The mbaMission Blog

FROM mbaMission Blog: Approaching Community Service as a Positive Experience

Many MBA aspirants feel that admissions committees have essentially sentenced them to community service in much the same way a judge would sentence a criminal to perform volunteer work. This is far from the truth. If you are slogging through your time as a volunteer, you are certainly not helping yourself or your candidacy. “Time served” is not the most important factor of your community work in the eyes of the MBA admissions committees—what is meaningful and revealing is the impact you have on others. Indeed, the spirit with which you have served your community is what will impress the committees. As you consider your options for community involvement (and we hope you began doing so long before now), be sure to choose a cause or group about which you are passionate and to which you can commit yourself entirely. By dedicating yourself to an organization about which you are sincerely enthusiastic (just as you would in choosing a job), you will naturally find yourself in situations that will lend themselves to quality essays and powerful recommendations.

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FROM mbaMission Blog: Your Dream MBA: 5 Steps to Getting In Webinar Series

The leaders in the MBA admissions space—mbaMission and Manhattan Prep —are coming together to make sure you will be ready for the 2017–2018 MBA admissions season. Join us for a free, five-part webinar series called “Your Dream MBA: 5 Steps to Getting In.” Senior Consultants from mbaMission will address and explain different significant admissions issues, while experts from Manhattan Prep will help you tackle some of the toughest challenges GMAT test takers face, offering valuable insight and advice. These live webinars are held on Wednesdays from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. EDT. Please sign up for each session separately via the links below—space is limited. Session 1: April 12, 2017: Assessing Your MBA Profile and GMAT vs. GRE Session 2: April 19 2017: Selecting Your Target MBA Program and How to Study for the GMAT in Two Weeks Session 3: April 26, 2017: Writing Standout B-School Admissions Essays and Maximizing Your ROI on the GMAT Session 4: May 3, 2017: Advanced GMAT: 700+ Level Quant and Advanced GMAT: 700+ Level Sentence Correction Strategy Session 5: May 10, 2017: Questions and Answers with MBA Admissions Officers *Admissions officers on this panel include:  Bruce DelMonico, Yale School of Management Amanda Carlson, Columbia Business School Additional admissions officers yet to be announced! Enroll today!

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FROM mbaMission Blog: Using the Optional Essay to Demonstrate Your Sense of Responsibility

Business school candidates who have an obvious weakness in their profile—such as a low test score or a prolonged gap in work experience—often worry that they are destined to attend a virtually unknown MBA program. When such applicants ask admissions officers how their weakness might affect their candidacy, they often hear this straightforward and common refrain: “We look at applications holistically.” Although this may sound like a cliché, we at mbaMission have seen numerous candidates with sub-600 GMAT scores and GPAs under 3.0 find their way into top-ten programs. The key to overcoming any kind of weakness in your candidacy is to address it in the optional essay, not with excuses, but by taking responsibility: Example 1: “In my freshman year, I had the flu the day before my midterms and did quite badly on my first batch. As a result, my grades noticeably dipped in my first term. Then, in my second term, I was very engaged in extracurricular activities with my fraternity, and again, my grades suffered. However, looking at just my grades in my major, from my second year forward, I would have a GPA of…” Some who read this sample paragraph may find the excuses absurd, while others may not even notice. Although valid explanations for a candidate’s low grades certainly exist, a temporary bout of the flu and involvement in extracurricular activities are not among them. Example 2: “As a freshman at XYZ University, I was unable to appreciate the rather awesome educational opportunities before me, and my grades were, quite simply, lower than they should have been. However, by my second year, when I discovered my passion for English literature and chose this subject as my major, I pursued my studies with vigor and completely turned my academic performance around, earning a consistent stream of A grades in…” In this second example, any excuses are cast aside and replaced with a candid discussion of the candidate’s experience. As a result, the applicant establishes credibility, explains the change, and infers that he/she will likewise perform well as an MBA student. Admissions committees, like employers, do not like excuses. Avoid making them.

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FROM mbaMission Blog: Maximize Your GMAT Study Results by Boosting Your Memory

With regard to the GMAT, raw intellectual horsepower helps, but it is not everything. Manhattan Prep’s Stacey Koprince teaches you how to perform at your best on test day by using some common sense. Has this happened to you? You have ambitious plans to study a ton of things this weekend. You get tired, but you are determined to push through, so you keep studying. You begin to get a bit anxious because you feel you are not learning well (and you are not!), so you study even more. You get even more tired, and that makes it even harder to learn. By the end of the weekend, you are exhausted, frustrated, and demoralized. Time magazine published a fascinating little article back in 2012: “To Boost Memory, Shut Your Eyes and Relax.” Go take a look at it. Do not worry; I will wait. In a nutshell: your brain makes better memories when it is not tired. The Time article quotes Michaela Dewar, the lead author of a research study on this topic. She notes that we are “at a very early stage of memory formation” when we first start to study new information, and “further neural processes have to occur after this stage for us to be able to remember this information at a later point in time.” The italics are mine. Note what Ms. Dewar has said: more “stuff” has to happen in our brains after we have studied this info for us to be able to recall that information later on. In the meantime, we have to go do something else that does not involve learning other new things. Eat lunch. Take a walk or exercise. Listen to some music while cleaning the house. Get a good night’s sleep. How can we use this in our GMAT study? There are many ways to study, but do not plan to study for more than about two hours at a stretch. Cut yourself off earlier if you realize that you are feeling significantly mentally fatigued. If you do hit that two-hour mark, stop. You can study more today, if you want, but first take at least a one-hour brain break. Next, if you plan to study on days that you also have work or class, see whether you have the flexibility to study before or during the class/work day. You could get up a little earlier than normal (warning: do not try this if you are a night person) or possibly arrange to get into work a bit later than normal a couple of days a week. You could study on your lunch break. These sessions might only run 20 or 30 minutes, but that is fine—you are just trying to get some studying done earlier in the day, while your brain is more fresh!

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FROM mbaMission Blog: Professor Profiles: Jeremy Siegel, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school. However, 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 week, we profile a standout professor as identified by students. Today, we profile Jeremy Siegel from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Jeremy Siegel is arguably one of the most recognizable and renowned professors at Wharton, and not just because he regularly appears on CNN, CNBC, and NPR to weigh in on the financial markets. One first-year student we interviewed referred to Siegel as “THE professor at Wharton.” Siegel, who has taught at the school since 1976, combines his expertise with a passion for teaching. On the long list of teaching awards he has received is Bloomberg Businessweek’s Best Business School Professor (worldwide) accolade in 1994. What is more, Siegel’s expertise gives him almost unparalleled street cred in the eyes of Wharton students—not an easy lot to win over on the topic of the stock market. At the beginning of each class session for his macroeconomics course, Siegel pulls up live market data and quickly interprets what is going on in the markets that day. Interestingly, even students who are not enrolled in this course commonly stand at the back of the room to watch this summary. Siegel has been recognized often for his writings, having won numerous best article awards, and is a bestselling author. The Washington Post named his book Stocks for the Long Run: The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns and Long-Term Investment Strategies “one of the ten-best investment books of all time.” And in 2005, Bloomberg Businessweek named another of Siegel’s works, The Future for Investors: Why the Tried and the True Triumph Over the Bold and the New, one of the best business books of the year. Also in 2005, Siegel received the prestigious Nicholas Molodovsky Award from CFA Institute, awarded to “those individuals who have made outstanding contributions of such significance as to change the direction of the profession and to raise it to higher standards of accomplishment.” For information on other defining characteristics of the MBA program at Wharton or any of 15 other top business schools, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

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FROM mbaMission Blog: Campus Expansion at Washington University’s Olin Business School

Washington University’s Olin Business School announced in 2011 that lead gifts totaling $25M from two of its benefactors would support a plan to construct two new facilities for its graduate program—Knight Hall and Bauer Hall. The $90M expansion was completed in the spring of 2014—several months earlier than expected—and added seven new classrooms, 75 faculty offices, a 100-seat café, graduate student services, lounges, an Active Learning Lab, and a new event space called The Forum. A three-dimensional rendering of the buildings, which received LEED Gold certification in 2014, can be seen here. Although Olin is a smaller sized program (128 full-time MBA students in the Class of 2018) and is noted for its highly collaborative culture, the expansion allows the school to grow its class size while providing more space and resources. Olin may also be well positioned to tap into St. Louis’s burgeoning start-up sector. According to a 2013 report by the career hub Dice, “The number of St. Louis–based technology jobs posted on Dice jumped 25 percent year/year. And those new tech jobs are coming at a higher price tag too: average tech salaries are up 13 percent year/year to $81,245. … St. Louis is becoming a start-up town.”

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FROM mbaMission Blog: MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: My Supervisor Graduated from HBS—He Knows!

We at mbaMission know of a man now in his 70s who graduated from a virtually unknown Canadian undergraduate school in 1963 and who, with no work experience at all, applied to Harvard Business School (HBS), Wharton, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), earning acceptance at all three (though the GSB deferred his entry for one year so he could gain a little more experience first). He ultimately studied at HBS and now runs a small grain-trading business. You could not meet a nicer man, and although he is certainly wise in many respects, one thing he knows nothing about is MBA admissions. “I attended so long ago, things must have changed since then,” he says. “I did not have any work experience at all. I had studied four years of commerce, and that was it!” Why are we telling you this? Many candidates each year tell us that their bosses, who applied to business school during far different times, have given them “sage” advice about applying and that they feel they should follow it—after all, what worked for their boss in 1966, 1976, 1986, or even 1996 must still be applicable today, right? Wrong. For a long time, the MBA was actually not all that desirable a degree, so the admissions process was not so competitive. To give you an idea of the MBA’s relative popularity, Duke University (Fuqua) did not even start its MBA program until 1970, but its law school was founded in 1868. Yale University was founded in 1701, but it did not have an MBA program until 1976. So, the MBA is a relatively new degree that has only recently (as of the late 1990s) reached its current level of popularity and prestige. What does all of this mean with regard to your boss’s advice? Although your supervisor may have gotten into one of your target schools, he/she likely did so years ago and therefore may not have had to contend with the steep competition you now face. Your boss may also not know anything about what the admissions process is like today and could be—however inadvertently—leading you astray. If your supervisor starts any bit of his/her well-intended advice with the phrase “when I applied,” you should view the coming declaration with tremendous caution.

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FROM mbaMission Blog: Managing a $2M Student Investment Fund at UCLA Anderson

Many acknowledge UCLA Anderson’s unique connections to the media and entertainment industry. However, far fewer MBA aspirants are aware of the tremendous opportunities Anderson provides to students interested in investment management. Established in 1987, the Student Investment Fund (SIF) at Anderson is a fellowship that provides a limited number of students with a hands-on opportunity to apply what they have learned thus far about investment theory. Students must apply for the opportunity to manage the portfolio, as one of the ten SIF Fellows, by participating in the four-round application process that includes panel interviews and essays. SIF Fellows engage in investment strategy, asset allocation, and security analysis for more than 18 months and explore both value and growth approaches to investment as well as fixed income investments. Fellows get together weekly during the academic year and visit at least 30 investment professionals throughout the fellowship to learn about different investment philosophies. Fellows also receive assistance in securing summer internships in the investment management industry. Those interested in a career in investment management should give UCLA Anderson a closer look. For more information on UCLA Anderson or 15 other leading MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

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FROM mbaMission Blog: Deciding Whether to Write an Optional MBA Application Essay

Many MBA candidates feel compelled to write an optional essay because they are concerned that not doing so will imply that they have no additional fascinating stories to share. The truth is that in virtually all cases, the admissions committee has offered the optional essay (or additional information space) to allow you to discuss possible unique circumstances in your candidacy, not so you can submit another 500 words about your career or an interesting personal accomplishment. Unless you have something vital in your candidacy that must be discussed, you should approach the idea of submitting an additional essay with caution. If you do decide to write an optional essay, be as brief and direct as possible. By submitting one, you are essentially asking the (likely overloaded) admissions officer to read yet another essay and are thus demanding more of this person’s valuable time. The key to writing an effective optional essay is therefore to respect this individual’s time and be as concise as possible, while still conveying all the necessary information. Thus, a discussion of your academic problems need not begin with a detailing of the excellent grades you earned in high school; an explanation of a gap in your work experience need not begin with a chronology of how consistently you worked before the gap occurred. We have seen candidates overcome any number of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, from a very low GMAT score to an arrest for drunk driving. We always encourage applicants to address such issues in a “short and sweet” manner (completing any optional essays well within word limits), and time has proven that this strategy can yield results. For more assistance with writing an optional essay (or even just deciding whether you should write one), see our Optional Essays Guide.

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I have admits from UCLA and NYU - dinged after interview at Booth and Kellogg. No interviews from Tuck and Ross. All this was ROUND 2 - so I believe I may have a better chance in round 1.

My goal pitch was to join MBB - but really the long term plan is to build my own consultancy form that can service various industry verticals (energy/digital/new tech/fintech).

But I have a potential offer as MD/Country Manager for a Oil and Gas company - I would be setting up operations in India.

Obviously its a really big opportunity but I will be 30 this year (2017). if i re-apply, i will 31 at Matriculation. The new job would be huge interms of the impact i can create and potentially strengthen my candidacy - but would be age work significantly against me?

Hi again bb10
Please see my response to your other posting.
Thanks
Krista


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FROM mbaMission Blog: Professor Profiles: Jeffrey Carr, NYU Stern School of Business

Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school. However, the educational experience you will have is what is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Today, we profile Jeffrey Carr from New York University’s (NYU’s) Leonard N. Stern School of Business. Having taught at Stern for more than a decade as an adjunct associate professor (earning him the 1996 Stern/Citibank Teacher of the Year Award), Jeffrey Carr joined Stern’s full-time faculty in 2007 and is now a clinical professor of marketing and entrepreneurship. He served formerly as the executive director of the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation and has garnered a reputation as one of the school’s most respected marketing experts, featured by such major news outlets as NBC and the New York Times. Carr is president of Marketing Foundations Inc. and has worked on projects for such companies as Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, General Electric, Pfizer, Kodak, Time Inc., and Unilever. As one first year we interviewed said of his experience at Stern, “So far, the most impressive class has been ‘Marketing’ with Jeff Carr,” adding, “He’s super engaging and makes you think more about the consequences of your actions in marketing than simply teaching you the tools. The class structure is very informal, but all of the students are learning a ton.” For more information about NYU Stern and 15 other top-ranked business schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

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FROM mbaMission Blog: Finding the Most Suitable Writers for Your MBA Recommendation Letters

Letters of recommendation are an important part of your overall MBA application package—they provide the only outside information the admissions committee receives about you. However, one of the most stressful parts of the application process can be choosing your recommenders. The first question you should ask is who can write a valuable letter on my behalf? Many candidates believe that recommenders must have remarkable credentials and titles to impress the admissions committee. However, selecting individuals who can write a personal and knowledgeable letter that discusses your talents, accomplishments, personality, and potential is far more important. If senior managers at your company can only describe your work in vague and general terms, they will not help your cause. Lower-level managers who directly supervise your work, on the other hand, can often offer powerful examples of the impact you have had on your company. As a result, their letters can be far more effective. Nonetheless, not everyone who knows you and your capabilities well will make a good recommender. For starters, you should of course feel confident that your potential recommender likes you and will write a positive letter on your behalf. As you contemplate your choices, try to gather some intelligence on your potential recommenders. Have they written letters for anyone else? Are they generous with their time with regard to employee feedback and review sessions? Will they devote the effort and time necessary to write a letter that will really shine? (For more insight on this topic, see our blog post on choosing “safe” recommenders.) If your prospective MBA program asks for two letters of recommendation, you should generally approach two of your recent supervisors, with one ideally being your current supervisor. Your letters will have added credibility if they are written by individuals who are senior to you, because your recommenders are in evaluative positions and will not have anything to lose by critically appraising your candidacy. If you are unable to ask your current supervisor for any reason, do not panic. Read how to handle this situation in our blog post, “What If I Have No Supervisor?”

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FROM mbaMission Blog: Earning an MBA at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business

Because MBA applicants can get carried away with rankings, we profile amazing programs at business schools that are typically ranked outside the top 15. The Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech may rival MIT Sloan and Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business with respect to its focus on the direct application of Internet technology to global business problems. The school’s rather small (approximately 60–80 students each year) and innovation-focused program was nevertheless ranked 28th among full-time MBA programs by Bloomberg Businessweek in 2016. Situated in the heart of Technology Square in Midtown Atlanta, Scheller offers students numerous networking and innovation resources within the city’s high-tech business community, including the Advanced Technology Development Center business incubator. In addition, the Enterprise Innovation Institute, or EI2, bills itself as “the nation’s largest and most comprehensive university-based program of business and industry assistance, technology commercialization, and economic development” on its Web site and provides students with resources for career options at the intersection of business and technology. As an indicator of the school’s overall strengths in information technology and operations management, a large portion of Scheller’s student body tends to come from science, technology, engineering, and math backgrounds (50% of the Class of 2017, for example).

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FROM mbaMission Blog: Developing Your GMAT Study Plan

With regard to the GMAT, raw intellectual horsepower helps, but it is not everything. Manhattan Prep’s Stacey Koprince teaches you how to perform at your best on test day by using some common sense. Help! I need to get ready for the GMAT—where do I even start? You need to make a few major decisions at the beginning, starting with this one: do you want to study on your own, take a class, or work with a private tutor? Each path has its advantages and disadvantages; this article can help you decide. Next, if you take a class or work with a tutor, then your teacher will give you a study plan, at least for the length of time that you are working together. If not, you will have to devise your own study plan. This will take some effort, but it is not rocket science—if you are thoughtful and thorough, you can put together a very good study plan. I want to point out a couple of highlights from the study plan article. First, you need to know your goal and your starting point; if you do not know what level you are at right now or what score you are trying to achieve, then putting together a good study plan is impossible. Second, you are going to need study materials that fall into three broad categories: (1) test content and methodology (what to study and how to study), (2) practice questions (best source: Official Guide and other official practice question materials), and (3) practice tests. Finally, make sure that you know how to study/learn in an efficient and effective manner. Hint: doing 2,000 practice problems does not equal “efficient and effective.” Nor does taking a practice test every three days, or even every week. Read the article for more!

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FROM mbaMission Blog: MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: My Months of Work Experience Will Not Count

“I had an internship from June to August of 2014. Will the admissions committee count it as work experience?” “I was running a lab during my Master’s program—is that part of my total number of months of work experience?” “I ran a small business that ultimately failed—will I get credit for my time as an entrepreneur?” Business schools have not seriously considered a candidate’s number of months of work experience as a factor in admissions decisions for a long time. In fact, with such programs as Harvard Business School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business increasingly open to younger candidates, work experience on a strictly quantitative level is actually being devalued at some schools. A candidate’s quantity of work experience is just not relevant—quality is what is important. An “average” employee who has merely fulfilled expectations during a five-year stint at a Fortune 500 company could certainly be said to be at a disadvantage compared with an individual who has made the most of a three-year stint elsewhere and has been promoted ahead of schedule. Think about it—which of the two would you admit? So, if you are asked on an application how many months of work experience you will have prior to matriculating, you should simply answer honestly. If you have any gray areas or are unsure about any aspect of your professional experience as it pertains to your application, you can always call the Admissions Office for guidance—most Admissions Offices are actually surprisingly helpful with this kind of simple technical question. Thereafter, stop worrying about the number of months you do or do not have and instead focus on revealing that—and how—you have had an impact in your professional life. Your essays, recommendations, interviews, resume, and other application elements will ultimately make a qualitative impact that will outweigh any quantitative data.

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FROM mbaMission Blog: Learn How to Manage Investment Funds at Darden Capital Management

Many think that because the University of Virginia (UVA) Darden School of Business casts itself as offering a general management program, the school has no specialties. General management, however, is a philosophy that suggests that no business problem can be viewed in isolation—for example, a finance problem relates to marketing, a marketing problem relates to operations, and so on. In the student club Darden Capital Management (DCM), students can apply general management principles in evaluating equities to understand the entire firm while also specializing in asset management to further their careers in this finance industry niche. Through DCM, first-year students pitch long and short investment ideas to second-year student fund managers who oversee approximately $10M of Darden’s endowment, which is divided among five funds, each with its own focal area. First year students ultimately “graduate” and run these funds themselves for credit as second years, reporting on their investment decisions and performance to Darden’s finance board. Students who manage these funds report that they have had an advantage breaking into asset management, because this hands-on experience gives them plenty to discuss in interviews. Managing around $10M will do that… For more information on Darden or 15 other leading MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

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FROM mbaMission Blog: Changes in Leadership at Stanford GSB and Chicago Booth

Spring will soon be in full bloom. Meanwhile, the winds of change are blowing at the offices of some business schools. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business had launched a nationwide search for a new dean in July 2016 after Sunil Kumar, who had served in the position since 2011, announced his departure to become the provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Johns Hopkins University. Earlier this month, Chicago Booth announced that its search for a new dean had come to an end, as Madhav Rajan, who served as the senior associate dean for academic affairs at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) from 2010 to 2016, will step into the role in July. “We are confident that Madhav will be an outstanding leader for Chicago Booth in the coming years,” University President Robert Zimmer and Provost Daniel Diermeier commented in the announcement. Rajan’s former workplace, the Stanford GSB, also revealed recently that the vacant position of assistant dean and director of MBA admissions and financial aid has been filled after Derrick Bolton, who served as the director for 15 years, took on the role of dean of admissions at the Stanford Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program last September. Kirsten Moss will head the Stanford GSB MBA program admissions team beginning in June, although the position is nothing new for her—Moss worked as the director of admissions at the school during 2009–2010 and served in a similar role at Harvard Business School from 1999–2001.

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FROM mbaMission Blog: Wharton Announces Deferred Admission MBA for Liberal Arts Undergrads

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania likely does not suffer from a lack of applicants. During the 2015–2016 admissions season, for example, the MBA program received nearly 6,700 applications. But now the school is launching a program to attract a completely new pool of applicants: liberal arts undergraduates. The Moelis Advance Access Program, established with a $10M donation from alumni Ken Moelis and Julie Taffet Moelis, will be open to University of Pennsylvania seniors majoring in liberal arts, science, and nursing who hope to gain admission to the MBA program before finalizing their undergraduate studies. The program will accept approximately ten students during its first year. In the future, applicants from other universities may be accepted as well, Wharton Dean Geoffrey Garrett told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), and he assured that all students admitted under the new program will receive financial aid. “We don’t want students to have to choose between following their intellectual passion or social values and getting a good job,” Garrett said. Ken Moelis, who received an MBA from Wharton in 1981 and subsequently made a name for himself as the founder of the investment banking company Moelis & Co., may have had his own past in mind when brainstorming the new program: “If I had to do it again I would be a history major, and then gotten a Wharton M.B.A.,” Moelis commented to the WSJ.

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