Get to Know: Haas School of Business

Posted on March 21, 2012 | Leave a comment

UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business is very popular among applicants. In fact, these days only Harvard and Stanford consistently have lower acceptance rates than Haas. The school’s “Confidence Without Attitude” mission is very appealing to recruiters, especially in the post-meltdown environment that has companies looking for ethics in their new MBA hires.

Are you thinking about applying to Haas? How do you know if the school really is a good fit for you? here are five reasons why UC Berkeley may be the perfect school for you to target for your MBA experience:

You are interested in green technology
Few other business schools offer any curriculum at all in the field of renewable energy or cleantech, and even fewer have demonstrated a commitment to leading these fields forward into the future.

You’re interested in the business of technology
Whether you want to develop software, or develop a software company, Haas is a great place to expand your expertise in the areas of product development and product management, the management of innovation, and bringing new technology ideas to market.

You might want to go into healthcare
Haas has great support for educating future leaders in healthcare. Berkeley is known for its joint MBA/MPH (Master’s in Public Health) program, and they offer a Graduate Program in Health Management as well. Haas is a natural fit for someone interested in tackling some of the biggest problems facing the world.

You’re a woman or a U.S. minority
As other top schools are doing, Haas is reaching out to women and to underrepresented ethnic groups, through programs and organizations such as the Forte Foundation and The Consortium. Haas hosts a Women’s Workshop and a Diversity Weekend in an effort to spread the word about its programs to these different groups. While Haas does not lower its standards for female or minority applicants, they do seem to be interested in improving the proportions of students in these categories and may give such candidates a closer look.

You have plans to start a nonprofit or social venture
One of the strongest business schools for nonprofit management has traditionally been Yale. Haas has similar strengths, with somewhat different emphasis on the innovation side. Someone considering an application to Yale for nonprofit might want to also consider Haas for similar reasons.

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Posted in Berkeley, Haas

2013 U.S. News Business School Rankings Just Released

Posted on March 14, 2012 | Leave a comment

Yesterday U.S. News & World Report released its 2013 business school rankings. Of course the rankings will have some impact on your school research, but using them as any more than a useful starting point can lead you to apply to schools which don’t fit you as well as they could. Use them, for sure, but use them with care!

Here are the top 20 American programs as defined by U.S. News. Each school’s 2012 rankings follows in parentheses:

2013 U.S. News Business School Rankings
1. Harvard (2)
1. Stanford (1)
3. Penn (Wharton) (3)
4. MIT (Sloan) (3)
4. Northwestern (Kellogg) (5)
4. Chicago (Booth) (5)
7. UC Berkeley (Haas) (7)
8. Columbia (9)
9. Dartmouth (Tuck) (7)
10. Yale (10)
11. NYU (Stern) (10)
12. Duke (Fuqua) (12)
13. Michigan (Ross) (14)
13. Virginia (Darden) (13)
15. UCLA (Anderson) (14)
16. Cornell (Johnson) (16)
17. Texas (McCombs) (17)
18. Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) (18)
19. Emory (Goizueta) (23)
19. UNC (Kenan-Flagler) (19)

The biggest news starts at the top of the rankings, where Harvard moved into a tie with Stanford after being ranked #2 behind Stanford last year. Wharton, which had been tied with MIT Sloan for third place in the 2012 rankings, moved ahead of Sloan to take sole possession of the third spot this year. After that is a very tight cluster of schools, with Kellogg and Booth moving up from fifth place to tie Sloan for fourth place.

The rest of the top ten looks quite similar to what it was last year, with some minor shuffling among Columbia, Tuck, and Stern (with Stern landing at #11 this year). Looking at the rest of the top 20 schools, the most notable move came from Emory, which managed to break into the top 20 after sitting at #23 last year. Falling out of the top 20 was Washington University in St. Louis (Olin), which landed at the 22nd spot.

U.S. News uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative ratings to compile its scores. 40% of a school’s overall score comes from assessments by business school leaders and by corporate recruiters. So, in a sense, a large part of what they’re ranking is a school’s reputation, which can make the entire process a bit self-reinforcing. Even if a school were to dramatically improve every aspect of its program — from academics to job placement to alumni services — it might takes years for these results to have a significant impact on these qualitative ratings. Said another way, a large part of these rankings are essentially backward-looking… Their peer’s opinions of them are shaped by what the schools have done over the past few decades (or more), not necessarily by what the schools are doing right now.

The next 25% of an MBA program’s rating comes from other quantitative measures around the admissions process, including the mean GMAT score and undergraduate GPAs of the incoming class, and the school’s admissions rate. These stats are relatively straightforward, but keep in mind that schools are always trying to game the system and find ways to tweak these numbers to improve their rankings (e.g., accepting a student with a GRE score means that the school doesn’t need to include that student’s test score to U.S. News).

The last 35% of a school’s rating comes from more quantitative measures of the program’s success in placing job candidates, including mean starting salary and bonus data and the percentage of grads who have full-time jobs at graduation and three months after graduation. Even here, be aware of what’s being ranked: A school that sends many more grads into investment banking will likely report a higher average starting salary than a school that sends many grads into the non-profit sector. So, apple-to-apples comparisons aren’t so simple.

None of this means that the rankings are bogus. We all pay attention to them, and we will continue to do so as long as U.S. News and other publications keep ranking graduate schools. But know exactly what you’re looking at as you review these rankings!

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Posted in MBA Rankings

Get to Know: NYU Stern

Posted on March 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

NYU Stern is one of the premier MBA programs in the country, and for good reason. Its innovative curriculum and terrific location make it one of the first schools that many MBA applicants consider, particularly those who are interested in pursuing careers on Wall Street. If you want to attend a top-ranked business school, chances are that you’ve at least considered sending an application to Stern.

But, besides knowing that it’s a top-ranked school with strong ties to the banking sector, how well do you really know Stern? How do you know if it’s a good fit for you? And, perhaps more importantly, how do you know if the admissions committee will decide you’re a good fit for Stern? Today we dig into four things that make NYU Stern unique among top-ranked MBA programs:

A welcoming environment for career changers
Stern is considered one of the best possible destinations for those looking to move from one field to another by way of their MBA education. The Industry Mentoring Initiative allows Stern students to apply for a very unique mentoring program that puts career changers into actual companies to learn about a new industry or function and to make strong inroads into that world through networking. It is a competitive application process and one that that requires a clear move from one career to another, but for those students who participate, it can be a lifesaver. The IMI program features tracks in six different industries: consulting, luxury and retail, marketing, media and entertainment, investment banking, and sales and trading. While any business school can serve as the launching pad into a new career, the significant resources available for students at Stern makes this a natural choice for many.

An innovative and responsive faculty
Stern was quick to move during the global financial crisis. Not only were its professors speaking to the media on a daily basis as the events unfolded, but by the first quarter of 2009, a major collaborative effort by 33 faculty members resulted in 18 policy white papers and a book on the financial crisis, Restoring Financial Stability, as well as a course offered by the white paper authors. In late 2010, Stern published the next book in this series, Regulating Wall Street, which discusses the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act and identifies flaws in this sweeping regulation on the financial industry. Most recently, Guaranteed to Fail came out, blasting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as the underlying culprits of the mortgage crisis and our economic woes. Stern’s faculty are heavily engaged in research of critical issues of the day, and few schools have been so quick to publicize analysis of and policy recommendations for these very significant events.

A focus on Emotional Intelligence
While many schools are grappling with the issues that created the economic problems a few years ago and seek to redefine their place in business and society, NYU Stern has focused on identifying the traits of individuals they want to invite into their collaborative community. Stern looks to evaluate candidates’ “EQ” or emotional intelligence, as equally important as IQ, in determining if they will be a good fit to the school.

A viable part-time MBA option in the Northeast
Stern was one of the first graduate business schools to offer a part-time program and they remain the only top program in the region to have one. The next closest part-time option is at Duke, down in North Carolina.

To stay on top on all of the latest news at Stern and other top-ranked business schools, be sure to find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

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Should You Apply to Business School in Round 3?

Posted on March 1, 2012 | Leave a comment

At this time of year, we get the “Round 3 or wait?” question from a lot of applicants. As usual, the answer we give them is, “It depends,” although we do have some very strong opinions on the matter. Applying in Round 3 is not automatically a bad idea, but there is definitely a “buyer beware” aspect that you should consider. In this case, what you’re buying is a few minutes of an admissions officer’s time, and the price you pay is the application fee plus all of the blood, sweat, and tears that will go into your application.

Of course, what answer we give largely depends on who the applicant is. One applicant might want to apply now because he was recently laid off. He hadn’t been planning on applying to business school this year, but his sudden unemployment now makes MBA programs look that much more appealing. Another might call us because she just took the GMAT again and still can’t get above a 650. She had been planning on nailing the GMAT this month and spending a couple of weeks on her essays and letters of recommendation, but now she wonders if she’d be better served by taking more time for her GMAT prep and applying in the fall, with a (hopefully) higher GMAT score. Still another applicant just rolled out of bed last week and decided that the one thing he’s really wanted all his life is Harvard MBA… He just never realized it until now!

To be clear, Round 3 is NOT an automatic black hole where applications go to die. As we wrote earlier this year, top business schools know that great applicants can come in any round, and many schools have very specific reasons (such as U.S. schools needing to stay competitive vs. international programs) for paying close attention to the Round 3 applicant pool.

Still, since in Round 3 your chances of success can’t help but be impacted somewhat by what happened in the previous rounds — Did your first-choice school admit more students than it originally had planned? Are yields higher than historical averages? — you can’t help but wonder if you’re going to get fair shake in Round 3. Ultimately, however, how well you do in Round 3 depends far more on you and your application than on what numbers the admissions office saw in previous rounds.

If you have a unique profile or are targeting a business school outside of the top 20, then your chances in Round 3 may not be bad at all. Or, if you want to attend a part-time or EMBA program then the “rounds” concept may not even be relevant, depending on the school. If none of these descriptions fit your situation, then you may want wait until next year. If you’re already on the “old” side for a typical applicant (e.g., you have more than five years of full-time work experience now), though, and there’s not a high likelihood that you will take a significant step forward in your career in the next eight months, then that’s one more reason to apply now, in Round 3.

Round 3 partly gets a bad reputation from those applicants who throw together their applications at the last minute (rather than having to wait eight months before applying in next year’s admissions cycle) and end up getting rejected. “See,” they say, “I knew I wouldn’t get in. Round 3 is impossible.” But Round 3 wasn’t the problem… their applications were what held them back. We spend a great deal of our time here at Veritas Prep talking applicants out of such kamikaze missions, and the same goes for the “Round 3 vs. next year” decision.

In short, if you apply to a top-ranked MBA program with a flaw that you know is significant — e.g., a low GMAT score, or a weak undergrad transcript with nothing to compensate for it, or sloppy essays, or I-hope-he-spelled-my-name-right letters of recommendation — then you can safely assume that flaw will also bother MBA admissions officers enough to keep you out. In that case, we almost always strongly recommend that an applicant wait, takes steps to improve things, and then apply next year, when things are in order.

Waiting is always a good idea if you can apply with a significantly better application next year. But, if you feel you have a strong application now, and you don’t expect to have a significantly stronger story in eight months, then applying in Round 3 is not such a terrible idea. Just keep in mind that there are factors outside of your control. Just like in real life.

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Get to Know: Harvard Business School

Posted on February 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

Not surprisingly, we get more questions about Harvard Business School than about any other MBA program. At such a highly visible school, it’s hard for changes to go unnoticed, but there have indeed been a lot of changes at Harvard recently. Among them are:

An evolution beyond the case method
What was sacrosanct at Harvard for generations was that 100% of courses were taught using the case study method. As many predicted when Dean Nitin Nohria arrived in Summer 2010, the curriculum is undergoing change. Starting with the class matriculating in Fall 2011, students will now have “field method” experiences as a counterpart to the case-based teaching. The first change to the curriculum is a year-long first-year course called FIELD, for Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development. FIELD features small-group opportunities for students to put what they learn into practice. The Class of 2012 will also see a reduction in the number of case-based courses and the introduction of new labs, similar to what schools like MIT have offered for some time.

A slight increase in average age of admitted students
Harvard has traditionally been very open to younger candidates, and has not been as fixated on years of work experience as some other schools. This preference for younger candidates may have reversed with the class starting at HBS in Fall 2011. Over a quarter of those accepted in this class graduated from college in 2007, which means that they have a solid four years of work experience before beginning their MBA. Harvard didn’t accept a single student straight from college this year into the full-time MBA program, either. It is highly unlikely that the pendulum will swing too far in the other direction — Harvard is almost certainly going to continue accepting high-potential early-career students. However, those with a few more years of work experience should also be encouraged by this trend.

An effort to broaden the professional pool beyond consulting and finance candidates
While consultants, investment bankers, and private equity analysts will undoubtedly make up the majority of classes of students entering Harvard for years to come, during this past year, these standard business school types weren’t welcomed as warmly as they typically have been. Harvard was more selective in choosing among these cohorts, and some very well-qualified candidates did not get offered a spot. This is likely due to Dean Nohria’s concern regarding the bad rap that business schools have gotten in the press and their perceived responsibility in contributing to the economic
crisis.

More women in the classroom
As a direct result of one of Dean Nohria’s new initiatives, 39% of the Class of 2014 are women. Harvard now rivals Wharton in this area. Harvard is also working to increase the numbers of women on the faculty and is sponsoring academic research on women in business.

A “normalization” of the HBS 2+2 program admissions
Coinciding with the increase in overall age of Harvard’s students, the Admissions Board also made an adjustment to the HBS 2+2 program. There are fewer special rules and policies surrounding an application to 2+2, and instead, it looks more like a formal channel for Harvard to attract qualified students earlier in their lives. College juniors and seniors can apply through 2+2 in a series of application rounds that work just like the standard MBA application rounds do, except that they’re staggered on an offset schedule from the main cycle, and the essay questions are slightly different. The HBS 2+2 program is at least as competitive, if not more so, as standard Harvard’s standard MBA program.

To stay on top on all of the latest news on HBS and other top-ranked business schools, be sure to find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

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Posted in Harvard

Get to Know: Tuck School of Business

Posted on February 16, 2012 | Leave a comment

Tuck is quote popular among applicants we talk to, which is especially notable given the school’s small size. We are often disappointed, though, by how few Tuck applicants really know whether the school is good fit for them. We always urge these applicants to go back and do their homework a bit more before they begin the application process.

Are you thinking about applying to Tuck? If so, how do you know the Tuck admissions team will think you’re a good fit for the school? Today we look at four things that make the Tuck School of Business unique among top-ranked business schools:

Small classes, personal attention
Partly because of the remote location, and partly because of the small class size, Tuck has a smaller full-time resident faculty (less than 50) with fewer adjunct professors than other schools. However, the small class size also benefits the students, with a student/teacher ratio of about 10:1. The intimacy of the community is also enhanced by the fact that most first-year students live in dormitories on campus. (If you want to see what the Tuck dorms look like, check out the tour on the school’s YouTube channel.) This arrangement is not common at other full-time programs, where students tend to be more spread out, especially those in cities like New York and Chicago. Another novelty at Tuck that fosters relationships among the class? The first-year study groups rotate regularly, rather than remaining fixed, the way they typically are elsewhere.

Strong emphasis on professional experience
While some other business schools in its backyard have been welcoming younger and younger students, Tuck has held steadfast on its requirement for significant work experience prior to matriculation. The average age of a first-year is 28, and not a single person entered Tuck straight from college this year; 100% have some work experience. It’s possible for a college senior to apply to Tuck, though if accepted, it’s also likely that deferred admission would be offered, to matriculate in a few years’ time.

Dedication to diversity
Tuck’s Minority Business Executive was the first diversity-focused program of its kind. Tuck launched this initiative over 30 years ago, and the school remains dedicated to attracting students across all ethnographic and demographic spectrums. Tuck sponsors a by-application Diversity Conference in the Fall (they cover the cost of attendance for those accepted — and there’s a similar by-application Women in Business Conference as well). Tuck participates in conferences hosted by National Black MBA, National Hispanic MBA, and Reaching Out MBA (for the LGBT community). And, Tuck is the highest-ranked member of The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, which is a long-standing program that encourages and facilitates minority candidates for business school. All that being said, Tuck still seems to have trouble attracting minorities compared to some of its peers, with just 19% of Tuckies being U.S. minorities. The proportion of minority faculty is slightly better, at 21% (commendably, Tuck is among the few programs who bother to report this latter statistic). Tuck also adds diversity to the classroom by encouraging international students — and encouraging U.S. employers to hire their international students, through deliberate education to recruiters to demystify visa requirements, and focused outreach on the behalf of these international students.

Strong, consistent leadership
With 15 years of tenure, the dean of Tuck, Paul Danos, has been running the show for much longer than his counterparts at other schools. Many top business schools have gone through transition periods of late as they adapt to changed leadership and find their direction anew. The continuity here — and a leader who has already weathered multiple economic cycles and knows how to keep the school moving forward despite the challenges — can provide advantages for students at Tuck.

To stay on top on all of the latest news on Tuck and other top-ranked business schools, be sure to find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

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Posted in Uncategorized

Get to Know: UCLA Anderson

Posted on February 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

Are you thinking about applying to UCLA Anderson? If so, why? How do you know if it’s really is a good fit for you? More importantly, how do you know the Anderson admissions team will think you’re a good fit for the school? Today we present a few reasons why Anderson might be a good fit for you:
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Posted in Anderson, UCLA