-
Moving from the Military to Business School
Tweet Share on Facebook May 27, 2011 Comment (2)With Memorial Day upon us, it seems fitting to take a look at one special group of b-school students: war veterans. In fact, my very first client, many years ago, was in the military. Despite having a 540 GMAT, he was admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. In all, our military clients have consistently done quite well, often despite having low test scores.
Military applicants tend to blow other candidates out of the water, figuratively speaking, because they have a wealth of experience to draw from at a very young age. While many b-school hopefuls can only speak to sitting in cubicles, crunching numbers for the boss, these veteran applicants have had to deal with highly stressful situations, think on their feet, make ethical decisions, and lead important projects.
-
M.B.A. Programs Invest in Social Good
Tweet Share on Facebook May 20, 2011 CommentImpact investing is an emerging field that has taken top business schools by storm. Doing well by doing good isn't a new concept. But unlike traditional socially responsible investing, which has sometimes received flak for leading to "greenwashing"—disguising ordinary profit-seeking behavior as socially or environmentally conscious—the new genre of impact investing channels large-scale private capital for social benefit, according to a report by J.P. Morgan and the Rockefeller Foundation.
To harness this new asset class, Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University recently hosted the first International Impact Investing Challenge, with more than $40,000 in prizes awarded to the winning teams. This invitation-only pitch competition asked students to design investment vehicles that create sustainable impact and are large enough to attract institutional investors. Twelve M.B.A. programs were invited to send one team to represent their program at a final competition at the J.P. Morgan headquarters in New York in April.
-
How to Pay For Your M.B.A.
Tweet Share on Facebook May 13, 2011 Comment (3)It's that time of year again—applicants are experiencing the euphoria of acceptance at the b-school of their dreams, only to be jarred by the reality that they've now got to come up with the money to pay for it. Popular M.B.A. applicant blogger Richard Battle-Baxter says he nearly fainted when he received his initial loan award notification. "I knew that would be coming but it was like looking at an employment offer! I mean actually... [one] year's tuition is definitely someone's yearly salary!"
Tuition at the top programs can soar well over $100,000, and tangential academic and living expenses will also set you back a pretty penny if you're planning on earning your M.B.A. degree in a metropolis such as New York, Boston, or Los Angeles. You're about to pony up for one of the most costly investments of your life at exactly the same moment you must bid adios to your (hopefully) substantial annual salary for up to two years. For many, that's a sobering realization.
-
Study Examines Harvard's Academic Gender Gap
Tweet Share on Facebook May 6, 2011 CommentCan you imagine a business school professor advising a group of 25-year-old male entrepreneurs to "act demure" when meeting with a group of potential investors? Probably not—yet it's the advice I once received after presenting a successful business plan with two other women to a panel of judges and venture capitalists. We were the only all-female team participating, and when they introduced us to an audience of hundreds of people, they called us "The Spice Girls." Not cool.
Although more than a decade has passed since I earned my M.B.A., the academic gender gap is still a hot-button issue in management education. At Harvard Business School, where women make up 36 percent of the class of 2011, proportionally more men than women receive academic honors, a study published recently in The Harbus reveals.
