MBA ZoNe - B-School Blogger

The (In)-Compleat MBA

"“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” – attributed to former President Harry S Truman.

I get a lot of unsolicited advice, to which I listen carefully because it gives me clues about things that might really matter. Here’s a recent example.

I called on the CEO of a major enterprise, a man of no scarcity of opinions. He is a scourge of business schools—and yet I respect him and count him as a friend of over a decade. It had been a while since we talked, so I should have guessed that he had bottled up quite a rant about management education, which, when uncorked, went something like this:

New MBAs can’t do anything valuable like start or run a company, invent the new iPad or search engine, or reorganize a dying business to make it successful. They are focused too much on frameworks, theories, and abstractions about how the world works. They just re-hash ideas from anthropology, economics, psychology, and sociology. Why can’t they just focus on business directly? B-schools aren’t doing their job..."
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Source: Robert F. Bruner, Dean

What Happens When You Apply To Booth | Poets and Quants

"Like many business schools right now, the University of Chicago’s Booth School is in the midst of the heavy season for making admit decisions on its second round candidates. In two days, on Feb. 16th, Booth will begin notifying second round applicants and will wrap up all its second round decisions by March 16th.

Evaluating the quality of an applicant pool is more art than science, more of a subjective process by people than an impartial algorithm."
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Source: Poets and Quants

Why I Chose Stanford GSB

"Community, flexibility, diverse backgrounds, and atmosphere of campus were some of the reasons students chose to come to the Stanford GSB."

Low GMAT Score? UC Berkeley Haas' Perspective @MBAPodcaster

"Let’s say UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business is at the top of your list of schools. Let’s say your GMAT score is not within Haas’ middle 80 percent range of 680 to 760. Do you still have a chance?  "We’re not looking to admit numbers, we’re looking to admit people," said Corrine Kang, Associate Director of Admissions for the fulltime MBA Program at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Kang said Haas provides the middle 80% score range to give applicants a sense of how competitive admission to Haas is, but has no minimum score cutoff..."
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Source: MBA Podcaster

MBA essay word count: we can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Or can we? @MBAStudio

"“How strictly do I have to stick to the essay word limit? How much can I go over? Does it matter if I’m under?” is a question I get a lot from clients and people who pop up on email.  To answer this, it’s essential, as always, to think about any process or task or limit in admissions from AdCom’s point of view. Put yourself in their shoes. Why do they ask for it? What are they trying to achieve? How does it help them?..."
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Source: MBA Studio

Does Anyone Like an MBA?

"My wife sent me this article about a MIT MBA Candidate who was upset about a recent NPR podcast where they blast MBAs and blame us for the fall of the economy. The article pretty much contained the usual defense we come up with about how can you blame us for this and there are many people involved, but what I found interesting about this article was the comments on the bottom. Pretty much everyone who commented agreed with the original NPR podcast and thinks MBAs are scum and are to blame..."
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Source: Nick Hopkins | BusinessWeek Blogs 

Harvard Business School Enrolls Largest Class Ever

"William White of the Harvard Crimson recently reported on increased enrollment in HBS’s incoming class, the Class of 2011. With 942 enrolled students (from 9,093 applicants), this will be the largest class in HBS’s history.  Aside from the increased class size, what is notable about the statistical story at HBS these days is that applications to the 2+2 program—now in its second year—increased by 34 percent, from 631 to 844, though HBS expects to admit about the same number of 2+2 applicants (106) this year. Because these students are being “pre-admitted” to future classes, HBS may ultimately add another section to hold its “traditional” class size, excepting its younger applicants, constant..."
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Source: MBA Mission

Clearly, You Are Not Anonymous

"Last year at this time, many MBA applicants were fretting about their futures, because of an investigation into users of the Scoretop.com website, a site which was designed to provide those studying for the GMAT with actual questions from the test. In 2005, one-hundred and nineteen applicants were rejected by HBS for trying to access their admissions decisions online prior to the release date..."
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Source: MBA Mission

UCLA’s Anderson School of Business Asks Applicants to Submit Audio Essays

"Applicants this year to the Anderson School of Business at the University of California at Los Angeles were invited to submit essays in audio format, the Financial Times reports.  Though the option was voluntary, 70 percent of applicants for the class of 2011 chose to record their essays, Mae Jennifer Shores, Anderson’s admissions director, told the FT. Furthermore, the submissions were “ethnic, gender and country neutral,” Shores says,with international applicants as eager to participate as U.S. students..."
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Source: ClearAdmit

Fall Back and Regroup

"... is a strategy basically used when somebody who is on uncertain or lost ground, falls back to a better known or secure position to regroup/reconsider and (hopefully) win the upper hand again. It’s widely used - military battles first come to mind, but this strategy is also effective in arguments, negotiations, academics, sports, etc....think about it and you’ll find situations where it can be valuable..."
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Source: Bizwiz’s Issues and Challenges of Life