By Elise Anderson,UCLA Newsroom

December 21, 2011

The application process for the full-time M.B.A. program at the UCLA Anderson School of Management has gone completely paperless. Starting this admissions season, applications are being evaluated solely on iPads, eliminating the need for any printed forms, essays, recommendations, transcripts or other documents.

Using a new mobile application provided by Matchbox, a Boston-based software company, the school has streamlined the review and analysis process, allowing admissions evaluators focus on finding the most distinctive candidates to admit, said Rob Weiler, a UCLA Anderson assistant dean and director of admissions and financial aid.

With an iPad stylus, an evaluator can highlight evidence and score each M.B.A. application across several metrics, including academics, focus, leadership, interpersonal skills and employability, said Craig Hubbell, UCLA Anderson's associate director of M.B.A. admissions.

"Both speed and depth of analysis are enhanced with the Matchbox solution, in a process that is healthier for applicants, admissions officers and trees too," Hubbell said.

"Matchbox provides a new flexibility for us to read applications in any location," added Weiler. "Whether in the office, on a plane or in an admissions committee meeting, we can instantly view files to compare and contrast the key points of the candidates under consideration."

Going paperless is especially timely, given the large increase in applications that the full-time M.B.A. program has received so far this year. Prospective M.B.A. students have responded enthusiastically to new innovations in the core curriculum and UCLA Anderson's refocused outreach, driving applications up by more than 20 percent.

"The ability to readily target candidates who fit with our community will have a profound effect in the classroom and beyond," Weiler said. "We look forward to seeing the fruits of our efforts in the stellar M.B.A. class of 2014."

Maryellen Lamb, our new head of MBA Career Management, recently spoke with The Wharton Journal about the current state of recruiting.

 

Q: The student body has become more professionally diverse in the recent years. Is this making your job more difficult, to satisfy students’ recruiting needs?

 

I wouldn’t say it has made my job more difficult, it’s made it more interesting. Ten years ago, about 70% of the class got their jobs from companies with a mature recruiting process (consulting and banking). Now, it’s only about 50%, and the other half – students looking to conduct an enterprise search—is looking at PE, hedge funds, tech, energy, social impact, so in turn we’ve turned our focus to those areas while still maintaining our relationship with mature companies. We’ve dramatically increased our outreach to enterprise companies and we work closely with them on how to best market their roles to students. We also work with students to assist them with how to go about positioning themselves in the best light for these opportunities.

 

Last summer, we had 6 staffers in San Francisco for about 10 days attending Global Alumni Forum and visiting companies. We were able to meet with more than 40 companies from tech, startups, media, energy, VC, and CPG. It was an amazing trip and we were able to establish and/or deepen relationships, get a better sense of hiring needs and market trends, and most importantly, get a sense of recruiting practices and company cultures that we are able to share with students.

 

Q: How will you go about meeting the needs of some of Wharton’s non-traditional students?

 

I’m not a huge fan of the word “non-traditional” – the diversity of backgrounds is what makes Wharton great – our goal is to support all students in achieving their career goals. We are continually increasing our efforts via advising, career education and company outreach. For example, we’ve seen a significant increase in student interest in Entrepreneurship and our Entrepreneurship team has done a stellar job in the past year connecting with startup companies interested in Wharton talent, travelling to various conferences and events to further establish the Wharton brand. As a result, we have doubled the amount of startup opportunities available.

 

We understand that students come to Wharton with different professional toolkits, so we offer a range of programs at all skill levels for both mature and enterprise recruiting processes. For example, at the end of this month, we are offering a program called Crack the Case, which will help students prepare for case interviews regardless of their target industry. This training comes as we’ve seen more and more employers use the case method for interviewing.

 

Q: It appears that banks are pulling back on their hiring this year. How will MBACM react to this?

 

In 2008-9 when the banking world was falling apart, we were in the fortunate position of being a core school for nearly every bulge bracket bank. While they cut back on recruiting, they were still keen to hire Wharton talent, and we’re hearing the same thing this year. One way we’ve been able to minimize some of the fallout from tight hiring markets is to grow our relationships with more of the boutique banks. We also have a great alumni network to lean on when times are tough. We encourage students who are interested in corporate finance to think beyond banks and look at some of the great finance opportunities within industry.

 

Q: What advice would you give to students whose job search will extend beyond graduation due to factors such as recruiting channels used by their preferred industries or hiring needs of the organizations they would like to work with?

 

Everyone came to Wharton with work experience, a certain risk tolerance, and aspirations. When talking to people who are looking at enterprise searches that might take them into the spring or beyond graduation, I first try to assess their risk tolerance – if they don’t have the financial wherewithal to be unemployed past graduation or have serious family pressure around graduating with a job, I’ll encourage them to consider a different sort of search to help ease that pressure. If they’re aware of the risks and are passionate about doing something that might take until May/June or beyond, I talk to them about staying positive, not losing their passion, and about how every meeting and every conversation will help to grow their knowledge of the industry and develop their own personal network – and that’s incredibly valuable!

 

Share on Facebook

By Catherine Groux, US News

As technology - such as online education, e-books and social media - becomes an increasingly important part of higher education, it is also becoming a crucial aspect of the admissions process at business schools across the country.

Today, students who wish to pursue a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree may find that their potential schools are supplementing standard admissions essays by using more technologically savvy methods of evaluating applicants.

For example, since 2007, individuals who have applied to the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business have had to make a PowerPoint presentation as a supplement to their application, Bloomberg BusinessWeek recently reported. In doing so, the institution became one of the first to add technological tools to their application process. Kurt Ahlm, associate dean of student recruitment and admissions, said in an email that the PowerPoint presentations help the school get to know its applicants on a deeper level.

"Traditional essays were too familiar, and applicants had access to hundreds of essay-writing books, websites and consultants," Ahlm told BusinessWeek. "We wanted to get at something that was more authentic, get an answer that was thoughtful, strategic and added some depth. Our culture embraces the challenge of making sense out of the unfamiliar, and we wanted to introduce an exercise that would capture that."

Similarly, individuals who apply to New York University's Stern School of Business are required to submit one of their application essays on a USB drive, CD or DVD. This format encourages students to showcase their creativity, as they are allowed to submit anything from short movies to musical narrations, BusinessWeek states.

Isser Gallogly, assistant dean of MBA admissions at the business school, said the unique application format allows faculty to see how prospective students will fit into the institution's culture. Additionally, the subject gives applicants a creative, yet personal, topic to discuss during their in-person interviews.

In September, Columbia Business School also announced that it would introduce a unique element to its application process. The Wall Street Journal reports that students who applied to the school had to discuss their professional goals in 200 characters or less, creating an almost Twitter-size statement. Admissions officers from the business school said the short essays prompt students to display more honesty and authenticity.

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Events and Initiatives Provide Female MBAs with the Skills and Guidance Necessary to Succeed By The Johnson School at Cornell University

According to a study conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women average $4,600 less than men at their initial post-MBA jobs, and the gap extends from that point forward. At the same time, the number of women pursuing MBAs is on the rise and it is especially critical now for business schools to address this gap and how to keep women interested in the MBA.

Johnson at Cornell University is aggressively reviewing the ways it can increase the number of females it enrolls and also ways it can support its female students and alumnae. To this end, the school is featuring a number of female-specific events, initiatives and resources that foster development and success.

"Our program offerings are designed to give women the tools and resources necessary to achieve a successful career in business," said Nsombi B. Ricketts, director of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at Johnson. "Women face specific challenges in the workplace, but the value they provide in all areas of the business world is critical so we must continue to grow their presence in this turbulent economy."

Johnson's Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) strives to recruit women and offers a variety of services to support women currently in the program and close the gender gap. The ODI works with companies seeking to recruit female students during their studies and upon graduation. In addition, Johnson's ODI also hosts a number of events geared for female MBAs including the Women's Power Lunch Series, and the upcoming annual Johnson Women in Business (JWIB) conference.

The JWIB conference, being held on Cornell's campus from October 20-21, is a female student hosting event that allows students to learn about its MBA programs, gain valuable insight on how to position oneself as a top female candidate for MBA admissions and network with Johnson's female students, faculty, staff and alumnae. Anne Weisberg, Director of Diversity at Blackrock, will begin the two-day event addressing attendees at Thursday's welcome dinner.

Among a jam-packed agenda, including sessions on "Financing Your MBA," statistics and strategy, day two of JWIB will kick off with a keynote breakfast followed by The Women's Power Lunch with speaker Janet Carr from Johnson's Advisory Council. This year's alumna keynote speaker is Jodi Glickman, MBA '02, an entrepreneur, author, public speaker, consultant and regular blogger for the Harvard Business Review and a contributor to Fortune.com and Business Insider.

Among her many roles, Glickman also serves as a faculty member of the Johnson School's Leadership Program. "It is important now, more than ever before, to empower women and provide them with insight and guidance on how they can thrive in today's economy," said Glickman. "I feel privileged to be part of such a significant event and hope that my presence and personal story can make a difference in someone's life." In addition to ODI, Johnson's Parker Center is actively involved in promoting women in business initiatives and hosts the annual Women in Investing Conference. This event was founded in 2010 by Parker Center Director Lakshmi Bhojraj, MBA '01, to educate women about the rewarding career opportunities available to them in investment management--a field in which women are vastly underrepresented.

Furthering its commitment to female MBAs, Johnson partners with the Forte Foundation to offer Forte Fellowships to select women pursuing Full-time, Part-Time or Executive MBA. These fellowships are intended to increase female MBA applications and enrollment. In order to be considered for a fellowship, individuals must submit an MBA application. About Johnson at Cornell UniversityFounded in 1946, the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management is consistently ranked as one of the top graduate schools of business. Johnson builds upon Cornell's depth and breadth of distinguished research and teaching, and its vast, worldwide network of alumni, faculty, and colleagues.

The school's "performance learning" approach offers students defined frameworks and analytical tools, combined with expert feedback to solve real problems in real organizations. Deliberately small and extremely selective, Johnson maintains an intense, collaborative community, where students develop teamwork and networking skills that foster innovation and deliver results. Programs include one- and two-year MBA degrees, an Executive MBA and the Cornell-Queen's Executive MBA, which offers interactive videoconferencing sessions across the U.S. and Canada.

www.johnson.cornell.edu . Copyright (C) 2011 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

 

On Sept. 20 the Fonté Foundation hosted NYC II Forum: Inspiration, Opportunity and the MBA at the Citigroup Center.

There were two MBA panels as well as a graduate school open house that featured over 40 schools from across the nation.

The first panel consisted of five alumnae all from different schools which included the London Business School and The Wharton School of Business.

A question asked at the end of the panel important for undergraduate students was what seniors can do to stand out to graduate schools.

Most panelists agreed it was about doing things you were passionate about.

Makaiya Brown who is the Senior Associate at Mercer Investments would apply for leadership roles inside school organizations.

She took as many opportunities as she could in her university as well as volunteering outside of school. This helped her to understand and to practice skills as well as to experiment in different fields.

Next to answer the question was Aikta Jain, who holds a management position at Ernest & Young.

Having a mentor was an important aspect of reaching her goals.

She looked up and contacted alumnae in fields she was interested in to help and guide her through the process.

"Think with the end game in mind. Definitely pursue the things you are passionate about. Come up with something creative, unique to differentiate you," said Lyenda Simpson Delp who is a director at Blackrock, Inc.

Jennie Baik, who is a director of strategy and business development at Omnicom Media Group, agrees one needs to go into anything with a lot of passion.

Even on the essay portion of graduate school applications, Baik stated that the ones that most stand out are the mundane essays, the ones that show an applicant is really committed or something that is unusual that can be spun in a different way to be powerful.

"Having international exposure whether you decide to stay there or come back to the U.S., just meeting people from different cultures, it really adds to you. Especially when most businesses are global," said Jain in response to global internships.

The second panel focused on MBA admissions, where four panelists present who tackled essays,  GPA, work experience and leadership, recommendations and the GMAT.

The advice given by the panelists is generally applicable to all schools, but one should check with each specific institution.

Hilary Prokob, Associate Director of full-time MBA admissions at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, spoke on work experience and leadership.

"Work experience is something every admission committee looks at pretty closely. We want to get to know you as a professional," said Prokob.  The quality of the work is more important than quantity.

Many programs require work experience because a student will get more out of the program and have something to contribute when there is work experience to draw from.

Prokob suggests sitting in on an MBA class. If you feel you are able to raise your hand and contribute then you may be ready.  If you sit there and think you have nothing to say, in Prokob's opinion one needs more experience.

Admissions look for people with leadership experience and potential. Applicants should include both formal and informal roles.

The board looks at the resume to understand the nature of the work, how one's career has progressed and the challenges he or she faced. Prokob warned not to rely on ones title to convey the job description.

"[Admissions] wants to understand what you do on a day to day basis. Don't leave admissions guessing, put everything out there," Said Prokob. She also suggests staying away from jargon and acronyms.

Anthony Pena, Associate Director of MBA admissions and financial aid at The Wharton School, spoke on the GMAT and GPA.

The GMAT and GPA assess if one is academically ready for the MBA curriculum while making sure they have the ability to take advantage of the program and other of external things.

Admission boards are looking for a well rounded applicant. They do not look at the GPA in isolation and most institutions do not have a GPA cutoff.

Admissions take into consideration the undergraduate institution attended, ones major, as well as other time commitments, extracurricular activities, and any leadership roles.

For the GMAT as well as other accepted exams, admissions will look at the total score as well as individual sections.

If one does score as they would have liked, he suggests taking the exam twice. But if one gets around the same score the second time the person should move onto the rest of the application.

"A big mistake is to stress over the GMAT and forget about other parts of the application," said Pena.

Would-be small business owners in Cuba now have the opportunity to sign up for a masters degree in business administration from the Catholic Church.

Story by PRI's The World. Listen to audio above for full report.

Cuba's leader Raul Castro has been making some moves toward liberalizing the island's communist economy. The government recently announced that it was drastically reducing its workforce, and now it has begun offering the island's first MBA program, sponsored by the Catholic Church.

"It's really a sign of the times," according to Financial Times reporter Marc Franc, "both in terms of the government's acceptance of small businesses and also the warming trend with the catholic church."

About a year ago, the Cuban government announced a change in its policy toward small business owners. Franc reports that "far from treating small businessmen like criminals, in fact, the country needed small business, and in fact they would be an important part of the socialist economy in the future."

The government has started to give out licenses to would-be small business owners, at a rate of about 2,000 per week, according to Franc. But the university system there doesn't have the classes set up to teach about how to run a business. That's when the church stepped in.

It may not be Harvard, but many of the students are excited about the classes. "When you have zero alternative, of course it's great," Franc says. There will be about 30 students at the start, some from the university in Havana, some small business owners, and some who want to run businesses in the future.

Throughout the country, new businesses have been starting up, according to Franc. In fact, the street on which the school is located provides an interesting microcosm of the changes in Cuba.

"The school is located in the colonial part of Havana, so basically these people who are selling in this area, they're selling to tourists, not necessarily to Cubans," Franc reports. "So they're competing with the state directly for the tourism dollars, something that was totally forbidden just a year ago."

For now, though, it's a question of how far this capitalist revolution in Cuba will go.

----------------------------------------------------------

PRI's "The World" is a one-hour, weekday radio news magazine offering a mix of news, features, interviews, and music from around the globe. "The World" is a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. More about The World.

By Bess Levin

Why do you want to go to business school? Is it to advance your career? While that may be the answer for many, that’s not what business school admissions officers want to hear. They’re bored. Sick of it. They want to be wowed. They want to drill down to who you are- as a human. They want to get to know you. Step out of these clothes and slip into something more comfortable. Figure out what motivates you. What makes you tick. How to they intend to do this? By changing the face of the b-school application process as we know it. The well compensated powers that be in academia have revolutionized the interview process in the following ways:

“Staff-moderated group discussions.” Group interviews, to the layman.

Beginning this winter, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School will invite a random sampling of M.B.A. applicants to participate in a staff-moderated on-campus group discussion with fellow applicants. They will be encouraged to discuss and debate current topics in business, as chosen by the school.

Insanely quirky and not at all textbook masturbatory prompts that have been posed at university applicants for years.

…even the quirkiest questions can get uninspiring responses. The Haas School, bringing back an old prompt, asked applicants for the class entering in fall 2008, “If you could have dinner with one individual in the past, present or future, who would it be and why?” But Haas’s Ms. Fujii was underwhelmed by the answers. She believes an admissions consultant told clients to say “yourself, 30 years in the future,” a response that quickly cluttered her office.

Asking applicants to answer the world’s craziest questions in 200 characters or less

The University of Iowa’s Henry B. Tippie School of Management this summer offered a full scholarship valued at $37,240 to the applicant who best answered, “What makes you an exceptional Tippie full-time M.B.A. candidate and future M.B.A. hire?” via a tweet…Columbia Business School this year is asking applicants to respond in no more than 200 characters to the following question: “What is your post-M.B.A. professional goal?” (The answer would be shorter than the length of this paragraph.)

This last one is almost scary in how “out there” it is. Restricted to 200 letters/spaces/punctuations marks, who knows what kind of crazy shit people will reveal. Instead of going on for 4 paragraphs about how they ultimately want to become an a portfolio manager at mid-sized hedge fund, the character limit will force them to tell the admissions committee, “My goal is to sell organs on the internet.” Or maybe the limit will serve to potentially open an even bigger window into any given applicant’s soul. Not only will it get them to reveal their real reason for attending business school but could separate the squares who play by the rules and are destined for middle management from those who know when to break them by saying I see your character limit and raise you not only 458 but the chance to accept someone who has the vision and conviction of his ideas to tell you this:

What I really want to do, more than anything in this entire world…and I’ve never told this to anyone…is I want to breed dogs. I want find one dog out of all of them that not only has the beauty and the grace to win the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show…but then has the speed and the determination to win the Greyhound Classic, which is the Kentucky Derby of dog graces. And then I want to take him to Alaska for what I think is the ultimate test of endurance, and that’s to lead his entire family in the Iditorad, with me driving. And to win with a record time. That’s really my only ambition and I’ve never been able to tell anyone about it until now.

Tweets, Plays Well With Others: A Perfect MBA Candidate [WSJ]

By Matt Symonds,

The balance of world economic power is shifting east, and the potential impact on business education is huge. Though the Graduate Management Admissions Council  reports that candidates from Asia Pacific make up 57% of the applicant pool to U.S. two-year M.B.A. programs, the heavy flow of applicants to schools in Europe and North America may drop off as the East’s brightest and best opt for study closer to home, and case studies about Asian companies become more relevant than those about their Western peers.

Which raises the question whether the balance of world intellectual power may also be shifting. And whether the future business school of choice may not be in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania or Barcelona but in Shanghai, Hyderabad or Singapore.

As reflected in the media business school rankings, the Asian M.B.A. is on the rise. In 2011 there are eight schools that feature in the top 100 business school rankings of the Financial Times, up from only three schools four years ago. The likes of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), the Indian School of Business (ISB), China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) and Singapore’s Nanyang and National University of Singapore (NUS) and are fast on the heels of the top M.B.A. programs of North America and Europe for a position at the top table. It is a little over one hundred years since the Harvard Business School began its M.B.A. program – are we set to see a comparable Asian champion in the next ten?

Demand is certainly on the rise. Score reports for the GMAT, the Graduate Management Admissions Test used by business schools as part of the candidate selection process, indicate that in the past five years the number of applicants from China, India, Hong Kong and Singapore sending their test scores to schools in these countries has increased by an impressive 229%.

And with six to ten applicants for every place on the M.B.A. program, the top schools in Asia are matching the admissions selectivity of Harvard and Wharton, admittedly with considerably smaller class sizes. If the GMAT is any indication of student smarts, these schools can claim to attract a bright talent pool. Though not quite on a par with the likes of Stanford GSB, whose average GMAT score this year is 731, schools in Asia are edging closer, with a GMAT average around the 700 mark.

But to compete on the world stage these schools face the challenge of attracting top talent from outside of their local market. The signs are encouraging.

At the CEIBS, the Shanghai-based school launched as a joint venture in 1994 by the Shanghai Jiaotong University and EFMD, the European Foundation for Management Development based in Brussels, the percentage of western students studying in their full-time M.B.A. program has increased from 2% in 2005 to 39% in 2011.

The National University of Singapore has observed similar growth. Since 2006 the school has seen a three-fold increase in the number of North American applicants for the M.B.A. programs and more than a four-fold increase in European applicants. Mr Lim Yue Wen, Director of Graduate Studies at NUS identifies various factors driving this demand, including the burgeoning Asian economy.  ”We have seen more Multinational Corporations setting up their regional headquarters in Asia, and in the process, the need for talents have risen accordingly in Asia as well. Thus, it is not surprising that students will want to be in Asia, where the action is.”

In India, for many years the largest source of international applicants to western business schools, the number of western students now looking to study within the country is also increasing, albeit more slowly. The Indian School of Business in Hyderabad reports that though international students make up less than 10% of the current M.B.A. class, this number has increased by 26% in the past two years, and international applications have almost doubled over the same period.

The dean, Ajit Rangnekar, argues that in a tentative global economy, India provides better opportunities for career growth, and that ISB attracts traditional M.B.A. recruiters such as McKinsey and Goldman Sachs as well as the growing number of Indian multinationals such as Infosys and Tata. He also points out that for international students, the M.B.A. is an unparalled opportunity to gain on the ground exposure to both the business world and culture of one of the fastest growing economies in the world. This ‘soft’ transition in a stronger job market appealed to Daniel Gomez, a Spanish student in the ISB class of 2011. “The dual circumstance of India, as an emerging country and as a technological point of reference, has played a major role in my decision to come to study here.”