Overall, 74.4% of respondents this year indicated a confidence level of 7 or higher. The lowest rating chosen was 3, selected by just 5.1% of the survey participants. Confidence (in the proper measure) can certainly be an important part of a successful candidacy, and we hope that our respondents’ positive outlook pays off! 
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16 Oct 2014, 11:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Beyond the MBA Classroom: Formal Balls at Kellogg |
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Kellogg students certainly have no shortage of events on their social calendars. A series of student-run formal balls peppers the first-year calendar, starting with the CIM Ball (Complete Immersion in Management—the two-week orientation student complete just before the full-time curriculum begins) at the beginning of the academic year and continuing with the First- and Second-Year’s Social, the Fall Ball, the Charity Ball, and Casino Night (which is essentially another ball). When mbaMission interviewed students about their social calendar, many had trouble placing the names and themes of the balls, as they had been to all of them, and the different events had seemingly fused into a single memory. In short, once the school year begins, the average Kellogg student can expect to wear a tuxedo or ball gown more frequently than he/she might typically be accustomed to. For more information on Northwestern Kellogg or 15 other leading MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides. |
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Hi Generic [Bot],
Here are updates for you:
ANNOUNCEMENTS
AGSM at UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE
Tuck at Dartmouth
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